Small Gods

And that was the problem. It was the problem of all really secret societies. They were secret. How many members did the Turtle Movement have? No one knew, exactly. What was the name of the man beside you? Two other members knew, because they would have introduced him, but who were they behind these masks? Because knowledge was dangerous. If you knew, the inquisitions could wind it slowly out of you. So you made sure you didn’t know. This made conversation much easier during cell meetings, and impossible outside of them.

It was the problem of all tentative conspirators throughout history: how to conspire without actually uttering words to an untrusted possible fellow-conspirator which, if reported, would point the accusing red-hot poker of guilt.

The little beads of sweat on Drunah’s forehead, despite the warm breeze, suggested that the secretary was agonising along the same lines. But it didn’t prove it. And for Fri’it, not dying had become a habit.

He clicked his knuckles nervously.

‘A holy war,’ he said. That was safe enough. The sentence included no verbal clue to what Fri’it thought about the prospect. He hadn’t said, ‘Ye god, not a damn holy war, is the man insane? Some idiot missionary gets himself killed, some man writes some gibberish about the shape of the world, and we have to go to war?’ If pressed, and indeed stretched and broken, he could always claim that his meaning had been ‘At last! A not-to-be-missed opportunity to die gloriously for Om, the one true God, who shall Trample the Unrighteous with Hooves of Iron!’ It wouldn’t make a lot of difference, evidence never did once you were in the deep levels where accusation had the status of proof, but at least it might leave one or two inquisitors feeling that they might just have been wrong.

‘Of course, the Church has been far less militant in the last century or so,’ said Drunah, looking out over the desert. ‘Much taken up with the mundane problems of the empire.’

A statement. Not a crack in it where you could insert a bone-disjointer.

‘There was the crusade against the Hodgsonites,’ said Fri’it distantly. ‘And the Subjugation of the Melchiorites. And the Resolving of the false prophet Zeb. And the Correction of the Ashelians, and the Shriving of the—’

‘But all that was just politics,’ said Drunah.

‘Hmm. Yes. Of course, you are right.’

‘And, of course, no one could possibly doubt the wisdom of a war to further the worship and glory of the Great God.’

‘No. None could doubt it,’ said Fri’it, who had walked across many a battlefield the day after a glorious victory, when you had ample opportunity to see what winning meant. The Omnians forbade the use of all drugs. At times like that the prohibition bit hard, when you dared not go to sleep for fear of your dreams.

‘Did not the Great God declare, through the Prophet Abbys, that there is no greater and more honourable sacrifice than one’s own life for the God?’

‘Indeed he did,’ said Fri’it. He couldn’t help recalling that Abbys had been a bishop in the Citadel for fifty years before the Great God had Chosen him. Screaming enemies had never come at him with a sword. He’d never looked into the eyes of someone who wished him dead — no, of course he had, all the time, because of course the Church had its politics — but at least they hadn’t been holding the means to that end in their hands at the time.

‘To die gloriously for one’s faith is a noble thing,’ Drunah intoned, as if reading the words off an internal notice-board.

‘So the prophets tell us,’ said Fri’it, miserably.

The Great God moved in mysterious ways, he knew. Undoubtedly He chose His prophets, but it seemed as if He had to be helped. Perhaps He was too busy to choose for Himself. There seemed to be a lot more meetings, a lot more nodding, a lot more exchanging of glances even during the services in the Great Temple.

Certainly there was a glow about young Vorbis — how easy it was to slip from one thought to the other. There was a man touched by destiny. A tiny part of Fri’it, the part that had lived for much of its life in tents, and been shot at quite a lot, and had been in the middle of mêlées where you could just as easily be killed by an ally as an enemy, added: or at least by something. It was a part of him that was due to spend all the eternities in all the hells, but it had already had a lot of practice.

‘You know I travelled a lot when I was much younger?’ he said.

‘I have often heard you talk most interestingly of your travels in heathen lands,’ said Drunah politely. ‘Often bells are mentioned.’

‘Did I ever tell you about the Brown Islands?’

‘Out beyond the end of the world,’ said Drunah. ‘I remember. Where bread grows on trees and young women find little white balls in oysters. They dive for them, you said, while wearing not a stitc—’