Small Gods

He was quite old, and in many respects resembled a frog that had been dried out for quite some time. Something about him generally made people think of the word ‘spry’, but, at the moment, they would be much more likely to think of the words ‘mother naked’ and possibly also ‘dripping wet’ and would be one hundred per cent accurate, too. Although there was the beard. It was a beard you could camp out in.

The man thudded down the street without any apparent self-consciousness and stopped outside a potter’s shop. The potter didn’t seem concerned at being addressed by a little wet naked man; in fact, none of the people in the street had given him a second glance.

‘I’d like a Number Nine pot and some string, please,’ said the old man.

‘Yes sir, Mr Legibus.’ The potter reached under his counter and pulled out a towel. The naked man took it in an absent-minded way. Brutha got the feeling that this had happened to both of them before.

‘And a lever of infinite length and, um, an immovable place to stand,’ said Legibus, drying himself off.

‘What you see is what I got, sir. Pots and general household items, but a bit short on axiomatic mechanisms.’

‘Well, have you got a piece of chalk?’

‘Got some right here from last time,’ said the potter.

The little naked man took the chalk and started to draw triangles on the nearest bit of wall. Then he looked down.

‘Why haven’t I got any clothes on?’ he said.

‘We’ve been having our bath again, haven’t we?’ said the potter.

‘I left my clothes in the bath?’

‘I think you probably had an idea while you were in the bath?’ prompted the potter.

‘That’s right! That’s right! Got this splendid idea for moving the world around!’ said Legibus. ‘Simple lever principle. Should work perfectly. It’s just a matter of getting the technical details sorted out.’^{32}

‘That’s nice. We can move somewhere warm for the winter,’ said the potter.

‘Can I borrow the towel?’

‘It’s yours anyway, Mr Legibus.’

‘Is it?’

‘I said, you left it here last time. Remember? When you had that idea for the lighthouse?’

‘Fine. Fine,’ said Legibus, wrapping the towel around himself. He drew a few more lines on the wall. ‘Fine. Okay. I’ll send someone down later to collect the wall.’

He turned and appeared to see the Omnians for the first time. He peered forward and then shrugged.

‘Hmm,’ he said, and wandered away.

Brutha tugged at the cloak of one of the Ephebian soldiers.

‘Excuse me, but why did we stop?’ he said.

‘Philosophers have right of way,’ said the soldier.

‘What’s a philosopher?’ said Brutha.

‘Someone who’s bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,’ said a voice in his head.

‘An infidel seeking the just fate he shall surely receive,’ said Vorbis. ‘An inventor of fallacies. This cursed city attracts them like a dung heap attracts flies.’

‘Actually, it’s the climate,’ said the voice of the tortoise. ‘Think about it. If you’re inclined to leap out of your bath and run down the street every time you think you’ve got a bright idea, you don’t want to do it somewhere cold. If you do do it somewhere cold, you die out. That’s natural selection, that is. Ephebe’s known for its philosophers. It’s better than street theatre.’

‘What, a lot of old men running around the streets with no clothes on?’ said Brutha, under his breath, as they were marched onward.

‘More or less. If you spend your whole time thinking about the universe, you tend to forget the less important bits of it. Like your pants. And ninety-nine out of a hundred ideas they come up with are totally useless.’

‘Why doesn’t anyone lock them away safely, then? They don’t sound much use to me,’ said Brutha.

‘Because the hundredth idea,’ said Om, ‘is generally a humdinger.’

‘What?’

‘Look up at the highest tower on the rock.’

Brutha looked up. At the top of the tower, secured by metal bands, was a big disc that glittered in the morning light.

‘What is it?’ he whispered.

‘The reason why Omnia hasn’t got much of a fleet any more,’ said Om. ‘That’s why it’s always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it’s all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does a Falling Tree in the Forest Make a Sound if There’s No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they’re going to start dribbling one of ’em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy’s ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles,’^{33} he added. ‘Always coming up with amazing new ideas, the philosophers. The one before that was some intricate device that demonstrated the principles of leverage by incidentally hurling balls of burning sulphur two miles.^{34} Then before that, I think, there was some kind of an underwater thing that shot sharpened logs into the bottom of ships.’

Brutha stared at the disc again. He hadn’t understood more than one-third of the words in the last statement.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘does it?’

‘Does what?’

‘Make a sound. If it falls down when no one’s there to hear it.’

‘Who cares?’