Small Gods

Om listened curiously. He could remember prayers. There had been a lot of them, once. So many that he couldn’t make out an individual prayer even if he had felt inclined to, but that didn’t matter, because what mattered was the huge cosmic susurration of thousands of praying, believing minds. The words weren’t worth listening to, anyway.

Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that’d happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn’t a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time …

Well, he couldn’t even do the most basic of god tricks now. Thunderbolts with about the same effect as the spark off a cat’s fur, and you could hardly smite anyone with one of those. He had smitten good and hard in his time. Now he could just about walk through water and feed the One.

Brutha’s prayer was a piccolo tune in a world of silence.

Om waited until the novice was quiet again and then unfolded his legs and walked out, rocking from side to side, into the dawn.

***

The Ephebians walked through the palace courtyards, surrounding the Omnians almost, but not quite, in the manner of a prisoners’ escort.

Brutha could see that Vorbis was boiling with fury. A small vein on the side of the exquisitor’s bald temple was throbbing.

As if feeling Brutha’s eyes on him, Vorbis turned his head.

‘You seem ill at ease this morning, Brutha,’ he said.

‘Sorry, lord.’

‘You seem to be looking into every corner. What are you expecting to find?’

‘Uh. Just interested, lord. Everything’s new.’

‘All the so-called wisdom of Ephebe is not worth one line from the least paragraph in the Septateuch,’ said Vorbis.

‘May we not study the works of the infidel in order to be more alert to the ways of heresy?’ said Brutha, surprised at himself.

‘Ah. A persuasive argument, Brutha, and one that the inquisitors have heard many times, if a little indistinctly in many cases.’

Vorbis glowered at the back of the head of Aristocrates, who was leading the party. ‘It is but a small step from listening to heresy to questioning established truth, Brutha. Heresy is often fascinating. Therein lies its danger.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Hah! And not only do they carve forbidden statues, but they can’t even do it properly.’

Brutha was no expert, but even he had to agree that this was true. Now the novelty of them had worn off, the statues that decorated every niche in the palace did have a certain badly made look. Brutha was pretty sure he’d just passed one with two left arms. Another one had one ear larger than the other. It wasn’t that someone had set out to carve ugly gods. They had clearly been meant to be quite attractive statues. But the sculptor hadn’t been much good at it.

‘That woman there appears to be holding a penguin,’ said Vorbis.

‘Patina, Goddess of Wisdom,’ said Brutha automatically, and then realized he’d said it.

‘I, er, heard someone mention it,’ he added.

‘Indeed. And what remarkably good hearing you must have,’ said Vorbis.

Aristocrates paused outside an impressive doorway and nodded at the party.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘the Tyrant will see you now.’

‘You will recall everything that is said,’ whispered Vorbis.

Brutha nodded.

The doors swung open.

All over the world there were rulers with titles like the Exalted, the Supreme, and Lord High Something or Other. Only in one small country was the ruler elected by the people, who could remove him whenever they wanted — and they called him the Tyrant.

The Ephebians believed that every man should have the vote.[6] Every five years someone was elected to be Tyrant, provided he could prove that he was honest, intelligent, sensible and trustworthy. Immediately after he was elected, of course, it was obvious to everyone that he was a criminal madman and totally out of touch with the view of the ordinary philosopher in the street looking for a towel. And then five years later they elected another one just like him, and really it was amazing how intelligent people kept on making the same mistakes.

Candidates for the Tyrantship were elected by the placing of black or white balls in various urns, thus giving rise to a well-known comment about politics.^{41}

The Tyrant was a fat little man with skinny legs, giving people the impression of an egg that was hatching upside down. He was sitting alone in the middle of the marble floor, in a chair surrounded by scrolls and scraps of paper. His feet didn’t touch the marble, and his face was pink.

Aristocrates whispered something in his ear. The Tyrant looked up from his paperwork.

‘Ah, the Omnian delegation,’ he said, and a smile flashed across his face like something small darting across a stone. ‘Do be seated, all of you.’

He looked down again.