Small Gods

There was a movement in the crowd, and the sound of Didactylos’s voice.

‘Let go! You heard him! Anyway … I always wanted a chance to do this …’

A couple of servants were pushed aside and the philosopher stumped out of the crowd, his barren lantern held defiantly over his head.

Brutha watched the philosopher pause for a moment in the empty space, and then turn very slowly until he was directly facing Vorbis. He took a few steps forward then, and held the lantern out as he appeared to regard the deacon critically.

‘Hmm,’ he said.

‘You are the … perpetrator?’ said Vorbis.

‘Indeed. Didactylos is my name.’

‘You are blind?’

‘Only as far as vision is concerned, my lord.’

‘Yet you carry a lantern,’ said Vorbis. ‘Doubtless for some catchword reason. Probably you’ll tell me you’re looking for an honest man?’

‘I don’t know, my lord. Perhaps you could tell me what he looks like?’

‘I should strike you down now,’ said Vorbis.

‘Oh, certainly.’

Vorbis indicated the book.

‘These lies. This scandal. This … this lure to drag the minds of men from the path of true knowledge. You dare to stand before me and declare’ — he pushed the book with a toe — ‘that the world is flat and travels through the void on the back of a giant turtle?’

Brutha held his breath.

So did history.

Affirm your belief, Brutha thought. Just once, someone please stand up to Vorbis. I can’t. But someone …

He found his eyes swivelling towards Simony, who stood on the other side of Vorbis’s chair. The sergeant looked transfixed, fascinated.

Didactylos drew himself up to his full height. He half-turned and for a moment his blank gaze passed across Brutha. The lantern was extended at arm’s length.

‘No,’ he said.

‘When every honest man knows that the world is a sphere, a perfect shape, bound to spin around the sphere of the Sun as Man orbits the central truth of Om,’ said Vorbis, ‘and the stars—’

Brutha leaned forward, heart pounding.

‘My lord?’ he whispered.

‘What?’ snapped Vorbis.

‘He said “no”,’ said Brutha.

‘That’s right,’ said Didactylos.

Vorbis sat absolutely motionless for a moment. Then his jaw moved a fraction, as if he was rehearsing some words under his breath.

‘You deny it?’ he said.

‘Let it be a sphere,’ said Didactylos. ‘No problem with a sphere. No doubt special arrangements are made for everything to stay on. And the Sun can be another larger sphere, a long way off. Would you like the Moon to orbit the world or the Sun? I advise the world. More hierarchical, and a splendid example to us all.’

Brutha was seeing something he’d never seen before. Vorbis was looking bewildered.

‘But you wrote … you said the world is on the back of a giant turtle! You gave the turtle a name!’

Didactylos shrugged. ‘Now I know better,’ he said. ‘Who ever heard of a turtle ten thousand miles long? Swimming through the emptiness of space? Hah. For stupidity! I am embarrassed to think of it now.’

Vorbis shut his mouth. Then he opened it again.

‘This is how an Ephebian philosopher behaves?’ he said.

Didactylos shrugged again. ‘It is how any true philosopher behaves,’ he said. ‘One must always be ready to embrace new ideas, take account of new proofs. Don’t you agree? And you have brought us many new points’ — a gesture seemed to take in, quite by accident, the Omnian bowmen around the room — ‘for me to ponder. I can always be swayed by powerful argument.’

‘Your lies have already poisoned the world!’

‘Then I shall write another book,’ said Didactylos calmly. ‘Think how it will look — proud Didactylos swayed by the arguments of the Omnians. A full retraction. Hmm? In fact, with your permission, lord — I know you have much to do, looting and burning and so on — I will retire to my barrel right away and start work on it. A universe of spheres. Balls spinning through space. Hmm. Yes. With your permission, lord, I will write you more balls than you can imagine…’

The old philosopher turned and, very slowly, walked towards the exit.

Vorbis watched him go.

Brutha saw him half-raise his hand to signal the guards, and then lower it again.

Vorbis turned to the Tyrant.

‘So much for your —’ he began.

‘Coo-ee!’

The lantern sailed through the doorway and shattered against Vorbis’s skull.

‘Nevertheless … the Turtle Moves!’

Vorbis leapt to his feet.

‘I—’ he screamed, and then got a grip on himself. He waved irritably at a couple of the guards. ‘I want him caught. Now. And … Brutha?’

Brutha could hardly hear him for the rush of blood in his ears. Didactylos had been a better thinker than he’d thought.

‘Yes, lord?’

‘You will take a party of men, and you will take them to the Library … and then, Brutha, you will burn the Library.’

Didactylos was blind, but it was dark. The pursuing guards could see, except that there was nothing to see by. And they hadn’t spent their lives wandering the twisty, uneven and above all many-stepped lanes of Ephebe.

‘—eight, nine, ten, eleven,’ muttered the philosopher, bounding up a pitch-dark flight of steps and haring around a corner.