Small Gods

After a full chorus of He is Trampling the Unrighteous with Hooves of Hot Iron Brutha unplugged his ears and risked a quick listen.

Apart from the distant protests of the crows, there was silence.

It worked. Put your trust in the God, they said. And he always had. As far back as he could remember.

He picked up his hoe and turned back, in relief, to the vines.

The hoe’s blade was about to hit the ground when Brutha saw the tortoise.

It was small and basically yellow and covered with dust. Its shell was badly chipped. It had one beady eye — the other had fallen to one of the thousands of dangers that attend any slow-moving creature which lives an inch from the ground.

He looked around. The gardens were well inside the temple complex, and surrounded by high walls.

‘How did you get in here, little creature?’ he said. ‘Did you fly?’

The tortoise stared monoptically at him. Brutha felt a bit homesick. There had been plenty of tortoises in the sandy hills back home.

‘I could give you some lettuce,’ said Brutha. ‘But I don’t think tortoises are allowed in the gardens. Aren’t you vermin?’

The tortoise continued to stare. Practically nothing can stare like a tortoise.

Brutha felt obliged to do something.

‘There’s grapes,’ he said. ‘Probably it’s not sinful to give you one grape. How would you like a grape, little tortoise?’

‘How would you like to be an abomination in the nethermost pit of chaos?’ said the tortoise.

The crows, who had fled to the outer walls, took off again to a rendering of The Way of the Infidel Is A Nest Of Thorns.

Brutha opened his eyes and took his fingers out of his ears again.

The tortoise said, ‘I’m still here.’

Brutha hesitated. It dawned on him, very slowly, that demons and succubi didn’t turn up looking like small old tortoises. There wouldn’t be much point. Even Brother Nhumrod would have to agree that when it came to rampant eroticism, you could do a lot better than a one-eyed tortoise.

‘I didn’t know tortoises could talk,’ he said.

‘They can’t,’ said the tortoise. ‘Read my lips.’

Brutha looked closer.

‘You haven’t got lips,’ he said.

‘No, nor proper vocal chords,’ agreed the tortoise. ‘I’m doing it straight into your head, do you understand?’

‘Gosh!’

‘You do understand, don’t you?’

‘No.’

The tortoise rolled its eye.

‘I should have known. Well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to waste time on gardeners. Go and fetch the top man, right now.’

‘Top man?’ said Brutha. He put his hand to his mouth. ‘You don’t mean … Brother Nhumrod?’

‘Who’s he?’ said the tortoise.

‘The master of the novices!’

‘Oh, Me!’ said the tortoise. ‘No,’ it went on, in a singsong imitation of Brutha’s voice, ‘I don’t mean the master of the novices. I mean the High Priest or whatever he calls himself. I suppose there is one?’

Brutha nodded blankly.

‘High Priest, right?’ said the tortoise. ‘High. Priest. High Priest.’

Brutha nodded again. He knew there was a High Priest. It was just that, while he could just about encompass the hierarchical structure between his own self and Brother Nhumrod, he was unable to give serious consideration to any kind of link between Brutha the novice and the Cenobiarch. He was theoretically aware that there was one, that there was a huge canonical structure with the High Priest at the top and Brutha very firmly at the bottom, but he viewed it in the same way as an amoeba might view the chain of evolution all the way between itself and, for example, a chartered accountant. It was missing links all the way to the top.

‘I can’t go asking the—’ Brutha hesitated. Even the thought of talking to the Cenobiarch frightened him into silence. ‘I can’t ask anyone to ask the High Cenobiarch to come and talk to a tortoise!’

‘Turn into a mud leech and wither in the fires of retribution!’ screamed the tortoise.

‘There’s no need to curse,’ said Brutha.

The tortoise bounced up and down furiously.

‘That wasn’t a curse! That was an order! I am the Great God Om!’

Brutha blinked.

Then he said, ‘No you’re not. I’ve seen the Great God Om,’ he waved a hand making the shape of the holy horns, conscientiously, ‘and he isn’t tortoise-shaped. He comes as an eagle, or a lion, or a mighty bull. There’s a statue in the Great Temple. It’s seven cubits high. It’s got bronze on it and everything. It’s trampling infidels. You can’t trample infidels when you’re a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look. It’s got horns of real gold. Where I used to live there was a statue one cubit high in the next village and that was a bull too. So that’s how I know you’re not the Great God’—holy horns—‘Om.’

The tortoise subsided.

‘How many talking tortoises have you met?’ it said sarcastically.

‘I don’t know,’ said Brutha.

‘What d’you mean, you don’t know?’

‘Well, they might all talk,’ said Brutha conscientiously, demonstrating the very personal kind of logic that got him Extra Melons. ‘They just might not say anything when I’m there.’