Small Gods

He remembered Brother Murduck. And the soldiers who had been lost in the desert. And all the things that had been done to people, even to Brutha.

‘Tell him you can’t remember!’ Om yelled. ‘Tell him you can’t recall!’^{57}

‘And if he was on trial,’ said Simony, ‘he’d be found guilty. No one would dare do anything else.’

Thoughts always moved slowly through Brutha’s mind, like icebergs. They arrived slowly and left slowly and when they were there they occupied a lot of space, much of it below the surface.

He thought: the worst thing about Vorbis isn’t that he’s evil, but that he makes good people do evil. He turns people into things like himself. You can’t help it. You catch it off him.

There was no sound but the slosh of water against the Unnamed Boat’s hull and the spinning of the philosophical engine.

‘We’d be caught if we returned to Omnia,’ said Brutha slowly.

‘We can land away from the ports,’ said Simony eagerly.

‘Ankh-Morpork!’ shouted Om.

‘First we should take Mr Didactylos to Ankh-Morpork,’ said Brutha. ‘Then — I’ll come back to Omnia.’

‘You can damn well leave me there too!’ said Om. ‘I’ll soon find some believers in Ankh-Morpork, don’t you worry, they believe anything there!’

‘Never seen Ankh-Morpork,’ said Didactylos. ‘Still, we live and learn. That’s what I always say.’ He turned to face the soldier. ‘Kicking and screaming.’

‘There’s some exiles in Ankh,’ said Simony. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be safe there.’

‘Amazing!’ said Didactylos. ‘And to think, this morning, I didn’t even know I was in danger.’

He sat back in the boat.

‘Life in this world,’ he said, ‘is, as it were, a sojourn in a cave.^{58} What can we know of reality? For all we see of the true nature of existence is, shall we say, no more than bewildering and amusing shadows cast upon the inner wall of the cave by the unseen blinding light of absolute truth, from which we may or may not deduce some glimmer of veracity, and we as troglodyte seekers of wisdom can only lift our voices to the unseen and say, humbly, “Go on, do Deformed Rabbit … it’s my favourite.”’^{59}

Vorbis stirred the ashes with his foot.

‘No bones,’ he said.

The soldiers stood silently. The fluffy grey flakes collapsed and blew a little way in the dawn breeze.

‘And the wrong sort of ash,’ said Vorbis.^{60}

The sergeant opened his mouth to say something.

‘Be assured I know that of which I speak,’ said Vorbis.

He wandered over to the charred trap-door, and prodded it with his toe.

‘We followed the tunnel,’ said the sergeant, in the tones of one who hopes against experience that sounding helpful will avert the wrath to come. ‘It comes out near the docks.’

‘But if you enter it from the docks it does not come out here,’ Vorbis mused. The smoking ashes seemed to hold an endless fascination for him.

The sergeant’s brow wrinkled.

‘Understand?’ said Vorbis. ‘The Ephebians wouldn’t build a way out that was a way in. The minds that devised the labyrinth would not work like that. There would be … valves. Sequences of trigger-stones, perhaps. Trips that trip only one way. Whirring blades that come out of unexpected walls.’

‘Ah.’

‘Most intricate and devious, I have no doubt.’

The sergeant ran a dry tongue over his lips. He could not read Vorbis like a book, because there had never been a book like Vorbis. But Vorbis had certain habits of thought that you learned, after a while.

‘You wish me to take the squad and follow it up from the docks,’ he said hollowly.

‘I was just about to suggest it,’ said Vorbis.

‘Yes, lord.’

Vorbis patted the sergeant on the shoulder.

‘But do not worry!’ he said cheerfully. ‘Om will protect the strong in faith.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘And the last man can bring me a full report. But first … they are not in the city?’

‘We have searched it fully, lord.’

‘And no one left by the gate? Then they left by sea.’

‘All the Ephebian war vessels are accounted for, Lord Vorbis.’

‘This bay is lousy with small boats.’

‘With nowhere to go but the open sea, sir.’

Vorbis looked out at the Circle Sea. It filled the world from horizon to horizon. Beyond lay the smudge of the Sto plains and the ragged line of the Ramtops, all the way to the towering peaks that the heretics called the Hub but which was, he knew, the Pole, visible around the curve of the world only because of the way light bent in atmosphere, just as it did in water … and he saw a smudge of white, curling over the distant ocean.

Vorbis had very good eyesight, from a height.

He picked up a handful of grey ash, which had once been Dykeri’s Principles of Navigation, and let it drift through his fingers.

‘Om has sent us a fair wind,’ he said. ‘Let us get down to the docks.’

Hope waved optimistically in the waters of the sergeant’s despair.

‘You won’t be wanting us to explore the tunnel, lord?’ he said.

‘Oh, no. You can do that when we return.’

Urn prodded at the copper globe with a piece of wire while the Unnamed Boat wallowed in the waves.