Small Gods

‘Can’t you beat it?’ said Simony, who was not up to speed on the difference between machines and people.

‘It’s a philosophical engine,’ said Urn. ‘Beating won’t help.’

‘But you said machines could be our slaves,’ said Simony.

‘Not the beating sort,’ said Urn. ‘The nozzles are bunged up with salt. When the water rushes out of the globe it leaves the salt behind.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Water likes to travel light.’

‘We’re becalmed! Can you do anything about it?’

‘Yes, wait for it to cool down and then clean it out and put some more water in it.’

Simony looked around distractedly.

‘But we’re still in sight of the coast!’

‘You might be,’ said Didactylos. He was sitting in the middle of the boat with his hands crossed on the top of his walking-stick, looking like an old man who doesn’t often get taken out for an airing and is quite enjoying it.

‘Don’t worry. No one could see us out here,’ said Urn. He prodded at the mechanism. ‘Anyway, I’m a bit worried about the screw. It was invented to move water along, not move along on water.’

‘You mean it’s confused?’ said Simony.

‘Screwed up,’ said Didactylos happily.

Brutha lay in the pointed end, looking down at the water. A small squid siphoned past, just under the surface. He wondered what it was—

— and knew it was the common bottle squid, of the class Cephalo-poda, phylum Mollusca, and that it had an internal cartilaginous support instead of a skeleton and a well-developed nervous system and large, image-forming eyes that were quite similar to vertebrate eyes.

The knowledge hung in the forefront of his mind for a moment, and then faded away.

‘Om?’ Brutha whispered.

‘What?’

‘What’re you doing?’

‘Trying to get some sleep. Tortoises need a lot of sleep, you know.’

Simony and Urn were bent over the philosophical engine. Brutha stared at the globe—

— a sphere of radius r, which therefore had a volume V = (4/3) (pi) rrr, and surface area A = 4 (pi) rr—

‘Oh, my god …’

‘What now?’ said the voice of the tortoise.

Didactylos’s face turned towards Brutha, who was clutching at his head.

‘What’s a pi?’

Didactylos reached out a hand and steadied Brutha.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Om.

‘I don’t know! It’s just words! I don’t know what’s in the books! I can’t read!’

‘Getting plenty of sleep is vital,’ said Om. ‘It builds a healthy shell.’

Brutha sagged to his knees in the rocking boat. He felt like a householder coming back unexpectedly and finding the old place full of strangers. They were in every room, not menacing, but just filling the space with their thereness.

‘The books are leaking!’

‘I don’t see how that can happen,’ said Didactylos. ‘You said you just looked at them. You didn’t read them. You don’t know what they mean.’

‘They know what they mean!’

‘Listen. They’re just books, of the nature of books,’ said Didactylos. They’re not magical. If you could know what books contained just by looking at them, Urn there would be a genius.’

‘What’s the matter with him?’ said Simony.

‘He thinks he knows too much.’

‘No! I don’t know anything! Not really know,’ said Brutha. ‘I just remembered that squids have an internal cartilaginous support!’

‘I can see that would be a worry,’ said Simony. ‘Huh. Priests? Mad, the lot of them.’

‘No! I don’t know what cartilaginous means!’

‘Skeletal connective tissue,’ said Didactylos. ‘Think of bony and leathery at the same time.’

Simony snorted. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘we live and learn, just like you said.’

‘Some of us even do it the other way round,’ said Didactylos.

‘Is that supposed to mean something?’

‘It’s philosophy,’ said Didactylos. ‘And sit down, boy. You’re making the boat rock. We’re overloaded as it is.’

‘It’s being buoyed upward by a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid,’ muttered Brutha, sagging.

‘Hmm?’

‘Except that I don’t know what buoyed means.’

Urn looked up from the sphere. ‘We’re ready to start again,’ he said. ‘Just bale some water in here with your helmet, mister.’

‘And then we shall go again?’

‘Well, we can start getting up steam,’ said Urn. He wiped his hands on his toga.

‘Y’know,’ said Didactylos, ‘there are different ways of learning things. I’m reminded of the time when old Prince Lasgere of Tsort asked me how he could become learned, especially since he hadn’t got any time for this reading business. I said to him, “There is no royal road to learning, sire,” and he said to me, “Bloody well build one or I shall have your legs chopped off. Use as many slaves as you like.” A refreshingly direct approach, I always thought. Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words.’^{61}

‘Why didn’t he chop your legs off?’ said Urn.

‘I built him his road. More or less.’

‘How? I thought that was just a metaphor.’

‘You’re learning, Urn. So I found a dozen slaves who could read and they sat in his bedroom at night whispering choice passages to him while he slept.’

‘Did that work?’