Small Gods

‘Don’t know. The third slave stuck a six-inch dagger in his ear. Then after the revolution the new ruler let me out of prison and said I could leave the country if I promised not to think of anything on the way to the border. But I don’t believe there was anything wrong with the idea in principle.’

Urn blew on the fire.

‘Takes a little while to heat up the water,’ he explained.

Brutha lay back in the bow again. If he concentrated, he could stop the knowledge flowing. The thing to do was avoid looking at things. Even a cloud—

— devised by natural philosophy as a means of occasioning shade on the surface of the world, thus preventing overheating—

— caused an intrusion. Om was fast asleep.

Knowing without learning, thought Brutha. No. The other way round. Learning without knowing …

***

Nine-tenths of Om dozed in his shell. The rest of him drifted like a fog in the real world of the gods, which is a lot less interesting than the three-dimensional world inhabited by most of humanity.

He thought: we’re a little boat. She’ll probably not even notice us. There’s the whole of the ocean. She can’t be everywhere.

Of course, she’s got many believers. But we’re only a little boat …

He felt the minds of inquisitive fishes nosing around the end of the screw. Which was odd, because in the normal course of things fishes were not known for their—

‘Greetings,’ said the Queen of the Sea.

‘Ah.’

‘I see you’re still managing to exist, little tortoise.’

‘Hanging in there,’ said Om. ‘No problems.’

There was a pause which, if it were taking place between two people in the human world, would have been spent in coughing and looking embarrassed. But gods are never embarrassed.

‘I expect,’ said Om guardedly, ‘you are looking for your price.’

‘This vessel and everyone in it,’ said the Queen. ‘But your believer can be saved, as is the custom.’

‘What good are they to you? One of them’s an atheist.’

‘Hah! They all believe, right at the end.’

‘That doesn’t seem …’ Om hesitated. ‘Fair?’

Now the Sea Queen paused.

‘What’s fair?’

‘Like … underlying justice?’ said Om. He wondered why he said it.

‘Sounds a human idea to me.’

‘They’re inventive, I’ll grant you. But what I meant was … I mean … they’ve done nothing to deserve it.’

‘Deserve? They’re human. What’s deserve got to do with it?’

Om had to concede this. He wasn’t thinking like a god. This bothered him.

‘It’s just…’

‘You’ve been relying on one human for too long, little god.’

‘I know. I know.’ Om sighed. Minds leaked into one another. He was seeing too much from a human point of view. ‘Take the boat, then. If you must. I just wish it was—’

‘Fair?’ said the Sea Queen. She moved forward. Om felt her all around him.

‘There’s no such thing,’ she said. ‘Life’s like a beach. And then you die.’

Then she was gone.

Om let himself retreat into the shell of his shell.

‘Brutha?’

‘Yes?’

‘Can you swim?’

The globe started to spin.

Brutha heard Urn say, ‘There. Soon be on our way.’

‘We’d better be.’ This was Simony. ‘There’s a ship out there.’

‘This thing goes faster than anything with sails or oars.’

Brutha looked across the bay. A sleek Omnian ship was passing the lighthouse. It was still a long way off, but Brutha stared at it with a dread and expectation that magnified better than telescopes.

‘It’s moving fast,’ said Simony. ‘I don’t understand it — there’s no wind.’

Urn looked round at the flat calm.

‘There can’t be wind there and not here,’ he said.

‘I said, can you swim?’ The voice of the tortoise was insistent in Brutha’s head.

‘I don’t know,’ said Brutha.

‘Do you think you could find out quickly?’

Urn looked upwards.

‘Oh,’ he said.

Clouds had massed over the Unnamed Boat. They were visibly spinning.

‘You’ve got to know!’ shouted Om. ‘I thought you had a perfect memory!’

‘We used to splash around in the big cistern in the village,’ whispered Brutha. ‘I don’t know if that counts!’

Mist whipped off the surface of the sea. Brutha’s ears popped. And still the Omnian ship came on, flying across the waves.

‘What do you call it when you’ve got a dead calm surrounded by winds—’ Urn began.

‘Hurricane?’ said Didactylos.

Lightning crackled between sky and sea. Urn yanked at the lever that lowered the screw into the water. His eyes glowed almost as brightly as the lightning.

‘Now there’s a power,’ he said. ‘Harnessing the lightning! The dream of mankind!’

The Unnamed Boat surged forward.

‘Is it? It’s not my dream,’ said Didactylos. ‘I always dream of a giant carrot chasing me through a field of lobsters.’

‘I mean metaphorical dream, master,’ said Urn.

‘What’s a metaphor?’ said Simony.

Brutha said, ‘What’s a dream?’

A pillar of lightning laced the mist. Secondary lightnings sparked off the spinning globe.

‘You can get it from cats,’ said Urn, lost in a philosophical world, as the Boat left a white wake behind it. ‘You stroke them with a rod of amber, and you get tiny lightnings … if I could magnify that a million times, no man would ever be a slave again and we could catch it in jars and do away with the night…’