Small Gods

‘Water seeps down after the rains,’ said Brutha. ‘It lodges in the rocks. Don’t gods know these things?’

‘We don’t need to.’ Om looked around. ‘Let’s go. I hate this place.’

‘It’s just an old temple. There’s nothing here.’

‘That’s what I mean.’

Sand and rubble half-filled it. Light lanced in through the broken roof high above, on to the slope that they had climbed down. Brutha wondered how many of the wind-carved rocks in the desert had once been buildings. This one must have been huge, perhaps a mighty tower. And then the desert had come.

There were no whispering voices here. Even the small gods kept away from abandoned temples, for the same reason that people kept away from graveyards. The only sound was the occasional plink of the water.

It dripped into a shallow pool in front of what looked like an altar. From the pool it had worn a groove in the slabs of the floor all the way to a round pit, which appeared to be bottomless. There were a few statues, all of them toppled; they were heavy-proportioned, lacking any kind of detail, each one a child’s clay model chiselled in granite. The distant walls had once been covered with some kind of bas-relief, but it had crumbled away except in a few places, which showed strange designs that mainly consisted of tentacles.

‘Who were the people who lived here?’ said Brutha.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What god did they worship?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘The statues are made of granite, but there’s no granite near here.’

‘They were very devout, then. They dragged it all the way.’

‘And the altar block is covered in grooves.’

‘Ah. Extremely devout. That would be to let the blood run off.’

‘You really think they did human sacrifice?’

‘I don’t know! I want to get out of here!’

‘Why? There’s water and it’s cool—’

‘Because … a god lived here. A powerful god. Thousands worshipped it. I can feel it. You know? It comes out of the walls. A Great God. Mighty were his dominions and magnificent was his word. Armies went forth in his name and conquered and slew. That kind of thing. And now no one, not you, not me, no one, even knows who the god was or his name or what he looked like. Lions drink in the holy places and those little squidgy things with eight legs, there’s one by your foot, what d’you call ’em, the ones with the antennae, crawl beneath the altar. Now do you understand?’

‘No,’ said Brutha.

‘Don’t you fear death? You’re a human!’

Brutha considered this. A few feet away, Vorbis stared mutely at the patch of sky.

‘He’s awake. He’s just not speaking.’

‘Who cares? I didn’t ask you about him.’

‘Well … sometimes … when I’m on catacomb duty … it’s the kind of place where you can’t help … I mean, all the skulls and things … and the Book says …’

‘There you are,’ said Om, a note of bitter triumph in his voice. ‘You don’t know. That’s what stops everyone going mad, the uncertainty of it, the feeling that it might work out all right after all. But it’s different for gods. We do know. You know that story about the sparrow flying through a room?’

‘No.’

‘Everyone knows it.’

‘Not me.’

‘About life being like a sparrow flying through a room? Nothing but darkness outside? And it flies through the room and there’s just a moment of warmth and light?’^{67}

‘There are windows open?’ said Brutha.

‘Can’t you imagine what it’s like to be that sparrow, and know about the darkness? To know that afterwards there’ll be nothing to remember, ever, except that one moment of the light?’

‘No.’

‘No. Of course you can’t. But that’s what it’s like, being a god. And this place … it’s a morgue.’

Brutha looked around at the ancient, shadowy temple.

‘Well … do you know what it’s like, being human?’

Om’s head darted into his shell for a moment, the nearest he was capable of to a shrug.

‘Compared to a god? Easy. Get born. Obey a few rules. Do what you’re told. Die. Forget.’

Brutha stared at him.

‘Is something wrong?’

Brutha shook his head. Then he stood up and walked over to Vorbis.

The deacon had drunk water from Brutha’s cupped hands. But there was a switched-off quality about him. He walked, he drank, he breathed. Or something did. His body did. The dark eyes opened, but appeared to be looking at nothing that Brutha could see. There was no sense that anyone was looking out through them. Brutha was certain that if he walked away, Vorbis would sit on the cracked flagstones until he very gently fell over. Vorbis’ body was present, but the whereabouts of his mind was probbly not locatable on any normal atlas.

It was just that, here and now and suddenly, Brutha felt so alone that even Vorbis was good company.

‘Why do you bother with him? He’s had thousands of people killed!’

‘Yes, but perhaps he thought you wanted it.’

‘I never said I wanted that.’

‘You didn’t care,’ said Brutha.

‘But I—’

‘Shut up!’

Om’s mouth opened in astonishment.