Small Gods

That thought wouldn’t go away. Mind like a steel ball, Om had said. Nothing got in or out. So all Vorbis could hear were the distant echoes of his own soul. And out of the distant echoes he would forge a Book of Vorbis, and Brutha suspected he knew what the commandments would be. There would be talk of holy wars and blood and crusades and blood and piety and blood.

Brutha got up, feeling like a fool. But the thoughts wouldn’t go away.

He was a bishop, but he didn’t know what bishops did. He’d only seen them in the distance, drifting along like earthbound clouds. There was only one thing he felt he knew how to do.

Some spotty boy was hoeing the vegetable garden. He looked at Brutha in amazement when he took the hoe, and was stupid enough to try to hang on to it for a moment.

‘I am a bishop, you know,’ said Brutha. ‘Anyway, you aren’t doing it right. Go and do something else.’

Brutha jabbed viciously at the weeds around the seedlings. Only away a few weeks and already there was a haze of green on the soil.

You’re a bishop. For being good. And here’s the iron turtle. In case you’re bad. Because …

… there were two people in the desert, and Om spoke to one of them.

It had never occurred to Brutha like that before.

Om had spoken to him. Admittedly, he hadn’t said the things that the Great Prophets said he said. Perhaps he’d never said things like that …

He worked his way along to the end of the row. Then he tidied up the bean vines.

Lu-Tze watched Brutha carefully from his little shed by the soil heaps.

***

It was another barn. Urn was seeing a lot of barns.

They’d started with a cart, and invested a lot of time in reducing its weight as much as possible. Gearing had been a problem. He’d been doing a lot of thinking about gears. The ball wanted to spin much faster than the wheels wanted to turn. That was probably a metaphor for something or other.

‘And I can’t get it to go backwards,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Simony. ‘It won’t have to go backwards. What about armour?’

Urn waved a distracted hand around his workshop.

‘This is a village forge!’ he said. ‘This thing is twenty feet long! Zacharos can’t make plates bigger than a few feet across. I’ve tried nailing them on a framework, but it just collapses under the weight.’

Simony looked at the skeleton of the steam car and the pile of plates stacked beside it.

‘Ever been in a battle, Urn?’ he said.

‘No. I’ve got flat feet. And I’m not very strong.’

‘Do you know what a tortoise is?’

Urn scratched his head. ‘Okay. The answer isn’t a little reptile in a shell, is it? Because you know I know that.’

‘I mean a shield tortoise. When you’re attacking a fortress or a wall, and the enemy is dropping everything he’s got on you, every man holds his shield overhead so that it … kind of … slots into all the shields around it. Can take a lot of weight.’

‘Overlapping,’ murmured Urn.

‘Like scales,’ said Simony.

Urn looked reflectively at the cart.

‘A tortoise,’ he said.

‘And the battering-ram?’ said Simony.

‘Oh, that’s no problem,’ said Urn, not paying much attention. ‘Tree-trunk bolted to the frame. Big iron rammer. They’re only bronze doors, you say?’

‘Yes. But very big.’

‘Then they’re probably hollow. Or cast bronze plates on wood. That’s what I’d do.’

‘Not solid bronze? Everyone says they’re solid bronze.’

‘That’s what I’d say, too.’

‘Excuse me, sirs.’

A burly man stepped forward. He wore the uniform of the palace guards.

‘This is Sergeant Fergmen,’ said Simony. ‘Yes, sergeant?’

‘The doors is reinforced with Klatchian steel. Because of all the fighting in the time of the False Prophet Zog. And they opens outwards only. Like lock gates on a canal, you understand? If you push on ’em, they only locks more firmly together.’

‘How are they opened, then?’ said Urn.

‘The Cenobiarch raises his hand and the breath of God blows them open,’ said the sergeant.

‘In a logical sense, I meant.’

‘Oh. Well, one of the deacons goes behind a curtain and pulls a lever. But … when I was on guard down in the crypts, sometimes, there was a room … there was gratings and things … well, you could hear water gushing …’

‘Hydraulics,’ said Urn. ‘Thought it would be hydraulics.’

‘Can you get in?’ said Simony.

‘To the room? Why not? No one bothers with it.’

‘Could he make the doors open?’ said Simony.

‘Hmm?’ said Urn.

Urn was rubbing his chin reflectively with a hammer. He seemed to be lost in a world of his own.

‘I said, could Fergmen make these hydra haulics work?’

‘Hmm? Oh. Shouldn’t think so,’ said Urn, vaguely.

‘Could you?’

‘What?’

‘Could you make them work?’

‘Oh. Probably. It’s just pipes and pressures, after all. Um.’

Urn was still staring thoughtfully at the steam cart. Simony nodded meaningfully at the sergeant, indicating that he should go away, and then tried the mental interplanetary journey necessary to get to whatever world Urn was in.

He tried looking at the cart, too.

‘How soon can you have it all finished?’

‘Hmm?’

‘I said—’

‘Late tomorrow night. If we work through tonight.’