The sun was well up now. In fact it was probably setting, if Didactylos’s theories about the speed of light were correct, but in matters of relativity the point of view of the observer is very important, and from Om’s point of view the sun was a golden ball in a flaming orange sky.
He pulled himself up another slope, and stared blearily at the distant Citadel. In his mind’s eye, he could hear the mocking voices of all small gods.
They didn’t like a god who had failed. They didn’t like that at all. It let them all down. It reminded them of mortality. He’d be thrust out into the deep desert, where no one would ever come. Ever. Until the end of the world.
He shivered in his shell.
Urn and Fergmen walked nonchalantly through the tunnels of the Citadel, using the kind of nonchalant walk which, had there been anyone to take an interest in it, would have drawn detailed and arrow-sharp attention to them within seconds. But the only people around were those with vital jobs to do. Besides, it was not a good idea to stare too hard at the guards, in case they stared back.
Simony had told Urn he’d agreed to this. He couldn’t quite remember doing so. The sergeant knew a way into the Citadel, that was sensible. And Urn knew about hydraulics. Fine. Now he was walking through these dry tunnels with his toolbelt clinking. There was a logical connection, but it had been made by someone else.
Fergmen turned a corner and stopped by a large grille, which stretched from floor to ceiling. It was very rusty. It might once have been a door — there was a suggestion of hinges, rusted into the stone. Urn peered through the bars. Beyond, in the gloom, there were pipes.
‘Eureka,’ he said.
‘Going to have a bath, then?’ said Fergmen.
‘Just keep watch.’
Urn selected a short crowbar from his belt and inserted it between the grille and the stonework. Give me a foot of good steel and a wall to brace … my … foot … against — the grille ground forward and then popped out with a leaden sound — and I can change the world …
He stepped inside the long, dark, damp room, and gave a whistle of admiration.
No one had done any maintenance for — well, for as long as it took iron hinges to become a mass of crumbling rust — but all this still worked?
He looked up at lead and iron buckets bigger than he was, and a tangle of man-sized pipes.
This was the breath of God.
Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent-protection.
There were the levers and
‘Sergeant?’
Fergmen peered round the door. He looked nervous, like an atheist in a thunderstorm.
‘What?’
Urn pointed.
‘There’s a big shaft through the wall there, see? At the bottom of the gear-chain?’
‘The what?’
‘The big knobbly wheels?’
‘Oh. Yeah.’
‘Where does the shaft go to?’
‘Don’t know. There’s the big Treadmill of Correction through there.’
The breath of God was ultimately the sweat of men. Didactylos would have appreciated the joke, Urn thought.
He was aware of a sound that had been there all the time but was only now penetrating through his concentration. It was tinny and faint and full of echoes, but it was voices. From the pipes.
The sergeant, to judge by his expression, had heard them too.
Urn put his ear to the metal. There was no possibility of making out words, but the general religious rhythm was familiar enough.
‘It’s just the service going on in the Temple,’ he said. ‘It’s probably resonating off the doors and the sound’s being carried down the pipes.’
Fergmen did not look reassured.
‘No gods are involved in any way,’ Urn translated. He turned his attention to the pipes again.
‘Simple principle,’ said Urn, more to himself than to Fergmen. ‘Water pours into the reservoirs on the weights, disturbing the equilibrium. One lot of weights descends and the other rises up the shaft in the wall. The weight of the door is immaterial. As the bottom weights descend, these buckets
He caught Fergmen’s expression.
‘Water goes in and out and the doors swing open,’ he translated. ‘So all we’ve got to do is wait for … what did he say the sign would be?’
‘They’ll blow a trumpet when they’re through the main gate,’ said Fergmen, pleased to be of service.
‘Right.’ Urn eyed the weights and the reservoirs overhead. The bronze pipes dripped with corrosion.