Small Gods: Discworld Novel, A Read online

  But the first thing they noticed was his skull.

  Deacon Vorbis was bald by design. Most of the Church’s ministers, as soon as they were ordained, cultivated long hair and beards that you could lose a goat in. But Vorbis shaved all over. He gleamed. And lack of hair seemed to add to his power. He didn’t menace. He never threatened. He just gave everyone the feeling that his personal space radiated several meters from his body, and that anyone approaching Vorbis was intruding on something important. Superiors fifty years his senior felt apologetic about interrupting whatever it was he was thinking about.

  It was almost impossible to know what he was thinking about and no one ever asked. The most obvious reason for this was that Vorbis was the head of the Quisition, whose job it was to do all those things that needed to be done and which other people would rather not do.

  You do not ask people like that what they are thinking about in case they turn around very slowly and say “You.”

  The highest post that could be held in the Quisition was that of deacon, a rule instituted hundreds of years ago to prevent this branch of the Church becoming too big for its boots.* But with a mind like his, everyone said, he could easily be an archpriest by now, or even an Iam.

  Vorbis didn’t worry about that kind of trivia. Vorbis knew his destiny. Hadn’t the God himself told him?

  “There,” said Brother Nhumrod, patting Brutha on the shoulder. “I’m sure you will see things clearer now.”

  Brutha felt that a specific reply was expected.

  “Yes, master,” he said. “I’m sure I shall.”

  “—shall. It is your holy duty to resist the voices at all times,” said Nhumrod, still patting.

  “Yes, master. I will. Especially if they tell me to do any of the things you mentioned.”

  “—mentioned. Good. Good. And if you hear them again, what will you do? Mmm?”

  “Come and tell you,” said Brutha, dutifully.

  “—tell you. Good. Good. That’s what I like to hear,” said Nhumrod. “That’s what I tell all my boys. Remember that I’m always here to deal with any little problems that may be bothering you.”

  “Yes, master. Shall I go back to the garden now?”

  “—now. I think so. I think so. And no more voices, d’you hear?” Nhumrod waved a finger of his nonpatting hand. A cheek puckered.

  “Yes, master.”

  “What were you doing in the garden?”

  “Hoeing the melons, master,” said Brutha.

  “Melons? Ah. Melons,” said Nhumrod slowly.

  “Melons. Melons. Well, that goes some way toward explaining things, of course.”

  An eyelid flickered madly.

  It wasn’t just the Great God that spoke to Vorbis, in the confines of his head. Everyone spoke to an exquisitor, sooner or later. It was just a matter of stamina.

  Vorbis didn’t often go down to watch the inquisitors at work these days. Exquisitors didn’t have to. He sent down instructions, he received reports. But special circumstances merited his special attention.

  It has to be said…there was little to laugh at in the cellar of the Quisition. Not if you had a normal sense of humor. There were no jolly little signs saying: You Don’t Have To Be Pitilessly Sadistic To Work Here But It Helps!!!

  But there were things to suggest to a thinking man that the Creator of mankind had a very oblique sense of fun indeed, and to breed in his heart a rage to storm the gates of heaven.

  The mugs, for example. The inquisitors stopped work twice a day for coffee. Their mugs, which each man had brought from home, were grouped around the kettle on the hearth of the central furnace which incidentally heated the irons and knives.

  They had legends on them like A Present From the Holy Grotto of Ossory, or To The World’s Greatest Daddy. Most of them were chipped, and no two of them were the same.

  And there were the postcards on the wall. It was traditional that, when an inquisitor went on holiday, he’d send back a crudely colored woodcut of the local view with some suitably jolly and risqué message on the back. And there was the pinned-up tearful letter from Inquisitor First Class Ishmale “Pop” Quoom, thanking all the lads for collecting no fewer than seventy-eight obols for his retirement present and the lovely bunch of flowers for Mrs. Quoom, indicating that he’d always remember his days in No. 3 pit, and was looking forward to coming in and helping out any time they were shorthanded.

  And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.

  Vorbis loved knowing that. A man who knew that, knew everything he needed to know about people.

  Currently he was sitting alongside the bench on which lay what was still, technically, the trembling body of Brother Sasho, formerly his secretary.

  He looked up at the duty inquisitor, who nodded. Vorbis leaned over the chained secretary.

  “What were their names?” he repeated.

  “…don’t know…”

  “I know you gave them copies of my correspondence, Sasho. They are treacherous heretics who will spend eternity in the hells. Will you join them?”

  “…don’t know names…”

  “I trusted you, Sasho. You spied on me. You betrayed the Church.”

  “…no names…”

  “Truth is surcease from pain, Sasho. Tell me.”

  “…truth…”

  Vorbis sighed. And then he saw one of Sasho’s fingers curling and uncurling under the manacles. Beckoning.

  “Yes?”

  He leaned closer over the body.

  Sasho opened his one remaining eye.

  “…truth…”

  “Yes?”

  “…The Turtle Moves…”

  Vorbis sat back, his expression unchanged. His expression seldom changed unless he wanted it to. The inquisitor watched him in terror.

  “I see,” said Vorbis. He stood up, and nodded at the inquisitor.

  “How long has he been down here?”

  “Two days, lord.”

  “And you can keep him alive for—?”

  “Perhaps two days more, lord.”

  “Do so. Do so. It is, after all,” said Vorbis, “our duty to preserve life for as long as possible. Is it not?”

  The inquisitor gave him the nervous smile of one in the presence of a superior whose merest word could see him manacled on a bench.

  “Er…yes, lord.”

  “Heresy and lies everywhere,” Vorbis sighed. “And now I shall have to find another secretary. It is too vexing.”

  After twenty minutes Brutha relaxed. The siren voices of sensuous evil seemed to have gone away.

  He got on with the melons. He felt capable of understanding melons. Melons seemed a lot more comprehensible than most things.

  “Hey, you!”

  Brutha straightened up.

  “I do not hear you, oh foul succubus,” he said.

  “Oh yes you do, boy. Now, what I want you to do is—”

  “I’ve got my fingers in my ears!”

  “Suits you. Suits you. Makes you look like a vase. Now—”

  “I’m humming a tune! I’m humming a tune!”

  Brother Preptil, the master of the music, had described Brutha’s voice as putting him in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey. Choral singing was compulsory for novitiates, but after much petitioning by Brother Preptil a special dispensation had been made for Brutha. The sight of his big round face screwed up in the effort to please was bad enough, but what was worse was listening to his voice, which was certainly powerful and full of intent conviction, swinging backward and forward across the tune without ever quite hitting it.

  He got Extra Melons instead.

  Up in the prayer towers a flock of crows took off in a hurry.

  After a full chorus of He is Trampling the Unrighteous with Hooves of Hot Iron Brutha unplugged his ears and risked a qui
ck listen.

  Apart from the distant protests of the crows, there was silence.

  It worked. Put your trust in the God, they said. And he always had. As far back as he could remember.

  He picked up his hoe and turned back, in relief, to the vines.

  The hoe’s blade was about to hit the ground when Brutha saw the tortoise.

  It was small and basically yellow and covered with dust. Its shell was badly chipped. It had one beady eye—the other had fallen to one of the thousands of dangers that attend any slow-moving creature which lives an inch from the ground.

  He looked around. The gardens were well inside the temple complex, and surrounded by high walls.

  “How did you get in here, little creature?” he said. “Did you fly?”

  The tortoise stared monoptically at him. Brutha felt a bit homesick. There had been plenty of tortoises in the sandy hills back home.

  “I could give you some lettuce,” said Brutha. “But I don’t think tortoises are allowed in the gardens. Aren’t you vermin?”

  The tortoise continued to stare. Practically nothing can stare like a tortoise.

  Brutha felt obliged to do something.

  “There’s grapes,” he said. “Probably it’s not sinful to give you one grape. How would you like a grape, little tortoise?”

  “How would you like to be an abomination in the nethermost pit of chaos?” said the tortoise.

  The crows, who had fled to the outer walls, took off again to a rendering of The Way of the Infidel Is A Nest Of Thorns.

  Brutha opened his eyes and took his fingers out of his ears again.

  The tortoise said, “I’m still here.”

  Brutha hesitated. It dawned on him, very slowly, that demons and succubi didn’t turn up looking like small old tortoises. There wouldn’t be much point. Even Brother Nhumrod would have to agree that when it came to rampant eroticism, you could do a lot better than a one-eyed tortoise.

  “I didn’t know tortoises could talk,” he said.

  “They can’t,” said the tortoise. “Read my lips.”

  Brutha looked closer.

  “You haven’t got lips,” he said.

  “No, nor proper vocal cords,” agreed the tortoise. “I’m doing it straight into your head, do you understand?”

  “Gosh!”

  “You do understand, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  The tortoise rolled its eye.

  “I should have known. Well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to waste time on gardeners. Go and fetch the top man, right now.”

  “Top man?” said Brutha. He put his hand to his mouth. “You don’t mean…Brother Nhumrod?”

  “Who’s he?” said the tortoise.

  “The master of the novices!”

  “Oh, Me!” said the tortoise. “No,” it went on, in a singsong imitation of Brutha’s voice, “I don’t mean the master of the novices. I mean the High Priest or whatever he calls himself. I suppose there is one?”

  Brutha nodded blankly.

  “High Priest, right?” said the tortoise. “High. Priest. High Priest.”

  Brutha nodded again. He knew there was a High Priest. It was just that, while he could just about encompass the hierarchical structure between his own self and Brother Nhumrod, he was unable to give serious consideration to any kind of link between Brutha the novice and the Cenobiarch. He was theoretically aware that there was one, that there was a huge canonical structure with the High Priest at the top and Brutha very firmly at the bottom, but he viewed it in the same way as an amoeba might view the chain of evolution all the way between itself and, for example, a chartered accountant. It was missing links all the way to the top.

  “I can’t go asking the—” Brutha hesitated. Even the thought of talking to the Cenobiarch frightened him into silence. “I can’t ask anyone to ask the High Cenobiarch to come and talk to a tortoise!”

  “Turn into a mud leech and wither in the fires of retribution!” screamed the tortoise.

  “There’s no need to curse,” said Brutha.

  The tortoise bounced up and down furiously.

  “That wasn’t a curse! That was an order! I am the Great God Om!”

  Brutha blinked.

  Then he said, “No you’re not. I’ve seen the Great God Om,” he waved a hand making the shape of the holy horns, conscientiously, “and he isn’t tortoise-shaped. He comes as an eagle, or a lion, or a mighty bull. There’s a statue in the Great Temple. It’s seven cubits high. It’s got bronze on it and everything. It’s trampling infidels. You can’t trample infidels when you’re a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look. It’s got horns of real gold. Where I used to live there was a statue one cubit high in the next village and that was a bull too. So that’s how I know you’re not the Great God”—holy horns—“Om.”

  The tortoise subsided.

  “How many talking tortoises have you met?” it said sarcastically.

  “I don’t know,” said Brutha.

  “What d’you mean, you don’t know?”

  “Well, they might all talk,” said Brutha conscientiously, demonstrating the very personal kind of logic that got him Extra Melons. “They just might not say anything when I’m there.”

  “I am the Great God Om,” said the tortoise, in a menacing and unavoidably low voice, “and before very long you are going to be a very unfortunate priest. Go and get him.”

  “Novice,” said Brutha.

  “What?”

  “Novice, not priest. They won’t let me—”

  “Get him!”

  “But I don’t think the Cenobiarch ever comes into our vegetable garden,” said Brutha. “I don’t think he even knows what a melon is.”

  “I’m not bothered about that,” said the tortoise. “Fetch him now, or there will be a shaking of the earth, the moon will be as blood, agues and boils will afflict mankind and diverse ills will befall. I really mean it,” it added.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Brutha, backing away.

  “And I’m being very reasonable, in the circumstances!” the tortoise shouted after him.

  “You don’t sing badly, mind you!” it added, as an afterthought.

  “I’ve heard worse!” as Brutha’s grubby robe disappeared through the gateway.

  “Puts me in mind of that time there was the affliction of plague in Pseudopolis,” it said quietly, as the footsteps faded. “What a wailing and a gnashing of teeth was there, all right.” It sighed. “Great days. Great days!”

  Many feel they are called to the priesthood, but what they really hear is an inner voice saying, “It’s indoor work with no heavy lifting, do you want to be a plowman like your father?”

  Whereas Brutha didn’t just believe. He really Believed. That sort of thing is usually embarrassing when it happens in a God-fearing family, but all Brutha had was his grandmother, and she Believed too. She believed like iron believes in metal. She was the kind of woman every priest dreads in a congregation, the one who knows all the chants, all the sermons. In the Omnian Church women were allowed in the temple only on sufferance, and had to keep absolutely silent and well covered-up in their own section behind the pulpit in case the sight of one half of the human race caused the male members of the congregation to hear voices not unakin to those that plagued Brother Nhumrod through every sleeping and waking hour. The problem was that Brutha’s grandmother had the kind of personality that can project itself through a lead sheet and a bitter piety with the strength of a diamond-bit auger.

  If she had been born a man, Omnianism would have found its 8th Prophet rather earlier than expected. As it was, she organized the temple-cleaning, statue-polishing, and stoning-of-suspected-adulteresses rotas with a terrible efficiency.

  So Brutha grew up in the sure and certain knowledge of the Great God Om. Brutha grew up knowing that Om’s eyes were on him all the time, especially in places like the privy, and that demons assailed him on all sides and were only kept at bay
by the strength of his belief and the weight of grandmother’s cane, which was kept behind the door on those rare occasions when it was not being used. He could recite every verse in all seven Books of the Prophets, and every single Precept. He knew all the Laws and the Songs. Especially the Laws.

  The Omnians were a God-fearing people.

  They had a great deal to fear.

  Vorbis’s room was in the upper Citadel, which was unusual for a mere deacon. He hadn’t asked for it. He seldom had to ask for anything. Destiny has a way of marking her own.

  He also got visited by some of the most powerful men in the Church’s hierarchy.

  Not, of course, the six Archpriests or the Cenobiarch himself. They weren’t that important. They were merely at the top. The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it’s still possible to get things done.

  People liked to be friends with Vorbis, mainly because of the aforesaid mental field which suggested to them, in the subtlest of ways, that they didn’t want to be his enemy.

  Two of them were sitting down with him now. They were General Iam Fri’it, who whatever the official records might suggest was the man who ran most of the Divine Legion, and Bishop Drunah, secretary to the Congress of Iams. People might not think that was much of a position of power, but then they’d never been minutes secretary to a meeting of slightly deaf old men.

  Neither man was in fact there. They were not talking to Vorbis. It was one of those kinds of meeting. Lots of people didn’t talk to Vorbis, and went out of their way to not have meetings with him. Some of the abbots from the distant monasteries had recently been summoned to the Citadel, traveling secretly for up to a week across tortuous terrain, just so they definitely wouldn’t join the shadowy figures visiting Vorbis’s room. In the last few months, Vorbis had apparently had about as many visitors as the Man in the Iron Mask.

  Nor were they talking. But if they had been there, and if they had been having a conversation, it would have gone like this: