Terry Pratchett - Discworld 13 - Small Gods

TERRY PRATCHETT

SMALL GODS

v1.0 (22-mar-01) Scanned, OCR’d and proofed in Word2000 by 4i Publications

NOW CONSIDER THE TORTOISE AND the eagle.

The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it.

Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a

lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to

anyone and too much trouble to eat.

And then there is the eagle. A creature of the air and high places, whose horizons go all the way to the

edge of the world. Eyesight keen enough to spot the rustle of some small and squeaky creature half a mile

away. All power, all control. Lightning death on wings. Talons and claws enough to make a meal of

anything smaller than it is and at least take a hurried snack out of anything bigger.

And yet the eagle will sit for hours on the crag and survey the kingdoms of the world until it spots a

distant movement and then it will focus, focus, focus on the small shell wobbling among the bushes down

there on the desert. And it will leap . . .

And a minute later the tortoise finds the world dropping away from it. And it sees the world for the first

time, no longer one inch from the ground but five hundred feet above it, and it thinks: what a great friend I

have in the eagle.

And then the eagle lets go.

And almost always the tortoise plunges to its death. Everyone knows why the tortoise does this. Gravity

is a habit that is hard to shake off. No one knows why the eagle does this. There's good eating on a

tortoise but, considering the effort involved, there's much better eating on practically anything else. It's

simply the delight of eagles to torment tortoises.

But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural

selection.

One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.

The story takes place in desert lands, in shades of umber and orange. When it begins and ends is more

problematical, but at least one of its beginnings took place above the snowline, thousands of miles away

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in the mountains around the Hub.[1]

One of the recurring philosophical questions is:

"Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?"

Which says something about the nature of philosophers, because there is always someone in a forest. It

may only be a badger, wondering what that cracking noise was, or a squirrel a bit puzzled by all the

scenery going upwards, but someone. At the very least, if it was deep enough in the forest, millions of

small gods would have heard it.

Things just happen, one after another. They don't care who knows. But history . . . ah, history is

different. History has to be observed. Otherwise it's not history. It's just . . . well, things happening one

after another.

And, of course, it has to be controlled. Otherwise it might turn into anything. Because history, contrary

to popular theories, is kings and dates and battles. And these things have to happen at the right time. This

is difficult. In a chaotic universe there are too many things to go wrong. It's too easy for a general's horse

to lose a shoe at the wrong time, or for someone to mishear an order, or for the carrier of the vital

message to be waylaid by some men with sticks and a cash flow problem. Then there are wild stories,

parasitic growths on the tree of history, trying to bend it their way.

So history has its caretakers.

They live . . . well, in the nature of things they live wherever they are sent, but their spiritual home is in a

hidden valley in the high Ramtops of the Discworld, where the books of history are kept.

These aren't books in which the events of the past are pinned like so many butterflies to a cork. These

are the books from which history is derived. There are more than twenty thousand of them; each one is

ten feet high, bound in lead, and the letters are so small that they have to be read with a magnifying glass.

When people say "It is written . . ." it is written here.

There are fewer metaphors around than people think.

Every month the abbot and two senior monks go into the cave where the books are kept. It used to be

the duty of the abbot alone, but two other reliable monks were included after the unfortunate case of the

59th Abbot, who made a million dollars in small bets before his fellow monks caught up with him.

Besides, it's dangerous to go in alone. The sheer concentratedness of History, sleeting past soundlessly

out into the world, can be overwhelming. Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.

The 493rd Abbot folded his wrinkled hands and addressed Lu-Tze, one of his most senior monks. The

clear air and untroubled life of the secret valley was such that all the monks were senior; besides, when

you work with Time every day, some of it tends to rub off.

"The place is Omnia," said the abbot, "on the Klatchian coast."

"I remember," said Lu-Tze. "Young fellow called Ossory, wasn't there?"

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"Things must be . . . carefully observed," said the abbot. "There are pressures. Free will, predestination .

. . . the power of symbols . . . turning-point . . . you know all about this."

"Haven't been to Omnia for, oh, must be seven hundred years," said Lu-Tze. "Dry place. Shouldn't think

there's a ton of good soil in the whole country, either."

"Off you go, then," said the abbot.

"I shall take my mountains," said Lu-Tze. "The climate will be good for them."

And he also took his broom and his sleeping mat. The history monks don't go in for possessions. They

find most things wear out in a century or two.

It took him four years to get to Omnia. He had to watch a couple of battles and an assassination on the

way, otherwise they would just have been random events.

It was the Year of the Notional Serpent, or two hundred years after the Declaration of the Prophet

Abbys.

Which meant that the time of the 8th Prophet was imminent.

That was the reliable thing about the Church of the Great God Om. It had very punctual prophets. You

could set your calendar by them, if you had one big enough.

And, as is generally the case around the time a prophet is expected, the Church redoubled its efforts to

be holy. This was very much like the bustle you get in any large concern when the auditors are expected,

but tended towards taking people suspected of being less holy and putting them to death in a hundred

ingenious ways. This is considered a reliable barometer of the state of one's piety in most of the really

popular religions. There's a tendency to declare that there is more backsliding around than in the national

toboggan championships, that heresy must be torn out root and branch, and even arm and leg and eye

and tongue, and that it's time to wipe the slate clean. Blood is generally considered very efficient for this

purpose.

And it came to pass that in that time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One:

"Psst!"

Brutha paused in mid-hoe and stared around the Temple garden.

"Pardon?" he said.

It was a fine day early in the lesser Spring. The prayer mills spun merrily in the breeze off the mountains.

Bees loafed around in the bean blossoms, but buzzed fast in order to give the impression of hard work.

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High above, a lone eagle circled.

Brutha shrugged, and got back to the melons.

Yea, the Great God Om spake again unto Brutha, the Chosen One:

"Psst!"

Brutha hesitated. Someone had definitely spoken to him from out of the air. Perhaps it was a demon.

Novice master Brother Nhumrod was hot on the subject of demons. Impure thoughts and demons. One

led to the other. Brutha was uncomfortably aware that he was probably overdue a demon.

The thing to do was to be resolute and repeat the Nine Fundamental Aphorisms.

Once more the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One:

"Are you deaf, boy?"

The hoe thudded on to the baking soil. Brutha spun around. There were the bees, the eagle and, at the

far end of the garden, old Brother Lu-Tze dreamily forking over the dung heap. The prayer mills whirled

reassuringly along the walls.

He made the sign with which the Prophet Ishkible had cast out spirits.

"Get thee behind me, demon," he muttered.

"I am behind you."

Brutha turned again, slowly. The garden was still empty.

He fled.

Many stories start long before they begin, and Brutha's story had its origins thousands of years before his

birth.

There are billions of gods in the world. They swarm as thick as herring roe. Most of them are too small

to see and never get worshiped, at least by anything bigger than bacteria, who never say their prayers

and don't demand much in the way of miracles.

They are the small gods-the spirits of places where two ant trails cross, the gods of microclimates down

between the grass roots. And most of them stay that way.

Because what they lack is belief.

A handful, though, go on to greater things. Anything may trigger it. A shepherd, seeking a lost lamb, finds

it among the briars and takes a minute or two to build a small cairn of stones in general thanks to

whatever spirits might be around the place. Or a peculiarly shaped tree becomes associated with a cure

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for disease. Or someone carves a spiral on an isolated stone. Because what gods need is belief, and what

humans want is gods.

Often it stops there. But sometimes it goes further. More rocks are added, more stones are raised, a

temple is built on the site where the tree once stood. The god grows in strength, the belief of its

worshipers raising it upwards like a thousand tons of rocket fuel. For a very few, the sky's the limit.

And, sometimes, not even that.

Brother Nhumrod was wrestling with impure thoughts in the privacy of his severe cell when he heard the

fervent voice from the novitiates' dormitory.

The Brutha boy was flat on his face in front of a statue of Om in His manifestation as a thunderbolt,

shaking and gabbling fragments of prayer.

There was something creepy about that boy, Nhumrod thought. It was the way he looked at you when

you were talking, as if he was listening.

He wandered out and prodded the prone youth with the end of his cane.

"Get up, boy! What do you think you're doing in the dormitory in the middle of the day? Mmm?"

Brutha managed to spin around while still flat on the floor and grasped the priest's ankles.

"Voice! A voice! It spoke to me!" he wailed.

Nhumrod breathed out. Ah. This was familiar ground. Voices were right up Nhumrod's cloister. He

heard them all the time.

"Get up, boy," he said, slightly more kindly.

Brutha got to his feet.

He was, as Nhumrod had complained before, too old to be a proper novice. About ten years too old.

Give me a boy up to the age of seven, Nhumrod had always said.

But Brutha was going to die a novice. When they made the rules, they'd never allowed for anything like

Brutha.

His big red honest face stared up at the novice master.

"Sit down on your bed, Brutha," said Nhumrod.

Brutha obeyed immediately. Brutha did not know the meaning of the word disobedience. It was only

one of a large number of words he didn't know the meaning of.

Nhumrod sat down beside him.

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"Now, Brutha," he said, "you know what happens to people who tell falsehoods, don't you?"

Brutha nodded, blushing.

"Very well. Now tell me about these voices."

Brutha twisted the hem of his robe in his hands.

"It was more like one voice, master," he said.

"-like one voice," said Brother Nhumrod. "And what did this voice say? Mmm?"

Brutha hesitated. Now he came to think about it, the voice hadn't said anything very much. It had just

spoken. It was, in any case, hard to talk to Brother Nhumrod, who had a nervous habit of squinting at

the speaker's lips and repeating the last few words they said practically as they said them. He also

touched things all the time-walls, furniture, people-as if he was afraid the universe would disappear if he

didn't keep hold of it. And he had so many nervous tics that they had to queue. Brother Nhumrod was

perfectly normal for someone who had survived in the Citadel for fifty years.

"Well . . ." Brutha began.

Brother Nhumrod held up a skinny hand. Brutha could see the pale blue veins in it.

"And I am sure you know that there are two kinds of voice that are heard by the spiritual," said the

master of novices. One eyebrow began to twitch.

"Yes, master. Brother Murduck told us that," said Brutha, meekly.

"-told us that. Yes. Sometimes, as He in His infinite wisdom sees fit, the God speaks to a chosen one

and he becomes a great prophet," said Nhumrod. "Now, I am sure you wouldn't presume to consider

yourself one of them? Mmm?"

"No, master."

"-master. But there are other voices," said Brother Nhumrod, and now his voice had a slight tremolo,

"beguiling and wheedling and persuasive voices, yes? Voices that are always waiting to catch us off our

guard?"

Brutha relaxed. This was more familiar ground.

All the novices knew about those kinds of voices. Except that usually they talked about fairly

straightforward things, like the pleasures of night-time manipulation and the general desirability of girls.

Which showed that they were novices when it came to voices. Brother Nhumrod got the kind of voices

that were, by comparison, a full oratorio. Some of the bolder novices liked to get Brother Nhumrod

talking on the subject of voices. He was an education, they said. Especially when little bits of white spit

appeared at the corners of his mouth.

Brutha listened.

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Brother Nhumrod was the novice master, but he wasn't the novice master. He was only master of the

group that included Brutha. There were others. Possibly someone in the Citadel knew how many there

were. There was someone somewhere whose job it was to know everything.

The Citadel occupied the whole of the heart of the city of Kom, in the lands between the deserts of

Klatch and the plains and jungles of Howondaland. It extended for miles, its temples, churches, schools,

dormitories, gardens, and towers growing into and around one another in a way that suggested a million

termites all trying to build their mounds at the same time.

When the sun rose the reflection of the doors of the central Temple blazed like fire. They were bronze,

and a hundred feet tall. On them, in letters of gold set in lead, were the Commandments. There were five

hundred and twelve so far, and doubtless the next prophet would add his share.

The sun's reflected glow shone down and across the tens of thousands of the strong-in-faith who labored

below for the greater glory of the Great God Om.

Probably no one did know how many of them there were. Some things have a way of going critical.

Certainly there was only one Cenobiarch, the Superior Iam. That was certain. And six Archpriests. And

thirty lesser Iams. And hundreds of bishops, deacons, subdeacons, and priests. And novices like rats in a

grain store. And craftsmen, and bull breeders, and torturers, and Vestigial Virgins . . .

No matter what your skills, there was a place for you in the Citadel.

And if your skill lay in asking the wrong kinds of questions or losing the righteous kind of wars, the place

might just be the furnaces of purity, or the Quisition's pits of justice.

A place for everyone. And everyone in their place.

The sun beat down on the temple garden.

The Great God Om tried to stay in the shade of a melon vine. He was probably safe here, here inside

these walls and with the prayer towers all around, but you couldn't be too careful. He'd been lucky once,

but it was asking too much to expect to be lucky again.

The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.

He crawled forward purposefully towards the old man shoveling muck until, after much exertion, he

judged himself to be within earshot.

He spake thusly: "Hey, you!"

There was no answer. There was not even any suggestion that anything had been heard.

Om lost his temper and turned Lu-Tze into a lowly worm in the deepest cesspit of hell, and then got

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even more angry when the old man went on peacefully shoveling.

"The devils of infinity fill your living bones with sulphur!" he screamed.

This did not make a great deal of difference.

"Deaf old bugger," muttered the Great God Om.

Or perhaps there was someone who did know all there was to be known about the Citadel. There's

always someone who collects knowledge, not because of a love of the stuff but in the same way that a

magpie collects glitter or a caddis fly collects little bits of twigs and rock. And there's always someone

who has to do all those things that need to be done but which other people would rather not do or, even,

acknowledge existed.

The third thing the people noticed about Vorbis was his height. He was well over six feet tall, but

stickthin, like a normal proportioned person modeled in clay by a child and then rolled out.

The second thing that people noticed about Vorbis was his eyes. His ancestors had come from one of

the deep desert tribes that had evolved the peculiar trait of having dark eyes--not just dark of pupil, but

almost black of eyeball. It made it very hard to tell where he was looking. It was as if he had sunglasses

on under his skin.

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.[2] 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?

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"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

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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 risque 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 short-handed.

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.

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Terry Pratchett - Discworld 13 - Small Gods

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