Terry Pratchett - Discworld 13 Small Gods

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Terry Pratchett

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 hur-

ried 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 wob-

bling 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. Eve-

ryone 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.

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 popu-

lar 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.

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 concen-

tratedness 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 un-

troubled 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."

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 his-

tory 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, other-

wise 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 immi-

nent.

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 re-

liable barometer of the state of one's piety in most of the

really popular religions. There's a tendency to declare that

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. 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 un-

comfortably 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

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 bacte-

ria, 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 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.

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 dor-

mitory 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.

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 re-

peating 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 be-

comes 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

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.

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.

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byTerryPratchettAndthenthereistheeagle.Acreatureoftheairandhighplaces,whosehorizonsgoallthewaytotheedgeoftheworld.Eyesightkeenenoughtospottherustleofsomesmallandsqueakycreaturehalfamileaway.Allpower,allcontrol.Lightningdeathonwings.Talonsandclawsenoughtomakeamealofanythingsmallerthanitisandatleastta...

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Terry Pratchett - Discworld 13 Small Gods

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