Vorbis sat absolutely motionless for a moment.

Then his jaw moved a fraction, as if he was rehearsing some words under his breath.

"You deny it?" he said.

"Let it be a sphere," said Didactylos. "No problem with a sphere. No doubt special arrangements are made for everything to stay on. And the Sun can be another larger sphere, a long way off. Would you like the Moon to orbit the world or the Sun? I advise the world. More hierarchical, and a splendid example to us all."

Brutha was seeing something he'd never seen before. Vorbis was looking bewildered.

"But you wrote . . . you said the world is on the back of a giant turtle! You gave the turtle a name!"

Didactylos shrugged. "Now I know better," he said. "Who ever heard of a turtle ten thousand miles long? Swimming through the emptiness of space? Hah. For stupidity! I am embarrassed to think of it now."

Vorbis shut his mouth. Then he opened it again.

"This is how an Ephebian philosopher behaves?" he said.

Didactylos shrugged again. "It is how any true philosopher behaves," he said. "One must always be ready to embrace new ideas, take account of new proofs. Don't you agree? And you have brought us many new points"-a gesture seemed to take in, quite by accident, the Omnian bowmen around the room-"for me to ponder. I can always be swayed by powerful argument."

"Your lies have already poisoned the world!"

"Then I shall write another book," said Didactylos calmly. "Think how it will look-proud Didactylos swayed by the arguments of the Omnians. A full retraction. Hmm? In fact, with your permission, lord-I know you have much to do, looting and burning and so on-I will retire to my barrel right away and start work on it. A universe of spheres. Balls spinning through space. Hmm. Yes. With your permission, lord, I will write you more balls than you can imagine . . ."

The old philosopher turned and, very slowly, walked towards the exit.

Vorbis watched him go.

Brutha saw him half-raise his hand to signal the guards, and then lower it again.

Vorbis turned to the Tyrant.

"So much for your-" he began.

"Coo-ee!"

The lantern sailed through the doorway and shattered against Vorbis's skull.

"Nevertheless . . . the Turtle Moves!"

Vorbis leapt to his feet.

"I-” he screamed, and then got a grip on himself. He waved irritably at a couple of the guards. "I want him caught. Now. And . . . Brutha?"

Brutha could hardly hear him for the rush of blood in his ears. Didactylos had been a better thinker than he'd thought.

"Yes, lord?"

"You will take a party of men, and you will take them to the Library . . . and then, Brutha, you will burn the Library."

Didactylos was blind, but it was dark. The pursuing guards could see, except that there was nothing to see by. And they hadn't spent their lives wandering the twisty, uneven and above all many-stepped lanes of Ephebe.

"-eight, nine, ten, eleven," muttered the philosopher, bounding up a pitch-dark flight of steps and haring around a corner.

"Argh, ow, that was my knee," muttered most of the guards, in a heap about halfway up.

One made it to the top, though. By starlight he could just make out the skinny figure, bounding madly along the street. He raised his crossbow. The old fool wasn't even dodging . . .

A perfect target.

There was a twang.

The guard looked puzzled for a moment. The bow toppled from his hands, firing itself as it hit the cobbles and sending its bolt ricocheting off a statue. He looked down at the feathered shaft sticking out of his chest, and then at the figure detaching itself from the shadows.

"Sergeant Simony?" he whispered.

"I'm sorry," said Simony. "I really am. But the Truth is important."

The soldier opened his mouth to give his opinion of the truth and then slumped forward.

He opened his eyes.

Simony was walking away. Everything looked lighter. It was still dark. But now he could see in the darkness. Everything was shades of gray. And the cobbles under his hand had somehow become a coarse black sand.

He looked up.

ON YOUR FEET, PRIVATE ICHLOS.

He stood up sheepishly. Now he was more than just a soldier, an anonymous figure to chase and be killed and be no more than a shadowy bit-player in other people's lives. Now he was Dervi Ichlos, aged thirtyeight, comparatively blameless in the general scheme of things, and dead.

He raised a hand to his lips uncertainly.

"You're the judge?" he said.

NOT ME.

Ichlos looked at the sands stretching away. He knew instinctively what he had to do. He was far less sophisticated than General Fri'it, and took more notice of songs he'd learned in his childhood. Besides, he had an advantage. He'd had even less religion than the general.

JUDGEMENT IS AT THE END OF THE DESERT.

Ichlos tried to smile.

"My mum told me about this," he said. "When you're dead, you have to walk a desert. And you see everything properly, she said. And remember everything right."

Death studiously did nothing to indicate his feelings either way.

"Might meet a few friends on the way, eh?" said the soldier.

POSSIBLY.

Ichlos set out. On the whole, he thought, it could have been worse.

Urn clambered across the shelves like a monkey, pulling books out of their racks and throwing them down to the floor.

"I can carry about twenty," he said. "But which twenty?"

"Always wanted to do that," murmured Didactylos happily. "Upholding truth in the face of tyranny and so on. Hah! One man, unafraid of the-”

"What to take? What to take?" shouted Urn.

"We don't need Grido's Mechanics," said Didactylos. "Hey, I wish I could have seen the look on his face! Damn good shot, considering. I just hope someone wrote down what I-”

"Principles of gearing! Theory of water expansion!" shouted Urn. "But we don't need Ibid's Civics or Gnomon's Ectopia, that's for sure-”

"What? They belong to all mankind!" snapped Didactylos.

"Then if all mankind will come and help us carry them, that's fine," said Urn. "But if it's just the two of us, I prefer to carry something useful."

"Useful? Books on mechanisms?"

"Yes! They can show people how to live better!"

"And these show people how to be people," said Didactylos. "Which reminds me. Find me another lantern. I feel quite blind without one-”

The Library door shook to a thunderous knocking. It wasn't the knocking of people who expected the door to be opened.

"We could throw some of the others into the-”

The hinges leapt out of the walls. The door thudded down.

Soldiers scrambled over it, swords drawn.

"Ah, gentlemen," said Didactylos. "Pray don't disturb my circles."

The corporal in charge looked at him blankly, and then down at the floor.

"What circles?" he said.

"Hey, how about giving me a pair of compasses and coming back in, say, half an hour?"

"Leave him, corporal," said Brutha.

He stepped over the door.

"I said leave him."

"But I got orders to-”

"Are you deaf? If you are, the Quisition can cure that," said Brutha, astonished at the steadiness of his own voice.

"You don't belong to the Quisition," said the corporal.

"No. But I know a man who does," said Brutha. "You are to search the palace for books. Leave him with me. He's an old man. What harm can he do?"

The corporal looked hesitantly from Brutha to his prisoners.

"Very good, corporal. I will take over."

They all turned.

"Did you hear me?" said Sergeant Simony, pushing his way forward.

"But the deacon told us-”

"Corporal?"

"Yes, sergeant?"

"The deacon is far away. I am right here."

"Yes, sergeant." Go.

"Yes, sergeant."

Simony cocked an ear as the soldiers marched away.

Then he stuck his sword in the door and turned to Didactylos. He made a fist with his left hand and brought his right hand down on it, palm extended.

"The Turtle Moves," he said.

"That all depends," said the philosopher, cautiously.

"I mean I am . . . a friend," he said.

"Why should we trust you?" said Urn.

"Because you haven't got any choice," said Sergeant Simony briskly.

"Can you get us out of here?" said Brutha.

Simony glared at him. "You?" he said. "Why should I get you out of here? You're an inquisitor!" He grasped his sword.

Brutha backed away.

"I'm not!"

"On the ship, when the captain sounded you, you just said nothing," said Simony. "You're not one of us."

"I don't think I'm one of them, either," said Brutha. "I'm one of mine."

He gave Didactylos an imploring look, which was a wasted effort, and turned it towards Urn instead.

"I don't know about this soldier," he said. "All I know is that Vorbis means to have you killed and he will burn your Library. But I can help. I worked it out on the way here."

"And don't listen to him," said Simony. He dropped on one knee in front of Didactylos, like a supplicant. "Sir, there are . . . some of us . . . who know your book for what it is . . . see, I have a copy . . ."

He fumbled inside his breastplate.

"We copied it out," said Simony. "One copy! That's all we had! But it's been passed around. Some of us who could read, read it to the others! It makes so much sense!"

"Er . . ." said Didactylos. "What?"

Simony waved his hands in excitement. "Because we know it-I've been to places that-it's true! There is a Great Turtle. The turtle does move! We don't need gods!"

"Urn? No one's stripped the copper off the roof, have they?" said Didactylos.

"Don't think so."

"Remind me not to talk to this chap outside, then."

"You don't understand!" said Simony. "I can save you. You have friends in unexpected places. Come on. I'll just kill this priest . . ."

He gripped his sword. Brutha backed away.

"No! I can help, too! That's why I came. When I saw you in front of Vorbis I knew what I could do!"

"What can you do?" sneered Urn.

"I can save the Library."

"What? Put it on your back and run away?" sneered Simony.

"No. I don't mean that. How many scrolls are there?"

"About seven hundred," said Didactylos.

"How many of them are important?"

"All of them!" said Urn.

"Maybe a couple of hundred," said Didactylos, mildly.

"Uncle! "

"All the rest is just wind and vanity publishing," said Didactylos.

"But they're books!"

"I may be able to take more than that," said Brutha slowly. "Is there a way out?"

"There . . . could be," said Didactylos.

"Don't tell him!" said Simony.

"Then all your books will burn," said Brutha. He pointed to Simony. "He said you haven't got a choice. So you haven't got anything to lose, have you?"

"He's a-” Simony began.

"Everyone shut up," said Didactylos. He stared past Brutha's ear.

"There may be a way out," he said. "What do you intend?"

"I don't believe this!" said Urn. "There's Omnians here and you're telling them there's another way out!"

"There's tunnels all through this rock," said Didactylos.

"Maybe, but we don't tell people!"

"I'm inclined to trust this person," said Didactylos. "He's got an honest face. Speaking philosophically."

"Why should we trust him?"

"Anyone stupid enough to expect us to trust him in these circumstances must be trustworthy," said Didactylos. "He'd be too stupid to be deceitful."

"I can walk out of here right now," said Brutha. "And where will your Library be then?"

"You see?" said Simony.

"Just when things apparently look dark, suddenly we have unexpected friends everywhere," said Didactylos. "What is your plan, young man?"

"I haven't got one," said Brutha. "I just do things, one after the other."

"And how long will doing things one after another take you?"

"About ten minutes, I think."

Simony glared at Brutha.

"Now get the books," said Brutha. "And I shall need some light."

"But you can't even read!" said Urn.

"I'm not going to read them." Brutha looked blankly at the first scroll, which happened to be De Chelonian Mobile.

"Oh. My god," he said.

"Something wrong?" said Didactylos.

"Could someone fetch my tortoise?"

Simony trotted through the palace. No one was paying him much attention. Most of the Ephebian guard was outside the labyrinth, and Vorbis had made it clear to anyone who was thinking of venturing inside just what would happen to the palace's inhabitants. Groups of Omnian soldiers were looting in a disciplined sort of way.

Besides, he was returning to his quarters.

There was a tortoise in Brutha's room. It was sitting on the table, between a rolled-up scroll and a gnawed melon rind and, insofar as it was possible to tell with tortoises, was asleep. Simony grabbed it without ceremony, rammed it into his pack, and hurried back towards the Library.

He hated himself for doing it. The stupid priest had ruined everything! But Didactylos had made him promise, and Didactylos was the man who knew the Truth.

All the way there he had the impression that someone was trying to attract his attention.

"You can remember them just by looking?" said Urn.

"Yes."

"The whole scroll?"

"Yes."

"I don't believe you."

"The word LIBRVM outside this building has a chip in the top of the first letter,' said Brutha. "Xeno wrote Reflections, and old Aristocrates wrote Platitudes, and Didactylos thinks Ibid's Discourses are bloody stupid. There are six hundred paces from the Tyrant's throne room to the Library. There is a-”

"He's got a good memory, you've got to grant him that," said Didactylos. "Show him some more scrolls."

"How will we know he's remembered them?" Urn demanded, unrolling a scroll of geometrical theorems. "He can't read! And even if he could read, he can't write! "

"We shall have to teach him."

Brutha looked at a scroll full of maps. He shut his eyes. For a moment the jagged outline glowed against the inside of his eyelids, and then he felt them settle into his mind. They were still there somewhere-he could bring them back at any time. Urn unrolled another scroll. Pictures of animals. This one, drawings of plants and lots of writing. This one, just writing. This one, triangles and things. They settled down in his memory. After a while, he wasn't even aware of the scroll unrolling. He just had to keep looking.

He wondered how much he could remember. but that was stupid. You just remembered everything you saw. A tabletop, or a scroll full of writing. There was as much information in the grain and coloring of the wood as there was in Xeno's Reflections.

Even so, he was conscious of a certain heaviness of mind, a feeling that if he turned his head sharply then memory would slosh out of his ears.

Urn picked up a scroll at random and unrolled it partway.

"Describe what an Ambiguous Puzuma looks like," he demanded.

"Don't know," said Brutha. He blinked.

"So much for Mr. Memory," said Urn.

"He can't read, boy. That's not fair," said the philosopher.

"All right. I mean-the fourth picture in the third scroll you saw," said Urn.

"A four-legged creature facing left," said Brutha. "A large head similar to a cat's and broad shoulders with the body tapering towards the hindquarters. The body is a pattern of dark and light squares. The ears are very small and laid flat against the head. There are six whiskers. The tail is stubby. Only the hind feet are clawed, three claws on each foot. The fore feet are about the same length as the head and held up against the body. A band of thick hair-”

"That was fifty scrolls ago," said Urn. "He saw the whole scroll for a second or two."

They looked at Brutha. Brutha blinked again.

"You know everything?" said Urn.

"I don't know."

"You've got half the Library in your head!"

"I feel . . . a . . . bit . . ."

The Library of Ephebe was a furnace. The flames burned blue where the melted copper roof dripped on to the shelves.

All libraries, everywhere, are connected by the bookworm holes in space created by the strong spacetime distortions found around any large collections of books.

Only a very few librarians learn the secret, and there are inflexible rules about making use of the fact. Because it amounts to time travel, and time travel causes big problems.

But if a library is on fire, and down in the history books as having been on fire . . .

There was a small pop, utterly unheard among the crackling of the bookshelves, and a figure dropped out of nowhere on to a small patch of unburned floor in the middle of the Library.

It looked ape-like, but it moved in a very purposeful way. Long simian arms beat out the flames, pulled scrolls off the shelves, and stuffed them into a sack. When the sack was full, it knuckled back into the middle of the room . . . and vanished, with another pop.

This has nothing to do with the story.

Nor does the fact that, some time later, scrolls thought to have been destroyed in the Great Ephebian Library Fire turned up in remarkably good condition in the Library of Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork.

But it's nice to know, even so.

Brutha awoke with the smell of the sea in his nostrils. At least it was what people think of as the smell of the sea, which is the stink of antique fish and rotten seaweed.

He was in some sort of shed. Such light as managed to come through its one unglazed window was red, and flickered. One end of the shed was open to the water. The ruddy light showed a few figures clustered around something there.

Brutha gently probed the contents of his memory. Everything seemed to be there, the Library scrolls neatly arranged. The words were as meaningless to him as any other written word, but the pictures were interesting. More interesting than most things in his memory, anyway.

He sat up, carefully.

"You're awake, then," said the voice of Om, in his head. "Feel a bit full, do we? Feel a bit like a stack of shelves? Feel like we've got big notices saying "SILENCIOS!" all over the place inside our head? What did you go and do that for?"

"I . . . don't know. It seemed like . . . the next thing to do. Where are you?"

"Your soldier friend has got me in his pack. Thanks for looking after me so carefully, by the way."

Brutha managed to get to his feet. The world revolved round him for a moment, adding a third astronomical theory to the two currently occupying the minds of local thinkers.

He peered out of the window. The red light was coming from fires all over Ephebe, but there was one huge glow over the Library.

"Guerrilla activity," said Om. "Even the slaves are fighting. Can't understand why. You think they'd jump at the chance to be revenged on their masters, eh?"

"I suppose a slave in Ephebe has the chance to be free," said Brutha.

There was a hiss from the other end of the shed, and a metallic, whirring noise. Brutha heard Urn say, "There! I told you. Just a block in the tubes. Lets get some more fuel in."

Brutha tottered towards the group.

They were clustered round a boat. As boats went, it was of normal shape-a pointed end in front, a flat end at the back. But there was no mast. What there was, was a large, coppercolored ball, hanging in a wooden framework toward the back of the boat.

There was an iron basket underneath it, in which someone had already got a good fire going.

And the ball was spinning in its frame, in a cloud of steam.

"I've seen that," he said. "In De Chelonian Mobile. There was a drawing."

"Oh, it's the walking Library," said Didactylos. "Yes. You're right. Illustrating the principle of reaction. I never asked Urn to build a big one. This is what comes of thinking with your hands."

"I took it round the lighthouse one night last week," said Urn. "No problems at all."

"Ankh-Morpork is a lot further than that," said Simony.

"Yes, it is five times further than the distance between Ephebe and Omnia," said Brutha solemnly. "There was a scroll of maps," he added.

Steam rose in scalding clouds from the whirring ball. Now he was closer, Brutha could see that half a dozen very short oars had been joined together in a star-shaped pattern behind the copper globe, and hung over the rear of the boat. Wooden cogwheels and a couple of endless belts fiIled the intervening space. As the globe spun, the paddles thrashed at the air.

"How does it work?" he said.

"Very simple," said Urn. "The fire makes-”

"We haven't got time for this," said Simony.

"-makes the water hot and so it gets angry," said the apprentice philosopher. "So it rushes out of the globe through these four little nozzles to get away from the fire. The plumes of steam push the globe around, and the cogwheels and Legibus's screw mechanism transfer the motion to the paddles which turn, pushing the boat through the water."

"Very philosophical," said Didactylos.

Brutha felt that he ought to stand up for Omnian progress.

"The great doors of the Citadel weigh tons but are opened solely by the power of faith," he said. "One push and they swing open."

"I should very much like to see that," said Urn.

Brutha felt a faint sinful twinge of pride that Omnia still had anything he could be proud of.

"Very good balance and some hydraulics, probably."

"Oh."

Simony thoughtfully prodded the mechanism with his sword.

"Have you thought of all the possibilities?" he said.

Urn's hands began to weave through the air. "You mean mighty ships ploughing the wine-dark sea with no-” he began.

"On land, I was thinking," said Simony. "Perhaps . . . on some sort of cart . . ."

"Oh, no point in putting a boat on a cart."

Simony's eyes gleamed with the gleam of a man who had seen the future and found it covered with armor plating.

"Hmm," he said.

"It's all very well, but it's not philosophy," said Didactylos.

"Where's the priest?"

"I'm here, but I'm not a-”

"How're you feeling? You went out like a candle back there."

"I'm . . . better now."

"One minute upright, next minute a draftexcluder."

"I'm much better."

"Happen a lot, does it?"

"Sometimes."

"Remembering the scrolls okay?"

"I . . . think so. Who set fire to the Library?"

Urn looked up from the mechanism.

"He did," he said.

Brutha stared at Didactylos.

"You set fire to your own Library?"

"I'm the only one qualified," said the philosopher. "Besides, it keeps it out of the way of Vorbis."

"What?"

"Suppose he'd read the scrolls? He's bad enough as it is. He'd be a lot worse with all that knowledge inside him."

"He wouldn't have read them," said Brutha.

"Oh, he would. I know that type," said Didactylos "All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indulgence in private."

"Not Vorbis," said Brutha, with absolute certainty. "He wouldn't have read them."

"Well, anyway," said Didactylos, "if it had to be done, I did it."

Urn turned away from the bow of the boat, where he was feeding more wood into the brazier under the globe.

"Can we all get on board?" he said.

Brutha eased his way on a rough bench seat amidships, or whatever it was called. The air smelled of hot water.

"Right," said Urn. He pulled a lever. The spinning paddles hit the water; there was a jerk and then, steam hanging in the air behind it, the boat moved forward.

"What's the name of this vessel?" said Didactylos.

Urn looked surprised.

"Name?" he said. "It's a boat. A thing, of the nature of things. It doesn't need a name."

"Names are more philosophical," said Didactylos, with a trace of sulkiness. "And you should have broken an amphora of wine over it."

"That would have been a waste."

The boat chugged out of the boathouse and into the dark harbor. Away to one side, an Ephebian galley was on fire. The whole of the city was a patchwork of flame.

"But you've got an amphora on board?" said Didactylos.

"Yes."

"Pass it over, then."

White water trailed behind the boat. The paddles churned.

"No wind. No rowers!" said Simony. "Do you even begin to understand what you have here, Urn?"

"Absolutely. The operating principles are amazingly simple," said Urn.

"That wasn't what I meant. I meant the things you could do with this power!"

Urn pushed another log on the fire.

"It's just the transforming of heat into work," he said. "I suppose . . . oh, the pumping of water. Mills that can grind even when the wind isn't blowing. That sort of thing? Is that what you had in mind?"

Simony the soldier hesitated.

"Yeah," he said. "Something like that."

Brutha whispered, "Om?"

"Yes?"

"Are you all right?"

"It smells like a soldier's knapsack in here. Get me out."

The copper ball spun madly over the fire. It gleamed almost as brightly as Simony's eyes.

Brutha tapped him on the shoulder.

"Can I have my tortoise?"

Simony laughed bitterly.

"There's good eating on one of these things," he said, fishing out Om.

"Everyone says so," said Brutha. He lowered his voice to a whisper.

"What sort of place is Ankh?"

"A city of a million souls," said the voice of Om,

"many of them occupying bodies. And a thousand religions. There's even a temple to the small gods! Sounds like a place where people don't have trouble believing things. Not a bad place for a fresh start, I think. With my brains and your . . . with my brains, we should soon be in business again."

"You don't want to go back to Omnia?"

"No point," said the voice of Om. "It's always possible to overthrow an established god. People get fed up, they want a change. But you can't overthrow yourself, can you?"

"Who're you talking to, priest?" said Simony.

"I . . . er . . . was praying."

"Hah! To Om? You might as well pray to that tortoise."

"Yes."

"I am ashamed for Omnia," said Simony. "Look at us. Stuck in the past. Held back by repressive monotheism. Shunned by our neighbors. What good has our God been to us? Gods? Hah!"

"Steady on, steady on," said Didactylos. "We're on seawater and that's highly conductive armor you're wearing."

"Oh, I say nothing about other gods," said Simony quickly. "I have not the right. But Om? A bogeyman for the Quisition! If he exists, let him strike me down here and now!"

Simony drew his sword and held it up at arm's length.

Om sat peacefully on Brutha's lap. "I like this boy," he said. "He's almost as good as a believer. It's like love and hate, know what I mean?"

Simony sheathed his sword again.

"Thus I refute Om," he said.

"Yes, but what's the alternative?"

"Philosophy! Practical philosophy! Like Urn's engine there. It could drag Omnia kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat!"

"Kicking and screaming," said Brutha.

"By any means necessary," said Simony.

He beamed at them.

"Don't worry about him," said Om. "We'll be far away. Just as well, too. I don't think Omnia's going to be a popular country when news of last night's work gets about."

"But it was Vorbis's fault!" said Brutha out loud. "He started the whole thing! He sent poor Brother Murduck, and then he had him killed so he could blame it on the Ephebians! He never intended any peace treaty! He just wanted to get into the palace!"

"Beats me how he managed that, too," said Urn. "No one ever got through the labyrinth without a guide. How did he do it?"

Didactylos's blind eyes sought out Brutha.

"Can't imagine," he said. Brutha hung his head.

"He really did all that?" said Simony.

"Yes."

"You idiot! You total sandhead!" screamed Om.

"And you'd tell this to other people?" said Simony, insistently.

"I suppose so."

"You'd speak out against the Quisition?"

Brutha stared miserably into the night. Behind them, the flames of Ephebe had merged into one orange spark.

"All I can say is what I remember," he said.

"We're dead," said Om. "Throw me over the side, why don't you? This bonehead will want to take us back to Omnia!"

Simony rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"Vorbis has many enemies," he said, "in certain circumstances. Better he should be killed, but some would call that murder. Or even martyrdom. But a trial . . . if there was evidence . . . if they even thought there could be evidence . . "

"I can see his mind working!" Om screamed. "We'd all be safe if you'd shut up!"

"Vorbis on trial," Simony mused.

Brutha blanched at the thought. It was the kind of thought that was almost impossible to hold in the mind. It was the kind of thought that made no sense. Vorbis on trial? Trials were things that happened to other people.

He remembered Brother Murduck. And the soldiers who had been lost in the desert. And all the things that had been done to people, even to Brutha.

"Tell him you can't remember!" Om yelled. "Tell him you can't recall!"

"And if he was on trial," said Simony, "he'd be found guilty. No one would dare do anything else."

Thoughts always moved slowly through Brutha's mind, like icebergs. They arrived slowly and left slowly and when they were there they occupied a lot of space, much of it below the surface.

He thought: the worst thing about Vorbis isn't that he's evil, but that he makes good people do evil. He turns people into things like himself. You can't help it. You catch it off him.

There was no sound but the slosh of water against the Unnamed Boat's hull and the spinning of the philosophical engine.

"We'd be caught if we returned to Omnia," said Brutha slowly.

"We can land away from the ports," said Simony eagerly.

"Ankh-Morpork!" shouted Om.

"First we should take Mr. Didactylos to Ankh-Morpork," said Brutha. "Then-I'll come back to Omnia."

"You can damn well leave me there too!" said Om.

"I'll soon find some believers in Ankh-Morpork, don't you worry, they believe anything there!"

"Never seen Ankh-Morpork," said Didactylos. "Still, we live and learn. That's what I always say." He turned to face the soldier. "Kicking and screaming."

"There's some exiles in Ankh," said Simony. "Don't worry. You'll be safe there."

"Amazing!" said Didactylos. "And to think, this morning, I didn't even know I was in danger."

He sat back in the boat.

"Life in this world," he said, "is, as it were, a sojourn in a cave. What can we know of reality? For all we see of the true nature of existence is, shall we say, no more than bewildering and amusing shadows cast upon the inner wall of the cave by the unseen blinding light of absolute truth, from which we may or may not deduce some glimmer of veracity, and we as troglodyte seekers of wisdom can only lift our voices to the unseen and say, humbly, `Go on, do Deformed Rabbit . . . it's my favorite.' "

Vorbis stirred the ashes with his foot.

"No bones," he said.

The soldiers stood silently. The fluffy gray flakes collapsed and blew a little way in the dawn breeze.

"And the wrong sort of ash," said Vorbis.

The sergeant opened his mouth to say something.

"Be assured I know that of which I speak," said Vorbis.

He wandered over to the charred trapdoor, and prodded it with his toe.

"We followed the tunnel," said the sergeant, in the tones of one who hopes against experience that sounding helpful will avert the wrath to come. "It comes out near the docks."

"But if you enter it from the docks it does not come out here," Vorbis mused. The smoking ashes seemed to hold an endless fascination for him.

The sergeant's brow wrinkled.

"Understand?" said Vorbis. "The Ephebians wouldn't build a way out that was a way in. The minds that devised the labyrinth would not work like that. There would be . . . valves. Sequences of triggerstones, perhaps. Trips that trip only one way. Whirring blades that come out of unexpected walls."

` Ah.

"Most intricate and devious, I have no doubt."

The sergeant ran a dry tongue over his lips. He could not read Vorbis like a book, because there had never been a book like Vorbis. But Vorbis had certain habits of thought that you learned, after a while.

"You wish me to take the squad and follow it up from the docks," he said hollowly.

"I was just about to suggest it," said Vorbis.

"Yes, lord."

Vorbis patted the sergeant on the shoulder.

"But do not worry!" he said cheerfully. "Om will protect the strong in faith."

"Yes, lord."

"And the last man can bring me a full report. But first . . . they are not in the city?"

"We have searched it fully, lord."

"And no one left by the gate? Then they left by sea."

"All the Ephebian war vessels are accounted for, Lord Vorbis."

"This bay is lousy with small boats."

"With nowhere to go but the open sea, sir."

Vorbis looked out at the Circle Sea. It filled the world from horizon to horizon. Beyond lay the smudge of the Sto plains and the ragged line of the Ramtops, all the way to the towering peaks that the heretics called the Hub but which was, he _ knew,

the Pole, visible around the curve of the world only because of the way light bent in atmosphere, just as it did in water . . . and he saw a smudge of white, curling over the distant ocean.

Vorbis had very good eyesight, from a height.

He picked up a handful of gray ash, which had once been Dykeri's Principles of Navigation, and let it drift through his fingers.

"Om has sent us a fair wind," he said. "Let us get down to the docks."

Hope waved optimistically in the waters of the sergeant's despair.

"You won't be wanting us to explore the tunnel, lord?" he said.

"Oh, no. You can do that when we return."

Urn prodded at the copper globe with a piece of wire while the Unnamed Boat wallowed in the waves.

"Can't you beat it?" said Simony, who was not up to speed on the difference between machines and people.

"It's a philosophical engine," said Urn. "Beating won't help."

"But you said machines could be our slaves," said Simony.

"Not the beating sort," said Urn. "The nozzles are bunged up with salt. When the water rushes out of the globe it leaves the salt behind."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Water likes to travel light."

"We're becalmed! Can you do anything about it?"

"Yes, wait for it to cool down and then clean it out and put some more water in it."

Simony looked around distractedly.

"But we're still in sight of the coast!"

"You might be," said Didactylos. He was sitting in the middle of the boat with his hands crossed on the top of his walking-stick, looking like an old man who doesn't often get taken out for an airing and is quite enjoying it.

"Don't worry. No one could see us out here," said Urn. He prodded at the mechanism. "Anyway, I'm a bit worried about the screw. It was invented to move water along, not move along on water."

"You mean it's confused?" said Simony.

"Screwed up," said Didactylos happily.

Brutha lay in the pointed end, looking down at the water. A small squid siphoned past, just under the surface. He wondered what it was-

-and knew it was the common bottle squid, of the class Cephalopoda, phylum Mollusca, and that it had an internal cartilaginous support instead of a skeleton and a well-developed nervous system and large, image-forming eyes that were quite similar to vertebrate eyes.

The knowledge hung in the forefront of his mind for a moment, and then faded away.

"Om?" Brutha whispered.

"What?"

"What're you doing?"

"Trying to get some sleep. Tortoises need a lot of sleep, you know."

Simony and Urn were bent over the philosophical engine. Brutha stared at the globe

-a sphere of radius r, which therefore had a volume V = (4/3)(pi) rrr, and surface area A = 4(pi) rr-

"Oh, my god . . ."

"What now?" said the voice of the tortoise.

Didactylos's face turned towards Brutha, who was clutching at his head.

"What's a pi?"

Didactylos reached out a hand and steadied Brutha.

"What's the matter?" said Om.

"I don't know! It's just words! I don't know what's in the books! I can't read!"

"Getting plenty of sleep is vital," said Om. "It builds a healthy shell."

Brutha sagged to his knees in the rocking boat. He felt like a householder coming back unexpectedly and finding the old place full of strangers. They were in every room, not menacing, but just filling the space with their thereness.

"The books are leaking!"

"I don't see how that can happen," said Didactylos. "You said you just looked at them. You didn't read them. You don't know what they mean."

"They know what they mean!"

"Listen. They're just books, of the nature of books," said Didactylos. "They're not magical. If you could know what books contained just by looking at them, Urn there would be a genius."

"What's the matter with him?" said Simony.

"He thinks he knows too much."

"No! I don't know anything! Not really know," said Brutha. "I just remembered that squids have an internal cartilaginous support!"

"I can see that would be a worry," said Simony. "Huh. Priests? Mad, the lot of them."

"No! I don't know what cartilaginous means!"

"Skeletal connective tissue," said Didactylos. "Think of bony and leathery at the same time."

Simony snorted. "Well, well," he said, "we live and learn, just like you said."

"Some of us even do it the other way round," said Didactylos.

"Is that supposed to mean something?"

"It's philosophy," said Didactylos. "And sit down, boy. You're making the boat rock. We're overloaded as it is."

"It's being buoyed upward by a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid," muttered Brutha, sagging.

"Hmm?"

"Except that I don't know what buoyed means."

Urn looked up from the sphere. "We're ready to start again," he said. "Just bale some water in here with your helmet, mister."

"And then we shall go again?"

"Well, we can start getting up steam," said Urn. He wiped his hands on his toga.

"Y'know," said Didactylos, "there are different ways of learning things. I'm reminded of the time when old Prince Lasgere of Tsort asked me how he could become learned, especially since he hadn't got any time for this reading business. I said to him, `There is no royal road to learning, sire,' and he said to me, `Bloody well build one or I shall have your legs chopped off. Use as many slaves as you like.' A refreshingly direct approach, I always thought. Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words."

"Why didn't he chop your legs off?" said Urn.

"I built him his road. More or less."

"How? I thought that was just a metaphor."

"You're learning, Urn. So I found a dozen slaves who could read and they sat in his bedroom at night whispering choice passages to him while he slept."

"Did that work?"

"Don't know. The third slave stuck a six-inch dagger in his ear. Then after the revolution the new ruler let me out of prison and said I could leave the country if I promised not to think of anything on the way to the border. But I don't believe there was anything wrong with the idea in principle."

Urn blew on the fire.

"Takes a little while to heat up the water," he explained.

Brutha lay back in the bow again. If he concentrated, he could stop the knowledge flowing. The thing to do was avoid looking at things. Even a cloud-

-devised by natural philosophy as a means of occasioning shade on the surface of the world, thus preventing overheating-

-caused an intrusion. Om was fast asleep.

Knowing without learning, thought Brutha. No. The other way round. Learning without knowing . . .

Nine-tenths of Om dozed in his shell. The rest of him drifted like a fog in the real world of the gods, which is a lot less interesting than the three-dimensional world inhabited by most of humanity.

He thought: we're a little boat. She'll probably not even notice us. There's the whole of the ocean. She can't be everywhere.

Of course, she's got many believers. But we're only a little boat . . .

He felt the minds of inquisitive fishes nosing around the end of the screw. Which was odd, because in the normal course of things fishes were not known for their-

"Greetings," said the Queen of the Sea.

"Ah."

"I see you're still managing to exist, little tortoise." "Hanging in there," said Om. "No problems."

There was a pause which, if it were taking place between two people in the human world, would have been spent in coughing and looking embarrassed. But gods are never embarrassed.

"I expect," said Om guardedly, "you are looking for your price."

"This vessel and everyone in it," said the Queen. "But your believer can be saved, as is the custom."

"What good are they to you? One of them's an atheist."

"Hah! They all believe, right at the end."

"That doesn't seem . . ." Om hesitated. "Fair?"

Now the Sea Queen paused.

"What's fair?"

"Like . . . underlying justice?" said Om. He wondered why he said it.

"Sounds a human idea to me."

"They're inventive, I'll grant you. But what I meant was . . . I mean . . . they've done nothing to deserve it."

"Deserve? They're human. What's deserve got to do with it?"

Om had to concede this. He wasn't thinking like a god. This bothered him.

"It's just . . ."

"You've been relying on one human for too long, little god."

"I know. I know." Om sighed. Minds leaked into one another. He was seeing too much from a human point of view. "Take the boat, then. If you must. I just wish it was-”

"Fair?" said the Sea Queen. She moved forward. Om felt her all around him.

"There's no such thing," she said. "Life's like a beach. And then you die."

Then she was gone.

Om let himself retreat into the shell of his shell.

"Brutha?"

"Yes?"

"Can you swim?"

The globe started to spin.

Brutha heard Urn say, "There. Soon be on our way."

"We'd better be." This was Simony. "There's a ship out there."

"This thing goes faster than anything with sails or oars."

Brutha looked across the bay. A sleek Omnian ship was passing the lighthouse. It was still a long way off, but Brutha stared at it with a dread and expectation that magnified better than telescopes.

"It's moving fast," said Simony. "I don't understand it-there's no wind."

Urn looked round at the flat calm.

"There can't be wind there and not here," he said.

"I said, can you swim?" The voice of the tortoise was insistent in Brutha's head.

"I don't know," said Brutha.

"Do you think you could find out quickly?"

Urn looked upwards.

"Oh," he said.

Clouds had massed over the Unnamed Boat. They were visibly spinning.

"You've got to know!" shouted Om. "I thought you had a perfect memory!"

"We used to splash around in the big cistern in the village," whispered Brutha. "I don't know if that counts!"

Mist whipped off the surface of the sea. Brutha's ears popped. And still the Omnian ship came on, flying across the waves.

"What do you call it when you've got a dead calm surrounded by winds-” Urn began.

"Hurricane?" said Didactylos.

Lightning crackled between sky and sea. Urn yanked at the lever that lowered the screw into the water. His eyes glowed almost as brightly as the lightning.

"Now there's a power," he said. "Harnessing the lightning! The dream of mankind!"

The Unnamed Boat surged forward.

"Is it? It's not my dream," said Didactylos. "I always dream of a giant carrot chasing me through a field of lobsters."

"I mean metaphorical dream, master," said Urn.

"What's a metaphor?" said Simony.

Brutha said, "What's a dream?"

A pillar of lightning laced the mist. Secondary lightnings sparked off the spinning globe.

"You can get it from cats," said Urn, lost in a philosophical world, as the Boat left a white wake behind it. "You stroke them with a rod of amber, and you get tiny lightnings . . . if I could magnify that a million times, no man would ever be a slave again and we could catch it in jars and do away with the night . . ."

Lightning struck a few yards away.

"We're in a boat with a large copper ball in the middle of a body of salt water," said Didactylos. "Thanks, Urn."

"And the temples of the gods would be magnificently lit, of course," said Urn quickly.

Didactylos tapped his stick on the hull. "It's a nice idea, but you'd never get enough cats," he said. The sea surged up.

"Jump into the water!" Om shouted.

"Why?" said Brutha.

A wave almost overturned the boat. Rain hissed on the surface of the sphere, sent up a scalding spray.

"I haven't got time to explain! Jump overboard! It's for the best! Trust me!"

Brutha stood up, holding the sphere's framework to steady himself.

"Sit down!" said Urn.

"I'm just going out," said Brutha. "I may be some time."

The boat rocked under him as he half-jumped, half-fell into the boiling sea.

Lightning struck the sphere.

As Brutha bobbed to the surface he saw, for a moment, the globe glowing white-hot and the Unnamed Boat, its screw almost out of the water, skimming away through the mists like a comet. It vanished in the clouds and rain. A moment later, above the noise of the storm, there was a muffled "boom."

Brutha raised his hand. Om broke the surface, blowing seawater out of his nostrils.

"You said it would be for the best!" screamed Brutha.

"Well? We're still alive! And hold me out of the water! Tortoises can't swim!"

"But they might be dead!"

"Do you want to join them?"

A wave submerged Brutha. For a moment the world was a dark green curtain, ringing in his ears.

"I can't swim with one hand!" he shouted, as he broke surface again.

"We'll be saved! She wouldn't dare!"

"What do you mean?"

Another wave slapped at Brutha, and suction dragged at his robes.

"Om?"

"Yes?"

"I don't think I can swim . . ."

Gods are not very introspective. It has never been a survival trait. The ability to cajole, threaten, and terrify has always worked well enough. When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency toward quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point-of-view is seldom necessary.

Which had led, across the multiverse, to men and women of tremendous brilliance and empathy devoting their entire lives to the service of deities who couldn't beat them at a quiet game of dominoes. For example, Sister Sestina of Quirm defied the wrath of a local king and walked unharmed across a bed of coals and propounded a philosophy of sensible ethics on behalf of a goddess whose only real interest was in hairstyles, and Brother Zephilite of Klatch left his vast estates and his family and spent his life ministering to the sick and poor on behalf of the invisible god F'rum, generally considered unable, should he have a backside, to find it with both hands, should he have hands. Gods never need to be very bright when there are humans around to be it for them.

The Sea Queen was considered fairly dumb even by other gods. But there was a certain logic to her thoughts, as she moved deep below the storm-tossed waves. The little boat had been a tempting target . . . but here was a bigger one, full of people, sailing right into the storm.

This one was fair game.

The Sea Queen had the attention span of an onion bahji.

And, by and large, she created her own sacrifices. And she believed in quantity.

The Fin of God plunged from wave crest to wave trough, the gale tearing at its sails. The captain fought his way through waist-high water to the prow, where Vorbis stood clutching the rail, apparently oblivious to the fact that the ship was wallowing half-submerged.

"Sir! We must reef sail! We can't outrun this!"

Green fire crackled on the tops of the masts. Vorbis turned. The light was reflected in the pit of his eyes.

"It is all for the glory of Om," he said. "Trust is our sail, and glory is our destination."

The captain had had enough. He was unsteady on the subject of religion, but felt fairly confident that after thirty years he knew something about the sea.

"The ocean floor is our destination!" he shouted.

Vorbis shrugged. "I did not say there would not be stops along the way," he said.

The captain stared at him and then fought his way back across the heaving deck. What he knew about the sea was that storms like this didn't just happen You didn't just sail from calm water into the midst of a raging hurricane. This wasn't the sea. This was personal.

Lightning struck the mainmast. There was a scream from the darkness as a mass of torn sail and rigging crashed on to the deck.

The captain half-swam, half-climbed up the ladder to the wheel, where the helmsman was a shadow in the spray and the eerie storm glow.

"We'll never make it alive!"

CORRECT.

"We'll have to abandon ship!"

NO. WE WILL TAKE IT WITH US. IT'S A NICE SHIP.

The captain peered closer in the murk.

"Is that you, Bosun Coplei?"

WOULD YOU LIKE ANOTHER GUESS?

The hull hit a submerged rock and ripped open. Lightning struck the remaining mast and, like a paper boat that had been too long in the water, the Fin of God folded up. Baulks of timber splintered and fountained up into the whirling sky . . .

And there was a sudden, velvety silence.

The captain found that he had acquired a recent memory. It involved water, and a ringing in his ears, and the sensation of cold fire in his lungs. But it was fading. He walked over to the rail, his footsteps loud in the quietness, and looked over the side. Despite the fact that the recent memory included something about the ship being totally smashed, it now seemed to be whole again. In a way.

"Uh," he said, "we appear to have run out of sea."

YES.

"And land, too."

The captain tapped the rail. It was grayish, and slightly transparent.

"Uh. Is this wood?"

MORPHIC MEMORY.

"Sorry?"

YOU WERE A SAILOR. YOU HAVE HEARD A SHIP REFERRED TO AS A LIVING THING?

"Oh, yes. You can't spend a night on a ship without feeling that it has a sou-”

YES.

The memory of Fin of God sailed on through the silence. There was the distant sighing of wind, or of the memory of wind. The blown-out corpses of dead gales.

"Uh," said the ghost of the captain, "did you just say `were'?"

YES.

"I thought you did."

The captain stared down. The crew was assembling on deck, looking up at him with anxious eyes.

He looked down further. In front of the crew the ship's rats had assembled. There was a tiny robed shape in front of them.

It said, SQUEAK.

He thought: even rats have a Death . . .

Death stood aside and beckoned to the captain.

YOU HAVE THE WHEEL.

"But-but where are we going?"

WHO KNOWS?

The captain gripped the spokes helplessly. "But . . . there's no stars that I recognize! No charts! What are the winds here? Where are the currents?"

Death shrugged.

The captain turned the wheel aimlessly. The ship glided on through the ghost of a sea.

Then he brightened up. The worst had already happened. It was amazing how good it felt to know that. And if the worst had already happened . . .

"Where's Vorbis?" he growled.

HE SURVIVED.

"Did he? There's no justice!"

THERE'S JUST ME.

Death vanished.

The captain turned the wheel a bit, for the look of the thing. After all, he was still captain and this was still, in a way, a ship.

"Mr. Mate?"

The mate saluted. Sir!"

"Um. Where shall we go now?"

The mate scratched his head.

"Well, cap'n, I did hear as the heathen Klatch have got this paradise place where there's drinking and singing and young women with bells on and . . . you know . . . regardless."

The mate looked hopefully at his captain.

"Regardless, eh?" said the captain thoughtfully.

"So I did hear."

The captain felt that he might be due some regardless.

"Any idea how you get there?"

"I think you get given instructions when you're alive," said the mate.

"Oh."

"And there're some barbarians up toward the Hub," said the mate, relishing the word, "who reckon they go to a big hall where there's all sorts to eat and drink."

"And women?"

"Bound to be."

The captain frowned. "It's a funny thing," he said, "but why is it that the heathens and the barbarians seem to have the best places to go when they die?"

"A bit of a poser, that," agreed the mate. "I s'pose it makes up for 'em . . . enjoying themselves all the time when they're alive, too?" He looked puzzled. Now that he was dead, the whole thing sounded suspicious.

"I suppose you've no idea of the way to that paradise either?" said the captain.

"Sorry, cap'n."

"No harm in searching, though."

The captain looked over the side. If you sailed for long enough, you were bound to strike a shore. And no harm in searching.

A movement caught his eye. He smiled. Good. A sign. Maybe it was all for the best, after all . . .

Accompanied by the ghosts of dolphins, the ghost of a ship sailed on . . .

Seagulls never ventured this far along the desert coast. Their niche was filled by the scalbie, a member of the crow family that the crow family would be the first to disown and never talked about in company. It seldom flew, but walked everywhere in a sort of lurching hop. Its distinctive call put listeners in mind of a malfunctioning digestive system. It looked like other birds looked after an oil slick. Nothing ate scalbies, except other scalbies. Scalbies ate things that made a vulture sick. Scalbies would eat vulture sick. Scalbies ate everything.

One of them, on this bright new morning, sidled across the flea-hopping sand, pecking aimlessly at things in case pebbles and bits of wood had become edible overnight. In the scalbie's experience, practically anything became edible if it was left for long enough. It came across a mound lying on the tideline, and gave it a tentative jab with its beak.

The mound groaned.

The scalbie backed away hurriedly and turned its attention to a small domed rock beside the mound. It was pretty certain this hadn't been there yesterday, either. It essayed an exploratory peck.

The rock extruded a head and said, "Bugger off, you evil sod."

The scalbie leapt backward and then made a kind of running jump, which was the nearest any scalbie ever bothered to come to actual flight, on to a pile of sun-bleached driftwood. Things were looking up. If this rock was alive, then eventually it would be dead.

The Great God Om staggered over to Brutha and butted him in the head with its shell until he groaned.

"Wake up, lad. Rise and shine. Huphuphup. All ashore who's going ashore."

Brutha opened an eye.

"Wha' happened?" he said.

"You're alive is what happened," said Om. Life's a beach, he remembered. And then you die.

Brutha pulled himself into a kneeling position.

There are beaches that cry out for brightly colored umbrellas.

There are beaches that speak of the majesty of the sea.

But this beach wasn't like that. It was merely a barren hem where the land met the ocean. Driftwood piled up on the high-tide line, scoured by the wind. The air buzzed with unpleasant small insects. There was a smell that suggested that something had rotted away, a long time ago, somewhere where the scalbies couldn't find it. It was not a good beach.

"Oh. God."

"Better than drowning," said Om encouragingly.

"I wouldn't know." Brutha looked along the beach. "Is there any water to drink?"

"Shouldn't think so," said Om.

"Ossory V, verse 3, says that you made living water flow from the dry desert," said Brutha.

"That was by way of being artistic license," said Om.

"You can't even do that?"

"No."

Brutha looked at the desert again. Behind the driftwood lines, and a few patches of grass that appeared to be dying even while it grew, the dunes marched away.

"Which way to Omnia?" he said.

"We don't want to go to Omnia," said Om.

Brutha stared at the tortoise. Then he picked him up.

"I think it's this way," he said.

Om's legs waggled frantically.

"What do you want to go to Omnia for?" he said.

"I don't want to," said Brutha. "But I'm going anyway."

The sun hung high above the beach.

Or possibly it didn't.

Brutha knew things about the sun now. They were leaking into his head. The Ephebians had been very interested in astronomy. Expletius had proved that the Disc was ten thousand miles across. Febrius, who'd stationed slaves with quick reactions and carrying voices all across the country at dawn, had proved that light travelled at about the same speed as sound. And Didactylos had reasoned that, in that case, in order to pass between the elephants, the sun had to travel at least thirty-five thousand miles in its orbit every day or, to put it another way, twice as fast as its own light.

Which meant that mostly you could only ever see where the sun had been, except twice every day when it caught up with itself, and this meant that the whole sun was a faster-than-light particle, a tachyon or, as Didactylos put it, a bugger.

It was still hot. The lifeless sea seemed to steam.

Brutha trudged along, directly above the only piece of shadow for hundreds of miles. Even Om had stopped complaining. It was too hot.

Here and there fragments of wood rolled in the scum at the edge of the sea.

Ahead of Brutha the air shimmered over the sand. In the middle of it was a dark blob.

He regarded it dispassionately as he approached, incapable of any real thought. It was nothing more than a reference point in a world of orange heat, expanding and contracting in the vibrating haze.

Closer to, it turned out to be Vorbis.

The thought took a long time to seep through Brutha's mind.

Vorbis.

Not with a robe. All torn off. Just his singlet with. The nails sewn in. Blood -all. Over one leg. Torn by. Rocks. Vorbis.

Vorbis.

Brutha slumped to his knees. On the high-tide line, a scalbie gave a croak.

"He's still . . . alive," Brutha managed.

"Pity," said Om.

"We should do something . . . for him."

"Yes? Maybe you can find a rock and stove his head in," said Om.

"We can't just leave him here."

"Watch us." No."

Brutha got his hand under the deacon and tried to lift him. To his dull surprise, Vorbis weighed almost nothing. The deacon's robe had concealed a body that was just skin stretched over bone. Brutha could have broken him with bare hands.

"What about me?" whined Om.

Brutha slung Vorbis over his shoulder.

"You've got four legs," he said.

"I am your God!"

"Yes. I know." Brutha trudged on along the beach.

"What are you going to do with him?"

"Take him to Omnia," said Brutha thickly. "People must know. What he did."

"You're mad! You're mad! You think you're going to carry him to Omnia?"

"Don't know. Going to try."

"You! You!" Om pounded a claw on the sand. "Millions of people in the world and it had to be you! Stupid! Stupid!"

Brutha was becoming a wavering shape in the haze.

"That's it!" shouted Om. "I don't need you! You think I need you? I don't need you! I can soon find another believer! No problem about that!"

Brutha disappeared.

"And I'm not chasing after you!" Om screamed.

Brutha watched his feet dragging one in front of the other.

He was past the point of thinking now. What drifted through his frying brain were disjointed images and fragments of memory.

Dreams. They were pictures in your head. Coaxes had written a whole scroll about them. The superstitious thought they were messages sent by God, but really they were created by the brain itself, thrown up as it nightly sorted and fiIed the experiences of the day. Brutha never dreamed. So sometimes . . .

blackout, while the mind did the filing. It fiIed all the books. Now he knew without learning . . .

That was dreams.

God. God needed people. Belief was the food of the gods. But they also needed a shape. Gods became what people believed they ought to be. So the Goddess of Wisdom carried a penguin. It could have happened to any god. It should have been an owl. Everyone knew that. But one bad sculptor who had only ever had an owl described to him makes a mess of a statue, belief steps in, next thing you know the Goddess of Wisdom is lumbered with a bird that wears evening dress the whole time and smells of fish.

You gave a god its shape, like a jelly fills a mold.

Gods often became your father, said Abraxas the Agnostic. Gods became a big beard in the sky, because when you were three years old that was your father.

Of course Abraxas survived . . . This thought arrived sharp and cold, out of the part of his own mind that Brutha could still call his own. Gods didn't mind atheists, if they were deep, hot, fiery atheists like Simony, who spend their whole life not believing, spend their whole life hating gods for not existing. That sort of atheism was a rock. It was nearly belief . . .

Sand. It was what you found in deserts. Crystals of rock, sculpted into dunes. Gordo of Tsort said that sand was worn-down mountains but Irexes had found that sandstone was stone pressed out of sand, which suggested that grains were the fathers of mountains . . .

Every one a little crystal. And all of them getting bigger . . .

Much bigger . . .

Quietly, without realizing it, Brutha stopped falling forward and lay still.

"Bugger Off!"

The scalbie took no notice. This was interesting. It was getting to see whole new stretches of sand it had never seen before and, of course, there was the prospect, even the certainty, of a good meal at the end of it all.

It had perched on Om's shell.

Om stumped along the sand, pausing occasionally to shout at his passenger.

Brutha had come this way.

But here one of the outcrops of rocks, littering the desert like islands in a sea, stretched right down to the water's edge. He'd never have been able to climb it. The footprints in the sand turned inland, toward the deep desert.

"Idiot!"

Om struggled up the side of a dune, digging his feet in to stop himself slaloming backward.

On the far side of the dune the tracks became a long groove, where Brutha must have fallen. Om retracted his legs and tobogganed down it.

The tracks veered here. He must have thought that he could walk around the next dune and find the rock again on the other side. Om knew about deserts, and one of the things he knew was that this kind of logical thinking had been previously applied by a thousand bleached, lost skeletons.

Nevertheless, he plodded after the tracks, grateful for the brief shade of the dune now that the sun was sinking.

Around the dune and, yes, here they zigzagged awkwardly up a slope about ninety degrees away from where they should be heading. Guaranteed. That was the thing about deserts. They had their own gravity. They sucked you into the center.

Brutha crawled forward, Vorbis held unsteadily by one limp arm. He didn't dare stop. His grandmother would hit him again. And there was Master Nhumrod, too, drifting in and out of vision.

"I am really disappointed in you, Brutha. Mmm?"

"Want . . . water . . ."

"-water," said Nhumrod. "Trust in the great God."

Brutha concentrated. Nhumrod vanished.

"Great God?" he said.

Somewhere there was some shade. The desert couldn't go on for ever.

The sun set fast. For a while, Om knew, heat would radiate off the sand and his own shell would store it, but that would soon go and then there would be the bitterness of a desert night.

Stars were already coming on when he found Brutha. Vorbis had been dropped a little way away.

Om pulled himself level with Brutha's ear.

"Hey!"

There was no sound, and no movement. Om butted Brutha gently in the head and then looked at the cracked lips.

There was a pecking noise behind him.

The scalbie was investigating Brutha's toes, but its explorations were interrupted when a tortoise jaw closed around its foot.

"I old oo, ugger ogg!"

The scalbie gave a burp of panic and tried to fly away, but it was hindered by a determined tortoise hanging on to one leg. Om was bounced along the sand for a few feet before he let go.

He tried to spit, but tortoise mouths aren't designed for the job.

"I hate all birds," he said, to the evening air.

The scalbie watched him reproachfully from the top of a dune. It ruffled its handful of greasy feathers with the air of one who was prepared to wait all night, if necessary. As long as it took.

Om crawled back to Brutha. Well, there was still breathing going on.

Water . . .

The god gave it some thought. Smiting the living rock. That was one way. Getting water to flow . . . no problem. It was just a matter of molecules and vectors. Water had a natural tendency to flow. You just have to see to it that it flowed here instead of there. No problem at all to a god in the peak of condition.

How did you tackle it from a tortoise perspective?

The tortoise dragged himself to the bottom of the dune and then walked up and down for a few minutes. Finally he selected a spot and began digging.

This wasn't right. It had been fiery hot. Now he was freezing.

Brutha opened his eyes. Desert stars, brilliant white, looked back at him. His tongue seemed to fill his mouth. Now, what was it . . .

Water.

He rolled over. There had been voices in his head, and now there were voices outside his head. They were faint, but they were definitely there, echoing quietly over the moonlit sands.

Brutha crawled painfully toward the foot of the dune. There was a mound there. In fact, there were several mounds. The muffled voice was coming from one of them. He pulled himself closer.

There was a hole in the mound. Somewhere far underground, someone was swearing. The words were unclear as they echoed backward and forward up the tunnel, but the general effect was unmistakable.

Brutha flopped down, and watched.

After a few minutes there was movement at the mouth of the hole and Om emerged, covered with what, if this wasn't a desert, Brutha would have called mud.

"Oh, it's you," said the tortoise. "Tear off a bit of your robe and pass it over."

Dreamlike, Brutha obeyed.

"Turnin' round down there", said Om, "is no picnic, let me tell you."

He took the rag in his jaws, backed around carefully, and disappeared down the hole. After a couple of minutes he was back, still dragging the rag.

It was soaked. Brutha let the liquid dribble into his mouth. It tasted of mud, and sand, and cheap brown dye, and slightly of tortoise, but he would have drunk a gallon of it. He could have swum in a pool of it.

He tore off another strip for Om to take down.

When Om re-emerged, Brutha was kneeling beside Vorbis.

"Sixteen feet down! Sixteen bloody feet!" shouted Om. "Don't waste it on him! Isn't he dead yet?"

"He's got a fever."

"Put him out of our misery."

"We're still taking him back to Omnia."

"You think we'll get there? No food? No water?"

"But you found water. Water in the desert."

"Nothing miraculous about that," said Om. "There's a rainy season near the coast. Flash floods. Wadis. Dried-up river beds. You get aquifers," he added.

"Sounds like a miracle to me," croaked Brutha.

"Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle."

"Well, there's no food down there, take it from me," said Om. "Nothing to eat. Nothing in the sea, if we can find the sea again. I know the desert. Rocky ridges you have to go round. Everything turning you out of your path. Dunes that move in the night . . . lions . . . other things . . ."

. . . gods.

"What do you want to do, then?" said Brutha. "You said better alive than dead. You want to go back to Ephebe? We'll be popular there, you think?"

Om was silent.

Brutha nodded.

"Fetch more water, then."

It was better traveling at night, with Vorbis over one shoulder and Om under one arm.

At this time of year-

-the glow in the sky over there is the Aurora Corealis, the hublights, where the magical field of the Discworld constantly discharges itself among the peaks of Cori Celesti, the central mountain. And at this time of year the sun rises over the desert in Ephebe and over the sea in Omnia, so keep the hublights on the left and the sunset glow behind you-

"Did you ever go to Cori Celesti?" said Brutha.

Om, who had been nodding off in the cold, woke up with a start.

"Huh?"

"It's where the gods live."

"Hah! I could tell you stories," said Om darkly.

"What?"

"Think they're so bloody elite!"

"You didn't live up there, then?"

"No. Got to be a thunder god or something. Got to have a whole parcel of worshipers to live on Nob Hill. Got to be an anthropomorphic personification, one of them things."

"Not just a Great God, then?"

Well, this was the desert. And Brutha was going to die.

"May as well tell you," muttered Om. "It's not as though we're going to survive . . . See, every god's a Great God to someone. I never wanted to be that great. A handful of tribes, a city or two. It's not much to ask, is it?"

"There's two million people in the empire," said Brutha.

"Yeah. Pretty good, eh? Started off with nothing but a shepherd hearing voices in his head, ended up with two million people."

"But you never did anything with them," said Brutha.

"Like what?"

"Well . . . tell them not to kill one another, that sort of thing . . ."

"Never really given it much thought. Why should I tell them that?"

Brutha sought for something that would appeal to god psychology.

"Well, if people didn't kill one another, there'd be more people to believe in you?" he suggested.

"It's a point," Om conceded. "Interesting point. Sneaky."

Brutha walked along in silence. There was a glimmer of frost on the dunes.

"Have you ever heard", he said, "of Ethics?"

"Somewhere in Howondaland, isn't it?"

"The Ephebians were very interested in it."

"Probably thinking about invading."

"They seemed to think about it a lot."

"Long-term strategy, maybe."

"I don't think it's a place, though. It's more to do with how people live."

"What, lolling around all day while slaves do the real work? Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place while those fellows are living like-”

"-gods?" said Brutha.

There was a terrible silence.

"I was going to say kings," said Om, reproachfully.

"They sound a bit like gods."

"Kings," said Om emphatically.

"Why do people need gods?" Brutha persisted.

"Oh, you've got to have gods," said Om, in a hearty, no-nonsense voice.

"But it's gods that need people," said Brutha. "To do the believing. You said."

Om hesitated. "Well, okay," he said. "But people have got to believe in something. Yes? I mean, why else does it thunder?"

"Thunder," said Brutha, his eyes glazing slightly, "I don't-"

"-is caused by clouds banging together; after the lightning stroke, there is a hole in the air, and thus the sound is engendered by the clouds rushing to fill the hole and colliding, in accordance with strict cumulodynamic principles."

"Your voice goes funny when you're quoting," said Om. "What does engendered mean?"

"I don't know. No one showed me a dictionary."

"Anyway, that's just an explanation," said Om. "It's not a reason."

"My grandmother said thunder was caused by the Great God Om taking his sandals off," said Brutha. "She was in a funny mood that day. Nearly smiled."

"Metaphorically accurate," said Om. "But I never did thundering. Demarcation, see. Bloody I've-got-a-big-hammer Blind Io up on Nob Hill does all the thundering."

"I thought you said there were hundreds of thunder gods," said Brutha.

"Yeah. And he's all of 'em. Rationalization. A couple of tribes join up, they've both got thunder gods, right? And the gods kind of run together-you know how amoebas split?"

"No."

"Well, it's like that, only the other way."

"I still don't see how one god can be a hundred thunder gods. They all look different . . ."

"False noses."

"What?"

"And different voices. I happen to know Io's got seventy different hammers. Not common knowledge, that. And it's just the same with mother goddesses. There's only one of 'em. She just got a lot of wigs and of course it's amazing what you can do with a padded bra."

There was absolute silence in the desert. The stars, smeared slightly by high-altitude moisture, were tiny, motionless rosettes.

Away toward what the Church called the Top Pole, and which Brutha was coming to think of as the Hub, the sky flickered.

Brutha put Om down, and laid Vorbis on the sand.

Absolute silence.

Nothing for miles, except what he had brought with him. This must have been how the prophets felt, when they went into the desert to find . . . whatever it was they found, and talk to . . . whoever they talked to.

He heard Om, slightly peevish, say: "People've got to believe in something. Might as well be gods. What else is there?"

Brutha laughed.

"You know," he said, "I don't think I believe in anything any more."

"Except me!"

"Oh, I know you exist," said Brutha. He felt Om relax a little. "There's something about tortoises. Tortoises I can believe in. They seem to have a lot of existence in one place. It's gods in general I'm having difficulty with."

"Look, if people stop believing in gods, they'll believe in anything," said Om. "They'll believe in young Urn's steam ball. Anything at all."

"Hmm."

A green glow in the sky indicated that the light of dawn was chasing frantically after its sun.

Vorbis groaned.

"I don't know why he won't wake up," said Brutha. "I can't find any broken bones."

"How do you know?"

"One of the Ephebian scrolls was all about bones. Can't you do anything for him?"

"Why?"

"You're a god."

"Well, yes. If I was strong enough, I could probably strike him with lightning."

"I thought to did the lightning."

"No, just the thunder. You're allowed to do as much lightning as you like but you have to contract for the thundering."

Now the horizon was a broad golden band.

"How about rain?" said Brutha. "How about something useful?"

A line of silver appeared at the bottom of the gold. Sunlight was racing towards Brutha.

"That was a very hurtful remark," said the tortoise. "A remark calculated to wound."

In the rapidly growing light Brutha saw one of the rock islands a little way off. Its sand-blasted pillars offered nothing but shade, but shade, always available in large quantities in the depths of the Citadel, was now in short supply here.

"Caves?" said Brutha.

"Snakes."

"But still caves?"

"In conjunction with snakes."

"Poisonous snakes?"

"Guess."

The Unnamed Boat clipped along gently, the wind filling Urn's robe attached to a mast made out of bits of the sphere's framework bound together with Simony's sandal thongs.

"I think I know what went wrong," said Urn. "A mere overspeed problem."

"Overspeed? We left the water!" said Simony.

"It needs some sort of governor device," said Urn, scratching a design on the side of the boat. "Something that'd open the valve if there was too much steam. I think I could do something with a pair of revolving balls."

"It's funny you should say that," said Didactylos. "When I felt us leave the water and the sphere exploded I distinctly felt my-”

"That bloody thing nearly killed us!" said Simony.

"So the next one will be better," said Urn, cheerfully. He scanned the distant coastline.

"Why don't we land somewhere along here?" he said.

"The desert coast?" said Simony. "What for? Nothing to eat, nothing to drink, easy to lose your way. Omnia's the only destination in this wind. We can land this side of the city. I know people. And those people know people. All across Omnia, there's people who know people. People who believe in the Turtle."

"You know, I never meant for people to believe in the Turtle," said Didactylos unhappily. "It's just a big turtle. It just exists. Things just happen that way. I don't think the Turtle gives a damn. I just thought it might be a good idea to write things down and explain things a bit."

"People sat up all night, on guard, while other people made copies," said Simony, ignoring him. "Passing them from hand to hand! Everyone making a copy and passing it on! Like a fire spreading underground!"

"Would this be lots of copies?" said Didactylos cautiously.

"Hundreds! Thousands!"

"I suppose it's too late to ask for, say, a five per cent royalty?" said Didactylos, looking hopeful for a moment. "No. Probably out of the question, I expect. No. Forget I even asked."

A few flying fish zipped out of the waves, pursued by a dolphin.

"Can't help feeling a bit sorry for that young Brutha," said Didactylos.

"Priests are expendable," said Simony. "There's too many of them."

"He had all our books," said Urn.

"He'll probably float with all that knowledge in him," said Didactylos.

"He was mad, anyway," said Simony. "I saw him whispering to that tortoise."

"I wish we still had it. There's good eating on one of those things," said Didactylos.

It wasn't much of a cave, just a deep hollow carved by the endless desert winds and, a long time ago, even by water. But it was enough.

Brutha knelt on the stony floor and raised the rock over his head.

There was a buzzing in his ears and his eyeballs felt as though they were set in sand. No water since sunset and no food for a hundred years. He had to do it.

"I'm sorry," he said, and brought the rock down.

The snake had been watching him intently but in its early-morning torpor it was too slow to dodge. The cracking noise was a sound that Brutha knew his conscience would replay to him, over and over again.

"Good," said Om, beside him. "Now skin it, and don't waste the juice. Save the skin, too."

"I didn't want to do it," said Brutha.

"Look at it this way," said Om, "if you'd walked in the cave without me to warn you, you'd be lying on the floor now with a foot the size of a wardrobe. Do unto others before they do unto you."

"It's not even a very big snake," said Brutha.

"And then while you're writhing there in indescribable agony, you imagine all the things you would have done to that damn snake if you'd got to it first," said Om. "Well, your wish has been granted. Don't give any to Vorbis," he added.

"He's running a bad fever. He keeps muttering."

"Do you really think you'll get him back to the Citadel and they'll believe you?" said Om.

"Brother Nhumrod always said I was very truthful," said Brutha. He smashed the rock on the cave wall to create a crude cutting edge, and gingerly started dismembering the snake. "Anyway, there isn't anything else I can do. I couldn't just leave him."

"Yes you could," said Om.

"To die in the desert?"

"Yes. It's easy. Much easier than not leaving him to die in the desert."

No.

"This is how they do things in Ethics, is it?" said Om sarcastically.

"I don't know. It's how I'm doing it."

The Unnamed Boat bobbed in a gully between the rocks. There was a low cliff beyond the beach. Simony climbed back down it, to where the philosophers were huddling out of the wind.

"I know this area," he said. "We're a few miles from the village where a friend lives. All we have to do is wait till nightfall."

"Why're you doing all this?" said Urn. "I mean, what's the point?"

"Have you ever heard of a country called Istanzia?" said Simony. "It wasn't very big. It had nothing anyone wanted. It was just a place for people to live."

"Omnia conquered it fifteen years ago," said Didactylos.

"That's right. My country," said Simony. "I was just a kid then. But I won't forget. Nor will others. There's lots of people with a reason to hate the Church."

"I saw you standing close to Vorbis," said Urn. "I thought you were protecting him."

"Oh, I was, I was," said Simony. "I don't want anyone to kill him before I do."

Didactylos wrapped his toga around himself and shivered.

The sun was riveted to the copper dome of the sky. Brutha dozed in the cave. In his own corner, Vorbis tossed and turned.

Om sat waiting in the cave mouth.

Waited expectantly.

Waited in dread.

And they came.

They came out from under scraps of stone, and from cracks in the rock. They fountained up from the sand, they distilled out of the wavering sky. The air was fiIled with their voices, as faint as the whispering of gnats.

Om tensed.

The language he spoke was not like the language of the high gods. It was hardly language at all. It was a mere modulation of desires and hungers, without nouns and with only a few verbs .

. . . Want . . .

Om replied, mine.

There were thousands of them. He was stronger, yes, he had a believer, but they fiIled the sky like locusts. The longing poured down on him with the weight of hot lead. The only advantage, the only advantage, was that the small gods had no concept of working together. That was a luxury that came with evolution .

. . . Want . . .

Mine!

The chittering became a whine.

But you can have the other one, said Om .

. . . Dull, hard, enclosed, shut-in . . .

I know, said Om. But this one, mine!

The psychic shout echoed around the desert. The small gods fled.

Except for one.

Om was aware that it had not been swarming with the others, but had been hovering gently over a piece of sun-bleached bone. It had said nothing.

He turned his attention on it.

You. Mine!

I know, said the small god. It knew speech, real god speech, although it talked as though every word had been winched from the pit of memory.

Who are you? said Om.

The small god stirred.

There was a city once, said the small god. Not just a city. An empire of cities. I, I, I remember there were canals, and gardens. There was a lake. They had floating gardens on the lake, I recall. I, I. And there were temples. Such temples as you may dream of. Great pyramid temples that reached to the sky. Thousands were sacrificed. To the greater glory.

Om felt sick. This wasn't just a small god. This was a small god who hadn't always been small . . .

Who were you?

And there were temples. I, I, me. Such temples as you may dream of. Great pyramid temples that reached to the sky. The glory of. Thousands were sacrificed. Me. To the greater glory.

And there were temples. Me, me, me. Greater glory. Such glory temples as you may dream of. Great pyramid dream temples that reached to the sky. Me, me. Sacrificed. Dream. Thousands were sacrificed. To me the greater sky glory-

You were their God? Om managed.

Thousands were sacrificed. To the greater glory.

Can you hear me?

Thousands sacrificed greater glory. Me, me, me.

What was your name? shouted Om.

Name?

A hot wind blew over the desert, shifting a few grains of sand. The echo of a lost god blew away, tumbling over and over, until it vanished among the rocks.

Who were you?

There was no answer.

That's what happens, Om thought. Being a small god was bad, except at the time you hardly knew that it was bad because you only barely knew anything at all, but all the time there was something which was just possibly the germ of hope, the knowledge and belief that one day you might be more than you were now.

But how much worse to have been a god, and to now be no more than a smoky bundle of memories, blown back and forth across the sand made from the crumbled stones of your temples . . .

Om turned around and, on stumpy legs, walked purposefully back into the cave until he came to Brutha's head, which he butted.

"Wst?"

"Just checking you're still alive."

"Fgfl."

"Right."

Om staggered back to his guard position at the mouth of the cave.

There were said to be oases in the desert, but they were never in the same place twice. The desert wasn't mappable. It ate map-makers.

So did the lions. Om could remember them. Scrawny things, not like the lions of the Howondaland veldt. More wolf than lion, more hyena than either. Not brave, but with a kind of vicious, rangy cowardice that was much more dangerous . . .

Lions.

Oh, dear . . .

He had to find lions.

Lions drank.

Brutha awoke as the afternoon light dragged across the desert. His mouth tasted of snake.

Om was butting him on the foot.

"Come on, come on, you're missing the best of the day."

"Is there any water?" Brutha murmured thickly.

"There will be. Only five miles off. Amazing luck."

Brutha pulled himself up. Every muscle ached.

"How do you know?"

"I can sense it. I am a god, you know."

"You said you could only sense minds."

Om cursed. Brutha didn't forget things.

"It's more complicated than that," lied Om. "Trust me. Come on, while there's some twilight. And don't forget Mister Vorbis."

Vorbis was curled up. He looked at Brutha with unfocused eyes, stood up like a man still asleep when Brutha helped him.

"I think he might have been poisoned," said Brutha. "There's sea creatures with stings. And poisonous corals. He keeps moving his lips, but I can't make out what he's trying to say."

"Bring him along," said Om. "Bring him along. Oh, yes."

"You wanted me to abandon him last night," said Brutha.

"Did I?" said Om, his very shell radiating innocence. "Well, maybe I've been to Ethics. Had a change of heart. I can see he's with us for a purpose now. Good old Vorbis. Bring him along."

Simony and the two philosophers stood on the clifftop, looking across the parched farmlands of Omnia to the distant rock of the Citadel. Two of them looking, anyway.

"Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I'd smash that place like an egg," said Simony, leading Didactylos down the narrow path.

"Looks big," said Urn.

"See the gleam? Those are the doors."

"Look massive."

"I was wondering," said Simony, "about the boat. The way it moved. Something like that could smash the doors, right?"

"You'd have to flood the valley," said Urn.

"I mean if it was on wheels."

"Hah, yes," said Urn, sarcastically. It had been a long day. "Yes, if I had a forge and half a dozen blacksmiths and a lot of help. Wheels? No problem. But--

"We shall have to see," said Simony, "what we can do."

The sun was on the horizon when Brutha, his arm around Vorbis's shoulders, reached the next rock island. It was bigger than the one with the snake. The wind had carved the stones into gaunt, unlikely shapes, like fingers. There were even plants lodging in crevices in the rock.

"There's water somewhere," said Brutha.

"There's always water, even in the worst deserts," said Om. "One, oh, maybe two inches of rain a year."

"I can smell something," said Brutha, as his feet stopped treading on sand and crunched up the limestone scree around the boulders. "Something rank."

"Hold me over your head."

Om scanned the rocks.

"Right. Now bring me down again. And head for that rock that looks like . . . that looks very unexpected, really."

Brutha stared. "It does, too," he croaked, eventually. "Amazing to think it was carved by the wind."

"The wind god has a sense of humor," said Om. "Although it's pretty basic."

Near the foot of the rock huge slabs had fallen over the years, forming a jagged pile with, here and there, shadowy openings.

"That smell-” Brutha began.

"Probably animals come to drink the water," said Om.

Brutha's foot kicked against something yellowwhite, which bounced away among the rocks making a noise like a sackful of coconuts. In the stifling empty silence of the desert, it echoed loudly.

"What was that?"

"Definitely not a skull," lied Om. "Don't worry . . .

"There's bones everywhere!"

"Well? What did you expect? This is a desert! People die here! It's a very popular occupation in this vicinity!"

Brutha picked up a bone. He was, as he well knew, stupid. But people didn't gnaw their own bones after they died.

"Om-”

"There's water here!" shouted Om. "We need it! But-there's probably one or two drawbacks!"

"What kind of drawbacks?"

"As in natural hazards!"

"Like-?"

"Well, you know lions?" said Om desperately.

"There's lions here?"

"Well . . . slightly."

"Slightly lions?"

"Only one lion."

"Only one-”

"-generally a solitary creature. Most to be feared are the old males, who are forced into the most inhospitable regions by their younger rivals. They are eviltempered and cunning and in their extremity have lost all fear of man-'

The memory faded, letting go of Brutha's vocal chords.

"That kind?" Brutha finished.

"It won't take any notice of us once it's fed," said Om.

"Yes?"

"They go to sleep."

"After feeding-?"

Brutha looked round at Vorbis, who was slumped against a rock.

"Feeding?" he repeated.

"It'll be a kindness," said Om.

"To the lion, yes! You want to use him as bait?"

"He's not going to survive the desert. Anyway, he's done much worse to thousands of people. He'll be dying for a good cause."

"A good cause?"

"I like it."

There was a growl, from somewhere in the stones. It wasn't loud, but it was a sound with sinews in it. Brutha backed away.

"We don't just throw people to the lions!"

"He does."

"Yes. I don't."

"All right, we'll get on top of a slab and when the lion starts on him you can brain it with a rock. He'll probably get away with an arm or a leg. He'll never miss it."

"No! You can't do that to people just because they're helpless!"

"You know, I can't think of a better time?"

There was another growl from the rock pile. It sounded closer.

Brutha looked down desperately at the scattered bones. Among them, half-hidden by debris, was a sword. It was old, and not well-made, and scoured by sand. He picked it up gingerly by the blade.

"Other end," said Om.

"I know!..

"Can you use one?"

"I don't know!"

"I really hope you're a fast learner."

The lion emerged, slowly.

Desert lions, it has been said, are not like the lions of the veldt. They had been, when the great desert had been verdant woodland.[7] Then there had been time to lie around for most of the day, looking majestic, in between regular meals of goat.[8] But the woodland had become scrubland, the scrubland had become, well, poorer scrubland, and the goats and the people and, eventually, even the cities, went away.

The lions stayed. There's always something to eat, if you're hungry enough. People still had to cross the desert. There were lizards. There were snakes. It wasn't much of an ecological niche, but the lions were hanging on to it like grim death, which was what happened to most people who met a desert lion.

Someone had already met this one.

Its mane was matted. Ancient scars criss-crossed its pelt. It dragged itself towards Brutha, back legs trailing uselessly.

"It's hurt," said Brutha.

"Oh, good. And there's plenty of eating on one of those," said Om. "A bit stringy, but-”

The lion collapsed, its toast-rack chest heaving. A spear was protruding from its flank. Flies, which can always find something to eat in any desert, flew up in a swarm.

Brutha put down the sword. Om stuck his head in his shell.

"Oh no," he murmured. "Twenty million people in this world, and the only one who believes in me is a suicide"

"We can't just leave it," said Brutha.

"We can. We can. It's a lion. You leave lions alone. "

Brutha knelt down. The lion opened one crusted yellow eye, too weak even to bite him.

"You're going to die, you're going to die. I'm not going to find anyone to believe in me out here-”

Brutha's knowledge of animal anatomy was rudimentary. Although some of the inquisitors had an enviable knowledge of the insides of the human body that is denied to all those who are not allowed to open it while it's still working, medicine as such was frowned upon in Omnia. But somewhere, in every village, was someone who officially didn't set bones and who didn't know a few things about certain plants, and who stayed out of reach of the Quisition because of the fragile gratitude of their patients. And every peasant picked up a smattering of knowledge. Acute toothache can burn through all but the strongest in faith.

Brutha grasped the spear-haft. The lion growled as he moved it.

"Can't you speak to it?" said Brutha.

"It's an animal."

"So are you. You could try to calm it down. Because if it gets excited-”

Om snapped into concentration.

In fact the lion's mind contained nothing but pain, a spreading nebula of the stuff, overcoming even the normal background hunger. Om tried to encircle the pain, make it flow away . . . and not to think about what would happen if it went. By the feel of things, the lion had not eaten for days.

The lion grunted as Brutha withdrew the spearhead.

"Omnian," he said. "It hasn't been there long. It must have met the soldiers when they were on the way to Ephebe. They must have passed close by." He tore another strip from his robe, and tried to clean the wound.

"We want to eat it, not cure it!" shouted Om. "What're you thinking of? You think it's going to be grateful?"

"It wanted to be helped."

"And soon it will want to be fed, have you thought about that?"

"It's looking pathetically at me."

"Probably never seen a week's meals all walking around on one pair of legs before."

That wasn't true, Om reflected. Brutha was shedding weight like an ice-cube, out here in the desert. That kept him alive! The boy was a two-legged camel.

Brutha crunched towards the rock pile, shards and bones shifting under his feet. The boulders formed a maze of half-open tunnels and caves. By the smell, the lion had lived there for a long time, and had quite often been ill.

He stared at the nearest cave for some time.

"What's so fascinating about a lion's den?" said Om.

"The way it's got steps down into it, I think," said Brutha.

Didactylos could feel the crowd. It filled the barn.

"How many are there?" he said.

"Hundreds!" said Urn. "They're even sitting on the rafters! And . . . master?"

"Yes?"

"There's even one or two priests! And dozens of soldiers!"

"Don't worry," said Simony, joining them on the makeshift platform made of fig barrels. "They are Turtle believers, just like you. We have friends in unexpected places!"

"But I don't-" Didactylos began, helplessly.

"There isn't anyone here who doesn't hate the Church with all their soul," said Simony.

"But that's not-”

"They're just waiting for someone to lead them!"

"But I never-”

"I know you won't let us down. You're a man of reason. Urn, come over here. There's a blacksmith I want you to meet-”

Didactylos turned his face to the crowd. He could feel the hot, hushed silence of their stares.

Each drop took minutes.

It was hypnotic. Brutha found himself staring at each developing drip. It was almost impossible to see it grow, but they had been growing and dripping for thousands of years.

"How?" said Om.

"Water seeps down after the rains," said Brutha. "It lodges in the rocks. Don't gods know these things?"

"We don't need to." Om looked around. "Let's go. I hate this place."

"It's just an old temple. There's nothing here."

"That's what I mean."

Sand and rubble half-filled it. Light lanced in through the broken roof high above, on to the slope that they had climbed down. Brutha wondered how many of the windcarved rocks in the desert had once been buildings. This one must have been huge, perhaps a mighty tower. And then the desert had come.

There were no whispering voices here. Even the small gods kept away from abandoned temples, fo the same reason that people kept away from graveyards. The only sound was the occasional plink of the water.

It dripped into a- shallow pool in front of what looked like an altar. From the pool it had worn a groove in the slabs of the floor all the way to a round pit, which appeared to be bottomless. There were a few statues, all of them toppled; they were heavy-proportioned, lacking any kind of detail, each one a child's clay model chiseled in granite. The distant walls had once been covered with some kind of bas-relief, but it had crumbled away except in a few places, which showed strange designs that mainly consisted of tentacles.

"Who were the people who lived here?" said Brutha.

"I don't know."

"What god did they worship?"

"I don't know."

"The statues are made of granite, but there's no granite near here."

"They were very devout, then. They dragged it all the way."

"And the altar block is covered in grooves."

"Ah. Extremely devout. That would be to let the blood run off."

"You really think they did human sacrifice?"

"I don't know! I want to get out of here!"

"Why? There's water and it's cool-”

"Because . . . a god lived here. A powerful god. Thousands worshiped it. I can feel it. You know? It comes out of the walls. A Great God. Mighty were his dominions and magnificent was his word. Armies went forth in his name and conquered and slew. That kind of thing. And now no one, not you, not me, no one, even knows who the god was or his name or what he looked like. Lions drink in the holy places and those little squidgy things with eight legs, there's one by your foot, what d'you call 'em, the ones with the antennae, crawl beneath the altar. Now do you understand?"

"No," said Brutha.

"Don't you fear death? You're a human!"

Brutha considered this. A few feet away. Vorbis stared mutely at the patch of sky.

"He's awake. He's just not speaking."

"Who cares? I didn't ask you about him."

"Well . . . sometimes . . . when I'm on catacomb duty . . . it's the kind of place where you can't help . . . I mean, all the skulls and things . . . and the Book says . . ."

"There you are," said Om, a note of bitter triumph in his voice. "You don't know. That's what stops everyone going mad, the uncertainty of it, the feeling that it might work out all right after all. But it's different for gods. We do know. You know that story about the sparrow flying through a room?"

"No."

"Everyone knows it."

"Not me."

"About life being like a sparrow flying through a room? Nothing but darkness outside? And it flies through the room and there's just a moment of warmth and light?"

"There are windows open?" said Brutha.

"Can't you imagine what it's like to be that sparrow, and know about the darkness? To know that afterward there'll be nothing to remember, ever, except that one moment of the light?"

No.

"No. Of course you can't. But that's what it's like, being a god. And this place . . . it's a morgue."

Brutha looked around at the ancient, shadowy temple.

"Well . . . do you know what it's like, being human?"

Om's head darted into his shell for a moment, the nearest he was capable of to a shrug.

"Compared to a god? Easy. Get born. Obey a few rules. Do what you're told. Die. Forget."

Brutha stared at him.

"Is something wrong?"

Brutha shook his head. Then he stood up and walked over to Vorbis.

The deacon had drunk water from Brutha's cupped hands. But there was a switched-off quality about him. He walked, he drank, he breathed. Or something did. His body did. The dark eyes opened, but appeared to be looking at nothing that Brutha could see. There was no sense that anyone was looking out through them. Brutha was certain that if he walked away, Vorbis would sit on the cracked flagstones until he very gently fell over. Vorbis' body was present, but the whereabouts of his mind was probably not locatable on any normal atlas.

It was just that, here and now and suddenly, Brutha felt so alone that even Vorbis was good company.

"Why do you bother with him? He's had thousands of people killed!"

"Yes, but perhaps he thought you wanted it."

"I never said I wanted that."

"You didn't care," said Brutha.

"But I-”

"Shut up!"

Om's mouth opened in astonishment.

"You could have helped people," said Brutha. "But all you did was stamp around and roar and try to make people afraid. Like . . . like a man hitting a donkey with a stick. But people like Vorbis made the stick so good, that's all the donkey ends up believing in."

"That could use some work, as a parable," said Om sourly.

"This is real life I'm talking about!"

"It's not my fault if people misuse the-”

"It is! It has to be! If you muck up people's minds just because you want them to believe in you, what they do is all your fault!"

Brutha glared at the tortoise, and then stamped off toward the pile of rubble that dominated one end of the ruined temple. He rummaged around in it.

"What are you looking for?"

"We'll need to carry water," said Brutha.

"There won't be anything," said Om. "People just left. The land ran out and so did the people. They took everything with them. Why bother to look?"

Brutha ignored him. There was something under the rocks and sand.

"Why worry about Vorbis?" Om whined. "In a hundred years' time, he'll be dead anyway. We'll all be dead."

Brutha tugged at the piece of curved pottery. It came away, and turned out to be about two-thirds of a wide bowl, broken right across. It had been almost as wide as Brutha's outstretched arms, but had been too broken for anyone to loot.

It was useful for nothing. But it had once been useful for something. There were embossed figures round its rim. Brutha peered at them, for want of something to distract himself, while Om's voice droned on in his head.

The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god). In the center of the bowl was a larger figure, obviously important, some kind of god they were doing it for . . .

"What?" he said.

"I said, in a hundred years' time we'll all be dead."

Brutha stared at the figures round the bowl. No one knew who their god was, and they were gone. Lions slept in the holy places and-

-Chilopoda aridius, the common desert centipede, his memory resident library supplied

-scuttled beneath the altar.

"Yes," said Brutha. "We will." He raised the bowl over his head, and turned.

Om ducked into his shell.

"But here-” Brutha gritted his teeth as he staggered under the weight. "And now-”

He threw the bowl. It landed against the altar. Fragments of ancient pottery fountained up, and clattered down again. The echoes boomed around the temple.

"-we are alive!"

He picked up Om, who had withdrawn completely into his shell.

"And we'll make it home. All of us," he said. "I know it."

"It's written, is it?" said Om, his voice muffled.

"It is said. And if you argue-a tortoise shell is a pretty good water container, I expect."

"You wouldn't."

"Who knows? I might. In a hundred years' time we'll all be dead, you said."

"Yes! Yes!" said Om desperately. "But here and now-”

"Right."

Didactylos smiled. It wasn't something that came easily to him. It wasn't that he was a somber man, but he could not see the smiles of others. It took several dozen muscle movements to smile, and there was no return on his investment.

He'd spoken many times to crowds in Ephebe, but they were invariably made up of other philosophers, whose shouts of "Bloody daft!," "You're making it up as you go along!" and other contributions to the debate always put him at his ease. That was because no one really paid any attention. They were just working out what they were going to say next.

But this crowd put him in mind of Brutha. Their listening was like a huge pit waiting for his words to fill it. The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.

"You can't believe in Great A'Tuin," he said. "Great A'Tuin exists. There's no point in believing in things that exist."

"Someone's put up their hand," said Urn.

"Yes?"

"Sir, surely only things that exist are worth believing in?" said the enquirer, who was wearing a uniform of a sergeant of the Holy Guard.

"If they exist, you don't have to believe in them," said Didactylos. "They just are." He sighed. "What can I tell you? What do you want to hear? I just wrote down what people know. Mountains rise and fall, and under them the Turtle swims onward. Men live and die, and the Turtle Moves. Empires grow and crumble, and the Turtle Moves. Gods come and go, and still the Turtle Moves. The Turtle Moves. "

From the darkness came a voice, "And that is really true?"

Didactylos shrugged. "The Turtle exists. The world is a flat disc. The sun turns round it once every day, dragging its light behind it. And this will go on happening, whether you believe it is true or not. It is real. I don't know about truth. Truth is a lot more complicated than that. I don't think the Turtle gives a bugger whether it's true or not, to tell you the truth."

Simony pulled Urn to one side as the philosopher went on talking.

"This isn't what they came to hear! Can't you do anything?"

"Sorry?" said Urn.

"They don't want philosophy. They want a reason to move against the Church! Now! Vorbis is dead, the Cenobiarch is gaga, the hierarchy are busy stabbing one another in the back. The Citadel is like a big rotten plum."

"Still a few wasps in it, though," said Urn. "You said you've only got a tenth of the army."

"But they're free men," said Simony. "Free in their heads. They'll be fighting for more than fifty cents a day."

Urn looked down at his hands. He often did that when he was uncertain about anything, as if they were the only things he was sure of in all the world.

"They'll get the odds down to three to one before the rest know what's happening," said Simony grimly. "Did you talk to the blacksmith?"

"Yes."

"Can you do it?"

"I . . . think so. It wasn't what I . . ."

"They tortured his father. Just for having a horseshoe hanging up in his forge, when everyone knows that smiths have to have their little rituals. And they took his son off into the army. But he's got a lot of helpers. They'll work through the night. All you have to do is tell them what you want."

"I've made some sketches . . ."

"Good," said Simony. "Listen, Urn. The Church is run by people like Vorbis. That's how it all works. Millions of people have died for-for nothing but lies. We can stop all that-”

Didactylos had stopped talking.

"He's muffed it," said Simony. "He could have done anything with them. And he just told them a lot of facts. You can't inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol."

They left the temple just before sundown. The lion had crawled into the shade of some rocks, but stood up unsteadily to watch them go.

"It'll track us," moaned Om. "They do that. For miles and miles."

"We'll survive."

"I wish I had your confidence."

"Ah, but I have a God to have faith in."

"There'll be no more ruined temples."

"There'll be something else."

"And not even snake to eat."

"But I walk with my God."

"Not as a snack, though. And you're walking the wrong way, too."

"No. I'm still heading away from the coast."

"That's what I mean."

"How far can a lion go with a spear wound like that in him?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Everything."

And, half an hour later, a black shadowy line on the silver moonlit desert, there were the tracks.

"The soldiers came this way. We just have to follow the tracks back. If we head where they've come from, we'll get where we're going."

"We'll never do it!"

"We're traveling light."

"Oh, yeah. They were burdened by all the food and water they had to carry," said Om bitterly. "How lucky for us we haven't got any."

Brutha glanced at Vorbis. He was walking unaided now, provided that you gently turned him around whenever you needed to change direction.

But even Om had to admit that the tracks were some comfort. In a way they were alive, in the same way that an echo is alive. People had been this way, not long ago. There were other people in the world. Someone, somewhere, was surviving.

Or not. After an hour or so they came across a mound beside the track. There was a helmet atop it, and a sword stuck in the sand.

"A lot of soldiers died to get here quickly," said Brutha.

Whoever had taken enough time to bury their dead had also drawn a symbol in the sand of the mound. Brutha halfexpected it to be a turtle, but the desert wind had not quite eroded the crude shape of a pair of horns.

"I don't understand that," said Om. "They don't really believe I exist, but they go and put something like that on a grave."

"It's hard to explain. I think it's because they believe they exist," said Brutha. "It's because they're people, and so was he."

He pulled the sword out of the sand.

"What do you want that for?"

"Might be useful."

"Against who?"

"Might be useful."

An hour later the lion, who was limping after Brutha, also arrived at the grave. It had lived in the desert for sixteen years, and the reason it had lived so long was that it had not died, and it had not died because it never wasted handy protein. It dug.

Humans have always wasted handy protein ever since they started wondering who had lived in it.

But, on the whole, there are worse places to be buried than inside a lion.

There were snakes and lizards on the rock islands. They were probably very nourishing and every one was, in its own way, a taste explosion.

There was no more water.

But there were plants . . . more or less. They looked like groups of stones, except where a few had put up a central flower spike that was a brilliant pink and purple in the dawn light.

"Where do they get the water from?"

"Fossil seas."

"Water that's turned to stone?"

"No. Water that sank down thousands of years ago.

Right down in the bedrock."

"Can you dig down to it?"

"Don't be stupid."

Brutha glanced from the flower to the nearest rock island.

"Honey," he said.

"What?"

The bees had a nest high on the side of a spire of rock. The buzzing could be heard from ground level. There was no possible way up.

"Nice try," said Om.

The sun was up. Already the rocks were warm to the touch. "Get some rest," said Om, kindly. "I'll keep watch."

"Watch for what?"

"I'll watch and find out."

Brutha led Vorbis into the shade of a large boulder, and gently pushed him down. Then he lay down too.

The thirst wasn't too bad yet. He'd drunk from the temple pool until he squelched as he walked. Later on, they might find a snake . . . When you considered what some people in the world had, life wasn't too bad.

Vorbis lay on his side, his black-on-black eyes staring at nothing.

Brutha tried to sleep.

He had never dreamed. Didactylos had been quite excited about that. Someone who remembered everything and didn't dream would have to think slowly, he said. Imagine a heart,[9] he said, that was nearly all memory, and had hardly any beats to spare for the everyday purposes of thinking. That would explain why Brutha moved his lips while he thought.

So this couldn't have been a dream. It must have been the sun.

He heard Om's voice in his head. The tortoise sounded as though he was holding a conversation with people Brutha could not hear.

Mine!

Go away!

No.

Mine!

Both of them!

Mine!

Brutha turned his head.

The tortoise was in a gap between two rocks, neck extended and weaving from side to side. There was another sound, a sort of gnat-like whining, that came and went . . . and promises in his head.

They flashed past . . . faces talking to him, shapes, visions of greatness, moments of opportunity, picking him up, taking him high above the world, all this was his, he could do anything, all he had to do was believe, in me, in me, in me-

An image formed in front of him. There, on a stone beside him, was a roast pig surrounded by fruit, and a mug of beer so cold the air was frosting on the sides.

Mine!

Brutha blinked. The voices faded. So did the food.

He blinked again.

There were strange after-images, not seen but felt. Perfect though his memory was, he could not remember what the voices had said or what the other pictures had been. All that lingered was a memory of roast pork and cold beer.

"That's because they don't know what to offer you," said Om's voice, quietly. "So they try to offer you anything. Generally they start with visions of food and carnal gratification."

"They got as far as the food," said Brutha.

"Good job I overcame them, then," said Om. "No telling what they might have achieved with a young man like yourself."

Brutha raised himself on his elbows.

Vorbis had not moved.

"Were they trying to get through to him, too?"

"I suppose so. Wouldn't work. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. Never seen a mind so turned in on itself."

"Will they be back?"

"Oh, yes. It's not as if they've got anything else to do."

"When they do," said Brutha, feeling lightheaded, "could you wait until they've shown me visions of carnal gratification?"

"Very bad for you."

"Brother Nhumrod was very down on them. But I think perhaps we should know our enemies, yes?"

Brutha's voice faded to a croak.

"I could have done with the vision of the drink," he said, wearily.

The shadows were long. He looked around in amazement.

"How long were they trying?"

"All day. Persistent devils, too. Thick as flies."

Brutha learned why at sunset.

He met St. Ungulant the anchorite, friend of all small gods. Everywhere.

"Well, well, well," said St. Ungulant. "We don't get very many visitors up here. Isn't that so, Angus?"

He addressed the air beside him.

Brutha was trying to keep his balance, because the cartwheel rocked dangerously every time he moved. They'd left Vorbis seated on the desert twenty feet below, hugging his knees and staring at nothing.

The wheel had been nailed flat on top of a slim pole. It was just wide enough for one person to lie uncomfortably. But St. Ungulant looked designed to lie uncomfortably. He was so thin that even skeletons would say, "Isn't he thin?" He was wearing some sort of minimalist loin-cloth, insofar as it was possible to tell under the beard and hair.

It had been quite hard to ignore St. Ungulant, who had been capering up and down at the top of his pole shouting "Coo-ee!" and "Over here!" There was a slightly smaller pole a few feet away, with an old-fashioned half-moon-cutout-on-the-door privy on it. Just because you were an anchorite, St. Ungulant said, didn't mean you had to give up everything.

Brutha had heard of anchorites, who were a kind of oneway prophet. They went out into the desert but did not come back, preferring a hermit's life of dirt and hardship and dirt and holy contemplation and dirt. Many of them liked to make life even more uncomfortable for themselves by being walled up in cells or living, quite appropriately, at the top of a pole. The Omnian Church encouraged them, on the basis that it was best to get madmen as far away as possible where they couldn't cause any trouble and could be cared for by the community, insofar as the community consisted of lions and buzzards and dirt.

"I was thinking of adding another wheel," said St. Ungulant, "just over there. To catch the morning sun, you know."

Brutha looked around him. Nothing but flat rock and sand stretched away on every side.

"Don't you get the sun everywhere all the time?" he said.

"But it's much more important in the morning," said St. Ungulant. "Besides, Angus says we ought to have a patio."

"He could barbecue on it," said Om, inside Brutha's head.

"Um," said Brutha. "What . . . religion . . . are you a saint of, exactly?"

An expression of embarrassment crossed the very small amount of face between St. Ungulant's eyebrows and his mustache.

"Uh. None, really. That was all rather a mistake," he said. "My parents named me Sevrian Thaddeus Ungulant, and then one day, of course, most amusing, someone drew attention to the initials. After that, it all seemed rather inevitable."

The wheel rocked slightly. St. Ungulant's skin was almost blackened by the desert sun.

"I've had to pick up herming as I went along, of course," he said. "I taught myself. I'm entirely selftaught. You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing."

"Er . . . but there's . . . Angus?" said Brutha, stating at the spot where he believed Angus to be, or at least where he believed St. Ungulant believed Angus to be.

"He's over here now," said the saint sharply, pointing to a different part of the wheel. "But he doesn't do any of the herming. He's not, you know, trained. He's just company. My word, I'd have gone quite mad if it wasn't for Angus cheering me up all the time!"

"Yes . . . I expect you would," said Brutha. He smiled at the empty air, in order to show willing.

"Actually, it's a pretty good life. The hours are rather long but the food and drink are extremely worthwhile."

Brutha had a distinct feeling that he knew what was going to come next.

"Beer cold enough?" he said.

"Extremely frosty," said St. Ungulant, beaming.

"And the roast pig?"

St. Ungulant's smile was manic.

"All brown and crunchy round the edges, yes," he said.

"But I expect, er . . . you eat the occasional lizard or snake, too?"

"Funny you should say that. Yes. Every once in a while. Just for a bit of variety."

"And mushrooms, too?" said Om.

"Any mushrooms in these parts?" said Brutha innocently.

St. Ungulant nodded happily.

"After the annual rains, yes. Red ones with yellow spots. The desert becomes really interesting after the mushroom season."

"Full of giant purple singing slugs? Talking pillars of flame? Exploding giraffes? That sort of thing?" said Brutha carefully.

"Good heavens, yes," said the saint. "I don't know why. I think they're attracted by the mushrooms."

Brutha nodded.

"You're catching on, kid," said Om.

"And I expect sometimes you drink . . . water?" said Brutha.

"You know, it's odd, isn't it," said St. Ungulant. "There's all this wonderful stuff to drink but every so often I get this, well, I can only call it a craving, for a few sips of water. Can you explain that?"

"It must be . . . a little hard to come by," said Brutha, still talking very carefully, like someone playing a fifty-pound fish on a fifty-one-pound breakingstrain fishing-line.

"Strange, really," said St. Ungulant. "When icecold beer is so readily available, too."

"Where, uh, do you get it? The water?" said Brutha.

"You know the stone plants?"

"The ones with the big flowers?"

"If you cut open the fleshy part of the leaves, there's up to half a pint of water," said the saint. "It tastes like weewee, mind you."

"I think we could manage to put up with that," said Brutha, through dry lips. He backed toward the rope-ladder that was the saint's contact with the ground.

"Are you sure you won't stay?" said St. Ungulant. "It's Wednesday. We get sucking pig plus chef's selection of sun-drenched dew-fresh vegetables on Wednesdays."