"We, uh, have lots to do," said Brutha, halfway down the swaying ladder.

"Sweets from the trolley?"

"I think perhaps . . .

St. Ungulant looked down sadly at Brutha helping Vorbis away across the wilderness.

"And afterward there's probably mints!" he shouted, through cupped hands. "No?"

Soon the figures were mere dots on the sand.

"There may be visions of sexual grati-no, I tell a lie, that's Fridays . . ." St. Ungulant murmured.

Now that the visitors had gone, the air was once again filled with the zip and whine of the small gods. There were billions of them.

St. Ungulant smiled.

He was, of course, mad. He'd occasionally suspected this. But he took the view that madness should not be wasted. He dined daily on the food of the gods, drank the rarest vintages, ate fruits that were not only out of season but out of reality. Having to drink the occasional mouthful of brackish water and chew the odd lizard leg for medicinal purposes was a small price to pay.

He turned back to the laden table that shimmered in the air. All this . . . and all the little gods wanted was someone to know about them, someone to even believe that they existed.

There was jelly and ice-cream today, too.

"All the more for us, eh, Angus?"

Yes, said Angus.

The fighting was over in Ephebe. It hadn't lasted long, especially when the slaves joined in. There were too many narrow streets, too many ambushes and, above all, too much terrible determination. It's generally held that free men will always triumph over slaves, but perhaps it all depends on your point of view.

Besides, the Ephebian garrison commander had declared somewhat nervously that slavery would henceforth be abolished, which infuriated the slaves. What would be the point of saving up to become free if you couldn't own slaves afterwards? Besides, how'd they eat?

The Omnians couldn't understand, and uncertain people fight badly. And Vorbis had gone. Certainties seemed less certain when those eyes were elsewhere.

The Tyrant was released from his prison. He spent his first day of freedom carefully composing messages to the other small countries along the coast.

It was time to do something about Omnia.

Brutha sang.

His voice echoed off the rocks. Flocks of scalbies shook off their lazy pedestrian habits and took off frantically, leaving feathers behind in their rush to get airborne. Snakes wriggled into cracks in the stone.

You could live in the desert. Or at least survive . . .

Getting back to Omnia could only be a matter of time. One more day . . .

Vorbis trooped along a little behind him. He said nothing and, when spoken to, gave no sign that he had understood what had been said to him.

Om, bumping along in Brutha's pack, began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist.

The strained strains of Claws of Iron shall Rend the Ungodly faded away. There was a small rockslide, some way off.

"We're alive," said Brutha.

"For now."

"And we're close to home."

"Yes?"

"I saw a wild goat on the rocks back there."

"There's still a lot of 'em about."

"Goats?"

"Gods. And the ones we had back there were the puny ones, mind you."

"What do you mean?"

Om sighed. "It's reasonable, isn't it? Think about it. The stronger ones hang around the edge, where there's prey . . . I mean, people. The weak ones get pushed out to the sandy places, where people hardly ever go-”

"The strong gods," said Brutha, thoughtfully. "Gods that know about being strong."

"That's right."

"Not gods that know what it feels like to be weak . . ."

"What? They wouldn't last five minutes. It's a god-eat-god world."

"Perhaps that explains something about the nature of gods. Strength is hereditary. Like sin."

His face clouded.

"Except that . . . it isn't. Sin, I mean. I think, perhaps, when we get back, I shall talk to some people."

"Oh, and they'll listen, will they?"

"Wisdom comes out of the wilderness, they say."

"Only the wisdom that people want. And mushrooms."

When the sun was starting to climb Brutha milked a goat. It stood patiently while Om soothed its mind. And Om didn't suggest killing it, Brutha noticed.

Then they found shade again. There were bushes here, lowgrowing, spiky, every tiny leaf barricaded behind its crown of thorns.

Om watched for a while, but the small gods on the edge of the wilderness were more cunning and less urgent. They'd be here, probably at noon, when the sun turned the landscape into a hellish glare. He'd hear them. In the meantime, he could eat.

He crawled through the bushes, their thorns scraping harmlessly along his shell. He passed another tortoise, which wasn't inhabited by a god and gave him that vague stare that tortoises employ when they're deciding whether something is there to be eaten or made love to, which are the only things on a normal tortoise mind. He avoided it, and found a couple of leaves it had missed.

Periodically he'd stomp back through the gritty soil and watch the sleepers.

And then he saw Vorbis sit up, look around him in a slow methodical way, pick up a stone, study it carefully, and then bring it down sharply on Brutha's head.

Brutha didn't even groan.

Vorbis got up and strode directly toward the bushes that hid Om. He tore the branches aside, regardless of the thorns, and pulled out the tortoise Om had just met.

For a moment it was held up, legs moving slowly, before the deacon threw it overarm into the rocks.

Then he picked up Brutha with some effort, slung him across his shoulders, and set off towards Omnia.

It happened in seconds.

Om fought to stop his head and legs retracting automatically into his shell, a tortoise's instinctive panic reaction.

Vorbis was already disappearing round some rocks.

He disappeared.

Om started to move forward and then ducked into his shell as a shadow skimmed over the ground. It was a familiar shadow, and one fiIled with tortoise dread.

The eagle swept down and towards the spot where the stricken tortoise was struggling and, with barely a pause in the stoop, snatched the reptile and soared back up into the sky with long, lazy sweeps of its wings.

Om watched it until it became a dot, and then looked away as a smaller dot detached itself and tumbled over and over toward the rocks below.

The eagle descended slowly, preparing to feed.

A breeze rattled the thornbushes and stirred the sand. Om thought he could hear the taunting, mocking voices of all the small gods.

St. Ungulant, on his bony knees, smashed open the hard swollen leaf of a stone plant.

Nice lad, he thought. Talked to himself a lot, but that was only to be expected. The desert took some people like that, didn't it, Angus?

Yes, said Angus.

Angus didn't want any of the brackish water. He said it gave him wind.

"Please yourself," said St. Ungulant. "Well, well! Here's a little treat."

You didn't often get Chilopoda aridius out here in the open desert, and here were three, all under one rock!

Funny how you felt like a little nibble, even after a good meal of Petit porc rôti avec pommes de terre nouvelles et légumes du jour et bière glacée avec figment de l'imagination.

He was picking the legs of the second one out of his tooth when the lion padded to the top of the nearest dune behind him.

The lion was feeling odd sensations of gratitude. It felt it should catch up with the nice food that had tended to it and, well, refrain from eating it in some symbolic way. And now here was some more food, hardly paying it any attention. Well, it didn't owe this one anything . . .

It padded forward, then lumbered up into a run.

Oblivious to his fate, St. Ungulant started on the third centipede.

The lion leapt . . .

And things would have looked very bad for St. Ungulant if Angus hadn't caught it right behind the ear with a rock.

Brutha was standing in the desert, except that the sand was as black as the sky and there was no sun, although everything was brilliantly lit.

Ah, he thought. So this is dreaming.

There were thousands of people walking across the desert. They paid him no attention. They walked as if completely unaware that they were in the middle of a crowd.

He tried to wave at them, but he was nailed to the spot. He tried to speak, and the words evaporated in his mouth.

And then he woke up.

The first thing he saw was the light, slanting through a window. Against the light was a pair of hands, raised in the sign of the holy horns.

With some difficulty, his head screaming pain at him, Brutha followed the hands along a pair of arms to where they joined not far under the bowed head of-

"Brother Nhumrod?"

The master of novices looked up.

"Brutha?"

"Yes?"

"Om be praised!"

Brutha craned his neck to look around.

"Is he here?"

"-here? How do you feel?"

"I-”

His head ached, his back felt as though it was on fire, and there was a dull pain in his knees.

"You were very badly sunburned," said Nhumrod. "And that was a nasty knock on the head you had in the fall."

"What fall?"

"-fall. From the rocks. In the desert. You were with the Prophet," said Nhumrod. "You walked with the Prophet. One of my novices."

"I remember . . . the desert . . ." said Brutha, touching his head gingerly. "But . . . the . . . Prophet . . . ?"

"-Prophet. People are saying you could be made a bishop, or even an Iam," said Nhumrod. "There's a precedent, you know. The Most Holy St. Bobby was made a bishop because he was in the desert with the Prophet Ossory, and he was a donkey."

"But I don't . . . remember . . . any Prophet. There was just me and-”

Brutha stopped. Nhumrod was beaming.

"Vorbis?"

"He most graciously told me all about it," said Nhumrod. "I was privileged to be in the Place of Lamentation when he arrived. It was just after the Sestine prayers. The Cenobiarch was just departing . . . well, you know the ceremony. And there was Vorbis. Covered in dust and leading a donkey. I'm afraid you were across the back of the donkey."

"I don't remember a donkey," said Brutha.

"-donkey. He'd picked it up at one of the farms. There was quite a crowd with him!"

Nhumrod was flushed with excitement.

"And he's declared a month of Jhaddra, and double penances, and the Council has given him the Staff and the Halter, and the Cenobiarch has gone off to the hermitage in Skant!"

"Vorbis is the eighth Prophet," said Brutha.

"-Prophet. Of course."

"And . . . was there a tortoise? Has he mentioned anything about a tortoise?"

"-tortoise? What have tortoises got to do with anything?" Nhumrod's expression softened. "But, of course, the Prophet said the sun had affected you. He said you were raving-excuse me-about all sorts of strange things."

"He did?"

"He sat by your bed for three days. It was . . . inspiring."

"How long . . . since we came back?"

"-back? Almost a week."

"A week!"

"He said the journey exhausted you very much."

Brutha stared at the wall.

"And he left orders that you were to be brought to him as soon as you were fully conscious," said Nhumrod. "He was very definite about that." His tone of voice suggested that he wasn't quite sure of Brutha's state of consciousness, even now. "Do you think you can walk? I can get some novices to carry you, if you'd prefer."

"I have to go and see him now?"

"-now. Right away. I expect you'll want to thank him."

Brutha had known about these parts of the Citadel only by hearsay. Brother Nhumrod had never seen them, either. Although he had not been specifically included in the summons, he had come nevertheless, fussing importantly around Brutha as two sturdy novices carried him in a kind of sedan chair normally used by the more crumbling of the senior clerics.

In the center of the Citadel, behind the Temple, was a walled garden. Brutha looked at it with an expert eye. There wasn't an inch of natural soil on the bare rock-every spadeful that these shady trees grew in must have been carried up by hand.

Vorbis was there, surrounded by bishops and Iams. He looked round as Brutha approached.

"Ah, my desert companion," he said, amiably. "And Brother Nhumrod, I believe. My brothers, I should like you to know that I have it in mind to raise our Brutha to archbishophood."

There was a very faint murmur of astonishment from the clerics, and then a clearing of a throat. Vorbis looked at Bishop Treem, who was the Citadel's archivist.

"Well, technically he is not yet even ordained," said Bishop Treem, doubtfully. "But of course we all know there has been a precedent."

"Ossory's ass," said Brother Nhumrod promptly. He put his hand over his mouth and went red with shame and embarrassment.

Vorbis smiled.

"Good Brother Nhumrod is correct," he said. "Who had also not been ordained, unless the qualifications were somewhat relaxed in those days."

There was a chorus of nervous laughs, such as there always is from people who owe their jobs and possibly their lives to a whim of the person who has just cracked the not very amusing line.

"Although the donkey was only made a bishop," said Bishop "Deathwish" Treem.

"A role for which it was highly qualified," said Vorbis sharply. "And now, you will all leave. Including Subdeacon Nhumrod," he added. Nhumrod went from red to white at this sudden preferment. "But Archbishop Brutha will remain. We wish to talk."

The clergy withdrew.

Vorbis sat down on a stone chair under an elder tree. It was huge and ancient, quite unlike its short-lived relatives outside the garden, and its berries were ripening.

The Prophet sat with his elbows on the stone arms of the chair, his hands interlocked in front of him, and gave Brutha a long, slow stare.

"You are . . . recovered?" he said, eventually.

"Yes, lord," said Brutha. "But, lord, I cannot be a bishop, I cannot even-”

"I assure you the job does not require much intelligence," said Vorbis. "If it did, bishops would not be able to do it."

There was another long silence.

When Vorbis next spoke, it was as if every word was being winched up from a great depth.

"We spoke once, did we not, of the nature of reality?"

"Yes."

"And about how often what is perceived is not that which is fundamentally true?"

"Yes."

Another pause. High overhead, an eagle circled, looking for tortoises.

"I am sure you have confused memories of our wanderings in the wilderness."

No."

"It is only to be expected. The sun, the thirst, the hunger . . ."

"No, lord. My memory does not confuse readily."

"Oh, yes. I recall."

"So do I, lord."

Vorbis turned his head slightly, looking sidelong at Brutha as if he was trying to hide behind his own face.

"In the desert, the Great God Om spoke to me."

"Yes, lord. He did. Every day."

"You have a mighty if simple faith, Brutha. When it comes to people, I am a great judge."

"Yes, lord. Lord?"

"Yes, my Brutha?"

"Nhumrod said you led me through the desert, lord."

"Remember what I said about fundamental truth, Brutha? Of course you do. There was a physical desert, indeed, but also a desert of the soul. My God led me, and I led you."

"Ah. Yes. I see."

Overhead, the spiraling dot that was the eagle appeared to hang motionless in the air for a moment. Then it folded its wings and fell-

"Much was given to me in the desert, Brutha. Much was learned. Now I must tell the world. That is the duty of a prophet. To go where others have not been, and bring back the truth of it."

-faster than the wind, its whole brain and body existing only as a mist around the sheer intensity of its purpose-

"I did not expect it to be this soon. But Om guided my steps. And now that we have the Cenobiarchy, we shall . . . make use of it."

Somewhere out on the hillsides the eagle swooped, picked something up, and strove for height . . .

"I'm just a novice, Lord Vorbis. I am not a bishop, even if everyone calls me one."

"You will get used to it."

It sometimes took a long time for an idea to form in Brutha's mind, but one was forming now. It was something about the way Vorbis was sitting, something about the edge in his voice.

Vorbis was afraid of him.

Why me? Because of the desert? Who would care? For all I know, it was always like this-probably it was Ossory's ass that carried him in the wilderness, who found the water, who kicked a lion to death.

Because of Ephebe? Who would listen? Who would care? He is the Prophet and the Cenobiarch. He could have me killed just like that. Anything he does is right. Anything he says is true.

Fundamentally true.

"I have something to show you that may amuse you," said Vorbis, standing up. "Can you walk?"

"Oh, yes. Nhumrod was just being kind. It's mainly sunburn."

As they moved away, Brutha saw something he hadn't noticed before. There were members of the Holy Guard, armed with bows, in the garden. They were in the shade of trees, or amongst bushes-not too obvious, but not exactly hidden.

Steps led from the garden to the maze of underground tunnels and rooms that underlay the Temple and, indeed, the whole of the Citadel. Noiselessly, a couple of guards fell in behind them at a respectful distance.

Brutha followed Vorbis through the tunnels to the artificers' quarter, where forges and workshops clustered around one wide, deep light-well. Smoke and fumes billowed up around the hewn rock walls.

Vorbis walked directly to a large alcove that glowed red with the light of forge fires. Several workers were clustered around something wide and curved.

"There," said Vorbis. "What do you think?"

It was a turtle.

The iron-founders had done a pretty good job, even down to the patterning on the shell and the scales on the legs. It was about eight feet long.

Brutha heard a rushing noise in his ears as Vorbis spoke.

"They speak poisonous gibberish about turtles, do they not? They think they live on the back of a Great Turtle. Well, let them die on one."

Now Brutha could see the shackles attached to each iron leg. A man, or a woman, could with great discomfort lie spread-eagled on the back of the turtle and be chained firmly at the wrists and ankles.

He bent down. Yes, there was the firebox underneath. Some aspects of Quisition thinking never changed.

That much iron would take ages to heat up to the point of pain. Much time, therefore, to reflect on things . . .

"What do you think?" said Vorbis.

A vision of the future flashed across Brutha's mind.

"Ingenious," he said.

"And it will be a salutary lesson for all others tempted to stray from the path of true knowledge," said Vorbis.

"When do you intend to, uh, demonstrate it?"

"I am sure an occasion will present itself," said Vorbis.

When Brutha straightened up, Vorbis was staring at him so intently that it was as if he was reading Brutha's thoughts off the back of his head.

"And now, please leave," said Vorbis. "Rest as much as you can . . . my son."

Brutha walked slowly across the Place, deep in unaccustomed thought.

"Afternoon, Your Reverence."

"You know already?"

Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah beamed over the top of his lukewarm ice-cold sherbet stand.

"Heard it on the grapevine," he said. "Here, have a slab of Klatchian Delight. Free. Onna stick."

The Place was more crowded than usual. Even Dhblah's hot cakes were selling like hot cakes.

"Busy today," said Brutha, hardly thinking about it.

"Time of the Prophet, see," said Dhblah, "when the Great God is manifest in the world. And if you think it's busy now, you won't be able to swing a goat here in a few days' time."

"What happens then?"

"You all right? You look a bit peaky."

"What happens then?"

"The Laws. You know. The Book of Vorbis? I suppose-” Dhblah leaned toward Brutha-"you wouldn't have a hint, would you? I suppose the Great God didn't happen to say anything of benefit to the convenience food industry?"

"I don't know. I think he'd like people to grow more lettuce."

"Really?"

"It's only a guess."

Dhblah grinned evilly. "Ah, yes, but it's your guess. A nod's as good as a poke with a sharp stick to a deaf camel, as they say. I know where I can get my hands on a few acres of well-irrigated land, funnily enough. Perhaps I ought to buy now, ahead of the crowd?"

"Can't see any harm in it, Mr. Dhblah."

Dhblah sidled closer. This was not hard. Dhblah sidled everywhere. Crabs thought he walked sideways.

"Funny thing," he said. "I mean . . . Vorbis?"

"Funny?" said Brutha.

"Makes you think. Even Ossory must have been a man who walked around, just like you and me. Got wax in his ears, just like ordinary people. Funny thing."

"What is?"

"The whole thing."

Dhblah gave Brutha another conspiratorial grin and then sold a footsore pilgrim a bowl of hummus that he would come to regret.

Brutha wandered down to his dormitory It was empty at this time of day, hanging around dormitories being discouraged in case the presence of the rockhard mattresses engendered thoughts of sin. His few possessions were gone from the shelf by his bunk. Probably he had a room of his own somewhere, although no one had told him.

Brutha felt totally lost.

He lay down on the bunk, just in case, and offered up a prayer to Om. There was no reply. There had been no reply for almost all of his life, and that hadn't been too bad, because he'd never expected one. And before, there'd always been the comfort that perhaps Om was listening and simply not deigning to say anything.

Now, there was nothing to hear.

He might as well be talking to himself, and listening to himself.

Like Vorbis.

That thought wouldn't go away. Mind like a steel ball, Om had said. Nothing got in or out. So all Vorbis could hear were the distant echoes of his own soul. And out of the distant echoes he would forge a Book of Vorbis, and Brutha suspected he knew what the commandments would be. There would be talk of holy wars and blood and crusades and blood and piety and blood.

Brutha got up, feeling like a fool. But the thoughts wouldn't go away.

He was a bishop, but he didn't know what bishops did. He'd only seen them in the distance, drifting along like earthbound clouds. There was only one thing he felt he knew how to do.

Some spotty boy was hoeing the vegetable garden. He looked at Brutha in amazement when he took the hoe, and was stupid enough to try to hang on to it for a moment.

"I am a bishop, you know," said Brutha. "Anyway, you aren't doing it right. Go and do something else."

Brutha jabbed viciously at the weeds around the seedlings. Only away a few weeks and already there was a haze of green on the soil.

You're a bishop. For being good. And here's the iron turtle. In case you're bad. Because . . .

. . . there were two people in the desert, and Om spoke to one of them.

It had never occurred to Brutha like that before.

Om had spoken to him. Admittedly, he hadn't said the things that the Great Prophets said he said. Perhaps he'd never said things like that . . .

He worked his way along to the end of the row. Then he tidied up the bean vines.

Lu-Tze watched Brutha carefully from his little shed by the soil heaps.

It was another barn. Urn was seeing a lot of barns.

They'd started with a cart, and invested a lot of time in reducing its weight as much as possible. Gearing had been a problem. He'd been doing a lot of thinking about gears. The ball wanted to spin much faster than the wheels wanted to turn. That was probably a metaphor for something or other.

"And I can't get it to go backward," he said.

"Don't worry," said Simony. "It won't have to go backward. What about armor?"

Urn waved a distracted hand around his workshop.

"This is a village forge!" he said. "This thing is twenty feet long! Zacharos can't make plates bigger than a few feet across. I've tried nailing them on a framework, but it just collapses under the weight."

Simony looked at the skeleton of the steam car and the pile of plates stacked beside it.

"Ever been in a battle, Urn?" he said.

"No. I've got flat feet. And I'm not very strong."

"Do you know what a tortoise is?"

Urn scratched his head. "Okay. The answer isn't a little reptile in a shell, is it? Because you know I know that."

"I mean a shield tortoise. When you're attacking a fortress or a wall, and the enemy is dropping everything he's got on you, every man holds his shield overhead so that it . . . kind of . . . slots into all the shields around it. Can take a lot of weight."

"Overlapping," murmured Urn.

"Like scales," said Simony.

Urn looked reflectively at the cart.

"A tortoise," he said.

"And the battering-ram?" said Simony.

"Oh, that's no problem," said Urn, not paying much attention. "Tree-trunk bolted to the frame. Big iron rammer. They're only bronze doors, you say?"

"Yes. But very big."

"Then they're probably hollow. Or cast bronze plates on wood. That's what I'd do."

"Not solid bronze? Everyone says they're solid bronze."

"That's what I'd say, too."

"Excuse me, sirs."

A burly man stepped forward. He wore the uniform of the palace guards.

"This is Sergeant Fergmen," said Simony. "Yes, sergeant?"

"The doors is reinforced with Klatchian steel. Because of all the fighting in the time of the False Prophet Zog. And they opens outwards only. Like lock gates on a canal, you understand? If you push on 'em, they only locks more firmly together."

"How are they opened, then?" said Urn.

"The Cenobiarch raises his hand and the breath of God blows them open," said the sergeant.

"In a logical sense, I meant."

"Oh. Well, one of the deacons goes behind a curtain and pulls a lever. But . . . when I was on guard down in the crypts, sometimes, there was a room . . . there was gratings and things . . . well, you could hear water gushing . . ."

"Hydraulics," said Urn. "Thought it would be hydraulics."

"Can you get in?" said Simony.

"To the room? Why not? No one bothers with it."

"Could he make the doors open?" said Simony.

"Hmm?" said Urn.

Urn was rubbing his chin reflectively with a hammer. He seemed to be lost in a world of his own.

"I said, could Fergmen make these hydra haulics work?"

"Hmm? Oh. Shouldn't think so," said Urn, vaguely.

"Could you?"

"What?"

"Could you make them work?"

"Oh. Probably. It's just pipes and pressures, after all. Um."

Urn was still staring thoughtfully at the steam cart. Simony nodded meaningfully at the sergeant, indicating that he should go away, and then tried the mental interplanetary journey necessary to get to whatever world Urn was in.

He tried looking at the cart, too.

"How soon can you have it all finished?"

"Hmm?"

"I said-”

"Late tomorrow night. If we work through tonight."

"But we'll need it for the next dawn! We won't have time to see if it works!"

"It'll work first time," said Urn.

"Really?"

"I built it. I know about it. You know about swords and spears and things. I know about things that go round and round. It will work first time."

"Good. Well, there are other things I've got to do-”

"Right."

Urn was left alone in the barn. He looked reflectively at his hammer, and then at the iron cart.

They didn't know how to cast bronze properly here. Their iron was pathetic, just pathetic. Their copper? It was terrible. They seemed to be able to make steel that shattered at a blow. Over the years the Quisition had weeded out all the good smiths.

He'd done the best he could, but . . .

"Just don't ask me about the second or third time," he said quietly to himself.

Vorbis sat in the stone chair in his garden, papers strewn around him.

"Well?"

The kneeling figure did not look up. Two guards stood over it, with drawn swords.

"The Turtle people . . . the people are plotting something," it said, the voice shrill with terror.

"Of course they are. Of course they are," said Vorbis. "And what is this plot?"

"There is some kind of . . . when you are confirmed as Cenobiarch . . . some kind of device, some machine that goes by itself . . . it will smash down the doors of the Temple . . ."

The voice faded away.

"And where is this device now?" said Vorbis.

"I don't know. They've bought iron from me. That's all I know."

"An iron device."

"Yes." The man took a deep breath-half-breath, half-gulp. "People say . . . the guards said . . . you have my father in prison and you might . . . I plead . . ."

Vorbis looked down at the man.

"But you fear," he said, "that I might have you thrown into the cells as well. You think I am that sort of person. You fear that I may think, this man has associated with heretics and blasphemers in familiar circumstances . . ."

The man continued to stare fixedly at the ground. Vorbis's fingers curled gently around his chin and raised his head until they were eye to eye.

"What you have done is a good thing," he said. He looked at one of the guards. "Is this man's father still alive?"

"Yes, lord."

"Still capable of walking?"

The inquisitor shrugged. "Ye-es, lord."

"Then release him this instant, put him in the charge of his dutiful son here, and send them both back home."

The armies of hope and fear fought in the informant's eyes.

"Thank you, lord," he said.

"Go in peace."

Vorbis watched one of the guards escort the man from the garden. Then he waved a hand vaguely at one of the head inquisitors.

"Do we know where he lives?"

"Yes, lord."

"Good."

The inquisitor hesitated.

"And this . . . device, lord?"

"Om has spoken to me. A machine that goes by itself? Such a thing is against all reason. Where are its muscles? Where is its mind?"

"Yes, lord."

The inquisitor, whose name was Deacon Cusp, had got where he was today, which was a place he wasn't sure right now that he wanted to be, because he liked hurting people. It was a simple desire, and one that was satisfied in abundance within the Quisition. And he was one of those who were terrified in a very particular way by Vorbis. Hurting people because you enjoyed it . . . that was understandable. Vorbis just hurt people because he'd decided that they should be hurt, without passion, even with a kind of hard love.

In Cusp's experience, people didn't make things up, ultimately, not in front of an exquisitor. Or course there were no such things as devices that moved by themselves, but he made a mental note to increase the guard-

"However," said Vorbis, "there will be a disturbance during the ceremony tomorrow."

"Lord?"

"I have . . . special knowledge," said Vorbis.

"Of course, lord."

"You know the breaking strain of sinews and muscles, Deacon Cusp."

Cusp had formed an opinion that Vorbis was somewhere on the other side of madness. Ordinary madness he could deal with. In his experience there were quite a lot of mad people in the world, and many of them became even more insane in the tunnels of the Quisition. But Vorbis had passed right through that red barrier and had built some kind of logical structure on the other side. Rational thoughts made out of insane components . . .

"Yes, lord," he said.

"I know the breaking strain of people."

It was night, and cold for the time of year.

Lu-Tze crept through the gloom of the barn, sweeping industriously. Sometimes he took a rag from the recesses of his robe and polished things.

He polished the outside of the Moving Turtle, which loomed low and menacing in the shadows.

And he swept his way toward the forge, where he watched for a while.

It takes extreme concentration to pour good steel. No wonder gods have always clustered around isolated smithies. There are so many things that can go wrong. A slight mis-mix of ingredients, a moment's lapse--

Urn, who was almost asleep on his feet, grunted as he was nudged awake and something was put in his hands.

It was a cup of tea. He looked into the little round face of LuTze.

"Oh," he said. "Thank you. Thank you very much."

Nod, smile.

"Nearly done," said Urn, more or less to himself. "Just got to let it cool now. Got to let it cool really slowly. Otherwise it crystallises, you see."

Nod, smile, nod.

It was good tea.

"S'not 'n important cast anyway," said Urn, swaying. "Jus' the control levers-”

Lu-Tze caught him carefully and steered him to a seat on a heap of charcoal. Then he went and watched the forge for a while. The bar of steel was glowing in the mold.

He poured a bucket of cold water over it, watched the great cloud of steam spread and disperse, and then put his broom over his shoulder and ran away hurriedly.

People to whom Lu-Tze was a vaguely glimpsed figure behind a very slow broom would have been surprised at his turn of speed, especially in a man six thousand years old who ate nothing but brown rice and drank only green tea with a knob of rancid butter in it.

A little way away from the Citadel's main gates he stopped running and started sweeping. He swept up to the gates, swept around the gates themselves, nodded and smiled at a soldier who glared at him and then realized that it was only the daft old sweeper, polished one of the handles of the gates, and swept his way by passages and cloisters to Brutha's vegetable garden.

He could see a figure crouched among the melons.

Lu-Tze found a rug and padded back out into the garden, where Brutha was sitting hunched up with his hoe over his knees.

Lu-Tze had seen many agonized faces in his time, which was a longer time than most whole civilizations managed to see. Brutha's was the worst. He tugged the rug over the bishop's shoulders.

"I can't hear him," said Brutha hoarsely. "It may mean that he's too far away. I keep on thinking that. He might be out there somewhere. Miles away!"

Lu-Tze smiled and nodded.

"It'll happen all over again. He never told anyone to do anything. Or not to do anything. He didn't care!"

Lu-Tze nodded and smiled again. His teeth were yellow. They were in fact his two-hundredth set.

"He should have cared."

Lu-Tze disappeared into his corner again and returned with a shallow bowl full of some kind of tea. He nodded and smiled and proffered it until Brutha took it and had a sip. It tasted like hot water with a lavender bag in it.

"You don't understand anything I'm talking about, do you?" said Brutha.

"Not much," said Lu-Tze.

"You can talk?"

Lu-Tze put a wisened finger to his lips.

"Big secret," he said.

Brutha looked at the little man. How much did he know about him? How much did anyone know about him?

"You talk to God," said Lu-Tze.

"How do you know that?"

"Signs. Man who talk to God have difficult life."

"You're right!" Brutha stared at Lu-Tze over the cup. "Why are you here?" he said. "You're not Omnian. Or Ephebian."

"Grew up near Hub. Long time ago. Now Lu-Tze a stranger everywhere he goes. Best way. Learned religion in temple at home. Now go where job is."

"Carting soil and pruning plants?"

"Sure. Never been bishop or high panjandrum. Dangerous life. Always be man who cleans pews or sweeps up behind altar. No one bother useful man. No one bother small man. No one remember name."

"That's what I was going to do! But it doesn't work for me."

"Then find other way. I learn in temple. Taught by ancient master. When trouble, always remember wise words of ancient and venerable master."

"What were they?"

"Ancient master say: `That boy there! What you eating? Hope you brought enough for everybody!' Ancient master say: `You bad boy! Why you no do homework?' Ancient master say: `What boy laughing? No tell what boy laughing, whole dojo stay in after school!' When remember these wise words, nothing seems so bad."

"What shall I do? I can't hear him!"

"You do what you must. I learn anything, it you have to walk it all alone."

Brutha hugged his knees.

"But he told me nothing! Where's all this wisdom? All the other prophets came back with commandments!"

"Where they get them?"

"I . . . suppose they made them up."

"You get them from same place."

"You call this philosophy?" roared Didactylos, waving his stick.

Urn cleaned pieces of the sand mold from the lever.

"Well . . . natural philosophy," he said.

The stick whanged down on the Moving Turtle's flanks.

"I never taught you this sort of thing!" shouted the philosopher. "Philosophy is supposed to make life better! "

"This will make it better for a lot of people," said Urn, calmly. "It will help overthrow a tyrant."

"And then?" said Didactylos.

"And then what?"

"And then you'll take it to bits, will you?" said the old man. "Smash it up? Take the wheels off? Get rid of all those spikes? Burn the plans? Yes? When it's served its purpose, yes?"

"Well-” Urn began.

"Aha!"

"Aha what? What if we do keep it? It'll be a . . . a deterrent to other tyrants!"

"You think tyrants won't build 'em too?"

"Well . . . I can build bigger ones!" Urn shouted.

Didactylos sagged. "Yes," he said. "No doubt you can. So that's all right, then. My word. And to think I was worrying. And now . . . I think I'll go and have a rest somewhere . . .

He looked hunched up, and suddenly old.

"Master?" said Urn.

"Don't `master' me," said Didactylos, feeling his way along the barn walls to the door. "I can see you know every bloody thing there is to know about human nature now. Hah!"

The Great God Om slid down the side of an irrigation ditch and landed on his back in the weeds at the bottom. He righted himself by gripping a root with his mouth and hauling himself over.

The shape of Brutha's thoughts flickered back and forth in his mind. He couldn't make out any actual words, but he didn't need to, any more than you needed to see the ripples to know which way the river flowed.

Occasionally, when he could see the Citadel as a gleaming dot in the twilight, he'd try shouting his own mind back as loudly as he could:

"Wait! Wait! You don't want to do that! We can go to Ankh-Morpork! Land of opportunity! With my brains and your . . . with you, the world is our mollusk! Why throw it all away . . .

And then he'd slide into another furrow. Once or twice he saw the eagle, forever circling.

"Why put your hand into a grinder? This place deserves Vorbis! Sheep deserve to be led!"

It had been like this when his very first believer had been stoned to death. Of course, by then he had dozens of other believers. But it had been a wrench. It had been upsetting. You never forgot your first believer. They gave you shape.

Tortoises are not well equipped for cross-country navigation. They need longer legs or shallower ditches.

Om estimated that he was doing less than a fifth of a mile an hour in a direct line, and the Citadel was at least twenty miles away. Occasionally he made good time between the trees in an olive grove, but that was more than pulled back by rocky ground and field walls.

All the time, as his legs whirred, Brutha's thoughts buzzed in his head like a distant bee.

He tried shouting in his mind again.

"What've you got? He's got an army! You've got an army? How many divisions have you got?"

But thoughts like that needed energy, and there was a limit to the amount of energy available in one tortoise. He found a bunch of fallen grapes and gobbled them until the juice covered his head, but it didn't make a lot of difference.

And then there was nightfall. Nights here weren't as cold as the desert, but they weren't as warm as the day. He'd slow down at night as his blood cooled. He wouldn't be able to think as fast. Or walk as fast.

He was losing heat already. Heat meant speed.

He pulled himself up on to an anthill-

"You're going to die! You're going to die!"

-and slid down the other side.

Preparations for the inauguration of the Cenobiarch Prophet began many hours before the dawn. Firstly, and not according to ancient tradition, there was a very careful search of the temple by Deacon Cusp and some of his colleagues. There was a prowling for tripwires and a poking of odd corners for hidden archers. Although it was against the thread, Deacon Cusp had his head screwed on. He also sent a few squads into the town to round up the usual suspects. The Quisition always found it advisable to leave a few suspects at large. Then you knew where to find them when you needed them.

After that a dozen lesser priests arrived to shrive the premises and drive out all afreets, djinns, and devils. Deacon Cusp watched them without comment. He'd never had any personal dealings with supernatural entities, but he knew what a well-placed arrow would do to an unexpecting stomach.

Someone tapped him on the rib-cage. He gasped at the sudden linkage of real life into the chain of thought, and reached instinctively for his dagger.

"Oh," he said.

Lu-Tze nodded and smiled and indicated with his broom that Deacon Cusp was standing on a patch of floor that he, Lu-Tze, wished to sweep.

"Hello, you ghastly little yellow fool," said Deacon Cusp.

Nod, smile.

"Never say a bloody word, do you?" said Deacon Cusp.

Smile, smile.

"Idiot."

Smile. Smile. Watch.

Urn stood back.

"Now," he said, "you sure you've got it all?"

"Easy," said Simony, who was sitting in the Turtle's saddle.

"Tell me again," said Urn.

"We-stoke-up-the-firebox," said Simony. "Then-when-thered-needle-points-to-xxvi, turn-the-brass-tap; when-the-bronze-whistle-blows, pull-the-big-lever. And steer by pulling the ropes."

"Right," said Urn. But he still looked doubtful. "It's a precision device," he said.

"And I am a professional soldier," said Simony. "I'm not a superstitious peasant."

"Fine, fine. Well . . . if you're sure . . . '

They'd had time to put a few finishing touches to the Moving Turtle. There were serrated edges to the shell and spikes on the wheels. And of course the waste steam pipe . . . he was a little uncertain about the waste steam pipe . . .

"It's merely a device," said Simony. "It does not present a problem."

"Give us an hour, then. You should just get to the Temple by the time we get the doors open."

"Right. Understood. Off you go. Sergeant Fergmen knows the way."

Urn looked at the steam pipe and bit his lip. I don't know what effect it's going to have on the enemy, he thought, but it scares the hells out of me.

Brutha woke up, or at least ceased trying to sleep. Lu-Tze had gone. Probably sweeping somewhere.

He wandered through the deserted corridors of the novice section. It would be hours before the new Cenobiarch was crowned. There were dozens of ceremonies to be undertaken first. Everyone who was anyone would be in the Place and the surrounding piazzas, and so would the even greater number of people who were no one very much. The sestinas were empty, the endless prayers left unsung. The Citadel might have been dead, were it not for the huge indefinable background roar of tens of thousands of people being silent. Sunlight filtered down through the light-wells.

Brutha had never felt more alone. The wilderness had been a feast of fun compared to this. Last night . . . last night, with Lu-Tze, it had all seemed so clear. Last night he had been in a mood to confront Vorbis there and then. Last night there seemed to be a chance. Anything was possible last night. That was the trouble with last nights. They were always followed by this mornings.

He wandered out into the kitchen level, and then into the outside world. There were one or two cooks around, preparing the ceremonial meal of meat, bread, and salt, but they paid him no attention at all.

He sat down outside one of the slaughterhouses. There was, he knew, a back gate somewhere around. Probably no one would stop him, today, if he walked out. Today they would be looking for unwanted people walking in.

He could just walk away. The wilderness had seemed quite pleasant, apart from the thirst and hunger. St. Ungulant with his madness and his mushrooms seemed to have life exactly right. It didn't matter if you fooled yourself provided you didn't let yourself know it, and did it well. Life was so much simpler, in the desert.

But there were a dozen guards by the gate. They had an unsympathetic look. He went back to his seat, which was tucked away in a corner, and stared gloomily at the ground.

If Om was alive, surely he could send a sign?

A grating by Brutha's sandals lifted itself up a few inches and slid aside. He stared at the hole.

A hooded head appeared, stared back, and disappeared again. There was a subterranean whispering. The head reappeared, and was followed by a body. It pulled itself on to the cobbles. The hood was pushed back. The man grinned conspiratorially at Brutha, put his finger to his lips and then, without warning, launched himself at him with violent intent.

Brutha rolled across the cobbles and raised his hands frantically as he saw the gleam of metal. One filthy hand clamped against his mouth. A knifeblade made a dramatic and very final silhouette against the light-

"No! "

"Why not? We said the first thing we'll do, we'll kill all the priests!"

"Not that one!"

Brutha dared to swivel his eyes sideways. Although the second figure rising from the hole was also wearing a filthy robe, there was no mistaking the paintbrush hairstyle.

He tried to say "Urn?"

"Shut up, you," said the other man, pressing the knife to his throat.

"Brutha?" said Urn. "You're alive?"

Brutha moved his eyes from his captor to Urn in a way which he hoped would indicate that it was too soon to make any commitment on this point.

"He's all right," said Urn.

"All right? He's a priest!"

"But he's on our side. Aren't you, Brutha?"

Brutha tried to nod, and thought: I'm on everyone's side. It'd be nice if, just for once, someone was on mine.

The hand was unclamped from his mouth, but the knife remained resting on his throat. Brutha's normally careful thought processes ran like quicksilver.

"The Turtle Moves?" he ventured.

The knife was withdrawn, with obvious reluctance.

"I don't trust him," said the man. "We should shove him down the hole at least."

"Brutha's one of us," said Urn.

"That's right. That's right," said Brutha. "Which ones are you?"

Urn leaned closer.

"How's your memory?"

"Unfortunately, it is fine."

"Good. Good. Uh. It would be a good idea to stay out of trouble, d'you hear . . . if anything happens. Remember the Turtle. Well, of course you would."

"What things?"

Urn patted him on the shoulder, making Brutha think for a moment of Vorbis. Vorbis, who never touched another person inside his head, was a great toucher with his hands.

"Best if you don't know what's happening," said Urn.

"But I don't know what's happening," said Brutha.

"Good. That's the way."

The burly man gestured with his knife towards the tunnels that led into the rock.

"Are we going, or what?" he demanded.

Urn ran after him and then stopped briefly and turned.

"Be careful," he said. "We need what's in your head!"

Brutha watched them go.

"So do I," he murmured.

And then he was alone again.

But he thought: Hold on. I don't have to be. I'm a bishop. At least I can watch. Om's gone and soon the world will end, so at least I might as well watch it happen.

Sandals flapping, Brutha set off towards the Place.

Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.

"You godawful idiot! Don't go that way!"

The sun was well up now. In fact it was probably setting, if Didactylos's theories about the speed of light were correct, but in matters of relativity the point of view of the observer is very important, and from Om's point of view the sun was a golden ball in a flaming orange sky.

He pulled himself up another slope, and stared blearily at the distant Citadel. In his mind's eye, he could hear the mocking voices of all small gods.

They didn't like a god who had failed. They didn't like that at all. It let them all down. It reminded them of mortality. He'd be thrust out into the deep desert, where no one would ever come. Ever. Until the end of the world.

He shivered in his shell.

Urn and Fergmen walked nonchalantly through the tunnels of the Citadel, using the kind of nonchalant walk which, had there been anyone to take an interest in it, would have drawn detailed and arrow-sharp attention to them within seconds. But the only people around were those with vital jobs to do. Besides, it was not a good idea to stare too hard at the guards, in case they stared back.

Simony had told Urn he'd agreed to this. He couldn't quite remember doing so. The sergeant knew a way into the Citadel, that was sensible. And Urn knew about hydraulics. Fine. Now he was walking through these dry tunnels with his toolbelt clinking. There was a logical connection, but it had been made by someone else.

Fergmen turned a corner and stopped by a large grille, which stretched from floor to ceiling. It was very rusty. It might once have been a door-there was a suggestion of hinges, rusted into the stone. Urn peered through the bars. Beyond, in the gloom, there were pipes.

"Eureka," he said.

"Going to have a bath, then?" said Fergmen.

"Just keep watch."

Urn selected a short crowbar from his belt and inserted it between the grille and the stonework. Give me a foot of good steel and a wall to brace . . . my . . . foot . . . against-the grille ground forward and then popped out with a leaden sound-and I can change the world . . .

He stepped inside the long, dark, damp room, and gave a whistle of admiration.

No one had done any maintenance for-well, for as long as it took iron hinges to become a mass of crumbling rust-but all this still worked?

He looked up at lead and iron buckets bigger than he was, and a tangle of man-sized pipes.

This was the breath of God.

Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent-protection.

There were the levers and there, hanging over pits in the rock floor, were the two sets of counterweights. Probably it'd only take a few hundred gallons of water to swing the balance either way. Of course, the water'd have to be pumped up-

"Sergeant?"

Fergmen peered round the door. He looked nervous, like an atheist in a thunderstorm.

"What?"

Urn pointed.

"There's a big shaft through the wall there, see? At the bottom of the gear-chain?"

"The what?"

"The big knobbly wheels?"

"Oh. Yeah."

"Where does the shaft go to?"

"Don't know. There's the big Treadmill of Correction through there."

Ah.

The breath of God was ultimately the sweat of men. Didactylos would have appreciated the joke, Urn thought.

He was aware of a sound that had been there all the time but was only now penetrating through his concentration. It was tinny and faint and full of echoes, but it was voices. From the pipes.

The sergeant, to judge by his expression, had heard them too.

Urn put his ear to the metal. There was no possibility of making out words, but the general religious rhythm was familiar enough.

"It's just the service going on in the Temple," he said. "It's probably resonating off the doors and the sound's being carried down the pipes."

Fergmen did not look reassured.

"No gods are involved in any way," Urn translated. He turned his attention to the pipes again.

"Simple principle," said Urn, more to himself than to Fergmen. "Water pours into the reservoirs on the weights, disturbing the equilibrium. One lot of weights descends and the other rises up the shaft in the wall. The weight of the door is immaterial. As the bottom weights descend, these buckets here tip over, pouring the water out. Probably quite a smooth action. Perfect equilibrium at either end of the movement, too. Nicely thought out."

He caught Fergmen's expression.

"Water goes in and out and the doors swing open," he translated. "So all we've got to do is wait for . . . what did he say the sign would be?"

"They'll blow a trumpet when they're through the main gate," said Fergmen, pleased to be of service.

"Right." Urn eyed the weights and the reservoirs overhead. The bronze pipes dripped with corrosion.

"But perhaps we'd better just check that we know what we're doing," he said. "It probably takes a minute or two before the doors start moving." He fumbled under his robe and produced something that looked, to Fergmen's eye, very much like a torture instrument. This must have communicated itself to Urn, who said very slowly and kindly: "This is an ad-just-ab-ble span-ner."

"Yes?"

"It's for twisting nuts off."

Fergmen nodded miserably.

"Yes?" he said.

"And this is a bottle of penetrating oil."

"Oh, good."

"Just give me a leg up, will you? It'll take time to unhook the linkage to the valve, so we might as well make a start." Urn heaved himself into the ancient machinery while, above, the ceremony droned on.

Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah was all for new prophets. He was even in favor of the end of the world, if he could get the concession to sell religious statues, cut-price icons, rancid sweetmeats, fermenting dates, and putrescent olives on a stick to any watching crowds.

Subsequently, this was his testament. There never was a Book of the Prophet Brutha, but an enterprising scribe, during what came to be called the Renovation, did assemble some notes, and Dhblah had this to say:

"I. I was standing right by the statue of Ossory, right, when I noticed Brutha just beside me. Everyone was keeping away from him because of him being a bishop and they do things to you if you jostle bishops.

"II. I said to him, hello, Your Graciousness, and offered him a yoghurt practically free.

"III. He responded, no.

"IV. I said, it's very healthy, it's a live yoghurt.

"V. He said, yes, he could see.

"VI. He was staring at the doors. This was about the time of the third gong, right, so we all knew we'd got hours to wait. He was looking a bit down and it's not as if he even ate the yoghurt, which I admit was on the hum a bit, what with the heat. I mean, it was more alive than usual. I mean, I had to keep hitting it with a spoon to stop it getting out of the . . . all right. I was just explaining about the yoghurt. All right. I mean, you want to put a bit of color in, don't you? People like a bit of color. It was green.

"VII. He just stood there, staring. So I said, got a problem, Your Reverence? Upon which he vouchsafed, I cannot hear him. I said, what is this he to whom what you refer? He said, if he was here, he would send me a sign.

"VIII. There is no truth whatsoever in the rumor that I ran away at this juncture. It was just the pressure of the crowd. I have never been a friend of the Quisition. I might have sold them food, but I always charged them extra.

"IX. Anyway, right, then he pushed through the line of guards what was holding the crowd back and stood right in front of the doors, and they weren't sure what to do about bishops, and I heard him say something like, I carried you in the desert, I believed all my life, just give me this one thing.

"X. Something like that, anyway. How about some yoghurt? Bargain offer. Onna stick."

Om lifted himself over a creeper-clad wall by grasping tendrils in his beak and hauling himself up by the neck muscles. Then he fell down the other side. The Citadel was as far away as ever.

Brutha's mind was flaming like a beacon in Om's senses. There's a streak of madness in everyone who spends quality time with gods, and it was driving the boy now.

"It's too soon!" Om yelled. "You need followers! It can't be just you! You can't do it by yourself! You have to get disciples first!"

Simony turned to look down the length of the Turtle. Thirty men were crouched under the shell, looking very apprehensive.

A corporal saluted.

"The needle's there, sergeant."

The brass whistle whistled.

Simony picked up the steering ropes. This was what war should be, he thought. No uncertainty. A few more Turtles like this, and no one would ever fight again.

"Stand by," he said.

He pulled the big lever hard.

The brittle metal snapped in his hand.

Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem.

In the depths of the Temple's hidden plumbing, Urn grasped a bronze pipe firmly with his spanner and gave the nut a cautious turn. It resisted. He changed position, and grunted as he used more pressure.

With a sad little metal sound, the pipe twisted-and broke . . .

Water gushed out, hitting him in the face. He dropped the tool and tried to block the flow with his fingers, but it spurted around his hands and gurgled down the channel towards one of the weights.

"Stop it! Stop it!" he shouted.

"What?" said Fergmen, several feet below him.

"Stop the water!"

"How?"

"The pipe's broken!"

"I thought that's what we wanted to do?"

"Not yet!"

"Stop shouting, mister! There's guards around!"

Urn let the water gush for a moment as he struggled out of his robe, and then he rammed the sodden material into the pipe. It shot out again with some force and slapped wetly against the lead funnel, sliding down until it blocked the tube that led to the weights. The water piled up behind it and then spilled over on to the floor.

Urn glanced at the weight. It hadn't begun to move.

He relaxed slightly. Now, provided there was still enough water to make the weight drop . . .

"Both of you-stand still."

He looked around, his mind going numb.

There was a heavy-set man in a black robe standing in the stricken doorway. Behind him, a guard held a sword in a meaningful manner.

"Who are you? Why are you here?"

Urn hesitated for only a moment.

He gestured with his spanner.

"Well, it's the seating, innit," he said. "You've got shocking seepage around the seating. Amazing it holds together."

The man stepped into the room. He glared uncertainly at Urn for a moment and then turned his attention to the gushing pipe. And then back to Urn.

"But you're not-” he began.

He spun around as Fergmen hit the guard hard with a length of broken pipe. When he turned back, Urn's spanner caught him full in the stomach. Urn wasn't strong, but it was a long spanner, and the wellknown principles of leverage did the rest. He doubled up and then sagged backwards against one of the weights.

What happened next happened in frozen time. Deacon Cusp grabbed at the weight for support. It sank down, ponderously, his extra poundage adding to the weight of the water. He clawed higher. It sank further, dropping below the lip of the pit. He sought for balance again, but this time it was against fresh air, and he tumbled on top of the falling weight.

Urn saw his face staring up at him as the weight fell into the gloom.

With a lever, he could change the world. It had certainly changed it for Deacon Cusp. It had made it stop existing.

Fergmen was standing over the guard, his pipe raised.

"I know this one," he said. "I'm going to give him a-”

"Never mind about that!"

"But-”

Above them linkage clanked into action. There was a distant creaking of bronze against bronze.

"Let's get out of here," said Urn. "Only the gods know what's happening up there."

And blows rained on the unmoving Moving Turtle's carapace.

"Damn! Damn! Damn!" shouted Simony, thumping it again. "Move! I command you to move! Can you understand plain Ephebian! Move!"

The unmoving machine leaked steam and sat there.

And Om pulled himself up the slope of a small hill. So it came to this, then. There was only one way to get to the Citadel now.

It was a million-to-one chance, with any luck.

And Brutha stood in front of the huge doors, oblivious to the crowd and the muttering guards. The Quisition could arrest anyone, but the guards weren't certain what happened to you if you apprehended an archbishop, especially one so recently favored by the Prophet.

Just a sign, Brutha thought, in the loneliness of his head.

The doors trembled, and swung slowly outwards.

Brutha stepped forward. He wasn't fully conscious now, not in any coherent way as understood by normal people. Just one part of him was still capable of looking at the state of his own mind and thinking: perhaps the Great Prophets felt like this all the time.

The thousands inside the temple were looking around in confusion. The choirs of lesser Iams paused in their chant. Brutha walked on up the aisle, the only one with a purpose in the suddenly bewildered throng.

Vorbis was standing in the center of the temple, under the vault of the dome. Guards hurried toward Brutha, but Vorbis raised a hand in a gentle but very positive movement.

Now Brutha could take in the scene. There was the staff of Ossory, and Abbys's cloak, and the sandals of Cena. And, supporting the dome, the massive statues of the first four prophets. He'd never seen them. He'd heard about them every day of his childhood.

And what did they mean now? They didn't mean anything. Nothing meant anything, if Vorbis was Prophet. Nothing meant anything, if the Cenobiarch was a man who'd heard nothing in the inner spaces of his own head but his own thoughts.

He was aware that Vorbis's gesture had not only halted the guards, although they surrounded him like a hedge. It had also filled the temple with silence. Into which Vorbis spoke.

"Ah. My Brutha. We had looked for you in vain. And now even you are here . . ."

Brutha stopped a few feet away. The moment of . . . whatever it had been . . . that had propelled him through the doors had drained away.

Now all there was, was Vorbis.

Smiling.

The part of him still capable of thought was thinking: there is nothing you can say. No one will listen. No one will care. It doesn't matter what you tell people about Ephebe, and Brother Murduck, and the desert. It won't be fundamentally true.

Fundamentally true. That's what the world is, with Vorbis in it.

Vorbis said, "There is something wrong? Something you wish to say?"

The black-on-black eyes filled the world, like two pits.

Brutha's mind gave up, and Brutha's body took over. It brought his hand back and raised it, oblivious to the sudden rush forward of the guards.

He saw Vorbis turn his cheek, and smile.

Brutha stopped, and lowered his hand.

He said, "No. I won't."

Then, for the first and only time, he saw Vorbis really enraged. There had been times before when the deacon had been angry, but it had been something driven by the brain, switched on and off as the need arose. This was something else, something out of control. And it flashed across his face only for a moment.

As the hands of the guards closed on him, Vorbis stepped forward and patted him on the shoulder. He looked Brutha in the eye for a moment and then said softly:

"Thrash him within an inch of his life and burn him the rest of the way."

An Iam began to speak, but stopped when he saw Vorbis's expression.

"Do it now."

A world of silence. No sound up here, except the rush of wind through the feathers.

Up here the world is round, bordered by a band of sea. The viewpoint is from horizon to horizon, the sun is closer.

And yet, looking down, looking for shapes . . .

. . . down in the farmland on the edge of the wilderness . . .

. . . on a small hill . . .

. . . a tiny moving dome, ridiculously exposed . . .

No sound but the rush of wind through feathers as the eagle pulls in its wings and drops like an arrow, the world spinning around the little moving shape that is the focus of all the eagle's attention.

Closer and . . .

. . . talons down . . .

. . . grip . . .

. . . and rise . . .

Brutha opened his eyes.

His back was merely agonizing. He'd long ago got used to switching off pain.

But he was spread-eagled on a surface, his arms and legs chained to something he couldn't see. Sky above. The towering frontage of the temple to one side.

By turning his head a little he could see the silent crowd. And the brown metal of the iron turtle. He could smell smoke.

Someone was just tightening the shackles on his hand. Brutha looked over at the inquisitor. Now, what was it he had to say? Oh, yes.

"The Turtle Moves?" he mumbled.

The man sighed.

"Not this one, friend," he said.

The world spun under Om as the eagle sought for shellcracking height, and his mind was besieged by the tortoise's existential dread of being off the ground. And Brutha's thoughts, bright and clear this close to death . . .

I'm on my back and getting hotter and I'm going to die . . .

Careful, careful. Concentrate, concentrate. It'll let go any second . . .

Om stuck out his long scrawny neck, stared at the body just above him, picked what he hoped was about the right spot, plunged his beak through the brown feathers between the talons, and gripped.

The eagle blinked. No tortoise had ever done that to an eagle, anywhere else in history.

Om's thoughts arrived in the little silvery world of its mind:

"We don't want to hurt one another, now do we?"

The eagle blinked again.

Eagles have never evolved much imagination or forethought, beyond that necessary to know that a turtle smashes when you drop it on the rocks. But it was forming a mental picture of what happened when you let go of a heavy tortoise that was still intimately gripping an essential bit of you.

Its eyes watered.

Another thought crept into its mind.

"Now. You play, uh, ball with me, I'll play . . . ball with you. Understand? This is important. This is what I want you to do . . ."

The eagle soared on a thermal off the hot rocks, and sped towards the distant gleam of the Citadel.

No tortoise had ever done this before. No tortoise in the whole universe. But no tortoise had ever been a god, and knew the unwritten motto of the Quisition: Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum.

When you have their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.

Urn pushed his way through the crowds, with Fergmen trailing behind. That was the best and the worst of civil war, at least at the start-everyone wore the same uniform. It was much easier when you picked enemies who were a different color or at least spoke with a funny accent. You could call them "gooks" or something. It made things easier.

Hey, Urn thought. This is nearly philosophy. Pity I probably won't live to tell anyone.

The big doors were ajar. The crowd was silent, and very attentive. He craned forward to see, and then looked up at the soldier beside him.

It was Simony.

"I thought-”

"It didn't work," said Simony, bitterly.

"Did you-?"

"We did everything! Something broke!"

"It must be the steel they make here," said Urn. "The link pins on-”

"That doesn't matter now," said Simony.

The flat tones of his voice made Urn follow the eyes of the crowd.

There was another iron turtle there-a proper model of a turtle, mounted on a sort of open gridwork of metal bars in which a couple of inquisitors were even now lighting a fire. And chained to the back of the turtle-

"Who's that?"

"Brutha."

"What?"

"I don't know what happened. He hit Vorbis, or didn't hit him. Or something. Enraged him anyway. Vorbis stopped the ceremony, right there and then."

Urn glanced at the deacon. Not Cenobiarch yet, so uncrowned. Among the Iams and bishops standing uncertainly in the open doorway, his bald head gleamed in the morning light.

"Come on, then," said Urn.

"Come on what?"

"We can rush the steps and save him!"

"There's more of them than there are of us," said Simony.

"Well, haven't there always been? There's not magically more of them than there are of us just because they've got Brutha, are there?"

Simony grabbed his arm.

"Think logically, will you?" he said. "You're a philosopher, aren't you? Look at the crowd!"

Urn looked at the crowd.

"Well?"

"They don't like it,." Simon turned. "Look, Brutha's going to die anyway. But this way it'll mean something. People don't understand, really understand, about the shape of the universe and all that stuff, but they'll remember what Vorbis did to a man. Right? We can make Brutha's death a symbol for people, don't you see?"

Urn stared at the distant figure of Brutha. It was naked, except for a loin-cloth.

"A symbol?" he said. His throat was dry.

"It has to be."

He remembered Didactylos saying the world was a funny place. And, he thought distantly, it really was. Here people were about to roast someone to death, but they'd left his loin-cloth on, out of respectability. You had to laugh. Otherwise you'd go mad.

"You know," he said, turning to Simony. "Now I know Vorbis is evil. He burned my city. Well, the Tsorteans do it sometimes, and we burn theirs. It's just war. It's all part of history. And he lies and cheats and claws power for himself, and lots of people do that, too. But do you know what's special? Do you know what it is?"

"Of course," said Simony. "It's what he's doing to-”

"It's what he's done to you."

"What?"

"He turns other people into copies of himself."

Simony's grip was like a vice. "You're saying I'm like him?"

"Once you said you'd cut him down," said Urn. "Now you're thinking like him . . .

"So we rush them, then?" said Simony. "I'm sure of-maybe four hundred on our side. So I give the signal and a few hundred of us attack thousands of them? And he dies anyway and we die too? What difference does that make?"

Urn's face was gray with horror now.

"You mean you don't know?" he said.

Some of the crowd looked round curiously at him.

"You don't know?" he said.

The sky was blue. The sun wasn't high enough yet to turn it into Omnia's normal copper bowl.

Brutha turned his head again, towards the sun. It was about a width above the horizon, although if Didactylos's theories about the speed of light were correct, it was really setting, thousands of years in the future.

It was eclipsed by the head of Vorbis.

"Hot yet, Brutha?" said the deacon.

"Warm."

"It will get warmer."

There was a disturbance in the crowd. Someone was shouting. Vorbis ignored it.

"Nothing you want to say?" he said. "Can't you manage even a curse? Not even a curse?"

"You never heard Om," said Brutha. "You never believed. You never, ever heard his voice. All you heard were the echoes inside your own mind."

"Really? But I am the Cenobiarch and you are going to burn for treachery and heresy," said Vorbis. "So much for Om, perhaps?"

"There will be justice," said Brutha. "If there is no justice, there is nothing."

He was aware of a small voice in his head, too faint yet to distinguish words.

"Justice?" said Vorbis. The idea seemed to enrage him. He spun around to the crowd of bishops. "Did you hear him? There will be justice? Om has judged! Through me! This is justice!"

There was a speck in the sun now, speeding toward the Citadel. And the little voice was saying left left left up up left right a bit up left-The mass of metal under him was getting uncomfortably hot.

"He comes now," said Brutha.

Vorbis waved his hand to the great facade of the temple. "Men built this. We built this," he said. "And what did Om do? Om comes? Let him come! Let him judge between us!"

"He comes now," Brutha repeated. "The God."

People looked apprehensively upward. There was that moment, just one moment, when the world holds its breath and against all experience waits for a miracle.

-up left now, when I say three, one, two, THREE-

"Vorbis?" croaked Brutha.

"What?" snapped the deacon.

"You're going to die."

It was hardly a whisper, but it bounced off the bronze doors and carried across the Place . . .

It made people uneasy, although they couldn't quite say why.

The eagle sped across the square, so low that people ducked. Then it cleared the roof of the temple and curved away towards the mountains. The watchers relaxed. It was only an eagle. For a moment there, just for a moment . . .

No one saw the tiny speck, tumbling down from the sky.

Don't put your faith in gods. But you can believe in turtles.

A feeling of rushing wind in Brutha's mind, and a voice . . .

-obuggerbuggerbuggerhelpaarghnoNoNoAarghBuggerNONOAARGH-

Even Vorbis got a grip of himself. There had been just a moment, when he'd seen the eagle-but, no . . .

He extended his arms and smiled beatifically at the sky.

"I'm sorry," said Brutha.

One or two people, who had been watching Vorbis closely, said later that there was just time for his expression to change before two pounds of tortoise, traveling at three meters a second, hit him between the eyes.

It was a revelation.

And that does something to people watching. For a start, they believe with all their heart.

Brutha was aware of feet running up the steps, and hands pulling at the chains.

And then a voice:

I. He is Mine.

The Great God rose over the Temple, billowing and changing as the belief of thousands of people flowed into him. There were shapes there, of eagle-headed men, and bulls, and golden horns, but they tangled and flamed and fused into one another.

Four bolts of fire whirred out of the cloud and burst the chains holding Brutha.

II. He Is Cenobiarch And Prophet of Prophets.

The voice of theophany rumbled off the distant mountains.

III. Do I Hear Any Objections? No? Good.

The cloud had by now condensed into a shimmering golden figure, as tall as the Temple. It leaned down until its face was a few feet away from Brutha, and in a whisper that boomed across the Place said:

IV. Don't Worry. This Is Just The Start. You and Me, Kid! People Are Going To Find Out What Wailing and Gnashing Of Teeth Really Is.

Another shaft of flame shot out and struck the Temple doors. They slammed shut, and then the white-hot bronze melted, erasing the commandments of the centuries.

V. What Shall It Be, Prophet?

Brutha stood up, unsteadily. Urn supported him by one arm, and Simony by the other.

"Mm?" he said, muzzily.

VI. Your Commandments?

"I thought they were supposed to come from you," said Brutha. "I don't know if I can think of any . . .

The world waited.

"How about `Think for Yourself'?" said Urn, staring in horrified fascination at the manifestation.

"No," said Simony. "Try something like `Social Cohesiveness is the Key to Progress.' "

"Can't say it rolls off the tongue," said Urn.

"If I can be of any help," said Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah, from the crowd, "something of benefit to the convenience food industry would be very welcome."

"Not killing people. We could do with one like that," said someone else.

"It'd be a good start," said Urn.

They looked at the Chosen One. He shook himself free of their grip and stood alone, swaying a little.

"No-oo," said Brutha. "No. I thought like that once, but it wouldn't. Not really."

Now, he said. Only now. Just one point in history. Not tomorrow, not next month, it'll always be too late unless it's now.

They stared at him.

"Come on," said Simony. "What's wrong with it? You can't argue with it."

"It's hard to explain," said Brutha. "But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave. I think . . . you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time."

VII. I Like One About Not Killing, said Om, from far above.

VIII. It's Got A Good Ring To It. Hurry Up, I've Got Some Smiting To Do.

"You see?" said Brutha. "No. No smiting. No commandments unless you obey them too."

Om thumped on the roof of the Temple.

IX. You Order Me? Here? NOW? ME?

"No. I ask."

X. That's Worse Than Ordering!

"Everything works both ways."

Om thumped his Temple again. A wall caved in. That part of the crowd that hadn't managed to stampede from the Place redoubled its efforts.

XI. There Must Be Punishment! Otherwise There Will Be No Order!

` No.

XII. I Do Not Need You! I Have Believers Enough Now!

"But only through me. And, perhaps, not for long. It will all happen again. It's happened before. It happens all the time. That's why gods die. They never believe in people. But you have a chance. All you need to do is . . . believe."

XIII. What? Listen To Stupid Prayers? Watch Over Small Children? Make It Rain?

"Sometimes. Not always. It could be a bargain."

XIV. BARGAIN! I don't Bargain! Not With Humans!

"Bargain now," said Brutha. "While you have the chance. Or one day you'll have to bargain with Simony, or someone like him. Or Urn, or someone like him. "

XV. I Could Destroy You Utterly.

"Yes. I am entirely in your power."

XVI. I Could Crush You Like An Egg!

"Yes."

Om paused.

Then he said: XVII. You Can't Use Weakness As A Weapon.

"It's the only one I've got."

XVIII. Why Should I Yield, Then?

"Not yield. Bargain. Deal with me in weakness. Or one day you'll have to bargain with someone in a position of strength. The world changes."

XIX. Hah! You Want A Constitutional Religion?

"Why not? The other sort didn't work."

Om leaned on the Temple, his temper subsiding.

Chap. II v. l. Very Well, Then. But Only For A Time. A grin spread across the enormous, smoking face. For One Hundred Years, Yes?

"And after a hundred years?"

II. We Shall See.

"Agreed."

A finger the length of a tree unfolded, descended, touched Brutha.

III. You Have A Persuasive Way. You Will Need It. A Fleet Approaches.

"Ephebians?" said Simony.

IV. And Tsorteans. And Djelibeybians. And Klatchians. Every Free Country Along The Coast. To Stamp Out Omnia For Good. Or Bad.

"You don't have many friends, do you?" said Urn.

"Even I don't like us much, and I am us," said Simony. He looked up at the god.

"Will you help?"

V. You Don't Even Believe In Me!

"Yes, but I'm a practical man."

VI. And Brave, Too, To Declare Atheism Before Your God.

"This doesn't change anything, you know!" said Simony. "Don't think you can get round me by existing! "

"No help," said Brutha, firmly.

"What?" said Simony. "We'll need a mighty army against that lot!"

"Yes. And we haven't got one. So we'll do it another way."

"You're crazy!"

Brutha's calmness was like a desert.

"This may be the case."

"We have to fight!"

"Not yet."

Simony clenched his fists in anger.

"Look . . . listen . . . We died for lies, for centuries we died for lies." He waved a hand towards the god. "Now we've got a truth to die for!"

"No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for."

Simony's mouth opened and shut soundlessly as he sought for words. Finally, he found some from the dawn of his education.

"I was told it was the finest thing to die for a god," he mumbled.

"Vorbis said that. And he was . . . stupid. You can die for your country or your people or your family,

but for a god you should live fully and busily, every day of along life."

"And how long is that going to be?"

"We shall see."

Brutha looked up at Om.

"You will not show yourself like this again?"

Chap. III v. I. No. Once Is Enough.

"Remember the desert."

II. I Will Remember.

"Walk with me."

Brutha went over to the body of Vorbis and picked it up.

"I think," he said, "that they will land on the beach on the Ephebian side of the forts. They won't use the rock shore and they can't use the cliffs. I'll meet them there." He glanced down at Vorbis. "Someone should."

"You can't mean you want to go by yourself?"

"Ten thousand won't be sufficient. One might be enough."

He walked down the steps.

Urn and Simony watched him go.

"He's going to die," said Simony. "He won't even be a patch of grease on the sand." He turned to Om. "Can you stop him?"

III. It May Be That I Cannot.

Brutha was already halfway across the Place.

"Well, we're not deserting him," said Simony.

IV. Good.

Om watched them go, too. And then he was alone, except for the thousands watching him, crammed around the edges of the great square. He wished he knew what to say to them. That's why he needed people like Brutha. That's why all gods needed people like Brutha.

"Excuse me?"

The god looked down.

V. Yes?

"Um. I can't sell you anything, can I?"

VI. What Is Your Name?

"Dhblah, god."

VII. Ah, Yes. And What Is It You Wish?

The merchant hopped anxiously from one foot to the other.

"You couldn't manage just a small commandment? Something about eating yoghurt on Wednesdays, say? It's always very difficult to shift, midweek."

VIII. You Stand Before Your God And Look For Business Opportunities?

"We-ell," said Dhblah, "we could come to an arrangement. Strike while the iron is hot, as the inquisitors say. Haha. Twenty percent? How about it? After expenses, of course-”

The Great God Om smiled.

IX. I Think You Will Make A Little Prophet, Dhblah, he said.

"Right. Right. That's all I'm looking for. Just trying to make both ends hummus."

X. Tortoises Are To Be Left Alone.

Dhblah put his head on one side.

"Doesn't sing, does it?" he said. "But . . . tortoise necklaces . . . hmm . . . brooches, of course. Tortoiseshel-”

XI. NO!

"Sorry, sorry. See what you mean. All right. Tortoise statues. Ye-ess. I thought about them. Nice shape. Incidentally, you couldn't make a statue wobble every now and again, could you? Very good for business wobbling statues. The statue of Ossory wobbles eve; Fast of Ossory, reg'lar. By means of a small piston device operated in the basement, it is said. But very good for the prophets, all the same."

XII. You Make me Laugh, Little Prophet. Sell Your Tortoises, By All Means.

"Tell you the truth," said Dhblah, "I've already drawn a few designs just now . . ."

Om vanished. There was a brief thunderclap. Dhblah looked reflectively at his sketches.

". . . but I suppose I'll have to take the little figure off them," he said, more or less to himself.

The shade of Vorbis looked around.

"Ah. The desert," he said. The black sand was absolutely still under the starlit sky. It looked cold.

He hadn't planned on dying yet. In fact . . . he couldn't quite remember how he'd died . . .

"The desert," he repeated, and this time there was a hint of uncertainty. He'd never been uncertain about anything in his . . . life. The feeling was unfamiliar and terrifying. Did ordinary people feel like this?

He got a grip on himself.

Death was impressed. Very few people managed this, managed to hold on to the shape of their old thinking after death.

Death took no pleasure in his job. It was an emotion he found hard to grasp. But there was such a thing as satisfaction.

"So," said Vorbis. "The desert. And at the end of the desert?"

JUDGEMENT.

"Yes, yes, of course."

Vorbis tried to concentrate. He couldn't. He could feel certainty draining away. And he'd always been certain.

He hesitated, like a man opening a door to a familiar room and finding nothing there but a bottomless pit. The memories were still there. He could feel them. They had the right shape. It was just that he couldn't remember what they were. There had been a voice . . . . Surely, there had been a voice? But all he could remember was the sound of his own thoughts, bouncing off the inside of his own head.

Now he had to cross the desert. What could there be to fear? The desert was what you believed.

Vorbis looked inside himself.

And went on looking.

He sagged to his knees.

I CAN SEE THAT YOU ARE BUSY, said Death.

"Don't leave me! It's so empty!"

Death looked around at the endless desert. He snapped his fingers and a large white horse trotted up.

I SEE A HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE, he said, swinging himself into the saddle.

"Where? Where?"

HERE. WITH YOU.

"I can't see them!"

Death gathered up the reins.

NEVERTHELESS, he said. His horse trotted forward a few steps.

"I don't understand!" screamed Vorbis.

Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?

"Yes. Yes, of course."

Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.

The first boats grounded in the shallows, and the troops leapt into shoulder-high surf.

No one was quite sure who was leading the fleet. Most of the countries along the coast hated one another, not in any personal sense, but simply on a kind of historical basis. On the other hand, how much leadership was necessary? Everyone knew where Omnia was. None of the countries in the fleet hated the others worse than they did Omnia. Now it was necessary for it . . . not to exist.

General Argavisti of Ephebe considered that he was in charge, because although he didn't have the most ships he was avenging the attack on Ephebe. But Imperiator Borvorius of Tsort knew that he was in charge, because there were more Tsortean ships than any others. And Admiral Rham-ap-Efan of Djelibeybi knew that he was in charge, because he was the kind of person who always thought he was in charge of anything. The only captain who did not, in fact, think that he was commanding the fleet was Fasta Benj, a fisherman from a very small nation of marsh-dwelling nomads of whose existence all the other countries were in complete ignorance, and whose small reed boat had been in the path of the fleet and had got swept along. Since his tribe believed that there were only fifty-one people in the world, worshiped a giant newt, spoke a very personal language which no one else understood, and had never seen metal or fire before, he was spending a lot of time wearing a puzzled grin.

Clearly they had reached a shore, not of proper mud and reeds, but of very small gritty bits. He lugged his little reed boat up the sand, and sat down with interest to see what the men in the feathery hats and shiny fish-scale vests were going to do next.

General Argavisti scanned the beach.

"They must have seen us coming," he said. "So why would they let us establish a beachhead?"

Heat haze wavered over the dunes. A dot appeared, growing and contracting in the shimmering air.

More troops poured ashore.

General Argavisti shaded his eyes against the sun.

"Fella's just standing there," he said.

"Could be a spy," said Borvorius.

"Don't see how he could be a spy in his own country," said Argavisti. "Anyway, if he was a spy he'd be creepin' around. That's how you can tell."

The figure had stopped at the foot of the dunes. There was something about it that drew the eye. Argavisti had faced many an opposing army, and this was normal. One patiently waiting figure was not. He found he kept turning to look at it.

"S'carrying something," he said eventually. "Sergeant? Go and bring that man here."

A few minutes later the sergeant returned.

"Says he'll meet you in the middle of the beach, sir," he reported.

"Didn't I tell you to bring him here?"

"He didn't want to come, sir."

"You've got a sword, haven't you?"

"Yessir. Prodded him a bit, but he dint want to move, sir. And he's carrying a dead body, sir."

"On a battlefield? It's not bring-your-own, you know."

"And . . . sir?"

"What?"

"Says he's probably the Cenobiarch, sir. Wants to talk about a peace treaty."

"Oh, he does? Peace treaty? We know about peace treaties with Omnia. Go and tell . . . no. Take a couple of men and bring him here."

Brutha walked back between the soldiers, through the organized pandemonium of the camp. I ought to feel afraid, he thought. I was always afraid in the Citadel. But not now. This is through fear and out the other side.

Occasionally one of the soldiers would give him a push. It's not allowed for an enemy to walk freely into a camp, even if he wants to.

He was brought before a trestle table, behind which sat half a dozen large men in various military styles,

and one small olive-skinned man who was gutting a fish and grinning hopefully at everyone.

"Well, now," said Argavisti, "Cenobiarch of Omnia, eh?"

Brutha dropped Vorbis's body on to the sand. Their gaze followed it.

"I know him-” said Borvorius. "Vorbis! Someone killed him at last, eh? And will you stop trying to sell me fish? Does anyone know who this man is?" he added, indicating Fasta Benj.

"It was a tortoise," said Brutha.

"Was it? Not surprised. Never did trust them, always creeping around. Look, I said no fish! He's not one of mine, I know that. Is he one of yours?"

Argavisti waved a hand irritably. "Who sent you, boy?"

"No one. I came by myself. But you could say I come from the future."

"Are you a philosopher? Where's your sponge?"

"You've come to wage war on Omnia. This would not be a good idea."

"From Omnia's point of view, yes."

"From everyone's. You will probably defeat us. But not all of us. And then what will you do? Leave a garrison? For ever? And eventually a new generation will retaliate. Why you did this won't mean anything to them. You'll be the oppressors. They'll fight. They might even win. And there'll be another war. And one day people will say: why didn't they sort it all out, back then? On the beach. Before it all started. Before all those people died. Now we have that chance. Aren't we lucky?"

Argavisti stared at him. Then he nudged Borvorius.

"What did he say?"

Borvorius, who was better at thinking than the others, said, "Are you talking about surrender?"

"Yes. If that's the word."

Argavisti exploded.

"You can't do that!"

"Someone will have to. Please listen to me. Vorbis is dead. He's paid."

"Not enough. What about your soldiers? They tried to sack our city!"

"Do your soldiers obey your orders?"

"Certainly! "

"And they'd cut me down here and now if you commanded it?"

"I should say so!"

"And I'm unarmed," said Brutha.

The sun beat down on an awkward pause.

"When I say they'd obey-” Argavisti began.

"We were not sent here to parley," said Borvorius abruptly. "Vorbis's death changes nothing fundamental. We are here to see that Omnia is no longer a threat."

"It is not. We will sent materials and people to help rebuild Ephebe. And gold, if you like. We will reduce the size of our army. And so on. Consider us beaten. We will even open Omnia to whatever other religions wish to build holy places here."

A voice echoed in his head, like the person behind you who says, "Put the red Queen on the black King," when you think you have been playing all by yourself . . .

I. What?

"This will encourage . . . local effort," said Brutha.

IL Other Gods? Here?

"There will be free trade along the coast. I wish to see Omnia take its place among its fellow nations."

III. I heard You Mention Other Gods.

"Its place is at the bottom," said Borvorius.

"No. That won't work."

IV. Could We Please Get Back To The Matter Of Other Gods?

"Will you please excuse me a moment?" said Brutha, brightly. "I need to pray."

Even Argavisti raised no objection as Brutha walked off a little way up the beach. As St. Ungulant preached to any who would listen, there were plus points in being a madman. People hesitated to stop you, in case it made things worse.

"Yes?" said Brutha, under his breath.

V. I Don't Seem To Recall Any Discussion About Other Gods Being Worshiped In Omnia?

"Ah, but it'll work for you," said Brutha. "People will soon see that those other ones are no good at all, won't they?" He crossed his fingers behind his back.

VI. This Is Religion, Boy. Not Comparison Bloody Shopping! You Shall Not Subject Your God To Market Forces!

"I'm sorry. I can see that you would be worried about-”

VII. Worried? Me? By A Bunch Of Primping Women And Musclebound Posers In Curly Beards?

"Fine. Is that settled, then?"

VIII. They Won't Last Five Minutes! . . . what?

"And now I'd better go and talk to these men one more time."

His eye was caught by a movement among the dunes.

"Oh, no," he said. "The idiots . . .

He turned and ran desperately toward the beached fleet.

"No! It's not like that! Listen! Listen!"

But they had seen the army, too.

It looked impressive, perhaps more impressive than it really was. When news gets through that a huge enemy fleet has beached with the intent of seriously looting, pillaging, and-because they are from civilized countries-whistling and making catcalls at the women and impressing them with their flash bloody uniforms and wooing them away with their flash bloody consumer goods, I don't know, show them a polished bronze mirror and it goes right to their heads, you'd think there was something wrong with the local lads . . . then people either head for the hills or pick up some handy, swingable object, get Granny to hide the family treasures in her drawers, and prepare to make a fight of it.

And, in the lead, the iron cart. Steam poured out of its funnel. Urn must have got it working again.

"Stupid! Stupid!" Brutha shouted, to the world in general, and carried on running.

The fleet was already forming battle-lines, and its commander, whichever he was, was amazed to see an apparent attack by one man.

Borvorius caught him as he plunged towards a line of spears.

"I see," he said. "Keep us talking while your soldiers got into position, eh?"

"No! I didn't want that!"

Borvorius's eyes narrowed. He had not survived the many wars of his life by being a stupid man.

"No," he said, "maybe you didn't. But it doesn't matter. Listen to me, my innocent little priest. Sometimes there has to be a war. Things go too far for words. There's . . . other forces. Now . . . go back to your people. Maybe we'll both be alive when all this is over and then we can talk. Fight first, talk after. That's how it works, boy. That's history. Now, go back."

Brutha turned away.

I. Shall I Smite Them?

"No!"

Il. I Could Make Them As Dust. Just Say The Word.

"No. That's worse than war."

III. But You Said A God Must Protect His People

"What would we be if I told you to crush honest men?"

IV. Not Stuck Full Of Arrows?

No.

The Omnians were assembling among the dunes. A lot of them had clustered around the iron-shielded cart. Brutha looked at it through a mist of despair.

"Didn't I say I'd go down there alone?" he said.

Simony, who was leaning against the Turtle, gave him a grim smile.

"Did it work?" he said.

"I think . . . it didn't."

"I knew it. Sorry you had to find out. Things have a way of wanting to happen, see? Sometimes you get people facing off and . . . that's it."

"But if only people would-”

"Yeah. You could use that as a commandment."

There was a clanging noise, and a hatch opened on the side of the Turtle. Urn emerged, backward, holding a spanner.

"What is this thing?" said Brutha.

"It's a machine for fighting," said Simony. "The Turtle Moves, eh?"

"For fighting Ephebians?" said Brutha.

Urn turned around.

"What?" he said.

"You've built this . . . this thing . . . to fight Ephebians?"

"Well . . . no . . . no," said Urn, looking bewildered. "We're fighting Ephebians?"

"Everyone," said Simony.

"But I never . . . I'm an . . . I never-”

Brutha looked at the spiked wheels and the sawedged plates around the edge of the Turtle.

"It's a device that goes by itself," said Urn. "We were going to use it for . . . I mean . . . look, I never wanted it to . . .'

"We need it now," said Simony.

"Which we?"

"What comes out of the big long spout thing at the front?" said Brutha.

"Steam," said Urn dully. "It's connected to the safety valve."

"Oh."

"It comes out very hot," said Urn, sagging even more.

"Oh?"

"Scalding, in fact."

Brutha's gaze drifted from the steam funnel to the rotating knives.

"Very philosophical," he said.

"We were going to use it against Vorbis," said Urn.

"And now you're not. It's going to be used against Ephebians. You know, I used to think I was stupid, and then I met philosophers."

Simony broke the silence by patting Brutha on the shoulder.

"It will all work out," he said. "We won't lose. After all," he smiled encouragingly, "we have God on our side."

Brutha turned. His fist shot out. It wasn't a scientific blow, but it was hard enough to spin Simony around. He clutched his chin.

"What was that for? Isn't this what you wanted?"

"We get the gods we deserve," said Brutha, "and I think we don't deserve any. Stupid. Stupid. The sanest man I've met this year lives up a pole in the desert. Stupid. I think I ought to join him."

I. Why?

"Gods and men, men and gods," said Brutha. "Everything happens because things have happened before. Stupid."

II. But You Are The Chosen One.

"Choose someone else."

Brutha strode off through the ragged army. No one tried to stop him. He reached the path that led up to the cliffs, and did not even turn to look at the battlelines.

"Aren't you going to watch the battle? I need someone to watch the battle."

Didactylos was sitting on a rock, his hands folded on his stick.

"Oh, hello," said Brutha, bitterly. "Welcome to Omnia."

"It helps if you're philosophical about it," said Didactylos.

"But there's no reason to fight!"

"Yes there is. Honor and revenge and duty and things like that."

"Do you really think so? I thought philosophers were supposed to be logical?"

Didactylos shrugged.

"Well, the way I see it, logic is only a way of being ignorant by numbers."

"I thought it would all be over when Vorbis was dead."

Didactylos stared into his inner world.

"It takes a long time for people like Vorbis to die. They leave echoes in history."

"I know what you mean."

"How's Urn's steam machine?" said Didactylos.

"I think he's a bit upset about it," said Brutha.

Didactylos cackled and banged his stick on the ground.

"Hah! He's learning! Everything works both ways!"

"It should do," said Brutha.

Something like a golden comet sped across the sky of the Discworld. Om soared like an eagle, buoyed up by the freshness, by the strength of the belief. For as long as it lasted, anyway. Belief this hot, this desperate, never lasted long. Human minds could not sustain it. But while it did last, he was strong.

The central spire of Cori Celesti rises up from the mountains at the Hub, ten vertical miles of green ice and snow, topped by the turrets and domes of Dunmanifestin.

There the gods of the Discworld live.

At the least, any god who is anybody. And it is strange that, although it takes years of effort and work and scheming for a god to get there, once there they never seem to do a lot apart from drink too much and indulge in a little mild corruption. Many systems of government follow the same broad lines.

They play games. They tend to be very simple games, because gods are easily bored by complicated things. It is strange that, while small gods can have one aim in mind for millions of years, are in fact one aim, large gods seem to have the attention span of the common mosquito.

And style? If the gods of the Discworld were people they would think that three plaster ducks is a bit avant-garde.

There was a double door at the end of the main hall.

It rocked to a thunderous knocking.

The gods looked up vaguely from their various preoccupations, shrugged and turned away.

The doors burst inward.

Om strode through the debris, looking around with the air of one who has a search to complete and not a lot of time to do it in.

"Right," he said.

Io, God of Thunder, looked up from his throne and waved his hammer threateningly.

"Who are you?"

Om strode toward the throne, picked up to by his toga, and gave a quick jab with his forehead.

Hardly anyone really believes in thunder gods any more . . .

Ow.

"Listen, friend. I've got no time for talking to some pantywaister in a sheet. Where's the gods of Ephebe and Tsort?"

lo, clutching at his nose, waved vaguely towards the center of the hall.

"You nidn't naf to ndo dat!" he said reproachfully.

Om strode across the hall.

In the center of the room was what at first looked like a round table, and then looked like a model of the Discworld, Turtle, elephants and all, and then in some undefinable way looked like the real Discworld, seen from far off yet brought up close to. There was something subtly wrong about the distances, a feeling of vast space curled up small. But possibly the real Discworld wasn't covered with a network of glowing lines, hovering just above the surface. Or perhaps miles above the surface?

Om hadn't seen this before, but he knew what it was. Both a wave and a particle; both a map and the place mapped. If he focused on the tiny glittering dome on top of the tiny Cori Celesti, he would undoubtedly see himself, looking down on an even smaller model . . . and so on, down to the point where the universe coiled up like the tail of an ammonite, a kind of creature that lived millions of years ago and never believed in any gods at all . . .

The gods clustered around it, watching intently.

Om elbowed aside a minor Goddess of Plenty.

There were dice floating just above the world, and a mess of little clay figures and gaming counters. You didn't need to be even slightly omnipotent to know what was going on.

"He hid by nose!"

Om turned around.

"I never forget a face, friend. Just take yours away, right? While you still have some left?"

He turned back to the game.

"S'cuse me," said a voice by his waist. He looked down at a very large newt.

"Yes?"

"You not supposed do that here. No Smiting. Not up here. It the rules. You want fight, you get your humans fight his humans."

"Who're you?"

"P'tang-P'tang, me."

"You're a god?"

"Definite."

"Yeah? How many worshipers have you got?"

"Fifty-one!"

The newt looked at him hopefully, and added, "Is that lots? Can't count."

It pointed at a rather crudely molded figure on the beach in Omnia and said, "But got a stake!"

Om looked at the figure of the little fisherman.

"When he dies, you'll have fifty worshippers," he said.

"That more or less than fifty-one?"

"A lot less."

"Definite?"

"Yes."

"No one tell me that."

There were several dozen gods watching the beach. Om vaguely remembered the Ephebian statues. There was the goddess with the badly carved owl. Yes.

Om rubbed his head. This wasn't god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn't a game down there. People died. Bits got chopped off. We're like eagles up here, he thought. Sometimes we show a tortoise how to flY.

Then we let go.

He said, to the occult world in general, "There's people going to die down there."

A Tsortean God of the Sun did not even bother to look round.

"That's what they're for," he said. In his hand he was holding a dice box that looked very much like a human skull with rubies in the eye-sockets.

"Ah, yes," said Om. "I forgot that, for a moment." He looked at the skull, and then turned to the little Goddess of Plenty.

"What's this, love? A cornucopia? Can I have a look? Thanks."

Om emptied some of the fruit out. Then he nudged the Newt God.

"If I was you, friend, I'd find something long and hefty," he said.

"Is one less than fifty-one?" said P'Tang-P'Tang.

"It's the same," said Om, firmly. He eyed the back of the Tsortean God's head.

"But you have thousands," said the Newt God. "You fight for thousands."

Om rubbed his forehead. I spent too long down there, he thought. I can't stop thinking at ground level.

"I think," he said, "I think, if you want thousands, you have to fight for one." He tapped the Solar God on the shoulder. "Hey, sunshine?"

When the God looked around, Om broke the cornucopia over his head.

It wasn't a normal thunderclap. It stuttered like the shyness of supernovas, great ripping billows of sound that tore up the sky. Sand fountained up and whirled across the recumbent bodies lying face down on the beach. Lightning stabbed down, and sympathetic fire leapt from spear-tip and sword-point.

Simony looked up at the booming darkness.

"What the hell's happening?" He nudged the body next to him.

It was Argavisti. They stared at one another.

More thunder smashed across the sky. Waves climbed up one another to rip into the fleet. Hull drifted with awful grace into hull, giving the bass line of the thunder a counterpoint of groaning wood.

A broken spar thudded into the sand by Simony's head.

"We're dead if we stay here," he said. "Come on."

They staggered through the spray and sand, amidst groups of cowering and praying soldiers, fetching up against something hard, half-covered.

They crawled into the calm under the Turtle.

Other people had already had the same idea. Shadowy figures sat or sprawled in the darkness. Urn sat dejectedly on his toolbox. There was a hint of gutted fish.

"The gods are angry," said Borvorius.

"Bloody furious," said Argavisti.

"I'm not that happy myself," said Simony. "Gods? Huh!"

"This is no time for impiety," said Rham-ap-Efan.

There was a shower of grapes outside.

"Can't think of a better one," said Simony.

A piece of cornucopia shrapnel bounced off the roof of the Turtle, which rocked on its spiked wheels.

"But why be angry with us?" said Argavisti. "We're doing what they want."

Borvorius tried to smile. "Gods, eh?" he said. "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em."

Someone nudged Simony, and passed him a soggy cigarette. It was a Tsortean soldier. Despite himself, he took a puff.

"It's good tobacco," he said. "The stuff we grow tastes like camel's droppings."

He passed it along to the next hunched figure.

THANK YOU.

Borvorius produced a flask from somewhere.

"Will you go to hell if you have a drop of spirit?" he said.

"So it seems," said Simony, absently. Then he noticed the flask. "Oh, you mean alcohol? Probably. But who cares? I won't be able to get near the fire for priests. Thanks."

"Pass it round."

THANK YOU.

The Turtle rocked to a thunderbolt.

"G'n y'himbe bo?"

They all looked at the pieces of raw fish, and Fasta Benj's hopeful expression.

"I could rake some of the coals out of the firebox from here," said Urn, after a while.

Someone tapped Simony on the shoulder, creating a strange tingling sensation.

THANK YOU. I HAVE TO GO.

As he took it he was aware of the rush of air, a sudden breath in the universe. He looked around in time to see a wave lift a ship out of the water and smash it against the dunes.

A distant scream colored the wind.

The soldiers stared.

"There were people under there," said Argavisti.

Simony dropped the flask.

"Come on," he said.

And no one, as they hauled on timbers in the teeth of the gale, as Urn applied everything he knew about levers, as they used their helmets as shovels to dig under the wreckage, asked who it was they were digging for, or what kind of uniform they'd been wearing.

Fog rolled in on the wind, hot and flashing with electricity, and still the sea pounded down.

Simony hauled on a spar, and then found the weight lessen as someone grasped the other end. He looked up into Brutha's eyes.

"Don't say anything," said Brutha.

"Gods are doing this to us?"

"Don't say anything!"

"I've got to know!"

"It's better than us doing this to us, isn't it?"

"There's still people who never got off the ships!"

"No one ever said it was going to be nice!"

Simony pulled aside some planking. There was a man there, armor and leathers so stained as to be unrecognizable, but alive.

"Listen," said Simony, as the wind whipped at him, "I'm not giving in! You've haven't won! I'm not doing this for any sort of god, whether they exist or not! I'm doing it for other people! And stop smiling like that!"

A couple of dice dropped on to the sand. They sparkled and crackled for a while and then evaporated.

The sea calmed. The fog went ragged and curled into nothingness. There was still a haze in the air, but the sun was at least visible again, if only as a brighter area in the dome of the sky.

Once again, there was the sensation of the universe drawing breath.

The gods appeared, transparent and shimmering in and out of focus. The sun glinted off a hint of golden curls, and wings, and lyres.

When they spoke, they spoke in unison, their voices drifting ahead or trailing behind the others, as always

.happens when a group of people are trying to faithfully repeat something they've been told to say.

Om was in the throng, standing right behind the Tsortean God of Thunder with a faraway expression on his face. It was noticeable, if only to Brutha, that the Thunder God's right arm disappeared up behind his own back in a way that, if such a thing could be imagined, would suggest that someone was twisting it to the edge of pain.

What the gods said was heard by each combatant in his own language, and according to his own understanding. It boiled down to:

I. This is Not a Game.

II. Here and Now, You are Alive.

And then it was over.

"You'd make a good bishop," said Brutha.

"Me?" said Didactylos. "I'm a philosopher!"

"Good. It's about time we had one."

""And an Ephebian!"

"Good. You can think up a better way of ruling the country. Priests shouldn't do it. They can't think about it properly. Nor can soldiers."

"Thank you," said Simony.

They were sitting in the Cenobiarch's garden. Far overhead an eagle circled, looking for anything that wasn't a tortoise.

"I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts," said Brutha. "That way, everyone's happy. Think about it. Simony?"

"Yes?"

"I'm making you head of the Quisition."

"What?"

"I want it stopped. And I want it stopped the hard way."

"You want me to kill all the inquisitors? Right!"

"No. That's the easy way. I want as few deaths as possible. Those who enjoyed it, perhaps. But only those. Now . . . where's Urn?"

The Moving Turtle was still on the beach, wheels buried in the sand blown about by the storm. Urn had been too embarrassed to try to unearth it.

"The last I saw, he was tinkering with the door mechanism," said Didactylos. "Never happier than when he's tinkering with things."

"Yes. We shall have to find things to keep him occupied. Irrigation. Architecture. That sort of thing."

"And what are you going to do?" said Simony.

"I've got to copy out the Library," said Brutha.

"But you can't read and write," said Didactylos.

"No. But I can see and draw. Two copies. One to keep here."

"Plenty of room when we burn the Septateuch," said Simony.

"No burning of anything. You have to take a step at a time," said Brutha. He looked out at the shimmering line of the desert. Funny. He'd been as happy as he'd ever been in the desert.

"And then . . ." he began.

"Yes?"

Brutha lowered his eyes, to the farmlands and villages around the Citadel. He sighed.

"And then we'd better get on with things," he said. "Every day."

Fasta Benj rowed home, in a thoughtful frame of mind.

It had been a very good few days. He'd met a lot of new people and sold quite a lot of fish. P'Tang-P'Tang, with his lesser servants, had talked personally to him, making him promise not to wage war on some place he'd never heard of. He'd agreed.[10]

Some of the new people had shown him this amazing way of making lightning. You hit this rock with this piece of hard stuff and you got little bits of lightning which dropped on to dry stuff which got red and hot like the sun. If you put more wood on it got bigger and if you put a fish on it got black but if you were quick it didn't get black but got brown and tasted better than anything he'd ever tasted, although this was not difficult. And he'd been given some knives not made out of rock and cloth not made out of reeds and, all in all, life was looking up for Fasta Benj and his people.

He wasn't sure why lots of people would want to hit Pacha Moj's uncle with a big rock, but it definitely escalated the pace of technological progress.

No one, not even Brutha, noticed that old Lu-Tze wasn't around any more. Not being noticed, either as being present or absent, is part of a history monk's stock in trade.

In fact he'd packed his broom and his bonsai mountains and had gone by secret tunnels and devious means to the hidden valley in the central peaks, where the abbot was waiting for him. The abbot was playing chess in the long gallery that overlooked the valley. Fountains bubbled in the gardens, and swallows flew in and out of the windows.

"All went well?" said the abbot, without looking up.

"Very well, lord," said Lu-Tze. "I had to nudge things a little, though."

"I wish you wouldn't do that sort of thing," said the abbot, fingering a pawn. "You'll overstep the mark one day."

"It's the history we've got these days," said Lu-Tze. "Very shoddy stuff, lord. I have to patch it up all the time-”

"Yes, Yes-”

"We used to get much better history in the old days."

"Things were always better than they are now. It's in the nature of things."

"Yes, lord. Lord?"

The abbot looked up in mild exasperation.

"Er . . . you know the books say that Brutha died and there was a century of terrible warfare?"

"You know my eyesight isn't what it was, Lu-Tze."

"Well . . . it's not entirely like that now."

"Just so long as it all turns out all right in the end," said the abbot.

"Yes, lord," said the history monk.

"There are a few weeks before your next assignment. Why don't you have a little rest?"

"Thank you, lord. I thought I might go down to the forest and watch a few falling trees."

"Good practice. Good practice. Mind always on the job, eh?"

As Lu-Tze left, the abbot glanced up at his opponent.

"Good man, that," he said. "Your move."

The opponent looked long and hard at the board.

The abbot waited to see what long-term, devious strategies were being evolved. Then his opponent tapped a piece with a bony finger.

REMIND ME AGAIN, he said. HOW THE LITTLE HORSESHAPED ONES MOVE.

Eventually Brutha died, in unusual circumstances.

He had reached a great age, but this at least was not unusual in the Church. As he said, you had to keep busy, every day.

He rose at dawn, and wandered over to the window. He liked to watch the sunrise.

They hadn't got around to replacing the Temple doors. Apart from anything else, even Urn hadn't been able to think of a way of removing the weirdly contorted heap of molten metal. So they'd just built steps over them. And after a year or two people had quite accepted it, and said it was probably a symbol. Not of anything, exactly, but still a symbol. Definitely symbolic.

But the sun did shine off the copper dome of the Library. Brutha made a mental note to enquire about the progress of the new wing. There were too many complaints about overcrowding these days.

People came from everywhere to visit the Library. It was the biggest non-magical library in the world. Half the philosophers of Ephebe seemed to live there now, and Omnia was even producing one or two of its own. And even priests were coming to spend some time in it, because of the collection of religious books. There were one thousand, two hundred and eighty-three religious books in there now, each one-according to itself-the only book any man need ever read. It was sort of nice to see them all together. As Didactylos used to say, you had to laugh.

Ix was while Brutha was eating his breakfast that the subdeacon whose job it was to read him his appointments for the day, and tactfully make sure he wasn't wearing his underpants on the outside, shyly offered him congratulations.

"Mmm?" said Brutha, his gruel dripping off the spoon.

"One hundred years," said the subdeacon. "Since you walked in the desert, Sir."

"Really? I thought it was, mm, fifty years? Can't be more than sixty years, boy."

"Uh, one hundred years, lord. We had a look in the records."

"Really. One hundred years? One hundred years' time?" Brutha laid down his spoon very carefully, and stared at the plain white wall opposite him. The subdeacon found himself turning to see what it was the Cenobiarch was looking at, but there was nothing, only the whiteness of the wall.

"One hundred years," mused Brutha. "Mmm. Good lord. I forgot." He laughed. "I forgot. One hundred years, eh? But here and now, we-”

The subdeacon turned round.

"Cenobiarch?"

He stepped closer, the blood draining from his face.

"Lord?"

He turned and ran for help.

Brutha's body toppled forward almost gracefully, smacking into the table. The bowl overturned, and 'gruel dripped down on to the floor.

And then Brutha stood up, without a second glance at his corpse.

"Hah. I wasn't expecting you," he said.

Death stopped leaning against the wall.

HOW FORTUNATE YOU WERE.

"But there's still such a lot to be done . . ."

YES. THERE ALWAYS IS.

Brutha followed the gaunt figure through the wall where, instead of the privy that occupied the far side in normal space, there was . . .

. . . black sand.

The light was brilliant, crystalline, in a black sky filled with stars.

"Ah. There really is a desert. Does everyone get this?" said Brutha.

WHO KNOWS?

"And what is at the end of the desert?"

JUDGEMENT.

Brutha considered this.

"Which end?"

Death grinned and stepped aside.

What Brutha had thought vas a rock in the sand was a hunched figure, sitting clutching its knees. It looked paralyzed with fear.

He stared.

"Vorbis?" he said.

He looked at Death.

"But Vorbis died a hundred years ago!"

YES. HE HAD TO WALK IT ALL ALONE. ALL ALONE WITH HIMSELF. IF HE DARED.

"He's been here for a hundred years?"

POSSIBLY NOT. TIME IS DIFFERENT HERE. IT IS . . . MORE PERSONAL.

"Ah. You mean a hundred years can pass like a few seconds?"

A HUNDRED YEARS CAN PASS LIKE INFINITY.

The black-on-black eyes stared imploringly at Brutha, who reached out automatically, without thinking . . . and then hesitated.

HE WAS A MURDERER, said Death. AND A CREATOR OF MURDERERS. A TORTURER. WITHOUT PASSION. CRUEL. CALLOUS. COMPASSIONLESS.

"Yes. I know. He's Vorbis," said Brutha. Vorbis changed people. Sometimes he changed them into dead people. But he always changed them. That was his triumph.

He sighed.

"But I'm me," he said.

Vorbis stood up, uncertainly, and followed Brutha across the desert.

Death watched them walk away.

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[1] Or, if you are a believer in Omnianism, the Pole.

[2] Which were of the one-size-fits-all, tighten-the-screws variety.

[3] Or would have done. If he had been there. But he wasn't. So he couldn't.

[4] It takes forty men with their feet on the ground to keep one man with his head in the air.

[5] Words are the litmus paper of the mind. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter," don't stop to pack.

[6] Provided that he wasn't poor, foreign, nor disqualified by reason of being mad, frivolous, or a woman.

[7] i.e., before the inhabitants had let goats graze everywhere. Nothing makes a desert like a goat.

[8] But not enough.

[9] Like many early thinkers, the Ephebians believed that thoughts originated in the heart and that the brain was merely a device to cool the blood.

[10] Fasta Benj's people had no word for war, since they had no one to fight and life was quite tough enough as it was. P'Tang-P'tang's words had arrived as: "remember when Pacha Moj hit his uncle with big rock? Like that, only more worse."