Small Gods

Page 48

“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.