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.”
