And, sometimes, not even that.
Brother Nhumrod was wrestling with impure thoughts in the privacy of his severe cell when he heard the fervent voice from the novitiates' dormitory.
The Brutha boy was flat on his face in front of a statue of Om in His manifestation as a thunderbolt, shaking and gabbling fragments of prayer.
There was something creepy about that boy, Nhumrod thought. It was the way he looked at you when you were talking, as if he was listening.
He wandered out and prodded the prone youth with the end of his cane.
“Get up, boy! What do you think you're doing in the dormitory in the middle of the day? Mmm?”
Brutha managed to spin around while still flat on the floor and grasped the priest's ankles.
“Voice! A voice! It spoke to me!” he wailed.
Nhumrod breathed out. Ah. This was familiar ground. Voices were right up Nhumrod's cloister. He heard them all the time.
“Get up, boy,” he said, slightly more kindly.
Brutha got to his feet.
He was, as Nhumrod had complained before, too old to be a proper novice. About ten years too old. Give me a boy up to the age of seven, Nhumrod had always said.
But Brutha was going to die a novice. When they made the rules, they'd never allowed for anything like Brutha.
His big red honest face stared up at the novice master.
“Sit down on your bed, Brutha,” said Nhumrod.
Brutha obeyed immediately. Brutha did not know the meaning of the word disobedience. It was only one of a large number of words he didn't know the meaning of.
Nhumrod sat down beside him.
“Now, Brutha,” he said, “you know what happens to people who tell falsehoods, don't you?”
Brutha nodded, blushing.
“Very well. Now tell me about these voices.”
Brutha twisted the hem of his robe in his hands.
“It was more like one voice, master,” he said.
“-like one voice,” said Brother Nhumrod. “And what did this voice say? Mmm?”
ONSIDER THE TORTOISE AND the eagle.
The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat.
And then there is the eagle. A creature of the air and high places, whose horizons go all the way to the edge of the world. Eyesight keen enough to spot the rustle of some small and squeaky creature half a mile away. All power, all control. Lightning death on wings. Talons and claws enough to make a meal of anything smaller than it is and at least take a hurried snack out of anything bigger.
And yet the eagle will sit for hours on the crag and survey the kingdoms of the world until it spots a distant movement and then it will focus, focus, focus on the small shell wobbling among the bushes down there on the desert. And it will leap . . .
And a minute later the tortoise finds the world dropping away from it. And it sees the world for the first time, no longer one inch from the ground but five hundred feet above it, and it thinks: what a great friend I have in the eagle.
And then the eagle lets go.
And almost always the tortoise plunges to its death. Everyone knows why the tortoise does this. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. No one knows why the eagle does this. There's good eating on a tortoise but, considering the effort involved, there's much better eating on practically anything else. It's simply the delight of eagles to torment tortoises.