“When you were almost fourteen, and your grandmother had beaten you for stealing cream from the stillroom, which in fact you had not done, she locked you in your room and you said, 'I wish you were-' ”
There will be a sign, thought Vorbis. There was always a sign, for the man who watched for them. A wise man always put himself in the path of the God.
He strolled through the Citadel. He always made a point of taking a daily walk through some of the lower levels, although of course always at a different time, and via a different route. Insofar as Vorbis got any pleasure in life, at least in any way that could be recognized by a normal human being, it was in seeing the faces of humble members of the clergy as they rounded a corner and found themselves face-to-chin with Deacon Vorbis of the Quisition. There was always that little intake of breath that indicated a guilty conscience. Vorbis liked to see properly guilty consciences. That was what consciences were for. Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned.
He rounded a corner and saw, scratched crudely on the wall opposite, a rough oval with four crude legs and even cruder head and tail.
He smiled. There seemed to be more of them lately. Let heresy fester, let it come to the surface like a boil. Vorbis knew how to wield the lance.
But the second or two of reflection had made him walk past a turning and, instead, he stepped out into the sunshine.
He was momentarily lost, for all his knowledge of the byways of the church. This was one of the walled gardens. Around a fine stand of tall decorative Klatchian corn, bean vines raised red and white blossoms towards the sun; in between the bean rows, melons baked gently on the dusty soil. In the normal way, Vorbis would have noted and approved of this efficient use of space, but in the normal way he wouldn't have encountered a plump young novice, rolling back and forth in the dust with his fingers in his ears.
Vorbis stared down at him. Then he prodded Brutha with his sandal.
“What ails you, my son?”
Brutha opened his eyes.
There weren't many superior members of the hierarchy he could recognize. Even the Cenobiarch was a distant blob in the crowd. But everyone recognized Vorbis the exquisitor. Something about him projected itself on your conscience within a few days of your arrival at the Citadel. The God was merely to be feared in the perfunctory ways of habit, but Vorbis was dreaded.
Brutha fainted.
“How very strange,” said Vorbis.
A hissing noise made him look round.
There was a small tortoise near his foot. As he glared, it tried to back away, and all the time it was staring at him and hissing like a kettle.
He picked it up and examined it carefully, turning it over and over in his hands. Then he looked around the walled garden until he found a spot in full sunshine, and put the reptile down, on its back. After a moment's thought he took a couple of pebbles from one of the vegetable beds and wedged them under the shell so that the creature's movement wouldn't tip it over.
Vorbis believed that no opportunity to acquire esoteric knowledge should ever be lost, and made a mental note to come back again in a few hours to see how it was getting on, if work permitted.
Then he turned his attention to Brutha.
There was a hell for blasphemers. There was a hell for the disputers of rightful authority. There were a number of hells for liars. There was probably a hell for little boys who wished their grandmothers were dead. There were more than enough hells to go around.
This was the definition of eternity; it was the space of time devised by the Great God Om to ensure that everyone got the punishment that was due to them.
The Omnians had a great many hells.
Currently, Brutha was going through all of them.
ed the bean rows for the look of the thing. The Great God Om, although currently the small god Om, ate a lettuce leaf.
All my life, Brutha thought, I've known that the Great God Om-he made the holy horns sign in a fairly half-hearted way?-was a . . . a . . . great big beard in the sky, or sometimes, when He comes down into the world, as a huge bull or a lion or . . . something big, anyway. Something you could look up to.
Somehow a tortoise isn't the same. I'm trying hard . . . but it isn't the same. And hearing him talk about the SeptArchs as if they were just . . . just some mad old men . . . it's like a dream . . .
In the rain-forests of Brutha's subconscious the butterfly of doubt emerged and flapped an experimental wing, all unaware of what chaos theory has to say about this sort of thing . . .
“I feel a lot better now,” said the tortoise. “Better than I have for months.”
“Months?” said Brutha. “How long have you been . . . ill?”
The tortoise put its foot on a leaf.
“What day is it?” it said.