Faint sounds drew themselves to his attention. There was the clink of metal, and then a very soft whimper.
Om swiveled his eye around.
The grille was high in one wall of a very long, low room. It was brightly illuminated by the light-wells that ran everywhere through the Citadel.
Vorbis had made a point of that. The inquisitors shouldn't work in the shadows, he said, but in the light.
Where they could see, very clearly, what they were doing.
So could Om.
He hung from the grille for some time, unable to take his eye off the row of benches.
On the whole, Vorbis discouraged red-hot irons, spiked chains, and things with drills and big screws on, unless it was for a public display on an important Fast day. It was amazing what you could do, he always said, with a simple knife . . .
But many of the inquisitors liked the old ways best.
After a while, Om very slowly hauled himself up to the grille, neck muscles twitching. Like a creature with its mind on something else, the tortoise hooked first one front leg over a bar, then another. His back legs waggled for a while, and then he hooked a claw on to the rough stonework.
He strained for a moment and then pulled himself back into the light.
He walked off slowly, keeping close to the wall to avoid the feet. He had no alternative to walking slowly in any case, but now he was walking slowly because he was thinking. Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time.
Anyone could go to the Place of Lamentation. It was one of the great freedoms of Omnianism.
There were all sorts of ways to petition the Great God, but they depended largely on how much you could afford, which was right and proper and exactly how things should be. After all, those who had achieved success in the world clearly had done it with the approval of the Great God, because it was impossible to believe that they had managed it with His disapproval. In the same way, the Quisition could act without possibility of flaw. Suspicion was proof. How could it be anything else? The Great God would not have seen fit to put the suspicion in the minds of His exquisitors unless it was right that it should be there. Life could be very simple, if you believed in the Great God Om. And sometimes quite short, too.
But there were always the improvident, the stupid, and those who, because of some flaw or oversight in this life or a past one, were not even able to afford a pinch of incense. And the Great God, in His wisdom and mercy as filtered through His priests, had made provision for them.
Prayers and entreaties could be offered up in the Place of Lamentation. They would assuredly be heard. They might even be heeded.
Behind the Place, which was a square two hundred meters across, rose the Great Temple itself.
There, without a shadow of a doubt, the God listened.
Or somewhere close, anyway . . .
Thousands of pilgrims visited the Place every day.
A heel knocked Om's shell, bouncing him off the wall. On the rebound a crutch caught the edge of his carapace and whirled him away into the crowd, spinning like a coin. He bounced up against the bedroll of an old woman who, like many others, reckoned that the efficacy of her petition was increased by the amount of time she spent in the square.
The God blinked muzzily. This was nearly as bad as eagles. It was nearly as bad as the cellar . . . no, perhaps nothing was as bad as the cellar . . .
He caught a few words before another passing foot kicked him away.
“The drought has been on our village for three years . . . a little rain, oh Lord?”
Rotating on the top of his shell, vaguely wondering if the right answer might stop people kicking him, the Great God muttered, “No problem.”
Another foot bounced him, unseen by any of the pious, between the forest of legs. The world was a blur.
He caught an ancient voice, steeped in hopelessness, saying, “Lord, Lord, why must my son be taken to join your Divine Legion? Who now will tend the farm? Could you not take some other boy?”
“Don't worry about it,” squeaked Om.
A sandal caught him under his tail and flicked him several yards across the square. No one was looking down. It was generally believed that staring fixedly at the golden horns on the temple roof while uttering the prayer gave it added potency. Where the presence of the tortoise was dimly registered as a bang on the ankle, it was disposed of by an automatic prod with the other foot .
“. . . my wife, who is sick with the . . .”