“Will it?” said Brutha, as they stepped out into the night.
No.
“Tell me again. Why exactly are we looking for a philosopher?” said Brutha.
“I want to get my power back,” said Om.
“But everyone believes in you!”
“If they believed in me they could talk to me. I could talk to them. I don't know what's gone wrong. No one is worshiping any other gods in Omnia, are they?”
“They wouldn't be allowed to,” said Brutha. “The Quisition would see to that.”
“Yeah. It's hard to kneel if you have no knees.”
Brutha stopped in the empty street.
“I don't understand you!”
“You're not supposed to. The ways of gods aren't supposed to be understandable to men.”
“The Quisition keeps us on the path of truth! The Quisition works for the greater glory of the Church!”
“And you believe that, do you?” said the tortoise.
Brutha looked, and found that certainty had gone missing. He opened and shut his mouth, but there were no words to be said.
“Come on,” said Om, as kindly as he could manage. “Let's get back.”
In the middle of the night Om awoke. There were noises from Brutha's bed.
Brutha was praying again.
Om listened curiously. He could remember prayers. There had been a lot of them, once. So many that he couldn't make out an individual prayer even if he had felt inclined to, but that didn't matter, because what mattered was the huge cosmic susurration of thousands of praying, believing minds. The words weren't worth listening to, anyway.
Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that'd happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn't a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time . . .
Well, he couldn't even do the most basic of god tricks now. Thunderbolts with about the same effect as the spark off a cat's fur, and you could hardly smite anyone with one of those. He had smitten good and hard in his time. Now he could just about walk through water and feed the One.
Brutha's prayer was a piccolo tune in a world of silence.
Om waited until the novice was quiet again and then unfolded his legs and walked out, rocking from side to side, into the dawn.
The Ephebians walked through the palace courtyards, surrounding the Omnians almost, but not quite, in the manner of a prisoners' escort.
Brutha could see that Vorbis was boiling with fury. A small vein on the side of the exquisitor's bald temple was throbbing.
As if feeling Brutha's eyes on him, Vorbis turned his head.
“You seem ill at ease this morning, Brutha,” he said.
“Sorry, lord.”
“You seem to be looking into every corner. What are you expecting to find?”
“Uh. Just interested, lord. Everything's new.”
“All the so-called wisdom of Ephebe is not worth one line from the least paragraph in the Septateuch,” said Vorbis.