“Your innocence is your shield, Brutha. No. By all means go to the Library. I have no fear of any effect on you. ”
“Lord Vorbis?”
“Yes?”
“The Tyrant said that they hardly did anything to Brother Murduck . . .”
Silence unrolled its restless length.
Vorbis said, “He lied.”
“Yes.” Brutha waited. Vorbis continued to stare at the wall. Brutha wondered what he saw there. When nothing else appeared to be forthcoming, he said, “Thank you.”
He stepped back a bit before he went out, so that he could squint under the deacon's bed.
He's probably in trouble, Brutha thought as he hurried through the palace. Everyone wants to eat tortoises.
He tried to look everywhere while avoiding the friezes of unclad nymphs.
Brutha was technically aware that women were a different shape from men; he hadn't left the village until he was twelve, by which time some of his contemporaries were already married. And Omnianism encouraged early marriage as a preventive against Sin, although any activity involving any part of the human anatomy between neck and knees was more or less Sinful in any case.
Brutha wished he was a better scholar so he could ask his God why this was.
Then he found himself wishing his God was a more intelligent God so it could answer.
He hasn't screamed for me, he thought. I'm sure I would have heard. So maybe no one's cooking him.
A slave polishing one of the statues directed him to the Library. Brutha pounded down an aisle of pillars.
When he reached the courtyard in front of the Library it was crowded with philosophers, all craning to look at something. Brutha could hear the usual petulant squabbling that showed that philosophical discourse was under way.
In this case:
“I've got ten obols here says it can't do it again!”
“Talking money? That's something you don't hear every day, Xeno.”
“Yeah. And it's about to say goodbye.”
“Look, don't be stupid. It's a tortoise. It's just doing a mating dance . . .”
There was a breathless pause. Then a sort of collective sigh.
“There!”
“That's never a right angle!”
“Come on! I'd like to see you do better in the circumstances!”
“What's it doing now?”
“The hypotenuse, I think.”
“Call that a hypotenuse? It's wiggly.”
“It's not wiggly. It's drawing it straight and you're looking at it in a wiggly way!”
“I'll bet thirty obols it can't do a square!”