“Yeah,” said Urn, grinning. “Use your left hand, do you?”
“Er, I use both,” said Brutha. “But not very well, everyone says.”
“Ah,” said Didactylos. “Ambi-sinister?”
“What?”
“He means incompetent with both hands,” said Om.
“Oh. Yes. That's me.” Brutha coughed politely. “Look . . . I'm looking for a philosopher. Um. One that knows about gods.”
He waited.
Then he said, “You aren't going to say they're a relic of an outmoded belief system?”
Didactylos, still running his fingers over Om's shell, shook his head.
“Nope. I like my thunderstorms a long way off.”
“Oh. Could you stop turning him over and over? He's just told me he doesn't like it.”
“You can tell how old they are by cutting them in half and counting the rings,” said Didactylos.
“Um. He hasn't got much of a sense of humor, either.”
“You're Omnian, by the sound of it.” Yes."
“Here to talk about the treaty?”
“I do the listening.”
“And what do you want to know about gods?”
Brutha appeared to be listening.
Eventually he said: “How they start. How they grow. And what happens to them afterwards.”
Didactylos put the tortoise into Brutha's hands.
“Costs money, that kind of thinking,” he said.
“Let me know when we've used more than fifty-two obols' worth,” said Brutha. Didactylos grinned.
“Looks like you can think for yourself,” he said. “Got a good memory?”
“No. Not exactly a good one.”
“Right? Right. Come on into the Library. It's got an earthed copper roof, you know. Gods really hate that sort of thing.”
Didactylos reached down beside him and picked up a rusty iron lantern.
Brutha looked up at the big white building.
“That's the Library?” he said.
“Yes,” said Didactylos. “That's why it's got LIBRVM carved over the door in such big letters. But a scribe like you'd know that, of course.”
The Library of Ephebe was-before it burned down-the second biggest on the Disc.