“He's going to be in big trouble in Omnia if he is. They've got a bastard of a god there. Did you ever read old Abraxas?”
“No, master.”
“Very big on gods. Big gods man. Always smelled of burnt hair. Naturally resistant.”
Om crawled slowly along the length of a line.
“Stop walking up and down like that,” he said, “I can't concentrate.”
“How can people talk like that?” Brutha asked the empty air. “Acting as if they're glad they don't know things! Finding out more and more things they don't know! It's like children proudly coming to show you a full potty!”
Om marked his place with a claw.
“But they find things out,” he said. “This Abraxas was a thinker and no mistake. I didn't know some of this stuff. Sit down!”
Brutha obeyed.
“Right,” said Om. “Now . . . listen. Do you know how gods get power?”
“By people believing in them,” said Brutha. “Millions of people believe in you.”
Om hesitated.
All right, all right. We are here and it is now. Sooner or later he'll find out for himself . . .
“They don't believe,” said Om.
"But-
“It's happened before,” said the tortoise. “Dozens of times. D'you know Abraxas found the lost city of Ee? Very strange carvings, he says. Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.”
“I don't understand,” said Brutha.
“Let me put it another way,” said the tortoise. “I am your God, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you'll obey me.”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now take a rock and go and kill Vorbis.”
Brutha didn't move.
“I'm sure you heard me,” said Om.
"But he'll . . . he's . . . the Quisition would-
“Now you know what I mean,” said the tortoise. “You're more afraid of him than you are of me, now. Abraxas says here: `Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed.' ”
“That can't be true!”
“I think it is. Abraxas says there's a kind of shellfish that lives in the same way. It makes a bigger and bigger shell until it can't move around any more, and so it dies.”
“But . . . but . . . that means . . . the whole Church . . .”
“Yes.”