I would .
. . . forward nine paces, and right one pace, and forward nineteen paces, and left two paces . . .
There was a light ahead. Not the occasional white glow of moonlight from the slits in the roof, but yel?low lamplight, dimming and brightening as its owner came nearer.
“Someone's coming,” he whispered. “It must be one of the guides!”
Vorbis had vanished.
Brutha hovered uncertainly in the passageway as the light bobbed nearer.
An elderly voice said, “That you, Number Four?”
The light came round a corner. It half-illuminated an old man, who walked up to Brutha and raised the candle to his face.
“Where's Number Four?” he said, peering around Brutha.
A figure appeared behind the man, from out of a side?passage. Brutha had the briefest glimpse of Vorbis, his face strangely peaceful, as he gripped the head of his staff, twisted and pulled. Sharp metal glittered for a moment in the candlelight.
o;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.”
Brutha tried to keep hold of the idea, but the sheer enormity of it kept wrenching it from his mental grasp.
“But you're not dead,” he managed.
“Next best thing,” said Om. “And you know what? No other small god is trying to usurp me. Did I ever tell you about old Ur-Gilash? No? He was the god back in what's now Omnia before me. Not much of one. Basically a weather god. Or a snake god. Some?thing, anyway. It took years to get rid of him, though. Wars and everything. So I've been thinking . . .”
Brutha said nothing.
“Om still exists,” said the tortoise. “I mean the shell. All you'd have to do is get people to under?stand.”
Brutha still said nothing.