And then he was alone again.
But he thought: Hold on. I don't have to be. I'm a bishop. At least I can watch. Om's gone and soon the world will end, so at least I might as well watch it happen.
Sandals flapping, Brutha set off towards the Place.
Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.
“You godawful idiot! Don't go that way!”
The sun was well up now. In fact it was probably setting, if Didactylos's theories about the speed of light were correct, but in matters of relativity the point of view of the observer is very important, and from Om's point of view the sun was a golden ball in a flaming orange sky.
He pulled himself up another slope, and stared blearily at the distant Citadel. In his mind's eye, he could hear the mocking voices of all small gods.
They didn't like a god who had failed. They didn't like that at all. It let them all down. It reminded them of mortality. He'd be thrust out into the deep desert, where no one would ever come. Ever. Until the end of the world.
He shivered in his shell.
Urn and Fergmen walked nonchalantly through the tunnels of the Citadel, using the kind of nonchalant walk which, had there been anyone to take an interest in it, would have drawn detailed and arrow-sharp attention to them within seconds. But the only people around were those with vital jobs to do. Besides, it was not a good idea to stare too hard at the guards, in case they stared back.
Simony had told Urn he'd agreed to this. He couldn't quite remember doing so. The sergeant knew a way into the Citadel, that was sensible. And Urn knew about hydraulics. Fine. Now he was walking through these dry tunnels with his toolbelt clinking. There was a logical connection, but it had been made by someone else.
Fergmen turned a corner and stopped by a large grille, which stretched from floor to ceiling. It was very rusty. It might once have been a door-there was a suggestion of hinges, rusted into the stone. Urn peered through the bars. Beyond, in the gloom, there were pipes.
“Eureka,” he said.
“Going to have a bath, then?” said Fergmen.
“Just keep watch.”
Urn selected a short crowbar from his belt and inserted it between the grille and the stonework. Give me a foot of good steel and a wall to brace . . . my . . . foot . . . against-the grille ground forward and then popped out with a leaden sound-and I can change the world . . .
He stepped inside the long, dark, damp room, and gave a whistle of admiration.
No one had done any maintenance for-well, for as long as it took iron hinges to become a mass of crumbling rust-but all this still worked?
He looked up at lead and iron buckets bigger than he was, and a tangle of man-sized pipes.
This was the breath of God.
Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent-protection.
There were the levers and there, hanging over pits in the rock floor, were the two sets of counterweights. Probably it'd only take a few hundred gallons of water to swing the balance either way. Of course, the water'd have to be pumped up-
“Sergeant?”
Fergmen peered round the door. He looked nervous, like an atheist in a thunderstorm.
“What?”
Urn pointed.
“There's a big shaft through the wall there, see? At the bottom of the gear-chain?”
“The what?”
“The big knobbly wheels?”
“Oh. Yeah.”