“Philosophy! Practical philosophy! Like Urn's engine there. It could drag Omnia kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat!”
“Kicking and screaming,” said Brutha.
“By any means necessary,” said Simony.
He beamed at them.
“Don't worry about him,” said Om. “We'll be far away. Just as well, too. I don't think Omnia's going to be a popular country when news of last night's work gets about.”
“But it was Vorbis's fault!” said Brutha out loud. “He started the whole thing! He sent poor Brother Murduck, and then he had him killed so he could blame it on the Ephebians! He never intended any peace treaty! He just wanted to get into the palace!”
“Beats me how he managed that, too,” said Urn. “No one ever got through the labyrinth without a guide. How did he do it?”
Didactylos's blind eyes sought out Brutha.
“Can't imagine,” he said. Brutha hung his head.
“He really did all that?” said Simony.
“Yes.”
“You idiot! You total sandhead!” screamed Om.
“And you'd tell this to other people?” said Simony, insistently.
“I suppose so.”
“You'd speak out against the Quisition?”
Brutha stared miserably into the night. Behind them, the flames of Ephebe had merged into one orange spark.
“All I can say is what I remember,” he said.
“We're dead,” said Om. “Throw me over the side, why don't you? This bonehead will want to take us back to Omnia!”
Simony rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“Vorbis has many enemies,” he said, “in certain circumstances. Better he should be killed, but some would call that murder. Or even martyrdom. But a trial . . . if there was evidence . . . if they even thought there could be evidence . . ”
“I can see his mind working!” Om screamed. “We'd all be safe if you'd shut up!”
“Vorbis on trial,” Simony mused.
Brutha blanched at the thought. It was the kind of thought that was almost impossible to hold in the mind. It was the kind of thought that made no sense. Vorbis on trial? Trials were things that happened to other people.
He remembered Brother Murduck. And the soldiers who had been lost in the desert. And all the things that had been done to people, even to Brutha.
“Tell him you can't remember!” Om yelled. “Tell him you can't recall!”
“And if he was on trial,” said Simony, “he'd be found guilty. No one would dare do anything else.”
Thoughts always moved slowly through Brutha's mind, like icebergs. They arrived slowly and left slowly and when they were there they occupied a lot of space, much of it below the surface.
He thought: the worst thing about Vorbis isn't that he's evil, but that he makes good people do evil. He turns people into things like himself. You can't help it. You catch it off him.
There was no sound but the slosh of water against the Unnamed Boat's hull and the spinning of the philosophical engine.
“We'd be caught if we returned to Omnia,” said Brutha slowly.