Brutha lay on his back among sails and ropes somewhere under the decking. It was hot, and the air smelled of all air anywhere that has ever come into contact with bilges.
Brutha hadn't eaten all day. Initially he'd been too ill to. Then he just hadn't.
“But being cruel to animals doesn't mean he's a . . . bad person,” he ventured, the harmonics of his tone suggesting that even he didn't believe this. It had been quite a small porpoise.
“He turned me on to my back,” said Om.
“Yes, but humans are more important than animals,” said Brutha.
“This is a point of view often expressed by humans,” said Om.
"Chapter IX, verse 16 of the book of- Brutha began.
“Who cares what any book says?” screamed the tortoise.
Brutha was shaken.
“But you never told any of the prophets that people should be kind to animals,” he said. “I don't remember anything about that. Not when you were . . . bigger. You don't want people to be kind to animals because they're animals, you just want people to be kind to animals because one of them might be you.”
“That's not a bad idea!”
"Besides, he's been kind to me. He didn't have to be.
“You think that? Is that what you think? Have you looked at the man's mind?”
“Of course I haven't! I don't know how to!”
“You don't?”
"No! Humans can't do-
Brutha paused. Vorbis seemed to do it. He only had to look at someone to know what wicked thoughts they harbored. And grandmother had been the same.
“Humans can't do it, I'm sure,” he said. “We can't read minds.”
“I don't mean reading them, I mean looking at them,” said Om. “Just seeing the shape of them. You can't read a mind. You might as well try and read a river. But seeing the shape's easy. Witches can do it, no trouble.”
“ `The way of the witch shall be as a path strewn with thorns,' ” said Brutha.
“Ossory?” said Om.
“Yes. But of course you'd know,” said Brutha.
“Never heard it before in my life,” said the tortoise bitterly. “It was what you might call an educated guess.”
“Whatever you say,” said Brutha, “I still know that you can't truly be Om. The God would not talk like that about His chosen ones.”
“I never chose anyone,” said Om. “They chose themselves.”
“If you're really Om, stop being a tortoise.”
“I told you, I can't. You think I haven't tried? Three years! Most of that time I thought I was a tortoise.”
“Then perhaps you were. Maybe you're just a tortoise who thinks he's a god.”
“Nah. Don't try philosophy again. Start thinking like that and you end up thinking maybe you're just a butterfly dreaming it's a whelk or something. No. One day all I had on my mind was the amount of walking necessary to get to the nearest plant with decent lowgrowing leaves, the next . . . I had all this memory filling up my head. Three years before the shell. No, don't you tell me I'm a tortoise with big ideas.”
Brutha hesitated. He knew it was wicked to ask, but he wanted to know what the memory was. Anyway, could it be wicked? If the God was sitting there talking to you, could you say anything truly wicked?