Small Gods - Terry Pratchett [48]
“Danger attends us at every turn,” said Vorbis quietly. “Any man who breaks rank or fraternizes in any way will explain his conduct to the inquisitors. At length.”
Brutha looked at a woman filling a jug from a well. It did not look like a very military act.
He was feeling that strange double feeling again. On the surface there were the thoughts of Brutha, which were exactly the thoughts that the Citadel would have approved of. This was a nest of infidels and unbelievers, its very mundanity a subtle cloak for the traps of wrong thinking and heresy. It might be bright with sunlight, but in reality it was a place of shadows.
But down below were the thoughts of the Brutha that watched Brutha from the inside…
Vorbis looked wrong here. Sharp and unpleasant. And any city where potters didn’t worry at all when naked, dripping wet old men came and drew triangles on their walls was a place Brutha wanted to find out more about. He felt like a big empty jug. The thing to do with something empty was fill it up.
“Are you doing something to me?” he whispered.
In his box, Om looked at the shape of Brutha’s mind. Then he tried to think quickly.
“No,” he said, and that at least was the truth. Had this ever happened before?
Had it been like this back in the first days? It must have been. It was all so hazy now. He couldn’t remember the thoughts he’d had then, just the shape of the thoughts. Everything had been highly colored, everything had been growing every day—he had been growing every day; thoughts and the mind that was thinking them were developing at the same speed. Easy to forget things from those times. It was like a fire trying to remember the shape of its flames. But the feeling—he could remember that.
He wasn’t doing anything to Brutha. Brutha was doing it to himself. Brutha was beginning to think in godly ways. Brutha was starting to become a prophet.
Om wished he had someone to talk to. Someone who understood.
This was Ephebe, wasn’t it? Where people made a living trying to understand?
The Omnians were to be housed in little rooms around a central courtyard. There was a fountain in the middle, in a very small grove of sweet-smelling pine trees. The soldiers nudged one another. People think that professional soldiers think a lot about fighting, but serious professional soldiers think a lot more about food and a warm place to sleep, because these are two things that are generally hard to get, whereas fighting tends to turn up all the time.
There was a bowl of fruit in Brutha’s cell, and a plate of cold meat. But first things first. He fished the God out of the box.
“There’s fruit,” he said. “What’re these berries?”
“Grapes,” said Om. “Raw material for wine.”
“You mentioned that word before. What does it mean?”
There was a cry from outside.
“Brutha!”
“That’s Vorbis. I’ll have to go.”
Vorbis was standing in the middle of his cell.
“Have you eaten anything?” he demanded.
“No, lord.”
“Fruit and meat, Brutha. And this is a fast day. They seek to insult us!”
“Um. Perhaps they don’t know that it is a fast day?” Brutha hazarded.
“Ignorance is itself a sin,” said Vorbis.
“Ossory VII, verse 4,” said Brutha automatically.
Vorbis smiled and patted Brutha’s shoulder.
“You are a walking book, Brutha. The Septateuch perambulatus.”
Brutha looked down at his sandals.
He’s right, he thought. And I had forgotten. Or at least, not wanted to remember.
And then he heard his own thoughts echoed back to him: it’s fruit and meat and bread, that’s all. That’s all it is. Fast days and feast days and Prophets’ Days and bread days…who cares? A God whose only concern about food now is that it’s low enough to reach?
I wish he wouldn’t keep patting my shoulder.
Vorbis turned away.
“Shall I remind the others?” Brutha said.
“No. Our ordained brothers will not, of course, require reminding. As for soldiers…a little license, perhaps, is allowable this far from home…”
Brutha wandered back to his cell.
Om was still on the table, staring fixedly at the melon.
“I nearly committed a terrible sin,” said Brutha. “I nearly ate fruit