Small Gods - Terry Pratchett [67]
“But you wrote…you said the world is on the back of a giant turtle! You gave the turtle a name!”
Didactylos shrugged. “Now I know better,” he said. “Who ever heard of a turtle ten thousand miles long? Swimming through the emptiness of space? Hah. For stupidity! I am embarrassed to think of it now.”
Vorbis shut his mouth. Then he opened it again.
“This is how an Ephebian philosopher behaves?” he said.
Didactylos shrugged again. “It is how any true philosopher behaves,” he said. “One must always be ready to embrace new ideas, take account of new proofs. Don’t you agree? And you have brought us many new points”—a gesture seemed to take in, quite by accident, the Omnian bowmen around the room—“for me to ponder. I can always be swayed by powerful argument.”
“Your lies have already poisoned the world!”
“Then I shall write another book,” said Didactylos calmly. “Think how it will look—proud Didactylos swayed by the arguments of the Omnians. A full retraction. Hmm? In fact, with your permission, lord—I know you have much to do, looting and burning and so on—I will retire to my barrel right away and start work on it. A universe of spheres. Balls spinning through space. Hmm. Yes. With your permission, lord, I will write you more balls than you can imagine…”
The old philosopher turned and, very slowly, walked towards the exit.
Vorbis watched him go.
Brutha saw him half-raise his hand to signal the guards, and then lower it again.
Vorbis turned to the Tyrant.
“So much for your—” he began.
“Coo-ee!”
The lantern sailed through the doorway and shattered against Vorbis’s skull.
“Nevertheless…the Turtle Moves!”
Vorbis leapt to his feet.
“I—” he screamed, and then got a grip on himself. He waved irritably at a couple of the guards. “I want him caught. Now. And…Brutha?”
Brutha could hardly hear him for the rush of blood in his ears. Didactylos had been a better thinker than he’d thought.
“Yes, lord?”
“You will take a party of men, and you will take them to the Library…and then, Brutha, you will burn the Library.”
Didactylos was blind, but it was dark. The pursuing guards could see, except that there was nothing to see by. And they hadn’t spent their lives wandering the twisty, uneven and above all many-stepped lanes of Ephebe.
“—eight, nine, ten, eleven,” muttered the philosopher, bounding up a pitch-dark flight of steps and haring around a corner.
“Argh, ow, that was my knee,” muttered most of the guards, in a heap about halfway up.
One made it to the top, though. By starlight he could just make out the skinny figure, bounding madly along the street. He raised his crossbow. The old fool wasn’t even dodging…
A perfect target.
There was a twang.
The guard looked puzzled for a moment. The bow toppled from his hands, firing itself as it hit the cobbles and sending its bolt ricocheting off a statue. He looked down at the feathered shaft sticking out of his chest, and then at the figure detaching itself from the shadows.
“Sergeant Simony?” he whispered.
“I’m sorry,” said Simony. “I really am. But the Truth is important.”
The soldier opened his mouth to give his opinion of the truth and then slumped forward.
He opened his eyes.
Simony was walking away. Everything looked lighter. It was still dark. But now he could see in the darkness. Everything was shades of gray. And the cobbles under his hand had somehow become a coarse black sand.
He looked up.
ON YOUR FEET, PRIVATE ICHLOS.
He stood up sheepishly. Now he was more than just a soldier, an anonymous figure to chase and be killed and be no more than a shadowy bit-player in other people’s lives. Now he was Dervi Ichlos, aged thirty-eight, comparatively blameless in the general scheme of things, and dead.
He raised a hand to his lips uncertainly.
“You’re the judge?” he said.
NOT ME.
Ichlos looked at the sands stretching away. He knew instinctively what he had to do. He was far less sophisticated than General Fri’it, and took more notice of songs he’d learned in his childhood. Besides, he had an advantage. He’d had even less religion