Small Gods - Terry Pratchett [77]
“What do you call it when you’ve got a dead calm surrounded by winds—” Urn began.
“Hurricane?” said Didactylos.
Lightning crackled between sky and sea. Urn yanked at the lever that lowered the screw into the water. His eyes glowed almost as brightly as the lightning.
“Now there’s a power,” he said. “Harnessing the lightning! The dream of mankind!”
The Unnamed Boat surged forward.
“Is it? It’s not my dream,” said Didactylos. “I always dream of a giant carrot chasing me through a field of lobsters.”
“I mean metaphorical dream, master,” said Urn.
“What’s a metaphor?” said Simony.
Brutha said, “What’s a dream?”
A pillar of lightning laced the mist. Secondary lightnings sparked off the spinning globe.
“You can get it from cats,” said Urn, lost in a philosophical world, as the Boat left a white wake behind it. “You stroke them with a rod of amber, and you get tiny lightnings…if I could magnify that a million times, no man would ever be a slave again and we could catch it in jars and do away with the night…”
Lightning struck a few yards away.
“We’re in a boat with a large copper ball in the middle of a body of salt water,” said Didactylos. “Thanks, Urn.”
“And the temples of the gods would be magnificently lit, of course,” said Urn quickly.
Didactylos tapped his stick on the hull. “It’s a nice idea, but you’d never get enough cats,” he said. The sea surged up.
“Jump into the water!” Om shouted.
“Why?” said Brutha.
A wave almost overturned the boat. Rain hissed on the surface of the sphere, sent up a scalding spray.
“I haven’t got time to explain! Jump overboard! It’s for the best! Trust me!”
Brutha stood up, holding the sphere’s framework to steady himself.
“Sit down!” said Urn.
“I’m just going out,” said Brutha. “I may be some time.”
The boat rocked under him as he half-jumped, half-fell into the boiling sea.
Lightning struck the sphere.
As Brutha bobbed to the surface he saw, for a moment, the globe glowing white-hot and the Unnamed Boat, its screw almost out of the water, skimming away through the mists like a comet. It vanished in the clouds and rain. A moment later, above the noise of the storm, there was a muffled “boom.”
Brutha raised his hand. Om broke the surface, blowing seawater out of his nostrils.
“You said it would be for the best!” screamed Brutha.
“Well? We’re still alive! And hold me out of the water! Tortoises can’t swim!”
“But they might be dead!”
“Do you want to join them?”
A wave submerged Brutha. For a moment the world was a dark green curtain, ringing in his ears.
“I can’t swim with one hand!” he shouted, as he broke surface again.
“We’ll be saved! She wouldn’t dare!”
“What do you mean?”
Another wave slapped at Brutha, and suction dragged at his robes.
“Om?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t think I can swim…”
Gods are not very introspective. It has never been a survival trait. The ability to cajole, threaten, and terrify has always worked well enough. When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency toward quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow’s-point-of-view is seldom necessary.
Which had led, across the multiverse, to men and women of tremendous brilliance and empathy devoting their entire lives to the service of deities who couldn’t beat them at a quiet game of dominoes. For example, Sister Sestina of Quirm defied the wrath of a local king and walked unharmed across a bed of coals and propounded a philosophy of sensible ethics on behalf of a goddess whose only real interest was in hairstyles, and Brother Zephilite of Klatch left his vast estates and his family and spent his life ministering to the sick and poor on behalf of the invisible god F’rum, generally considered unable, should he have a backside, to find it with both hands, should he have hands. Gods never need to be very bright when there are humans around to be it for them.
The Sea Queen was considered fairly dumb even by other gods. But there was a certain logic to her thoughts, as she moved deep below the storm-tossed waves. The little