Terry Pratchett - Small Gods

"VIII. There is no truth whatsoever in the rumor that I ran away at this juncture. It was just the pressure of the crowd. I have never been a friend of the Quisition. I might have sold them food, but I always charged them extra.

"IX. Anyway, right, then he pushed through the line of guards what was holding the crowd back and stood right in front of the doors, and they weren't sure what to do about bishops, and I heard him say something like, I carried you in the desert, I believed all my life, just give me this one thing.

"X. Something like that, anyway. How about some yoghurt? Bargain offer. Onna stick."

Om lifted himself over a creeper-clad wall by grasping tendrils in his beak and hauling himself up by the neck muscles. Then he fell down the other side. The Citadel was as far away as ever.

Brutha's mind was flaming like a beacon in Om's senses. There's a streak of madness in everyone who spends quality time with gods, and it was driving the boy now.

"It's too soon!" Om yelled. "You need followers! It can't be just you! You can't do it by yourself! You have to get disciples first!"

Simony turned to look down the length of the Turtle. Thirty men were crouched under the shell, looking very apprehensive.

A corporal saluted.

"The needle's there, sergeant."

The brass whistle whistled.

Simony picked up the steering ropes. This was what war should be, he thought. No uncertainty. A few more Turtles like this, and no one would ever fight again.

"Stand by," he said.

He pulled the big lever hard.

The brittle metal snapped in his hand.

Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem.

In the depths of the Temple's hidden plumbing, Urn grasped a bronze pipe firmly with his spanner and gave the nut a cautious turn. It resisted. He changed position, and grunted as he used more pressure.

With a sad little metal sound, the pipe twisted-and broke . . .

Water gushed out, hitting him in the face. He dropped the tool and tried to block the flow with his fingers, but it spurted around his hands and gurgled down the channel towards one of the weights.

"Stop it! Stop it!" he shouted.

"What?" said Fergmen, several feet below him.

"Stop the water!"

"How?"

"The pipe's broken!"

"I thought that's what we wanted to do?"

"Not yet!"

"Stop shouting, mister! There's guards around!"

Urn let the water gush for a moment as he struggled out of his robe, and then he rammed the sodden material into the pipe. It shot out again with some force and slapped wetly against the lead funnel, sliding down until it blocked the tube that led to the weights. The water piled up behind it and then spilled over on to the floor.

Urn glanced at the weight. It hadn't begun to move.

He relaxed slightly. Now, provided there was still enough water to make the weight drop . . .

"Both of you-stand still."

He looked around, his mind going numb.

There was a heavy-set man in a black robe standing in the stricken doorway. Behind him, a guard held a sword in a meaningful manner.

"Who are you? Why are you here?"

Urn hesitated for only a moment.

He gestured with his spanner.

"Well, it's the seating, innit," he said. "You've got shocking seepage around the seating. Amazing it holds together."

The man stepped into the room. He glared uncer­tainly at Urn for a moment and then turned his atten­tion to the gushing pipe. And then back to Urn.

"But you're not-” he began.

He spun around as Fergmen hit the guard hard with a length of broken pipe. When he turned back, Urn's spanner caught him full in the stomach. Urn wasn't strong, but it was a long spanner, and the well­known principles of leverage did the rest. He doubled up and then sagged backwards against one of the weights.

What happened next happened in frozen time. Dea­con Cusp grabbed at the weight for support. It sank down, ponderously, his extra poundage adding to the weight of the water. He clawed higher. It sank further, dropping below the lip of the pit. He sought for bal­ance again, but this time it was against fresh air, and he tumbled on top of the falling weight.

Urn saw his face staring up at him as the weight fell into the gloom.

With a lever, he could change the world. It had certainly changed it for Deacon Cusp. It had made it stop existing.

Fergmen was standing over the guard, his pipe raised.

"I know this one," he said. "I'm going to give him a-”

"Never mind about that!"

"But-”

Above them linkage clanked into action. There was a distant creaking of bronze against bronze.

"Let's get out of here," said Urn. "Only the gods know what's happening up there."

And blows rained on the unmoving Moving Turtle's carapace.

"Damn! Damn! Damn!" shouted Simony, thump­ing it again. "Move! I command you to move! Can you understand plain Ephebian! Move!"

The unmoving machine leaked steam and sat there.

And Om pulled himself up the slope of a small hill. So it came to this, then. There was only one way to get to the Citadel now.

It was a million-to-one chance, with any luck.

And Brutha stood in front of the huge doors, oblivious to the crowd and the muttering guards. The Quisition could arrest anyone, but the guards weren't certain what happened to you if you apprehended an arch­bishop, especially one so recently favored by the Prophet.

Just a sign, Brutha thought, in the loneliness of his head.

The doors trembled, and swung slowly outwards.

Brutha stepped forward. He wasn't fully conscious now, not in any coherent way as understood by normal people. Just one part of him was still capable of looking at the state of his own mind and thinking: perhaps the Great Prophets felt like this all the time.

The thousands inside the temple were looking around in confusion. The choirs of lesser Iams paused in their chant. Brutha walked on up the aisle, the only one with a purpose in the suddenly bewildered throng.

Vorbis was standing in the center of the temple, under the vault of the dome. Guards hurried toward Brutha, but Vorbis raised a hand in a gentle but very positive movement.

Now Brutha could take in the scene. There was the staff of Ossory, and Abbys's cloak, and the sandals of Cena. And, supporting the dome, the massive statues of the first four prophets. He'd never seen them. He'd heard about them every day of his childhood.

And what did they mean now? They didn't mean anything. Nothing meant anything, if Vorbis was Prophet. Nothing meant anything, if the Cenobiarch was a man who'd heard nothing in the inner spaces of his own head but his own thoughts.

He was aware that Vorbis's gesture had not only halted the guards, although they surrounded him like a hedge. It had also filled the temple with silence. Into which Vorbis spoke.

"Ah. My Brutha. We had looked for you in vain. And now even you are here . . ."

Brutha stopped a few feet away. The moment of . . . whatever it had been . . . that had propelled him through the doors had drained away.

Now all there was, was Vorbis.

Smiling.

The part of him still capable of thought was think­ing: there is nothing you can say. No one will listen. No one will care. It doesn't matter what you tell peo­ple about Ephebe, and Brother Murduck, and the des­ert. It won't be fundamentally true.

Fundamentally true. That's what the world is, with Vorbis in it.

Vorbis said, "There is something wrong? Some­thing you wish to say?"

The black-on-black eyes filled the world, like two pits.

Brutha's mind gave up, and Brutha's body took over. It brought his hand back and raised it, oblivious to the sudden rush forward of the guards.

He saw Vorbis turn his cheek, and smile.