Terry Pratchett - Small Gods

"Hah. I wasn't expecting you," he said.

Death stopped leaning against the wall.

HOW FORTUNATE YOU WERE.

"But there's still such a lot to be done . . ."

YES. THERE ALWAYS IS.

Brutha followed the gaunt figure through the wall where, instead of the privy that occupied the far side in normal space, there was . . .

. . . black sand.

The light was brilliant, crystalline, in a black sky filled with stars.

"Ah. There really is a desert. Does everyone get this?" said Brutha.

WHO KNOWS?

"And what is at the end of the desert?"

JUDGEMENT.

Brutha considered this.

"Which end?"

Death grinned and stepped aside.

What Brutha had thought vas a rock in the sand was a hunched figure, sitting clutching its knees. It looked paralyzed with fear.

He stared.

"Vorbis?" he said.

He looked at Death.

"But Vorbis died a hundred years ago!"

YES. HE HAD TO WALK IT ALL ALONE. ALL ALONE WITH HIMSELF. IF HE DARED.

"He's been here for a hundred years?"

POSSIBLY NOT. TIME IS DIFFERENT HERE. IT IS . . . MORE PERSONAL.

"Ah. You mean a hundred years can pass like a few seconds?"

A HUNDRED YEARS CAN PASS LIKE INFINITY.

The black-on-black eyes stared imploringly at Brutha, who reached out automatically, without thinking . . . and then hesitated.

HE WAS A MURDERER, said Death. AND A CREATOR OF MURDERERS. A TORTURER. WITHOUT PASSION. CRUEL. CALLOUS. COMPASSIONLESS.

"Yes. I know. He's Vorbis," said Brutha. Vorbis changed people. Sometimes he changed them into dead people. But he always changed them. That was his triumph.

He sighed.

"But I'm me," he said.

Vorbis stood up, uncertainly, and followed Brutha across the desert.

Death watched them walk away.

Or, if you are a believer in Omnianism, the Pole.

Which were of the one-size-fits-all, tighten-the-screws variety.

Or would have done. If he had been there. But he wasn't. So he couldn't.

It takes forty men with their feet on the ground to keep one man with his head in the air.

Words are the litmus paper of the mind. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter," don't stop to pack.

Provided that he wasn't poor, foreign, nor disqualified by reason of being mad, frivolous, or a woman.

i.e., before the inhabitants had let goats graze everywhere. Nothing makes a desert like a goat.

But not enough.

Like many early thinkers, the Ephebians believed that thoughts originated in the heart and that the brain was merely a device to cool the blood.

Fasta Benj's people had no word for war, since they had no one to fight and life was quite tough enough as it was. P'Tang-P'tang's words had arrived as: "remember when Pacha Moj hit his uncle with big rock? Like that, only more worse."