“Why don’t you run away?” he said.
“Oh, done that,” said the slave. “Ran away to Tsort once. Didn’t like it much. Came back. Run away for a fortnight in Djelibeybi every winter, though.”
“Do you get brought back?” said Brutha.
“Huh!” said the slave. “No, I don’t. Miserable skinflint, Aristocrates. I have to come back by myself. Hitching lifts on ships, that kind of thing.”
“You come back?”
“Yeah. Abroad’s all right to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. Anyway, I’ve only got another four years as a slave and then I’m free. You get the vote when you’re free. And you get to keep slaves.” His face glazed with the effort of recollection as he ticked off points on his fingers. “Slaves get three meals a day, at least one with meat. And one free day a week. And two weeks being-allowed-to-runaway every year. And I don’t do ovens or heavy lifting, and worldly-wise repartee only by arrangement.”
“Yes, but you’re not free, ” said Brutha, intrigued despite himself.
“What’s the difference?”
“Er . . . you don’t get any days off.” Brutha scratched his head. “And one less meal.”
“Really? I think I’ll give freedom a miss then, thanks.”
“Er . . . have you seen a tortoise anywhere around here?” said Brutha.
“No. And I cleaned under the bed.”
“Have you seen one anywhere else today?”
“You want one? There’s good eating on a-”
“No. No. It’s all right-”
“Brutha! ”
It was Vorbis’s voice. Brutha hurried out into the courtyard and into Vorbis’s cell.
“Ah, Brutha.”
“Yes, lord?”
Vorbis was sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring at the wall.
“You are a young man visiting a new place,” said Vorbis. “No doubt there is much you wish to see.”
“There is?” said Brutha. Vorbis was using the exquisitor voice again-a level monotone, a voice like a strip of dull steel.
“You may go where you wish. See new things, Brutha. Learn everything you can. You are my eyes and ears. And my memory. Learn about this place.”
“Er. Really, lord?”
“Have I impressed you with my use of careless language, Brutha?”
“No, lord.”
“Go away. Fill yourself. And be back by sunset.”
“Er. Even the Library?” said Brutha.
“Ah? Yes, the Library. The Library that they have here. Of course. Crammed with useless and dangerous and evil knowledge. I can see it in my mind, Brutha. Can you imagine that?”
“No, Lord Vorbis.”
“Your innocence is your shield, Brutha. No. By all means go to the Library. I have no fear of any effect on you. ”
“Lord Vorbis?”
“Yes?”
“The Tyrant said that they hardly did anything to Brother Murduck . . .”
Silence unrolled its restless length.
Vorbis said, “He lied.”
“Yes.” Brutha waited. Vorbis continued to stare at the wall. Brutha wondered what he saw there. When nothing else appeared to be forthcoming, he said, “Thank you.”
He stepped back a bit before he went out, so that he could squint under the deacon’s bed.
He’s probably in trouble, Brutha thought as he hurried through the palace. Everyone wants to eat tortoises.
He tried to look everywhere while avoiding the friezes of unclad nymphs.
Brutha was technically aware that women were a different shape from men; he hadn’t left the village until he was twelve, by which time some of his contemporaries were already married. And Omnianism encouraged early marriage as a preventive against Sin, although any activity involving any part of the human anatomy between neck and knees was more or less Sinful in any case.
Brutha wished he was a better scholar so he could ask his God why this was.
Then he found himself wishing his God was a more intelligent God so it could answer.
He hasn’t screamed for me, he thought. I’m sure I would have heard. So maybe no one’s cooking him.
A slave polishing one of the statues directed him to the Library. Brutha pounded down an aisle of pillars.
When he reached the courtyard in front of the Library it was crowded with philosophers, all craning to look at something. Brutha could hear the usual petulant squabbling that showed that philosophical discourse was under way.
In this case:
“I’ve got ten obols here says it can’t do it again!”
“Talking money? That’s something you don’t hear every day, Xeno.”
“Yeah. And it’s about to say goodbye.”
“Look, don’t be stupid. It’s a tortoise. It’s just doing a mating dance . . .”
There was a breathless pause. Then a sort of collective sigh.
“There!”
“That’s never a right angle!”
“Come on! I’d like to see you do better in the circumstances!”
“What’s it doing now?”
“The hypotenuse, I think.”
“Call that a hypotenuse? It’s wiggly.”
“It’s not wiggly. It’s drawing it straight and you’re looking at it in a wiggly way!”
“I’ll bet thirty obols it can’t do a square!”
“Here’s forty obols says it can.”
There was another pause, and then a cheer.
“Yeah!”
“That’s more of a parallelogram, if you ask me,” said a petulant voice.
“Listen, I knows a square when I sees one! And that’s a square.”
“All right. Double or nothing then. Bet it can’t do a dodecagon.”
“Hah! You bet it couldn’t do a septagon just now.”
“Double or nothing. Dodecagon. Worried, eh! Feeling a bit avis domestica? Cluck-cluck?”
“It’s a shame to take your money . . .”
There was another pause.
“Ten sides? Ten sides? Hah!”
“Told you it wasn’t any good! Whoever heard of a tortoise doing geometry?”
“Another daft idea, Didactylos?”
“I said so all along. It’s just a tortoise.”
“There’s good eating on one of those things . . .”
The mass of philosophers broke up, pushing past Brutha without paying him much attention. He caught a glimpse of a circle of damp sand, covered with geometrical figures. Om was sitting in the middle of them. Behind him was a very grubby pair of philosophers, counting out a pile of coins.
“How did we do, Urn?” said Didactylos.
“We’re fifty-two obols up, master.”
“See? Every day things improve. Pity it didn’t know the difference between ten and twelve, though. Cut one of its legs off and we’ll have a stew.”
“Cut off a leg?”
“Well, a tortoise like that, you don’t eat it all at once.”
Didactylos turned his face towards a plump young man with splayed feet and a red face, who was staring at the tortoise.
“Yes?” he said.
“The tortoise does know the difference between ten and twelve,” said the fat boy.
“Damn thing just lost me eighty obols,” said Didactylos.
“Yes. But tomorrow . . .” the boy began, his eyes glazing as if he was carefully repeating something he’d just heard “. . . tomorrow . . . you should be able to get odds of at least three to one.”
Didactylos’s mouth dropped open.
“Give me the tortoise, Urn,” he said.
The apprentice philosopher reached down and picked up Om, very carefully.
“You know, I thought right at the start there was something funny about this creature,” said Didactylos. “I said to Urn, there’s tomorrow’s dinner, and then he says no, it’s dragging its tail in the sand and doing geometry. That doesn’t come natural to a tortoise, geometry.”
Om’s eye turned to Brutha.
“I had to,” he said. “It was the only way to get his attention. Now I’ve got him by the curiosity. When you’ve got ’em by the curiosity, their hearts and minds will follow.”
“He’s a God,” said Brutha.
“Really? What’s his name?” said the philosopher.
“Don’t tell him! Don’t tell him! The local gods’ll hear!”
“I don’t know,” said Brutha.
Didactylos turned Om over.
“The Turtle Moves,” said Urn thoughtfully.
“What?” said Brutha.
“Master did a book,” said Urn.
“Not really a book,” said Didactylos modestly. “More a scroll. Just a little thing I knocked off.”
“Saying that the world is flat and goes through space on the back of a giant turtle?” said Brutha.
“Have you read it?” Didactylos’s gaze was unmoving. “Are you a slave?”
“No,” said Brutha. “I am a-”
“Don’t mention my name! Call yourself a scribe or something!”
“-scribe,” said Brutha weakly.
“Yeah,” said Urn. “I can see that. The telltale callus on the thumb where you hold the pen. The inkstains all over your sleeves.”
Brutha glanced at his left thumb. “I haven’t-”
“Yeah,” said Urn, grinning. “Use your left hand, do you?”
“Er, I use both,” said Brutha. “But not very well, everyone says.”
“Ah,” said Didactylos. “Ambi-sinister?”
“What?”
“He means incompetent with both hands,” said Om.
“Oh. Yes. That’s me.” Brutha coughed politely. “Look . . . I’m looking for a philosopher. Um. One that knows about gods.”
He waited.
Then he said, “You aren’t going to say they’re a relic of an outmoded belief system?”
Didactylos, still running his fingers over Om’s shell, shook his head.
“Nope. I like my thunderstorms a long way off.”
“Oh. Could you stop turning him over and over? He’s just told me he doesn’t like it.”