“I was thinking of adding another wheel,” said St. Ungulant, “just over there. To catch the morning sun, you know.”
Brutha looked around him. Nothing but flat rock and sand stretched away on every side.
“Don’t you get the sun everywhere all the time?” he said.
“But it’s much more important in the morning,” said St. Ungulant. “Besides, Angus says we ought to have a patio.”
“He could barbecue on it,” said Om, inside Brutha’s head.
“Um,” said Brutha. “What . . . religion . . . are you a saint of, exactly?”
An expression of embarrassment crossed the very small amount of face between St. Ungulant’s eyebrows and his mustache.
“Uh. None, really. That was all rather a mistake,” he said. “My parents named me Sevrian Thaddeus Ungulant, and then one day, of course, most amusing, someone drew attention to the initials. After that, it all seemed rather inevitable.”
The wheel rocked slightly. St. Ungulant’s skin was almost blackened by the desert sun.
“I’ve had to pick up herming as I went along, of course,” he said. “I taught myself. I’m entirely selftaught. You can’t find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing.”
“Er . . . but there’s . . . Angus?” said Brutha, stating at the spot where he believed Angus to be, or at least where he believed St. Ungulant believed Angus to be.
“He’s over here now,” said the saint sharply, pointing to a different part of the wheel. “But he doesn’t do any of the herming. He’s not, you know, trained. He’s just company. My word, I’d have gone quite mad if it wasn’t for Angus cheering me up all the time!”
“Yes . . . I expect you would,” said Brutha. He smiled at the empty air, in order to show willing.
“Actually, it’s a pretty good life. The hours are rather long but the food and drink are extremely worthwhile.”
Brutha had a distinct feeling that he knew what was going to come next.
“Beer cold enough?” he said.
“Extremely frosty,” said St. Ungulant, beaming.
“And the roast pig?”
St. Ungulant’s smile was manic.
“All brown and crunchy round the edges, yes,” he said.
“But I expect, er . . . you eat the occasional lizard or snake, too?”
“Funny you should say that. Yes. Every once in a while. Just for a bit of variety.”
“And mushrooms, too?” said Om.
“Any mushrooms in these parts?” said Brutha innocently.
St. Ungulant nodded happily.
“After the annual rains, yes. Red ones with yellow spots. The desert becomes really interesting after the mushroom season.”
“Full of giant purple singing slugs? Talking pillars of flame? Exploding giraffes? That sort of thing?” said Brutha carefully.
“Good heavens, yes,” said the saint. “I don’t know why. I think they’re attracted by the mushrooms.”
Brutha nodded.
“You’re catching on, kid,” said Om.
“And I expect sometimes you drink . . . water?” said Brutha.
“You know, it’s odd, isn’t it,” said St. Ungulant. “There’s all this wonderful stuff to drink but every so often I get this, well, I can only call it a craving, for a few sips of water. Can you explain that?”
“It must be . . . a little hard to come by,” said Brutha, still talking very carefully, like someone playing a fifty-pound fish on a fifty-one-pound breakingstrain fishing-line.
“Strange, really,” said St. Ungulant. “When icecold beer is so readily available, too.”
“Where, uh, do you get it? The water?” said Brutha.
“You know the stone plants?”
“The ones with the big flowers?”
“If you cut open the fleshy part of the leaves, there’s up to half a pint of water,” said the saint. “It tastes like weewee, mind you.”
“I think we could manage to put up with that,” said Brutha, through dry lips. He backed toward the rope-ladder that was the saint’s contact with the ground.
“Are you sure you won’t stay?” said St. Ungulant. “It’s Wednesday. We get sucking pig plus chef’s selection of sun-drenched dew-fresh vegetables on Wednesdays.”
“We, uh, have lots to do,” said Brutha, halfway down the swaying ladder.
“Sweets from the trolley?”
“I think perhaps . . .
St. Ungulant looked down sadly at Brutha helping Vorbis away across the wilderness.
“And afterward there’s probably mints!” he shouted, through cupped hands. “No?”
Soon the figures were mere dots on the sand.
“There may be visions of sexual grati-no, I tell a lie, that’s Fridays . . .” St. Ungulant murmured.
Now that the visitors had gone, the air was once again filled with the zip and whine of the small gods. There were billions of them.
St. Ungulant smiled.
He was, of course, mad. He’d occasionally suspected this. But he took the view that madness should not be wasted. He dined daily on the food of the gods, drank the rarest vintages, ate fruits that were not only out of season but out of reality. Having to drink the occasional mouthful of brackish water and chew the odd lizard leg for medicinal purposes was a small price to pay.
He turned back to the laden table that shimmered in the air. All this . . . and all the little gods wanted was someone to know about them, someone to even believe that they existed.
There was jelly and ice-cream today, too.
“All the more for us, eh, Angus?”
Yes, said Angus.
The fighting was over in Ephebe. It hadn’t lasted long, especially when the slaves joined in. There were too many narrow streets, too many ambushes and, above all, too much terrible determination. It’s generally held that free men will always triumph over slaves, but perhaps it all depends on your point of view.
Besides, the Ephebian garrison commander had declared somewhat nervously that slavery would henceforth be abolished, which infuriated the slaves. What would be the point of saving up to become free if you couldn’t own slaves afterwards? Besides, how’d they eat?
The Omnians couldn’t understand, and uncertain people fight badly. And Vorbis had gone. Certainties seemed less certain when those eyes were elsewhere.
The Tyrant was released from his prison. He spent his first day of freedom carefully composing messages to the other small countries along the coast.
It was time to do something about Omnia.
Brutha sang.
His voice echoed off the rocks. Flocks of scalbies shook off their lazy pedestrian habits and took off frantically, leaving feathers behind in their rush to get airborne. Snakes wriggled into cracks in the stone.
You could live in the desert. Or at least survive . . .
Getting back to Omnia could only be a matter of time. One more day . . .
Vorbis trooped along a little behind him. He said nothing and, when spoken to, gave no sign that he had understood what had been said to him.
Om, bumping along in Brutha’s pack, began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist.
The strained strains of Claws of Iron shall Rend the Ungodly faded away. There was a small rockslide, some way off.
“We’re alive,” said Brutha.
“For now.”
“And we’re close to home.”
“Yes?”
“I saw a wild goat on the rocks back there.”
“There’s still a lot of ’em about.”
“Goats?”
“Gods. And the ones we had back there were the puny ones, mind you.”
“What do you mean?”
Om sighed. “It’s reasonable, isn’t it? Think about it. The stronger ones hang around the edge, where there’s prey . . . I mean, people. The weak ones get pushed out to the sandy places, where people hardly ever go-”
“The strong gods,” said Brutha, thoughtfully. “Gods that know about being strong.”
“That’s right.”
“Not gods that know what it feels like to be weak . . .”
“What? They wouldn’t last five minutes. It’s a god-eat-god world.”
“Perhaps that explains something about the nature of gods. Strength is hereditary. Like sin.”
His face clouded.
“Except that . . . it isn’t. Sin, I mean. I think, perhaps, when we get back, I shall talk to some people.”
“Oh, and they’ll listen, will they?”
“Wisdom comes out of the wilderness, they say.”
“Only the wisdom that people want. And mushrooms.”
When the sun was starting to climb Brutha milked a goat. It stood patiently while Om soothed its mind. And Om didn’t suggest killing it, Brutha noticed.
Then they found shade again. There were bushes here, lowgrowing, spiky, every tiny leaf barricaded behind its crown of thorns.
Om watched for a while, but the small gods on the edge of the wilderness were more cunning and less urgent. They’d be here, probably at noon, when the sun turned the landscape into a hellish glare. He’d hear them. In the meantime, he could eat.
He crawled through the bushes, their thorns scraping harmlessly along his shell. He passed another tortoise, which wasn’t inhabited by a god and gave him that vague stare that tortoises employ when they’re deciding whether something is there to be eaten or made love to, which are the only things on a normal tortoise mind. He avoided it, and found a couple of leaves it had missed.