Wobbling slightly, his shell jerking from side to side, the former Great God Om set off to explore the citadel erected to his greater glory.
He couldn't help noticing things had changed a lot in three thousand years.
“Me?” said Brutha. "But, but-
“I don't believe he means to punish you,” said Nhumrod. “Although punishment is what you richly deserve, of course. We all richly deserve,” he added piously.
“But why?”
-why? He said he just wants to talk to you."
“But there is nothing I could possibly say that a quisitor wants to hear!” wailed Brutha.
“-Hear. I am sure you are not questioning the dea?con's wishes,” said Nhumrod.
“No. No. Of course not,” said Brutha. He hung his head.
“Good boy,” said Nhumrod. He patted as far up Brutha's back as he could reach. “Just you trot along,” he said. “I'm sure everything will be all right.” And then, because he too had been brought up in habits of honesty, he added, “Probably all right.”
There were few steps in the Citadel. The progress of the many processions that marked the complex rituals of Great Om demanded long, gentle slopes. Such steps as there were, were low enough to encompass the faltering steps of very old men. And there were so many very old men in the Citadel.
Sand blew in all the time from the desert. Drifts built up on the steps and in the courtyards, despite everything that an army of brush-wielding novices could do.
But a tortoise has very inefficient legs.
“Thou Shall Build Shallower Steps,” he hissed, hauling himself up.
Feet thundered past him, a few inches away. This was one of the main thoroughfares of the Citadel, leading to the Place of Lamentation, and was trodden by thousands of pilgrims every day.
Once or twice an errant sandal caught his shell and spun him around.
“Your feet to fly from your body and be buried in a termite mound!” he screamed.
It made him feel a little better.
Another foot clipped him and slid him across the stones. He fetched up, with a clang, against a curved metal grille set low in one wall. Only a lightning grab with his jaws stopped him slipping through it. He ended up hanging by his mouth over a cellar.
A tortoise has incredibly powerful jaw muscles. He swayed a bit, legs wobbling. All right. A tortoise in a crevassed, rocky landscape was used to this sort of thing. He just had to get a leg hooked . . .
Faint sounds drew themselves to his attention. There was the clink of metal, and then a very soft whimper.
Om swiveled his eye around.
The grille was high in one wall of a very long, low room. It was brightly illuminated by the light-wells that ran everywhere through the Citadel.
Vorbis had made a point of that. The inquisitors shouldn't work in the shadows, he said, but in the light.
Where they could see, very clearly, what they were doing.
So could Om.
He hung from the grille for some time, unable to take his eye off the row of benches.
On the whole, Vorbis discouraged red-hot irons, spiked chains, and things with drills and big screws on, unless it was for a public display on an important Fast day. It was amazing what you could do, he always said, with a simple knife . . .
er Nhumrod and Brother Vorbis looked down at him, tossing and turning on his bed like a beached whale.
“It's the sun,” said Nhumrod, almost calm now after the initial shock of having the exquisitor come looking for him. “The poor lad works all day in that garden. It was bound to happen.”