Small Gods (Discworld, #13)

by Terry Pratchett

Things just happen, one after another. They don’t care who knows. But history . . . ah, history is different. History has to be observed. Otherwise it’s not history. It’s just . . . well, things happening one after another.

And, of course, it has to be controlled. Otherwise it might turn into anything. Because history, contrary to popular theories, is kings and dates and battles. And these things have to happen at the right time. This is difficult. In a chaotic universe there are too many things to go wrong. It’s too easy for a general’s horse to lose a shoe at the wrong time, or for someone to mishear an order, or for the carrier of the vital message to be waylaid by some men with sticks and a cash flow problem. Then there are wild stories, parasitic growths on the tree of history, trying to bend it their way. So history has its caretakers.

Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.

There are billions of gods in the world. They swarm as thick as herring roe. Most of them are too small to see and never get worshiped, at least by anything bigger than bacteria, who never say their prayers and don’t demand much in the way of miracles. They are the small gods—the spirits of places where two ant trails cross, the gods of microclimates down between the grass roots. And most of them stay that way. Because what they lack is belief.

A handful, though, go on to greater things. Anything may trigger it. A shepherd, seeking a lost lamb, finds it among the briars and takes a minute or two to build a small cairn of stones in general thanks to whatever spirits might be around the place. Or a peculiarly shaped tree becomes associated with a cure for disease. Or someone carves a spiral on an isolated stone. Because what gods need is belief, and what humans want is gods. Often it stops there. But sometimes it goes further. More rocks are added, more stones are raised, a temple is built on the site where the tree once stood. The god grows in strength, the belief of its worshipers raising it upwards like a thousand tons of rocket fuel. For a very few, the sky’s the limit. And, sometimes, not even that.

The trouble with being a god is that you’ve got no one to pray to.

And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.

The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it’s still possible to get things done.

Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.

“Being alive is sinful. It stands to reason, because you have to sin every day when you’re alive.”

There was a hell for blasphemers. There was a hell for the disputers of rightful authority. There were a number of hells for liars. There was probably a hell for little boys who wished their grandmothers were dead. There were more than enough hells to go around. This was the definition of eternity; it was the space of time devised by the Great God Om to ensure that everyone got the punishment that was due to them.

Gods have no one to pray to. Om really wished that this was not the case. But everyone needs someone. “Brutha!”

There were twenty-three other novices in Brutha’s dormitory, on the principle that sleeping alone promoted sin. This always puzzled the novices themselves, since a moment’s reflection would suggest that there were whole ranges of sins only available in company. But that was because a moment’s reflection was the biggest sin of all. People allowed to be by themselves overmuch might indulge in solitary cogitation. It was well known that this stunted your growth. For one thing, it could lead to your feet being chopped off.

“‘We are judged in life as we are in death’ . . . Ossory III, chapter VI, verse 56. My grandmother said that when people die they come before you, they have to cross a terrible desert and you weigh their heart in some scales,” said Brutha. “And if it weighs less than a feather, they are spared the hells.”

“‘The way of the witch shall be as a path strewn with thorns,’”

The captain has a mirror. You will ask to borrow it.” “Er . . . what is a mirror, lord?” “An unholy and forbidden device,” said Vorbis. “Which regretfully can be pressed into godly service. He will deny it, of course. But a man with such a neat beard and tiny mustache is vain, and a vain man must have his mirror. So

For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.

“In the Citadel everyone said it was a glorious victory,” said Brutha. He found he could talk now with his lips hardly moving at all; Om seemed able to pick up his words as they reached his vocal cords. Ahead of him, Simony shadowed the deacon, staring suspiciously at each Ephebian guard. “That’s a funny thing,” said Om. “Winners never talk about glorious victories. That’s because they’re the ones who see what the battlefield looks like afterward. It’s only the losers who have glorious victories.”

One of the goddesses had been having some very serious trouble with her dress, Brutha noticed; if Brother Nhumrod had been present, he would have had to hurry off for some very serious lying down. “Petulia, Goddess of Negotiable Affection,” said Om. “Worshiped by the ladies of the night and every other time as well, if you catch my meaning.” Brutha’s mouth dropped open. “They’ve got a goddess for painted jezebels?” “Why not? Very religious people I understand. They’re used to being on their—they spend so much time looking at the—look, belief is where you find it. Specialization. That’s safe, see. Low risk, guaranteed returns. There’s even a God of Lettuce somewhere. I mean, it’s not as though any one else is likely to try to become a God of Lettuce. You just find a lettuce-growing community and hang on. Thunder gods come and go, but it’s you they turn to every time when there’s a bad attack of Lettuce Fly. You’ve got to . . . uh . . . hand it to Petulia. She spotted a gap in the market and filled it.” “There’s a God of Lettuce?” “Why not? If enough people believe, you can be god of anything . . .”

Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that’d happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn’t a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time . . .

Peace negotiations were not going well. “You attacked us!” said Vorbis. “I would call it preemptive defense,” said the Tyrant. “We saw what happened to Istanzia and Betrek and Ushistan.” “They saw the truth of Om!” “Yes,” said the Tyrant. “We believe they did, eventually.” “And they are now proud members of the Empire.” “Yes,” said the Tyrant. “We believe they are. But we like to remember them as they were. Before you sent them your letters, that put the minds of men in chains.” “That set the feet of men on the right road,” said Vorbis. “Chain letters,” said the Tyrant. “The Chain Letter to the Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain—the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed men on their lawn.”

‘Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed.’”

“There are some things which appear to be the truth, which have all the hallmarks of truth, but which are not the real truth. The real truth must sometimes be protected by a labyrinth of lies.”

“I am telling you that in the deepest sense of the truth they did. By their failure to embrace his words, by their intransigence, they surely killed him.” “But in the trivial sense of the truth,” said Brutha, picking every word with the care an inquisitor might give to his patient in the depths of the Citadel, “in the trivial sense, Brother Murduck died, did he not, in Omnia, because he had not died in Ephebe, had been merely mocked, but it was feared that others in the Church might not understand the, the deeper truth, and thus it was put about that the Ephebians had killed him in, in the trivial sense, thus giving you, and those who saw the truth of the evil of Ephebe, due cause to launch a—a just retaliation.”

“Well,” he said, “I am pleased to say that we can now dispense with the peace treaty. Quite unnecessary. Why prattle of peace when there is no more war? Ephebe is now a diocese of Omnia. There will be no argument.”

“One must always be ready to embrace new ideas, take account of new proofs. Don’t you agree? And you have brought us many new points”—a gesture seemed to take in, quite by accident, the Omnian bowmen around the room—“for me to ponder. I can always be swayed by powerful argument.”

“Your lies have already poisoned the world!” “Then I shall write another book,” said Didactylos calmly. “Think how it will look—proud Didactylos swayed by the arguments of the Omnians. A full retraction. Hmm? In fact, with your permission, lord—I know you have much to do, looting and burning and so on—I will retire to my barrel right away and start work on it. A universe of spheres. Balls spinning through space. Hmm. Yes. With your permission, lord, I will write you more balls than you can imagine . . .”

“Life in this world,” he said, “is, as it were, a sojourn in a cave. What can we know of reality? For all we see of the true nature of existence is, shall we say, no more than bewildering and amusing shadows cast upon the inner wall of the cave by the unseen blinding light of absolute truth, from which we may or may not deduce some glimmer of veracity, and we as troglodyte seekers of wisdom can only lift our voices to the unseen and say, humbly, ‘Go on, do Deformed Rabbit . . . it’s my favorite.’”

God. God needed people. Belief was the food of the gods. But they also needed a shape. Gods became what people believed they ought to be. So the Goddess of Wisdom carried a penguin. It could have happened to any god. It should have been an owl. Everyone knew that. But one bad sculptor who had only ever had an owl described to him makes a mess of a statue, belief steps in, next thing you know the Goddess of Wisdom is lumbered with a bird that wears evening dress the whole time and smells of fish. You gave a god its shape, like a jelly fills a mold.

“Just because you can explain it doesn’t mean it’s not still a miracle.”

You can’t inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol.”

One or two people, who had been watching Vorbis closely, said later that there was just time for his expression to change before two pounds of tortoise, traveling at three meters a second, hit him between the eyes. It was a revelation. And that does something to people watching. For a start, they believe with all their heart.

“Not yield. Bargain. Deal with me in weakness. Or one day you’ll have to bargain with someone in a position of strength. The world changes.”

You can die for your country or your people or your family, but for a god you should live fully and busily, every day of a long life.”

I used to think I was stupid, and then I met philosophers.”

“I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts,” said Brutha. “That way, everyone’s happy.

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.