Small Gods

Terry Pratchett

42 annotations • data

First annotation on May 3rd, 2024. Last on Jun 1st, 2025.

Introduction

The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat.
One of the recurring philosophical questions is: "Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?" Which says something about the nature of philosophers, because there is always someone in a forest.
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.
And, as is generally the case around the time a prophet is expected, the Church redoubled its efforts to be holy. This was very much like the bustle you get in any large concern when the auditors are expected, but tended towards taking people suspected of being less holy and putting them to death in a hundred ingenious ways. This is considered a reliable barometer of the state of one's piety in most of the really popular religions. There's a tendency to declare that there is more backsliding around than in the national toboggan championships, that heresy must be torn out root and branch, and even arm and leg and eye and tongue, and that it's time to wipe the slate clean. Blood is generally considered very efficient for this purpose.
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.
"Oh, well, it must have been me, yes? I always have a ton of lead slabs around in case I meet someone in the desert, yes?"
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.
It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary gray goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys. It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.
Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.
The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.
It was almost impossible to know what he was thinking about and no one ever asked. The most obvious reason for this was that Vorbis was the head of the Quisition, whose job it was to do all those things that needed to be done and which other people would rather not do.
"I couldn't talk!" said Brutha. "People were with me all the time! Can't you . . . read the words in my mind? Can't you read my thoughts?" "Mortal thoughts aren't like that," snapped Om. "You think it's like watching words paint themselves across the sky? Hah! It's like trying to make sense of a bundle of weeds. Intentions, yes. Emotions, yes. But not thoughts. Half the time you don't know what you're thinking, so why should I?"
There were no jolly little signs saying: You Don't Have To Be Pitilessly Sadistic To Work Here But It Helps!!!
"That wasn't m—" Om paused. There will be a price, he thought. It won't be cheap. It can't be cheap. The Sea Queen is a god. I've crushed a few towns in my time. Holy fire, that kind of thing. If the price isn't high, how can people respect you?
The shepherd had a hundred sheep, and it might have been surprising that he was prepared to spend days searching for one sheep; in fact, it was because he was the kind of man prepared to spend days looking for a lost sheep that he had a hundred sheep.
They weren't that important. They were merely at the top. 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.

Chapter 1

"You got to remember there's three basic approaches to philosophy in these parts," said Didactylos. "Tell him, Urn." "There's the Xenoists," said Urn promptly. "They say the world is basically complex and random. And there's the Ibidians. They say the world is basically simple and follows certain fundamental rules." "And there's me," said Didactylos, pulling a scroll out of its rack. "Master says basically it's a funny old world," said Urn. "And doesn't contain enough to drink," said Didactylos.
"It's happened before," said the tortoise. "Dozens of times. D'you know Abraxas found the lost city of Ee? Very strange carvings, he says. Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure." "I don't understand," said Brutha. "Let me put it another way," said the tortoise. "I am your God, right?" "Yes." "And you'll obey me." "Yes." "Good. Now take a rock and go and kill Vorbis." Brutha didn't move. "I'm sure you heard me," said Om. "But he'll . . . he's . . . the Quisition would—" "Now you know what I mean," said the tortoise. "You're more afraid of him than you are of me, now. Abraxas says here: '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.'"
"What's a philosopher?" said Brutha. "Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,"
"We copied it out," said Simony. "One copy! That's all we had! But it's been passed around. Some of us who could read, read it to the others! It makes so much sense!" "Er . . ." said Didactylos. "What?" Simony waved his hands in excitement. "Because we know it—I've been to places that—it's true! There is a Great Turtle. The turtle does move! We don't need gods!" "Urn? No one's stripped the copper off the roof, have they?" said Didactylos. "Don't think so." "Remind me not to talk to this chap outside, then."
The Library of Ephebe was a furnace. The flames burned blue where the melted copper roof dripped on to the shelves. All libraries, everywhere, are connected by the bookworm holes in space created by the strong space-time distortions found around any large collections of books. Only a very few librarians learn the secret, and there are inflexible rules about making use of the fact. Because it amounts to time travel, and time travel causes big problems. But if a library is on fire, and down in the history books as having been on fire . . . There was a small pop, utterly unheard among the crackling of the bookshelves, and a figure dropped out of nowhere on to a small patch of unburned floor in the middle of the Library. It looked ape-like, but it moved in a very purposeful way. Long simian arms beat out the flames, pulled scrolls off the shelves, and stuffed them into a sack. When the sack was full, it knuckled back into the middle of the room . . . and vanished, with another pop.
This has nothing to do with the story. Nor does the fact that, some time later, scrolls thought to have been destroyed in the Great Ephebian Library Fire turned up in remarkably good condition in the Library of Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork. But it's nice to know, even so.
"You set fire to your own Library?" "I'm the only one qualified," said the philosopher. "Besides, it keeps it out of the way of Vorbis." "What?" "Suppose he'd read the scrolls? He's bad enough as it is. He'd be a lot worse with all that knowledge inside him." "He wouldn't have read them," said Brutha. "Oh, he would. I know that type," said Didactylos. "All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indulgence in private." "Not Vorbis," said Brutha, with absolute certainty. "He wouldn't have read them." "Well, anyway," said Didactylos, "if it had to be done, I did it."
"Y'know," said Didactylos, "there are different ways of learning things. I'm reminded of the time when old Prince Lasgere of Tsort asked me how he could become learned, especially since he hadn't got any time for this reading business. I said to him, 'There is no royal road to learning, sire,' and he said to me, 'Bloody well build one or I shall have your legs chopped off. Use as many slaves as you like.' A refreshingly direct approach, I always thought. Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words." "Why didn't he chop your legs off?" said Urn. "I built him his road. More or less." "How? I thought that was just a metaphor." "You're learning, Urn. So I found a dozen slaves who could read and they sat in his bedroom at night whispering choice passages to him while he slept." "Did that work?" "Don't know. The third slave stuck a six-inch dagger in his ear. Then after the revolution the new ruler let me out of prison and said I could leave the country if I promised not to think of anything on the way to the border. But I don't believe there was anything wrong with the idea in principle."
The captain frowned. "It's a funny thing," he said, "but why is it that the heathens and the barbarians seem to have the best places to go when they die?"
"Thunder," said Brutha, his eyes glazing slightly, "I don't— "—is caused by clouds banging together; after the lightning stroke, there is a hole in the air, and thus the sound is engendered by the clouds rushing to fill the hole and colliding, in accordance with strict cumulodynamic principles." "Your voice goes funny when you're quoting," said Om. "What does engendered mean?" "I don't know. No one showed me a dictionary." "Anyway, that's just an explanation," said Om. "It's not a reason."
He heard Om, slightly peevish, say: "People've got to believe in something. Might as well be gods. What else is there?" Brutha laughed. "You know," he said, "I don't think I believe in anything any more." "Except me!" "Oh, I know you exist," said Brutha. He felt Om relax a little. "There's something about tortoises. Tortoises I can believe in. They seem to have a lot of existence in one place. It's gods in general I'm having difficulty with."
"Well, yes. If I was strong enough, I could probably strike him with lightning." "I thought Io did the lightning." "No, just the thunder. You're allowed to do as much lightning as you like but you have to contract for the thundering."
"Thesis plus antithesis equals hysteresis," said Ibid. "The stringent testing of the universe. The hammer of the intellect upon the anvil of fundamental truth—"
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 . . .
The Ephebians believed that every man should have the vote.* Every five years someone was elected to be Tyrant, provided he could prove that he was honest, intelligent, sensible, and trustworthy. Immediately after he was elected, of course, it was obvious to everyone that he was a criminal madman and totally out of touch with the view of the ordinary philosopher in the street looking for a towel. And then five years later they elected another one just like him, and really it was amazing how intelligent people kept on making the same mistakes.
The one called Urn was presumably the nephew, and had a fairly normal sort of mind, even if it did seem to have too many circles and angles in it. But Didactylos's mind bubbled and flashed like a potful of electric eels on full boil. Om had never seen anything like it. Brutha's thoughts took eons to slide into place, it was like watching mountains colliding; Didactylos's thoughts chased after one another with a whooshing noise. No wonder he was bald. Hair would have burned off from the inside.
"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis. "So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water." He smiled the fleeting smile again. "And there are the baths and the Library, of course. Many fine sights. You are our guests."

Chapter 2

A nod's as good as a poke with a sharp stick to a deaf camel, as they say.
No tortoise had ever done this before. No tortoise in the whole universe. But no tortoise had ever been a god, and knew the unwritten motto of the Quisition: Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum. When you have their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.
And it is strange that, although it takes years of effort and work and scheming for a god to get there, once there they never seem to do a lot apart from drink too much and indulge in a little mild corruption. Many systems of government follow the same broad lines.
They play games. They tend to be very simple games, because gods are easily bored by complicated things. It is strange that, while small gods can have one aim in mind for millions of years, are in fact one aim, large gods seem to have the attention span of the common mosquito.
"If they exist, you don't have to believe in them," said Didactylos. "They just are." He sighed. "What can I tell you? What do you want to hear? I just wrote down what people know. Mountains rise and fall, and under them the Turtle swims onward. Men live and die, and the Turtle Moves. Empires grow and crumble, and the Turtle Moves. Gods come and go, and still the Turtle Moves. The Turtle Moves."
Didactylos shrugged. "The Turtle exists. The world is a flat disc. The sun turns around it once every day, dragging its light behind it. And this will go on happening, whether you believe it is true or not. It is real. I don't know about truth. Truth is a lot more complicated than that. I don't think the Turtle gives a bugger whether it's true or not, to tell you the truth."
"We'll survive." "I wish I had your confidence." "Ah, but I have a God to have faith in." "There'll be no more ruined temples." "There'll be something else." "And not even snake to eat." "But I walk with my God." "Not as a snack, though. And you're walking the wrong way, too."