Face to face? Somehow, that didn't seem so bad as saying something wicked when he was up on a cloud or something.
“As far as I can recall,” said Om, “I'd intended to be a big white bull.”
“Trampling the infidel,” said Brutha.
“Not my basic intention, but no doubt some trampling could have been arranged. Or a swan, I thought. Something impressive. Three years later, I wake up and it turns out I've been a tortoise. I mean, you don't get much lower.” Careful, careful . . . you need his help, but don't tell him everything. Don't tell him what you suspect.
“When did you start think-when did you remember all this?” said Brutha, who found the phenomenon of forgetting a strange and fascinating one, as other men might find the idea of flying by flapping your arms.
“About two hundred feet above your vegetable garden,” said Om, “which is not a point where it's fun to become sapient, I'm here to tell you.”
“But why?” said Brutha. “Gods don't have to stay tortoises unless they want to!”
“I don't know,” lied Om.
If he works it out himself I'm done for, he thought. This is a chance in a million. If I get it wrong, it's back to a life where happiness is a leaf you can reach.
Part of him screamed: I'm a god! I don't have to think like this! I don't have to put myself in the power of a human!
But another part, the part that could remember exactly what being a tortoise for three years had been like, whispered: no. You have to. If you want to be up there again. He's stupid and gormless and he's not got a drop of ambition in his big flabby body. And this is what you've got to work with . . .
The god part said: Vorbis would have been better. Be rational. A mind like that could do anything!
He turned me on my back!
No, he turned a tortoise on its back.
Yes. Me.
No. You're a god.
Yes, but a persistently tortoise-shaped one.
If he had known you were a god . . .
But Om remembered Vorbis's absorbed expression, in a pair of grey eyes in front of a mind as impenetrable as a steel ball. He'd never seen a mind shaped like that on anything walking upright. There was someone who probably would turn a god on his back, just to see what would happen. Someone who'd overturn the universe, without thought of consequence, for the sake of the knowledge of what happened when the universe was flat on its back . . .
But what he had to work with was Brutha, with a mind as incisive as a meringue. And if Brutha found out that . . .
Or if Brutha died . . .
“How are you feeling?” said Om.
“Ill.”
“Snuggle down under the sails a bit more,” said Om. “You don't want to catch a chill.”
There's got to be someone else, he thought. It can't be just him who . . . the rest of the thought was so terrible he tried to block it from his mind, but he couldn't .
. . . it can't be just him who believes in me.
Really in me. Not in a pair of golden horns. Not in a great big building. Not in the dread of hot iron and knives. Not in paying your temple dues because everyone else does. Just in the fact that the Great God Om really exists.
And now he's got himself involved with the most unpleasant mind I've ever seen, someone who kills people to see if they die. An eagle kind of person if ever there was one . . .
Om was aware of a mumbling.
Brutha was lying face down on the deck.