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head.
    “There’s very good eating on one of these, you know,” said the master of novices. He saw the expression on Brutha’s face.
    “Look at it like this,” he said. “Would the Great God Om”—holy horns—“ ever manifest Himself in such a lowly creature as this? A bull, yes, of course, an eagle, certainly, and I think on one occasion a swan…but a tortoise ?”
    “Your sexual organs to sprout wings and fly away!”
    “After all,” Nhumrod went on, oblivious to the secret chorus in Brutha’s head, “what kind of miracles could a tortoise do? Mmm?”
    “Your ankles to be crushed in the jaws of giants!”
    “Turn lettuce into gold, perhaps?” said Brother Nhumrod, in the jovial tones of those blessed with no sense of humor. “Crush ants underfoot? Ahaha.”
    “Haha,” said Brutha dutifully.
    “I shall take it along to the kitchen, out of your way,” said the master of novices. “They make ex cellent soup. And then you’ll hear no more voices, depend upon it. Fire cures all Follies, yes?”
    “Soup?”
    “Er…” said Brutha.
    “Your intestines to be wound around a tree until you are sorry!”
    Nhumrod looked around the garden. It seemed to be full of melons and pumpkins and cucumbers. He shuddered.
    “Lots of cold water, that’s the thing,” he said. “Lots and lots.” He focused on Brutha again. “Mmm?”
    He wandered off toward the kitchens.

     

    The Great God Om was upside down in a basket in one of the kitchens, half-buried under a bunch of herbs and some carrots.
    An upturned tortoise will try to right itself firstly by sticking out its neck to its fullest extent and trying to useits head as a lever. If this doesn’t work it will wave its legs frantically, in case this will rock it upright.
    An upturned tortoise is the ninth most pathetic thing in the entire multiverse.
    An upturned tortoise who knows what’s going to happen to it next is, well, at least up there at number four.
    The quickest way to kill a tortoise for the pot is to plunge it into boiling water.
    Kitchens and storerooms and craftsmen’s workshops belonging to the Church’s civilian population honeycombed the Citadel. * This was only one of them, a smoky-ceilinged cellar whose focal point was an arched fireplace. Flames roared up the flue. Turnspit dogs trotted in their treadmills. Cleavers rose and fell on the chopping blocks.
    Off to one side of the huge hearth, among various other blackened cauldrons, a small pot of water was already beginning to seethe.
    “The worms of revenge to eat your blackened nostrils!” screamed Om, twitching his legs violently. The basket rocked.
    A hairy hand reached in and removed the herbs.
    “Hawks to peck your liver!”
    A hand reached in again and took the carrots.
    “Afflict you with a thousand cuts!”
    A hand reached in and took the Great God Om.
    “The cannibal fungi of—!”
    “Shut up!” hissed Brutha, shoving the tortoise under his robe.
    He sidled toward the door, unnoticed in the general culinary chaos.
    One of the cooks looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
    “Just got to take this back,” Brutha burbled, bringing out the tortoise and waving it helpfully. “Deacon’s orders.”
    The cook scowled, and then shrugged. Novices were regarded by one and all as the lowest form of life, but orders from the hierarchy were to be obeyed without question, unless the questioner wanted to find himself faced with more important questions like whether or not it is possible to go to heaven after being roasted alive.
    When they were out in the courtyard Brutha leaned against the wall and breathed out.
    “Your eyeballs to—!” the tortoise began.
    “One more word,” said Brutha, “and it’s back in the basket.”
    The tortoise fell silent.
    “As it is, I shall probably get into trouble for missing Comparative Religion with Brother Whelk,” said Brutha. “But the Great God has seen fit to make the poor man shortsighted and he probably won’t notice I’m not there,