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only if he does I shall have to say what I’ve done because telling lies to a Brother is a sin and the Great God will send me to hell for a million years.”
    “In this one case I could be merciful,” said the tortoise. “No more than a thousand years at the outside.”
    “My grandmother told me I shall go to hell when I die anyway,” said Brutha, ignoring this. “Being alive is sinful. It stands to reason, because you have to sin every day when you’re alive.”
    He looked down at the tortoise.
    “I know you’re not the Great God Om”—holy horns—“because if I was to touch the Great God Om”—holy horns—“my hands would burn away. The Great God would never become a tortoise, like BrotherNhumrod said. But it says in the Book of the Prophet Cena that when he was wandering in the desert the spirits of the ground and the air spoke unto him, so I wondered if you were one of those.”
    The tortoise gave him a one-eyed stare for a while. Then it said: “Tall fellow? Full beard? Eyes wobbling all over the place?”
    “What?” said Brutha.
    “I think I recall him,” said the tortoise. “Eyes wobbled when he talked. And he talked all the time. To himself. Walked into rocks a lot.”
    “He wandered in the wilderness for three months,” said Brutha.
    “That explains it, then,” said the tortoise. “There’s not a lot to eat there that isn’t mushrooms.”
    “Perhaps you are a demon,” said Brutha. “The Septateuch forbids us to have discourse with demons. Yet in resisting demons, says the Prophet Fruni, we may grow strong in faith—”
    “Your teeth to abscess with red-hot heat!”
    “Pardon?”
    “I swear to me that I am the Great God Om, greatest of gods!”
    Brutha tapped the tortoise on the shell.
    “Let me show you something, demon.”
    He could feel his faith growing, if he listened hard.

     

    This wasn’t the greatest statue of Om, but it was the closest. It was down in the pit level reserved for prisoners and heretics. And it was made of iron plates riveted together.
    The pits were deserted except for a couple of novices pushing a rough cart in the distance.
    “It’s a big bull,” said the tortoise.
    “The very likeness of the Great God Om in one of his worldly incarnations!” said Brutha proudly. “And you say you’re him ?”
    “I haven’t been well lately,” said the tortoise.
    Its scrawny neck stretched out further.
    “There’s a door on its back,” it said. “Why’s there a door on its back?”
    “So that the sinful can be put in,” said Brutha.
    “Why’s there another one in its belly?”
    “So the purified ashes can be let out,” said Brutha. “And the smoke issues forth from the nostrils, as a sign to the ungodly.”
    The tortoise craned its neck around at the rows of barred doors. It looked up at the soot-encrusted walls. It looked down at the now empty fire trench under the iron bull. It reached a conclusion. It blinked its one eye.
    “People?” it said eventually. “You roast people in it?”
    “There!” said Brutha triumphantly. “And thus you prove you are not the Great God! He would know that of course we do not burn people in there. Burn people in there? That would be unheard of!”
    “Ah,” said the tortoise. “Then what—?”
    “It is for the destruction of heretical materials and other such rubbish,” said Brutha.
    “Very sensible,” said the tortoise.
    “ Sinners and criminals are purified by fire in the Quisition’s pits or sometimes in front of the Great Temple,” said Brutha. “The Great God would know that.”
    “I think I must have forgotten,” said the tortoise quietly.
    “The Great God Om”—holy horns—“would know that He Himself said unto the Prophet Wallspur—” Brutha coughed and assumed the creased-eyebrow squint that meant serious thought was being undertaken. “‘Let the holy fire destroy utterly the unbeliever.’ That’s verse sixty-five.”
    “Did I say that?”
    “In the Year of the Lenient