"They do a lot of thinking," said Om. "Look for someone with a strained expression."

"That might just mean constipation."

"Well, so long as they're philosophical about it . . ."

The city of Ephebe surrounded them. Dogs barked. Somewhere a cat yowled. There was that general susurration of small comfortable sounds that shows that, out there, a lot of people are living their lives.

And then a door burst open down the street and there was the cracking noise of a quite large wine amphora being broken over someone's head.

A skinny old man in a toga picked himself up from the cobbles where he had landed, and glared at the doorway.

"I'm telling you, listen, a finite intellect, right, cannot by means of comparison reach the absolute truth of things, because being by nature indivisible, truth excludes the concepts of "more" or "less" so that nothing but truth itself can be the exact measure of truth. You bastards," he said.

Someone from inside the building said, "Oh yeah? Sez you."

The old man ignored Brutha but, with great difficulty, pulled a cobblestone loose and hefted it in his hand.

Then he dived back through the doorway. There was a distant scream of rage.

"Ah. Philosophy," said Om.

Brutha peered cautiously round the door.

Inside the room two groups of very nearly identical men in togas were trying to hold back two of their colleagues. It is a scene repeated a million times a day in bars around the multiverse-both would-be fighters growled and grimaced at one another and fought to escape the restraint of their friends, only of course they did not fight too hard, because there is nothing worse than actually succeeding in breaking free and suddenly finding yourself all alone in the middle of the ring with a madman who is about to hit you between the eyes with a rock.

"Yep," said Om, "that's philosophy, right enough."

"But they're fighting!"

"A full and free exchange of opinions, yes."

Now that Brutha could get a clearer view, he could see that there were one or two differences between the men. One had a shorter beard, and was very red in the face, and was waggling a finger accusingly.

"He bloody well accused me of slander!" he was shouting.

"I didn't!" shouted the other man.

"You did! You did! Tell 'em what you said!"

"Look, I merely suggested, to indicate the nature of paradox, right, that if Xeno the Ephebian said, `All Ephebians are liars-' "

"See? See? He did it again!"

"-no, no, listen, listen . . . then, since Xeno is himself an Ephebian, this would mean that he himself is a liar and therefore-”

Xeno made a determined effort to break free, dragging four desperate fellow philosophers across the floor.

"I'm going to lay one right on you, pal!"

Brutha said, "Excuse me, please?"

The philosophers froze. Then they turned to look at Brutha. They relaxed by degrees. There was a chorus of embarrassed coughs.

"Are you all philosophers?" said Brutha.

The one called Xeno stepped forward, adjusting the hang of his toga.

"That's right," he said. "We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am."

"Are," said the luckless paradox manufacturer automatically.

Xeno spun around. "I've just about had it up to here with you, Ibid!" he roared. He turned back to Brutha. "We are, therefore we am," he said confidently. "That's it."

Several of the philosophers looked at one another with interest.

"That's actually quite interesting," one said. "The evidence of our existence is the fact of our existence, is that what you're saying?"

"Shut up," said Xeno, without looking around.

"Have you been fighting?" said Brutha.

The assembled philosophers assumed various expressions of shock and horror.

"Fighting? Us? We're philosophers," said Ibid, shocked.

"My word, yes," said Xeno.

"But you were-” Brutha began.

Xeno waved a hand.

"The cut and thrust of debate," he said.

"Thesis plus antithesis equals hysteresis," said Ibid. "The stringent testing of the universe. The hammer of the intellect upon the anvil of fundamental truth-”

"Shut up," said Xeno. "And what can we do for you, young man?"

"Ask them about gods," Om prompted.

"Uh, I want to find out about gods," said Brutha.

The philosophers looked at one another.

"Gods?" said Xeno. "We don't bother with gods. Huh. Relics of an outmoded belief system, gods."

There was a rumble of thunder from the clear evening sky.

"Except for Blind to the Thunder God," Xeno went on, his tone hardly changing.

Lightning flashed across the sky.

"And Cubal the Fire God," said Xeno.

A gust of wind rattled the windows.

"Flatulus the God of the Winds, he's all right too," said Xeno.

An arrow materialized out of the air and hit the table by Xeno's hand.

"Fedecks the Messenger of the Gods, one of the alltime greats," said Xeno.

A bird appeared in the doorway. At least, it looked vaguely like a bird. It was about a foot high, black and white, with a bent beak and an expression that suggested that whatever it was it really dreaded ever happening to it had already happened.

"What's that?" said Brutha.

"A penguin," said the voice of Om inside his head.

"Patina the Goddess of Wisdom? One of the best," said Xeno.

The penguin croaked at him and waddled off into the darkness.

The philosophers looked very embarrassed. Then Ibid said, "Foorgol the God of Avalanches? Where's the snowline?"

"Two hundred miles away," said someone.

They waited. Nothing happened.

"Relic of an outmoded belief system," said Xeno.

A wall of freezing white death did not appear anywhere in Ephebe.

"Mere unthinking personification of a natural force," said one of the philosophers, in a louder voice. They all seemed to feel a lot better about this.

"Primitive nature worship."

"Wouldn't give you tuppence for him."

"Simple rationalization of the unknown."

"Hah! A clever fiction, a bogey to frighten the weak and stupid!"

The words rose up in Brutha. He couldn't stop himself.

"Is it always this cold?" he said. "It seemed very chilly on my way here."

The philosophers all moved away from Xeno.

"Although if there's one thing you can say about Foorgol," said Xeno, "it's that he's a very understanding god. Likes a joke as much as the next . . . man."

He looked both ways, quickly. After a while the philosophers relaxed, and seemed to completely forget about Brutha.

And only now did he really have time to take in the room. He had never seen a tavern before in his life, but that was what it was. The bar ran along one side of the room. Behind it were the typical trappings of an Ephebian bar-the stacks of wine jars, racks of amphorae, and the cheery pictures of vestal virgins on cards of salted peanuts and goat jerky, pinned up in the hope that there really were people in the world who would slatheringly buy more and more packets of nuts they didn't want in order to look at a cardboard nipple.