thanking all the lads for collecting no fewer than seventyeight obols for his retirement present and the lovely bunch of flowers for Mrs. Quoom, indicating that he'd always remember his days in No. 3 pit, and was looking forward to coming in and helping out any time they were short-handed.
And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
Vorbis loved knowing that. A man who knew that, knew everything he needed to know about people.
Currently he was sitting alongside the bench on which lay what was still, technically, the trembling body of Brother Sasho, formerly his secretary.
He looked up at the duty inquisitor, who nodded. Vorbis leaned over the chained secretary.
"What were their names?" he repeated.
". . . don't know . . ."
"I know you gave them copies of my correspondence, Sasho. They are treacherous heretics who will spend eternity in the hells. Will you join them?"
". . . don't know names . . ."
"I trusted you, Sasho. You spied on me. You betrayed the Church."
". . . no names . . ."
"Truth is surcease from pain, Sasho. Tell me."
". . . truth . . ."
Vorbis sighed. And then he saw one of Sasho's fingers curling and uncurling under the manacles. Beckoning.
"Yes?"
He leaned closer over the body.
Sasho opened his one remaining eye.
". . .truth . . ."
"Yes?"
". . . The Turtle Moves . . ."
Vorbis sat back, his expression unchanged. His expression seldom changed unless he wanted it to. The inquisitor watched him in terror.
"I see," said Vorbis. He stood up, and nodded at the inquisitor.
"How long has he been down here?"
"Two days, lord."
"And you can keep him alive for-?"
"Perhaps two days more, lord."
"Do so. Do so. It is, after all," said Vorbis, "our duty to preserve life for as long as possible. Is it not?"
The inquisitor gave him the nervous smile of one in the presence of a superior whose merest word could see him manacled on a bench.
"Er . . . yes, lord."
"Heresy and lies everywhere," Vorbis sighed. "And now I shall have to find another secretary. It is too vexing."
After twenty minutes Brutha relaxed. The siren voices of sensuous evil seemed to have gone away.
He got on with the melons. He felt capable of understanding melons. Melons seemed a lot more comprehensible than most things.
"Hey, you!"
Brutha straightened up.
"I do not hear you, oh foul succubus," he said.
"Oh yes you do, boy. Now, what I want you to do is-”
"I've got my fingers in my ears!"
"Suits you. Suits you. Makes you look like a vase. Now
"I'm humming a tune! I'm humming a tune!"
Brother Preptil, the master of the music, had described Brutha's voice as putting him in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey. Choral singing was compulsory for novitiates, but after much petitioning by Brother Preptil a special dispensation had been made for Brutha. The sight of his big round face screwed up in the effort to please was bad enough, but what was worse was listening to his voice, which was certainly powerful and full of intent conviction, swinging backward and forward across the tune without ever quite hitting it.
He got Extra Melons instead.
Up in the prayer towers a flock of crows took off in a hurry.
After a full chorus of He is Trampling the Unrighteous with Hooves of Hot Iron Brutha unplugged his ears and risked a quick listen.
Apart from the distant protests of the crows, there was silence.
It worked. Put your trust in the God, they said. And he always had. As far back as he could remember.
He picked up his hoe and turned back, in relief, to the vines.
The hoe's blade was about to hit the ground when Brutha saw the tortoise.
It was small and basically yellow and covered with dust. Its shell was badly chipped. It had one beady eye -the other had fallen to one of the thousands of dangers that attend any slow-moving creature which lives an inch from the ground.
He looked around. The gardens were well inside the temple complex; and surrounded by high walls.
"How did you get in here, little creature?" he said. "Did you fly?"
The tortoise stared monoptically at him. Brutha felt a bit homesick. There had been plenty of tortoises in the sandy hills back home.
"I could give you some lettuce," said Brutha. "But I don't think tortoises are allowed in the gardens. Aren't you vermin?"
The tortoise continued to stare. Practically nothing can stare like a tortoise.
Brutha felt obliged to do something.
"There's grapes," he said. "Probably it's not sinful to give you one grape. How would you like a grape, little tortoise?"
"How would you like to be an abomination in the nethermost pit of chaos?" said the tortoise.
The crows, who had fled to the outer walls, took off again to a rendering of The Way of the Infidel Is A Nest Of Thorns.
Brutha opened his eyes and took his fingers out of his ears again.
The tortoise said, "I'm still here."
Brutha hesitated. It dawned on him, very slowly, that demons and succubi didn't turn up looking like small old tortoises. There wouldn't be much point. Even Brother Nhumrod would have to agree that when it came to rampant eroticism, you could do a lot better than a one-eyed tortoise.
"I didn't know tortoises could talk," he said.
"They can't," said the tortoise. "Read my lips."
Brutha looked closer.
"You haven't got lips," he said.
"No, nor proper vocal chords," agreed the tortoise. "I'm doing it straight into your head, do you understand?"
"Gosh!"
"You do understand, don't you?"
"No."
The tortoise rolled its eye.
"I should have known. Well, it doesn't matter. I don't have to waste time on gardeners. Go and fetch the top man, right now."
"Top man?" said Brutha. He put his hand to his mouth. "You don't mean . . . Brother Nhumrod?"
"Who's he?" said the tortoise.
"The master of the novices!"
"Oh, Me!" said the tortoise. "No," it went on, in a singsong imitation of Brutha's voice, "I don't mean the master of the novices. I mean the High Priest or whatever he calls himself. I suppose there is one?"
Brutha nodded blankly.
"High Priest, right?" said the tortoise. "High. Priest. High Priest."
Brutha nodded again. He knew there was a High Priest. It was just that, while he could just about encompass the hierarchical structure between his own self and Brother Nhumrod, he was unable to give serious consideration to any kind of link between Brutha the novice and the Cenobiarch. He was theoretically aware that there was one, that there was a huge canonical structure with the High Priest at the top and Brutha very firmly at the bottom, but he viewed it in the same way as an amoeba might view the chain of evolution all the way between itself and, for example, a chartered accountant. It was missing links all the way to the top.