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"Currants, madam"

"Why'd they just fly away, then?" the woman demanded

The man looked down Then he looked back up into her face

"Ahis hands dramatically "The tile shifted uneasily

It recognized hu season in the high hills, ht be associated with thrown stones when it stooped upon the newborn lamb, but which otherere as unis as bushes and rocks But it had never been so close to so many of them Its mad eyes swiveled backward and forward uncertainly

At that le looked around wildly, its tiny predatoryto deal with this sudden overload

It leapt into the air The worshipers fought to get out of its way as it dipped across the flagstones and then rose majestically toward the turrets of the Great Temple and the hot sky

Below it, the doors of the Great Teilded bronze, opened by the breath (it was said) of the Great God Hi open ponderously and-and this was the holy part-silently

Brutha's enorstones Brutha always put a lot of effort into running; he ran fro like paddlewheels

This was too much There was a tortoise who said he was the God, and this couldn't be true except that it must be true, because of what it knew And he'd been tried by the Quisition Or so like that Anyway, it hadn't been as painful as he'd been led to expect

"Brutha!"

The square, norone quiet The pilgrims had all turned to face the Te with the events of the day, Brutha shouldered his way through the suddenly silent crowd

"Brutha!"

People have reality-dampers

It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, likeNot even thethe huoo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys It is used And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual

Because if this was not the case, then hu, would go around wearing big stupid grins, similar to those worn by certain reet raided by the authorities and have the contents of their plastic greenhouses very seriously inspected They'd say "Wow!" a lot And no one would doht start to think

Part of the brain exists to stop this happening It is very efficient It can make people experience boredo feverishly

So he didn't ih the last row of people and had trotted out into the middle of a wide pathway, until he turned and saw the procession approaching

The Cenobiarch was returning to his apartuely while his chaplain conducted on his behalf-the evening service

Brutha spun around, looking for a way to escape Then there was a cough beside him, and he stared up into the furious faces of a couple of Lesser Iaood-natured expression of the Cenobiarch himself

The old man raised his hand automatically to bless Brutha with the holy horns, and then two ion picked up the novice by the elbows, on the second attempt, and marched him swiftly out of the procession's path and hurled him into the crowd

"Brutha!"

Brutha bounded across the plaza to the statue and leaned against it, panting

"I'o to hell!" he muttered "For all eternity! "

"Who cares? Nowgethi the procession Even watching the procession was a holy act Brutha knelt down and peered into the scrollwork around the base of the statue

One beady eye glared back at hiet under there?"

"It was touch and go," said the tortoise "I tell you, when I' of eagles"

"What's the eagle trying to do to you?" said Brutha

"It wants to carry ive me dinner," snarled the tortoise "What do you think it wanted to do?" There was a short pause in which it contemplated the futility of sarcasues at a castle

"It wants to eat me," it said patiently

"But you're a tortoise!"

"I am your God!"

"But currently in the shape of a tortoise With a shell on, is what I les," said the tortoise darkly "They pick you up, carry you up a few hundred feet, and thendrop you"

"Urrgh"

"No More likecracksplat How did you think I got in here?"

"You were dropped? But-

"Landed on a pile of dirt in your garden That's eagles for you Whole place built of rock and paved with rock on a big rock and they miss"

"That was lucky Million-to-one chance," said Brutha

"I never had this trouble when I was a bull The nules who can pick up a bull, you can count theers of one head Anyway," said the tortoise, "there's worse here than eagles There's a-

"There's good eating on one of them, you know," said a voice behind Brutha