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"Where are we? Who's that? It's as hot as hell in here and, believeabout"

"I can't talk now!" hissed Brutha

"This cabbage stinks like a swamp! Let there be lettuce! Let there be slices ofthe jetty and were led one at a ti Brutha kept looking around guiltily, but no one else was taking any notice Despite his size, Brutha was easy not to notice Practically everyone had better things to do with their time than notice someone like Brutha Even Vorbis had switched hi to the captain

He found a place up near the pointed end, where one of the sticking-up bits with the sails on gave him a bit of privacy Then, with some dread, he opened the box

The tortoise spoke froles about?"

Brutha scanned the sky

"No"

The head shot out

"You- it began

"I couldn't talk!" said Brutha "People ith me all the time! Can't youread the words in hts?"

"Mortal thoughts aren't like that," snapped O words paint the to make sense of a bundle of weeds Intentions, yes Ehts Half the ti, so why should I?"

"Because you're the God," said Brutha "Abbys, chapter LVI, verse 17: `All of mortal mind he knows, and there are no secrets' "

"Was he the one with the bad teeth?"

Brutha hung his head

"Listen," said the tortoise, "I a else"

"But you knew about arden" muttered Brutha

The tortoise hesitated "That was different," it said "They weren'tthoughts That was guilt"

"I believe that the Great God is Oo on believing, whatever you say, and whatever you are"

"Good to hear it," said the tortoise fervently "Hold that thought Where are we?"

"On a boat," said Brutha "On the sea Wobbling"

"Going to Ephebe on a boat? What's wrong with the desert?"

"No one can cross the desert No one can live in the heart of the desert"

"I did"

"It's only a couple of days' sailing" Brutha's stoh the boat had hardly cleared the jetty "And they say that the God-

"- us a fair wind"

"I am? Oh Yes Trust me for a fair wind Flat as a mill-race the whole way, don't you worry"

"Ito the mast

After a while a sailor came and sat down on a coil of rope and looked at hio, Father," he said "It stands up all by itself"

"The seathe waves"left to throw up

The sailor spat thoughtfully

"Aye," he said "They got to be that shape, see, so's to fit into the sky"

"But the boat's creaking!"

"Aye It does that"

"You hed, and walked away

After a while, Brutha risked letting go He had never felt so ill in his life

It wasn't just the seasickness He didn't knohere he was And Brutha had always knohere he was Where he was, and the existence of Om, had been the only two certainties in his life

It was so, and periodically it will stop while it files away the , elsewhere in thedevices controlled by electric thinking-engines called "turtles"

Brutha knehere he was by re of footsteps and the noting of landmarks Somewhere inside his head was a thread of memory which, if you had wired it directly to whatever controlled his feet, would cause Brutha to ah the little pathways of his life all the way to the place he was born

Out of contact with the ground, on the mutable surface of the sea, the thread flapped loose

In his box, Oered across thedeck and reached the rail

To anyone except the novice, the boat was clipping through the waves on a good sailing day Seabirds wheeled in its wake Away to one side-port or starboard or one of those directions-a school of flying fish broke the surface in an attempt to escape the attentions of soed under the keel in a world where they never had to count at all

"Ah, Brutha," said Vorbis "Feeding the fishes, I see"

"No, lord," said Brutha "I' sick, lord"

He turned

There was Sergeant Si man with the deadpan expression of the truly professional soldier He was standing next to sonized as the number-one salt or whatever his title was And there was the exquisitor, s

"Him! Hi friend is not a good sailor," said Vorbis

"Him! Him! I'd know him anywhere!"

"Lord, I wish I wasn't a sailor at all," said Brutha He felt the box tre as O sharp! Push him overboard!"

"Come with us to the prow, Brutha," said Vorbis "There areto the captain"

The captain gave the frozen sht between a rock and a hard place Vorbis could always supply both

Brutha trailed behind the other three, and risked a whisper

"What's the matter?"

"Him! The bald one! Push hiht Brutha's embarrassed attention, and smiled

"We will have our minds broadened, I am sure," he said He turned back to the captain, and pointed to a large bird gliding down the face of the waves

"The Pointless Albatross," said the captain promptly "Flies fro with apparent affability at the view