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"Come on, then," said Urn

"Come on what?"

"We can rush the steps and save him!"

"There's more of them than there are of us," said Simony

"Well, haven't there always been? There's not ?ically ot Brutha, are there?"

Siically, will you?" he said "You're a phi?losopher, aren't you? Look at the crowd!"

Urn looked at the crowd

"Well?"

"They don't like it," Si to die anyway But this way it'llPeople don't understand, really under?stand, about the shape of the universe and all that stuff, but they'll reht? We can make Brutha's death a symbol for peo?ple, don't you see?"

Urn stared at the distant figure of Brutha It was naked, except for a loin-cloth

"A symbol?" he said His throat was dry

"It has to be"

He re the world was a funny place And, he thought distantly, it really was Here people were about to roast someone to death, but they'd left his loin-cloth on, out of respectability You had to laugh Otherwise you'd goto Simony "Now I know Vorbis is evil He burned my city Well, the Tsorteans do it sometimes, and we burn theirs It's just war It's all part of history And he lies and cheats and claer for himself, and lots of people do that, too But do you knohat's special? Do you knohat it is?"

"Of course," said Si to-

"It's what he's done to you"

"What?"

"He turns other people into copies of hirip was like a vice "You're saying I'm like him?"

"Once you said you'd cut hi like him

"So we rush them, then?" said Siive the signal and a few hundred of us attack thousands of them? And he dies anyway and we die too? What difference does that ray with horror now

"You mean you don't know?" he said

Some of the crowd looked round curiously at him

"You don't know?" he said

The sky was blue The sun wasn't high enough yet to turn it into Omnia's norain, towards the sun It was about a width above the horizon, although if Didactylos's theories about the speed of light were correct, it was really setting, thousands of years in the future

It was eclipsed by the head of Vorbis

"Hot yet, Brutha?" said the deacon

"Waret warmer"

There was a disturbance in the crowd So you want to say?" he said "Can't you e even a curse? Not even a curse?"

"You never heard Om," said Brutha "You never believed You never, ever heard his voice All you heard were the echoes inside your own mind"

"Really? But I a to burn for treachery and heresy," said Vorbis "So much for Om, perhaps?"

"There will be justice," said Brutha "If there is no justice, there is nothing"

He are of a suish words

"Justice?" said Vorbis The idea seee him He spun around to the crowd of bishops "Did you hear hih me! This is justice!"

There was a speck in the sun now, speeding toward the Citadel And the little voice was saying left left left up up left right a bit up left-Theuncomfortably hot

"He comes now," said Brutha

Vorbis waved his hand to the great facade of the temple "Men built this We built this," he said "And what did Oe between us!"

"He comes now," Brutha repeated "The God"

People looked apprehensively upward There was that moainst all experience waits for a miracle

-up left nohen I say three, one, two, THREE-

"Vorbis?" croaked Brutha

"What?" snapped the deacon

"You're going to die"

It was hardly a whisper, but it bounced off the bronze doors and carried across the Place

It h they couldn't quite say why

The eagle sped across the square, so low that people ducked Then it cleared the roof of the temple and curved away towards the le For a moment there, just for adown froods But you can believe in turtles

A feeling of rushing wind in Brutha's erhelpaarghnoNoNoAarghBuggerNONOAARGH-

Even Vorbis got a grip of hile-but, no

He extended his arms and smiled beatifically at the sky

"I'm sorry," said Brutha

One or two people, who had been watching Vorbis closely, said later that there was just tie before two pounds of tortoise, traveling at three meters a second, hit him between the eyes

It was a revelation

And that does so For a start, they believe with all their heart

Brutha are of feet running up the steps, and hands pulling at the chains

And then a voice:

I He is Mine

The Great God rose over the Te as the belief of thousands of people flowed into hile-headed led and flamed and fused into one another

Four bolts of fire whirred out of the cloud and burst the chains holding Brutha

II He Is Cenobiarch And Prophet of Prophets

The voice of theophany rumbled off the distant mountains