'About time, too,' said his father. 'Help me fold up your brother. You're sure it won't hurt him?'
'Well, if we do it carefully he can't move in Time, that is, width to us. So if no time can pass for him, nothing can hurt him.'
Ptaclusp thought of the old days, when pyramid building had simply consisted of piling one block on another and all you needed to remember was that you put less on top as you went up. And now it meant trying to put a crease in one of your sons.
'Right,' he said doubtfully. 'Let's be off, then.' He inched his way up the debris and poked his head over the top just as the vanguard of the dead came round the corner of the nearest minor pyramid.
His first thought was: this is it, they're coming to complain. He'd done his best. It wasn't always easy to build to a budget. Maybe not every lintel was exactly as per drawings, perhaps the quality of the internal plasterwork wasn't always up to snuff, but . . .
They can't all be complaining. Not this many of them.
Ptaclusp IIb climbed up alongside him. His mouth dropped open.
'Where are they all coming from?' he said.
'You're the expert. You tell me.
'Are they dead?'
Ptaclusp scrutinised some of the approaching marchers.
'If they're not, some of them are awfully ill,' he said.
'Let's make a run for it!'
'Where to? Up the pyramid?'
The Great Pyramid loomed up behind them, its throbbing filling the air. Ptaclusp stared at it.
'What's going to happen tonight?' he said.
'What?'
'Well, is it going to — do whatever it did — again?'
IIb stared at him. 'Dunno.'
'Can you find out?'
'Only by waiting. I'm not even sure what it's done now.
'Are we going to like it?'
'I shouldn't think so, dad. Oh, dear.'
'What's up now?'
'Look over there.'
Heading towards the marching dead, trailing behind Koomi like a tail behind a comet, were the priests.
It was hot and dark inside the horse. It was also very crowded.
They waited, sweating.
Young Autocue stuttered: 'What'll happen now, sergeant?'
The sergeant moved a foot tentatively. The atmosphere would have induced claustrophobia in a sardine.
'Well, lad. They'll find us, see, and be so impressed they'll drag us all the way back to their city, and then when it's dark we'll leap out and put them to the sword. Or put the sword to them. One or the other. And then we'll sack the city, bum the walls and sow the ground with salt. You remember, lad, I showed you on Friday.'
'Oh.'
Moisture dripped from a score of brows. Several of the men were trying to compose a letter home, dragging styli across wax that was close to melting.
'And then what will happen, sergeant?'
'Why, lad, then we'll go home heroes.'
'Oh.'
The older soldiers sat stolidly looking at the wooden walls. Autocue shifted uneasily, still worried about something.
'My mum said to come back with my shield or on it, sergeant,' he said.
'Jolly good, lad. That's the spirit.'
'We will be all right, though. Won't we, sergeant?'
The sergeant stared into the fetid darkness.
After a while, someone started to play the harmonica.
Ptaclusp half-turned his head from the scene and a voice by his ear said, 'You're the pyramid builder, aren't you?'
Another figure had joined them in their bolthole, one who was black-clad and moved in a way that made a cat's tread sound like a one-man band.
Ptaclusp nodded, unable to speak. He had had enough shocks for one day.
'Well, switch it off. Switch it off now.'
IIb leaned over.
'Who're you?' he said.
'My name is Teppic.'
'What, like the king?'
'Yes. Just like the king. Now turn it off.'
'It's a pyramid! You can't turn off pyramids!' said IIb.
'Well, then, make it flare.'
'We tried that last night.' IIb pointed to the shattered capstone. 'Unroll Two-Ay, dad.'
Teppic regarded the flat brother.
'It's some sort of wall poster, is it?' he said eventually.
IIb looked down. Teppic saw the movement, and looked down also; he was ankle-deep in green sprouts.
'Sorry,' he said. 'I can't seem to shake it off.'
'It can be dreadful,' said IIb frantically. 'I know how it is, I had this verruca once, nothing would shift it.'
Teppic hunkered down by the cracked stone.
'This thing,' he said. 'What's the significance? I mean, it's coated with metal. Why?'
'There's got to be a sharp point for the flare,' said IIb.
'Is that all? This is gold, isn't it?'
'It's electrum. Gold and silver alloy. The capstone has got to be made of electrum.'
Teppic peeled back the foil.
'This isn't all metal,' he said mildly.
'Yes. Well,' said Ptaclusp. 'We found, er, that foil works just as well.'
'Couldn't you use something cheaper? Like steel?' Ptaclusp sneered. It hadn't been a good day, sanity was a distant memory, but there were certain facts he knew for a fact.
'Wouldn't last for more than a year or two,' he said. 'What with the dew and so forth. You'd lose the point. Wouldn't last more than two or three hundred times.'
Teppic leaned his head against the pyramid. It was cold, and it hummed. He thought he could hear, under the throbbing, a faint rising tone.
The pyramid towered over him. (IIb could have told him that this was because the walls sloped in at precisely 56 degrees, and an effect known as battering made the pyramid loom even higher than it really was. He probably would have used words like perspective and virtual height as well.
The black marble was glassy smooth. The masons had done well. The cracks between each silky panel were hardly wide enough to insert a knife. But wide enough, all the same.
'How about once?' he said.
Koomi chewed his fingernails distractedly.
'Fire,' he said. 'That'd stop them. They're very inflammable. Or water. They'd probably dissolve.'
'Some of them were destroying pyramids,' said the high priest of Juf, the Cobra-Headed God of Papyrus.
'People always come back from the dead in such a bad temper,' said another priest.
Koomi watched the approaching army in mounting bewilderment.
'Where's Dios?' he said.
The old high priest was pushed to the front of the crowd.
'What shall I say to them?' Koomi demanded.
It would be wrong to say that Dios smiled. It wasn't an action he often felt called upon to perform. But his mouth creased at the edges and his eyes went half-hooded.
'You could tell them,' he said, 'that new times demand new men. You could tell them that it is time to make way for younger people with fresh ideas. You could tell them that they are outmoded. You could tell them all that.'
'They'll kill me!'
'Would they be that anxious for your eternal company, I wonder?'
'You're still high priest!'
'Why don't you talk to them?' said Dios. 'Don't forget to tell them that they are to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Century of the Cobra.' He handed Koomi the staff. 'Or whatever this century is called,' he added.
Koomi felt the eyes of the assembled brethren and sistren upon him. He cleared his throat, adjusted his robe, and turned to face the mummies.
They were chanting something, one word, over and over again. He couldn't quite make it out, but it seemed to have worked them up into a rage.
He raised the staff, and the carved wooden snakes looked unusually alive in the flat light.
The gods of the Disc — and here is meant the great consensus gods, who really do exist in Dunmanifestin, their semi-detached Valhalla on the world's impossibly high central mountain, where they pass the time observing the petty antics of mortal men and organising petitions about how the influx of the Ice Giants has lowered property values in the celestial regions — the gods of Disc have always been fascinated by humanity's incredible ability to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time.
They're not talking here of such easy errors as 'It's perfectly safe', or 'The ones that growl a lot don't bite', but of simple little sentences which are injected into difficult situations with the same general effect as a steel bar dropped into the bearings of a 3,000 rpm, 660 megawatt steam turbine.
And connoisseurs of mankind's tendency to put his pedal extremity where his tongue should be are agreed that when the judges' envelopes are opened then Hoot Koomi's fine performance in 'Begone from this place, foul shades' will be a contender for all— time bloody stupid greeting.
The front row of ancestors halted, and were pushed forward a little by the press of those behind.
King Teppicymon XXVII, who by common consent among the other twenty-six Teppicymons was spokesman, lurched on alone and picked up the trembling Koomi by his arms.
'What did you say?' he said.
Koomi's eyes rolled. His mouth opened and shut, but his voice wisely decided not to come out.
Teppicymon pushed his bandaged face close to the priest's pointed nose.
'I remember you,' he growled. 'I've seen you oiling around the place. A bad hat, if ever I saw one. I remember thinking that.'
He glared around at the others.
'You're all priests, aren't you? Come to say sorry, have you? Where's Dios?'
The ancestors pressed forward, muttering. When you've been dead for hundreds of years, you're not inclined to feel generous to those people who assured you that you were going to have a lovely time. There was a scuffle in the middle of the crowd as King Psam-nut-kha, who had spent five thousand years with nothing to look at but the inside of a lid, was restrained by younger colleagues.
Teppicymon switched his attention back to Koomi, who hadn't gone anywhere.
'Foul shades, was it?' he said.
'Er,' said Koomi.
'Put him down.' Dios gently took the staff from Koomi's unresisting fingers and said, 'I am Dios, the high priest. Why are you here?'
It was a perfectly calm and reasonable voice, with overtones of concerned but indubitable authority. It was a tone of voice the pharaohs of Djelibeybi had heard for thousands of years, a voice which had regulated the days, prescribed the rituals, cut the time into carefully-turned segments, interpreted the ways of gods to men. It was the sound of authority, which stirred antique memories among the ancestors and caused them to look embarrassed and shuffle their feet.
One of the younger pharaohs lurched forward.
'You bastard,' he croaked. 'You laid us out and shut us away, one by one, and you went on. People thought the name was passed on but it was always you. How old are you, Dios?'
There was no sound. No-one moved. A breeze stirred the dust a little.
Dios sighed.
'I did not mean to,' he said. 'There was so much to do. There were never enough hours in the day. Truly, I did not realise what was happening. I thought it was refreshing, nothing more, I suspected nothing. I noted the passing of the rituals, not the years.'
'Come from a long-lived family, do you?' said Teppicymon sarcastically.
Dios stared at him, his lips moving. 'Family,' he said at last, his voice softened from its normal bark. 'Family. Yes. I must have had a family, mustn't I. But, you know, I can't remember. Memory is the first thing that goes. The pyramids don't seem to preserve it, strangely.'
'This is Dios, the footnote-keeper of history?' said Teppicymon.
'Ah.' The high priest smiled. 'Memory goes from the head. But it is all around me. Every scroll and book.'
'That's the history of the kingdom, man!'
'Yes. My memory.'
The king relaxed a little. Sheer horrified fascination was unravelling the knot of fury.
'How old are you?' he said.
'I think… seven thousand years. But sometimes it seems much longer.'
'Really seven thousand years?'
'Yes,' said Dios.
'How could any man stand it?' said the king.
Dios shrugged.
'Seven thousand years is just one day at a time,' he said. Slowly, with the occasional wince, he got down on one knee and held up his staff in shaking hands.
'O kings,' he said, 'I have always existed only to serve.'
There was a long, extremely embarrassed pause.
'We will destroy the pyramids,' said Far-re-ptah, pushing forward.
'You will destroy the kingdom,' said Dios. 'I cannot allow it.'
'You cannot allow it?'
'Yes. What will we be without the pyramids?' said Dios.
'Speaking for the dead,' said Far-re-ptah, 'we will be free.'
'But the kingdom will be just another small country,' said Dios, and to their horror the ancestors saw tears in his eyes.
'All that we hold dear, you will cast adrift in time. Uncertain. Without guidance. Changeable.'
'Then it can take its chances,' said Teppicymon. 'Stand aside, Dios.'
Dios held up his staff. The snake around it uncoiled and hissed at the king.
'Be still,' said Dios.
Dark lightning crackled between the ancestors. Dios stared at the staff in astonishment; it had never done this before.
But seven thousand years of his priests had believed, in their hearts, that the staff of Dios could rule this world and the next.
In the sudden silence there was the faint chink, high up, of a knife being wedged between two black marble slabs.
The pyramid pulsed under Teppic, and the marble was as slippery as ice. The inward slope wasn't the help he had expected.
The thing, he told himself, is not to look up or down, but straight ahead, into the marble, parcelling the impossible height into manageable sections. Just like time. That's how we survive infinity — we kill it by breaking it up into small bits.
He was aware of shouts below him, and glanced briefly over his shoulder. He was barely a third of the way up, but he could see the crowds across the river, a grey mass speckled with the pale blobs of upturned faces. Closer to, the pale army of the dead, facing the small grey group of priests, with Dios in front of them. There was some sort of argument going on.
The sun was on the horizon.
He reached up, located the next crack, found a handhold.
Dios spotted Ptaclusp's head peering over the debris, and sent a couple of priests to bring him back. IIb followed, his carefully folded brother under his arm.
'What is the boy doing?' Dios demanded.
'O Dios, he said he was going to flare off the pyramid,' said Ptaclusp.
'How can he do that?'
'O lord, he says he is going to cap it off before the sun sets.'
'Is it possible?' Dios demanded, turning to the architect. IIb hesitated.
'It may be,' he said.
'And what will happen? Will we return to the world outside?'
'Well, it depends on whether the dimensional effect ratchets, as it were, and is stable in each state, or if, on the contrary, the pyramid is acting as a piece of rubber under tension-'
His voice stuttered to a halt under the intensity of Dios's stare.
'I don't know,' he admitted.
'Back to the world outside,' said Dios. 'Not our world. Our world is the Valley. Ours is a world of order. Men need order.'
He raised his staff.
'That's my son!' shouted Teppicymon. 'Don't you dare try anything! That's the king!'
The ranks of ancestors swayed, but couldn't break the spell.
'Er, Dios,' said Koomi.
Dios turned, his eyebrows raised.
'You spoke?' he said.
'Er, if it is the king, er I — that is, we — think perhaps you should let him get on with it. Er, don't you think that would be a really good idea?'
Dios's staff kicked, and the priests felt the cold bands of restraint freeze their limbs.
'I gave my life for the kingdom,' said the high priest. 'I gave it over and over again. Everything it is, I created. I cannot fail it now.'
And then he saw the gods.
Teppic eased himself up another couple of feet and then gently reached down to pull a knife out of the marble. It wasn't going to work, though. Knife climbing was for those short and awkward passages, and frowned on anyway because it suggested you'd chosen a wrong route. It wasn't for this sort of thing, unless you had unlimited knives.
He glanced over his shoulder again as strange barred shadows flickered across the face of the pyramid.
From out of the sunset, where they had been engaged in their eternal squabbling, the gods were returning.
They staggered and lurched across the fields and reed beds, heading for the pyramid. Near-brainless though they were, they understood what it was. Perhaps they even understood what Teppic was trying to do. Their assorted animal faces made it hard to be certain, but it looked as though they were very angry.
'Are you going to control them, Dios?' said the king. 'Are you going to tell them that the world should be changeless?'
Dios stared up at the creatures jostling one another as they waded the river. There were too many teeth, too many lolling tongues. The bits of them that were human were sloughing away. A lion-headed god of justice — Put, Dios recalled the name — was using its scales as a flail to beat one of the river gods. Chefet, the Dog-Headed God of metalwork, was growling and attacking his fellows at random with his hammer; this was Chefet, Dios thought, the god that he had created to be an example to men in the art of wire and filigree and small beauty.
Yet it had worked. He'd taken a desert rabble and shown them all he could remember of the arts of civilisation and the secrets of the pyramids. He'd needed gods then.
The trouble with gods is that after enough people start believing in them, they begin to exist. And what begins to exist isn't what was originally intended.
Chefet, Chefet, thought Dios. Maker of rings, weaver of metal. Now he's out of our heads, and see how his nails grow into claws . . .
This is not how I imagined him.
'Stop,' he instructed. 'I order you to stop! You will obey me. I made you!'
They also lack gratitude.
King Teppicymon felt the power around him weaken as Dios turned all his attention to ecclesiastical matters. He saw the tiny shape halfway up the wall of the pyramid, saw it falter.
The rest of the ancestors saw it, too, and as one corpse they knew what to do. Dios could wait.
This was family.
Teppic heard the snap of the handle under his foot, slid a little, and hung by one hand. He'd got another knife in above him but . . . no, no good. He hadn't got the reach. For practical purposes his arms felt like short lengths of wet rope. Now, if he spreadeagled himself as he slid, he might be able to slow enough .
He looked down and saw the climbers coming towards him, in a tide that was tumbling upwards.
The ancestors rose up the face of the pyramid silently, like creepers, each new row settling into position on the shoulders of the generation beneath, while the younger ones climbed on over them. Bony hands grabbed Teppic as the wave of edificeers broke around him, and he was half-pushed, half-pulled up the sloping wall. Voices like the creak of sarcophagi filled his ears, moaning encouragement.
'Well done, boy,' groaned a crumbling mummy, hauling him bodily on to its shoulder. 'You remind me of me when I was alive. To you, son.'
'Got him,' said the corpse above, lifting Teppic easily on one outstretched arm. 'That's a fine family spirit, lad. Best wishes from your great-great-great-great uncle, although I don't suppose you remember me. Coming up.
Other ancestors were climbing on past Teppic as he rose from hand to hand. Ancient fingers with a grip like steel clutched at him, hoisting him onwards.
The pyramid grew narrower.
Down below, Ptaclusp watched thoughtfully.
'What a workforce,' he said. 'I mean, the ones at the bottom are supporting the whole weight!'
'Dad,' said IIb. 'I think we'd better run. Those gods are getting closer.'
'Do you think we could employ them?' said Ptaclusp, ignoring him. 'They're dead, they probably won't want high wages, and-'
'Dad!'
'Sort of self-build-'
'You said no more pyramids, dad. Never again, you said. Now come on!'
Teppic scrambled to the top of the pyramid, supported by the last two ancestors. One of them was his father.
'I don't think you've met your great-grandma,' he said, indicating the shorter bandaged figure, who nodded gently at Teppic. He opened his mouth.
'There's no time,' she said. 'You're doing fine.'
He glanced at the sun which, old professional that it was, chose that moment to drop below the horizon. The gods had crossed the river, their progress slowed only by their tendency to push and shove among themselves, and were lurching through the buildings of the necropolis. Several were clustered around the spot where Dios had been.
The ancestors dropped away, sliding back down the pyramid as fast as they had climbed it, leaving Teppic alone on a few square feet of rock.
A couple of stars came out.
He saw white shapes below as the ancestors hurried away on some private errand of their own, lurching at a surprising speed towards the broad band of the river.
The gods abandoned their interest in Dios, this strange little human with the stick and the cracked voice. The nearest god, a crocodile-headed thing, jerked on to the plaza before the pyramid, squinted up at Teppic, and reached out towards him. Teppic fumbled for a knife, wondering what sort was appropriate for gods .
And, along the Djel, the pyramids began to flare their meagre store of hoarded time.
Priests and ancestors fled as the ground began to shake. Even the gods looked bewildered.
IIb snatched his father's arm and dragged him away.
'Come on!' he yelled into his ear. 'We can't be around here when it goes off! Otherwise you'll be put to bed on a coathanger!'
Around them several other pyramids struck their flares, thin and reedy affairs that were barely visible in the afterglow.
'Dad! I said we've got to go!'
Ptaclusp was dragged backwards across the flagstones, still staring at the hulking outline of the Great Pyramid.
'There's someone still there, look,' he said, and pointed to a figure alone on the plaza.
IIb peered into the gloom.
'It's only Dios, the high priest,' he said. 'I expect he's got some plan in mind, best not to meddle in the affairs of priests, now will you come on.'
The crocodile-headed god turned its snout back and forth, trying to focus on Teppic without the advantage of binocular vision. This close, its body was slightly transparent, as though someone had sketched in all the lines and got bored before it was time to do the shading. It trod on a small tomb, crushing it to powder.
A hand like a cluster of canoes with claws on hovered over Teppic. The pyramid trembled and the stone under his feet felt warm, but it resolutely forbore from any signs of wanting to flare.
The hand descended. Teppic sank on one knee and, out of desperation, raised the knife over his head in both hands.
The light glinted for a moment off the tip of the blade and then the Great Pyramid flared.
It did it in absolute silence to begin with, sending up a spire of eye-torturing flame that turned the whole kingdom into a criss-cross of black shadow and white light, a flame that might have turned any watchers not just into a pillar of salt but into a complete condiment set of their choice. It exploded like an unwound dandelion, silent as starlight, searing as a supernova.
Only after it had been bathing the necropolis in its impossible brilliance for several seconds did the sound come, and it was sound that winds itself up through the bones, creeps into every cell of the body, and tries with some success to turn them inside out. It was too loud to be called noise. There is sound so loud that it prevents itself from being heard, and this was that kind of sound.
Eventually it condescended to drop out of the cosmic scale and became, simply, the loudest noise anyone hearing it had ever experienced.
The noise stopped, filling the air with the dark metallic clang of sudden silence. The light went out, lancing the night with blue and purple afterimages. It was not the silence and darkness of conclusion but of pause, like the moment of equilibrium when a thrown ball runs out of acceleration but has yet to have gravity drawn to its attention and, for a brief moment, thinks that the worst is over.
This time it was heralded by a shrill whistling out of the clear sky and a swirl in the air that became a glow, became a flame, became a flare that sizzled downwards into the pyramid, punching into the mass of black marble. Fingers of lightning crackled out and grounded on the lesser tombs around it, so that serpents of white fire burned their way from pyramid to pyramid across the necropolis and the air filled with the stink of burning stone.
In the middle of the firestorm the Great Pyramid appeared to lift up a few inches, on a beam of incandescence, and turn through ninety degrees. This was almost certainly the special type of optical illusion which can take place even though noone is actually looking at it.
And then, with deceptive slowness and considerable dignity, it exploded.
It was almost too crass a word. What it did was this: it came apart ponderously into building-sized chunks which drifted gently away from one another, flying serenely out and over the necropolis. Several of them struck other pyramids, badly damaging them in a lazy, unselfconscious way, and then bounded on in silence until they ploughed to a halt behind a small mountain of rubble.
Only then did the boom come. It went on for quite along time.
Grey dust rolled over the kingdom.
Ptaclusp dragged himself upright and groped ahead, gingerly, until he walked into someone. He shuddered when he thought about the kind of people he'd seen walking around lately, but thought didn't come easily because something appeared to have hit him on the head recently .
'Is that you, lad?' he ventured.
'Is that you, dad?'
'Yes,' said Ptaclusp.
'It's me, dad.'
'I'm glad it's you, son.'
'Can you see anything?'
'No. It's all mist and fog.'
'Thank the gods for that, I thought it was me.'
'It is you, isn't it? You said.'
'Yes, dad.'
'Is your brother all right?'
'I've got him safe in my pocket, dad.'
'Good. So long as nothing's happened to him.'
They inched forward, clambering over lumps of masonry they could barely see.
'Something exploded, dad,' said IIb, slowly. 'I think it was the pyramid.'
Ptaclusp rubbed the top of his head, where two tons of flying rock had come within a sixteenth of an inch of fitting him for one of his own pyramids. 'It was that dodgy cement we bought from Merco the Ephebian, I expect-'
'I think this was a bit worse than a moody lintel, dad,' said IIb. 'In fact, I think it was a lot worse.'
'It looked a bit wossname, a bit on the sandy side-'
'I think you should find somewhere to sit down, dad,' said IIb, as kindly as possible. 'Here's Two-Ay. Hang on to him.'
He crept on alone, climbing over a slab of what felt very suspiciously like black marble. What he wanted, he decided, was a priest. They had to be useful for something, and this seemed the sort of time one might need one. For solace, or possibly, he felt obscurely, to beat their head in with a rock.
What he found instead was someone on their hands and knees, coughing. IIb helped him — it was definitely a him, he'd been briefly afraid it might be an it — and sat him on another lump of, yes, almost certainly marble.
'Are you a priest?' he said, fumbling in the rubble.
'I'm Dil. Chief embalmer,' the figure muttered.
'Ptaclusp IIb, paracosmic archi-' IIb began and then, suspecting that architects were not going to be too popular around here for a while, quickly corrected himself. 'I'm an engineer,' he said. 'Are you all right?'
'Don't know. What happened?'
'I think the pyramid exploded,' IIb volunteered.
'Are we dead?'
'I shouldn't think so. You're walking and talking, after all.'
Dil shivered. 'That's no guideline, take it from me. What's an engineer?'
'Oh, a builder of aqueducts,' said IIb quickly. 'They're the coming thing, you know.'
Dil stood up, a little shakily.
'I,' he said, 'need a drink. Let's find the river.'
They found Teppic first.
He was clinging to a small, truncated pyramid section that had made a moderate-sized crater when it landed.
'I know him,' said IIb. 'He's the lad who was on top of the pyramid. That's ridiculous, how could he survive that?'
'Why's there all corn sprouting out of it, too?' wondered Dil.
'I mean, perhaps there's some kind of effect if you're right in the centre of the flare, or something,' said IIb, thinking aloud. 'A sort of calm area or something, like in the middle of a whirlpool-' He reached instinctively for his wax tablet, and then stopped himself. Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with. 'Is he dead?' he said. 'Don't look at me,' said Dil, stepping back. He'd been running through his mind the alternative occupations now open to him. Upholstery sounded attractive. At least chairs didn't get up and walk after you'd stuffed them. IIb bent over the body.
'Look what he's got in his hand,' he said, gently bending back the fingers. 'It's a piece of melted metal. What's he got that for?'
Teppic dreamed.
He saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, and one of them was riding a bicycle.
He saw some camels, singing, and the song straightened out the wrinkles in reality.
He saw a finger Write on the wall of a pyramid: Going forth is easy. Going back requires (cont. on next wall) . . .
He walked around the pyramid, where the finger continued: An effort of will, because it is much harder. Thank you.
Teppic considered this, and it occurred to him that there was one thing left to do which he had not done. He'd never known how to before, but now he could see that it was just numbers, arranged in a special way. Everything that was magical was just a way of describing the world in words it couldn't ignore.
He gave a grunt of effort.
There was a brief moment of speed. Dil and IIb looked around as long shafts of light sparkled through the mists and dust, turning the landscape into old gold.
And the sun came up.
The sergeant cautiously opened the hatch in the horse's belly. When the expected flurry of spears did not materialise he ordered Autocue to let out the rope ladder, climbed down it, and looked across the chill morning desert.
The new recruit followed him down and stood, hopping from one sandal to another, on sand that was nearly freezing now and would be frying by lunchtime.
'There,' said the sergeant, pointing, 'see the Tsortean lines, lad?'
'Looks like a row of wooden horses to me, sergeant,' said Autocue. 'The one on the end's on rockers.'
'That'll be the officers. Huh. Those Tsorteans must think we're simple.' The sergeant stamped some life into his legs, took a few breaths of fresh air, and walked back to the ladder.
'Come on, lad,' he said.
'Why've we got to go back up there?'
The sergeant paused, his foot on a rope rung.
'Use some common, laddie. They're not going to come and take our horses if they see us hanging around outside, are they? Stands to reason.'
'You sure they're going to come, then?' said Autocue. The sergeant frowned at him.
'Look, soldier,' he said, 'anyone bloody stupid enough to think we're going to drag a lot of horses full of soldiers back to our city is certainly daft enough to drag ours all the way back to theirs. QED.'
'QED, sarge?'
'It means get back up the bloody ladder, lad.'
Autocue saluted. 'Permission to be excused first, sarge?'
'Excused what?'
'Excused, sarge,' said Autocue, a shade desperately. 'I mean, it's a bit cramped in the horse, sarge, if you know what I mean.'
'You're going to have to learn a bit of will power if you want to stay in the horse soldiers, boy. You know that?'
'Yes, sarge,' said Autocue miserably.
'You've got one minute.'
'Thanks, sarge.'
When the hatch closed above him Autocue sidled over to one of the horse's massive legs and put it to a use for which it wasn't originally intended.
And it was while he was staring vaguely ahead, lost in that Zen-like contemplation which occurs at moments like this, that there was a faint pop in the air and an entire river valley opened up in front of him.
It's not the sort of thing that ought to happen to a thoughtful lad. Especially one who has to wash his own uniform.
A breeze from the sea blew into the kingdom, hinting at, no, positively roaring suggestions of salt, shellfish and sun-soaked tidelines. A few rather puzzled seabirds wheeled over the necropolis, where the wind scurried among the fallen masonry and covered with sand the memorials to ancient kings, and the birds said more with a simple bowel movement than Ozymandias ever managed to say.
The wind had a cool, not unpleasant edge to it. The people out repairing the damage caused by the gods felt an urge to turn their faces towards it, as fish in a pond turn towards an influx of clear, fresh water.
No-one worked in the necropolis. Most of the pyramids had blown their upper levels clean off, and stood smoking gently like recently-extinct volcanoes. Here and there slabs of black marble littered the landscape. One of them had nearly decapitated a fine statue of Hat, the Vulture-Headed God.
The ancestors had vanished. No-one was volunteering to go and look for them.
Around midday a ship came up the Djel under full sail. It was a deceptive ship. It seemed to wallow like a fat and unprotected hippo, and it was only after watching it for some time that anyone would realise that it was also making remarkably fast progress. It dropped anchor outside the palace.
After a while, it let down a dinghy.
Teppic sat on the throne and watched the life of the kingdom reassemble itself, like a smashed mirror that is put together again and reflects the same old light in new and unexpected ways.
No-one was quite sure on what basis he was on the throne, but no-one else was at all keen on occupying it and it was a relief to hear instructions issued in a clear, confident voice. It is amazing what people will obey, if a clear and confident voice is used, and the kingdom was well used to a clear, confident voice.
Besides, giving orders stopped him thinking about things. Like, for example, what would happen next. But at least the gods had gone back to not existing again, which made it a whole lot easier to believe in them, and the grass didn't seem to be growing under his feet any more.
Maybe I can put the kingdom together again, he thought. But then what can I do with it? If only we could find Dios. He always knew what to do, that was the main thing about him.
A guard pushed his way through the milling throng of priests and nobles.
'Excuse me, your sire,' he said. 'There's a merchant to see you. He says it's urgent.'
'Not now, man. There's representatives of the Tsortean and Ephebian armies coming to see me in an hour, and there's a great deal that's got to be done first. I can't go around seeing any salesmen who happen to be passing. What's he selling, anyway?'
'Carpets, your sire.'
'Carpets?'
It was Chidder, grinning like half a watermelon, followed by several of the crew. He walked up the hall staring around at the frescoes and hangings. Because it was Chidder, he was probably costing them out. By the time he reached the throne he was drawing a double line under the total.
'Nice place,' he said, wrapping up thousands of years of architectural accumulation in a mere two syllables. 'You'll never guess what happened, we just happened to be sailing along the coast and suddenly there was this river. One minute cliffs, next minute river. There's a funny thing, I thought. I bet old Teppic's up there somewhere.'
'Where's Ptraci?'
'I knew you were complaining about the lack of the old home comforts, so we brought you this carpet.'
'I said, where's Ptraci?'
The crew moved aside, leaving a grinning Alfonz to cut the strings around the carpet and shake it out.
It uncurled swiftly across the floor in a flurry of dust balls and moths and, eventually, Ptraci, who continued rolling until her head hit Teppic's boot.
He helped her to her feet and tried to pick bits of fluff out of her hair as she swayed backwards and forwards. She ignored him and turned to Chidder, red with breathlessness and fury.
'I could have died in there!' she shouted. 'Lots of other things have, by the smell! And the heat!'
'You said it worked for Queen wossname, Ram-Jam-Hurrah, or whoever,' said Chidder. 'Don't blame me, at home a necklace or something is usually the thing.'
'I bet she had a decent carpet,' snapped Ptraci. 'Not something stuck in a bloody hold for six months.'
'You're lucky we had one at all,' said Chidder mildly. 'It was your idea.'
'Huh,' said Ptraci. She turned to Teppic. 'Hallo,' she said. 'This was meant to be a startling original surprise.'
'It worked,' said Teppic fervently. 'It really worked.'
Chidder lay on a daybed on the palace's veranda, while three handmaidens took turns to peel grapes for him. A pitcher of beer stood cooling in the shade. He was grinning amiably.
On a blanket nearby Alfonz lay on his stomach, feeling extremely awkward. The Mistress of the Women had found out that, in addition to the tattoos on his forearms, his back was a veritable illustrated history of exotic practices, and had brought the girls out to be educated. He winced occasionally as her pointer stabbed at items of particular interest, and stuffed his fingers firmly in his great, scarred ears to shut out the giggles.
At the far end of the veranda, given privacy by unspoken agreement, Teppic sat with Ptraci. Things were not going well.
'Everything changed,' he said. 'I'm not going to be king.'
'You are the king,' she said. 'You can't change things.'
'I can. I can abdicate. It's very simple. If I'm not really the king, then I can go whenever I please. If I am the king, then the king's word is final and I can abdicate. If we can change sex by decree, we can certainly change station. They can find a relative to do the job. I must have dozens.'
'The job? Anyway, you said there was only your auntie.'
Teppic frowned. Aunt Cleph-ptah-re was not, on reflection, the kind of monarch a kingdom needed if it was going to make a fresh start. She had a number of stoutly-held views on a variety of subjects, but most of them involved the flaying alive of people she disapproved of. This meant most people under the age of thirty— five, to start with.
'Well, someone else, then,' he said. 'It shouldn't be difficult, we've always seemed to have more nobles than really necessary. We'll just have to find one who has the dream about the cows.'
'Oh, the one where there's fat cows and thin cows?' said Ptraci.
'Yes. It's sort of ancestral.'
'It's a nuisance, I know that much. One of them's always grinning and playing a wimblehorn.'
'It looks like a trombone to me,' said Teppic.
'It's a ceremonial wimblehorn, if you look closely,' she said.
'Well, I expect everyone sees it a bit differently. I don't think it matters.' He sighed, and watched the Unnamed unloading. It seemed to have more than the expected number of feather mattresses, and several of the people wandering bemusedly down the gangplank were holding toolboxes and lengths of pipe.
'I think you're going to find it difficult,' said Ptraci. 'You can't say «All those who dream about cows please step forward». It'd give the game away.'
'I can't just hang around until someone happens to mention it, can I? Be reasonable,' he snapped. 'How many people are likely to say, hey, I had this funny dream about cows last night? Apart from you, I mean.'
They stared at one another.
'And she's my sister?' said Teppic.
The priests nodded. It was left to Koomi to put it into words. He'd just spent ten minutes going through the files with the Mistress of the Women.
'Her mother was, er, your late father's favourite,' he said.
'He took a great deal of interest in her upbringing, as you know, and, er, it would appear that . . . yes. She may be your aunt, of course. The concubines are never very good at paperwork. But most likely your sister.'
She looked at him with tear-filled eyes.
'That doesn't make any difference, does it?' she whispered.
Teppic stared at his feet.
'Yes,' he said. 'I think it does, really.' He looked up at her. 'But you can be queen,' he added. He glared at the priests. 'Can't she,' he stated firmly.
The high priests looked at one another. Then they looked at Ptraci, who stood alone, her shoulders shaking. Small, palace trained, used to taking orders . . . They looked at Koomi.
'She would be ideal,' he said. There was a murmur of suddenly— confident agreement.
'There you are then,' said Teppic, consolingly.
She glared at him. He backed away.
'So I'll be off,' he said, 'I don't need to pack anything, it's all right.'
'Just like that?' she said. 'Is that all? Isn't there anything you're going to say?'
He hesitated, halfway to the door. You could stay, he told himself. It wouldn't work, though. It'd end up a terrible mess; you'd probably end up splitting the kingdom between you. Just because fate throws you together doesn't mean fate's got it right. Anyway, you've been forth.
'Camels are more important than pyramids,' he said slowly. 'It's something we should always remember.'
He ran for it while she was looking for something to throw.
The sun reached the peak of noon without beetles, and Koomi hovered by the throne like Hat, the Vulture-Headed God.
'It will please your majesty to confirm my succession as high priest,' he said.
'What?' Ptraci was sitting with her chin cupped in one hand. She waved the other hand at him. 'Oh. Yes. All right. Fine.'
'No trace has, alas, been found of Dios. We believe he was very close to the Great Pyramid when it . . . flared.'
Ptraci stared into space. 'You carry on,' she said. Koomi preened.
'The formal coronation will take some time to arrange,' he said, taking the golden mask. 'However, your graciousness will be pleased to wear the mask of authority now, for there is much formal business to be concluded.'
She looked at the mask.
'I'm not wearing that,' she said flatly.
Koomi smiled. 'Your majesty will be pleased to wear the mask of authority,' he said.
'No,' said Ptraci.
Koomi's smile crazed a little around the edges as he attempted to get to grips with this new concept. He was sure Dios had never had this trouble.
He got over the problem by sidling round it. Sidling had stood him in good stead all his life; he wasn't going to desert it now. He put the mask down very carefully on a stool.
'It is the First Hour,' he said. 'Your majesty will wish to conduct the Ritual of the Ibis, and then graciously grant an audience to the military commanders of the Tsortean and Ephebian armies. Both are seeking permission to cross the kingdom. Your majesty will forbid this. At the Second Hour, there will-'
Ptraci sat drumming her fingers on the arms of the throne. Then she took a deep breath. 'I'm going to have a bath,' she said.
Koomi rocked back and forth a bit.
'It is the First Hour,' he repeated, unable to think of anything else. 'Your majesty will wish to conduct-'
'Koomi?'
'Yes, O noble queen?'
'Shut up.'
'The Ritual of the Ibis-' Koomi moaned.
'I'm sure you're capable of doing it yourself. You look like a man who does things himself, if ever I saw one,' she added sourly.
'The commanders of the Tsortean-'
'Tell them,' Ptraci began, and then paused. 'Tell them,' she repeated, 'that they may both cross. Not one or the other, you understand? Both.'
'Well, if we do it carefully he can't move in Time, that is, width to us. So if no time can pass for him, nothing can hurt him.'
Ptaclusp thought of the old days, when pyramid building had simply consisted of piling one block on another and all you needed to remember was that you put less on top as you went up. And now it meant trying to put a crease in one of your sons.
'Right,' he said doubtfully. 'Let's be off, then.' He inched his way up the debris and poked his head over the top just as the vanguard of the dead came round the corner of the nearest minor pyramid.
His first thought was: this is it, they're coming to complain. He'd done his best. It wasn't always easy to build to a budget. Maybe not every lintel was exactly as per drawings, perhaps the quality of the internal plasterwork wasn't always up to snuff, but . . .
They can't all be complaining. Not this many of them.
Ptaclusp IIb climbed up alongside him. His mouth dropped open.
'Where are they all coming from?' he said.
'You're the expert. You tell me.
'Are they dead?'
Ptaclusp scrutinised some of the approaching marchers.
'If they're not, some of them are awfully ill,' he said.
'Let's make a run for it!'
'Where to? Up the pyramid?'
The Great Pyramid loomed up behind them, its throbbing filling the air. Ptaclusp stared at it.
'What's going to happen tonight?' he said.
'What?'
'Well, is it going to — do whatever it did — again?'
IIb stared at him. 'Dunno.'
'Can you find out?'
'Only by waiting. I'm not even sure what it's done now.
'Are we going to like it?'
'I shouldn't think so, dad. Oh, dear.'
'What's up now?'
'Look over there.'
Heading towards the marching dead, trailing behind Koomi like a tail behind a comet, were the priests.
It was hot and dark inside the horse. It was also very crowded.
They waited, sweating.
Young Autocue stuttered: 'What'll happen now, sergeant?'
The sergeant moved a foot tentatively. The atmosphere would have induced claustrophobia in a sardine.
'Well, lad. They'll find us, see, and be so impressed they'll drag us all the way back to their city, and then when it's dark we'll leap out and put them to the sword. Or put the sword to them. One or the other. And then we'll sack the city, bum the walls and sow the ground with salt. You remember, lad, I showed you on Friday.'
'Oh.'
Moisture dripped from a score of brows. Several of the men were trying to compose a letter home, dragging styli across wax that was close to melting.
'And then what will happen, sergeant?'
'Why, lad, then we'll go home heroes.'
'Oh.'
The older soldiers sat stolidly looking at the wooden walls. Autocue shifted uneasily, still worried about something.
'My mum said to come back with my shield or on it, sergeant,' he said.
'Jolly good, lad. That's the spirit.'
'We will be all right, though. Won't we, sergeant?'
The sergeant stared into the fetid darkness.
After a while, someone started to play the harmonica.
Ptaclusp half-turned his head from the scene and a voice by his ear said, 'You're the pyramid builder, aren't you?'
Another figure had joined them in their bolthole, one who was black-clad and moved in a way that made a cat's tread sound like a one-man band.
Ptaclusp nodded, unable to speak. He had had enough shocks for one day.
'Well, switch it off. Switch it off now.'
IIb leaned over.
'Who're you?' he said.
'My name is Teppic.'
'What, like the king?'
'Yes. Just like the king. Now turn it off.'
'It's a pyramid! You can't turn off pyramids!' said IIb.
'Well, then, make it flare.'
'We tried that last night.' IIb pointed to the shattered capstone. 'Unroll Two-Ay, dad.'
Teppic regarded the flat brother.
'It's some sort of wall poster, is it?' he said eventually.
IIb looked down. Teppic saw the movement, and looked down also; he was ankle-deep in green sprouts.
'Sorry,' he said. 'I can't seem to shake it off.'
'It can be dreadful,' said IIb frantically. 'I know how it is, I had this verruca once, nothing would shift it.'
Teppic hunkered down by the cracked stone.
'This thing,' he said. 'What's the significance? I mean, it's coated with metal. Why?'
'There's got to be a sharp point for the flare,' said IIb.
'Is that all? This is gold, isn't it?'
'It's electrum. Gold and silver alloy. The capstone has got to be made of electrum.'
Teppic peeled back the foil.
'This isn't all metal,' he said mildly.
'Yes. Well,' said Ptaclusp. 'We found, er, that foil works just as well.'
'Couldn't you use something cheaper? Like steel?' Ptaclusp sneered. It hadn't been a good day, sanity was a distant memory, but there were certain facts he knew for a fact.
'Wouldn't last for more than a year or two,' he said. 'What with the dew and so forth. You'd lose the point. Wouldn't last more than two or three hundred times.'
Teppic leaned his head against the pyramid. It was cold, and it hummed. He thought he could hear, under the throbbing, a faint rising tone.
The pyramid towered over him. (IIb could have told him that this was because the walls sloped in at precisely 56 degrees, and an effect known as battering made the pyramid loom even higher than it really was. He probably would have used words like perspective and virtual height as well.
The black marble was glassy smooth. The masons had done well. The cracks between each silky panel were hardly wide enough to insert a knife. But wide enough, all the same.
'How about once?' he said.
Koomi chewed his fingernails distractedly.
'Fire,' he said. 'That'd stop them. They're very inflammable. Or water. They'd probably dissolve.'
'Some of them were destroying pyramids,' said the high priest of Juf, the Cobra-Headed God of Papyrus.
'People always come back from the dead in such a bad temper,' said another priest.
Koomi watched the approaching army in mounting bewilderment.
'Where's Dios?' he said.
The old high priest was pushed to the front of the crowd.
'What shall I say to them?' Koomi demanded.
It would be wrong to say that Dios smiled. It wasn't an action he often felt called upon to perform. But his mouth creased at the edges and his eyes went half-hooded.
'You could tell them,' he said, 'that new times demand new men. You could tell them that it is time to make way for younger people with fresh ideas. You could tell them that they are outmoded. You could tell them all that.'
'They'll kill me!'
'Would they be that anxious for your eternal company, I wonder?'
'You're still high priest!'
'Why don't you talk to them?' said Dios. 'Don't forget to tell them that they are to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Century of the Cobra.' He handed Koomi the staff. 'Or whatever this century is called,' he added.
Koomi felt the eyes of the assembled brethren and sistren upon him. He cleared his throat, adjusted his robe, and turned to face the mummies.
They were chanting something, one word, over and over again. He couldn't quite make it out, but it seemed to have worked them up into a rage.
He raised the staff, and the carved wooden snakes looked unusually alive in the flat light.
The gods of the Disc — and here is meant the great consensus gods, who really do exist in Dunmanifestin, their semi-detached Valhalla on the world's impossibly high central mountain, where they pass the time observing the petty antics of mortal men and organising petitions about how the influx of the Ice Giants has lowered property values in the celestial regions — the gods of Disc have always been fascinated by humanity's incredible ability to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time.
They're not talking here of such easy errors as 'It's perfectly safe', or 'The ones that growl a lot don't bite', but of simple little sentences which are injected into difficult situations with the same general effect as a steel bar dropped into the bearings of a 3,000 rpm, 660 megawatt steam turbine.
And connoisseurs of mankind's tendency to put his pedal extremity where his tongue should be are agreed that when the judges' envelopes are opened then Hoot Koomi's fine performance in 'Begone from this place, foul shades' will be a contender for all— time bloody stupid greeting.
The front row of ancestors halted, and were pushed forward a little by the press of those behind.
King Teppicymon XXVII, who by common consent among the other twenty-six Teppicymons was spokesman, lurched on alone and picked up the trembling Koomi by his arms.
'What did you say?' he said.
Koomi's eyes rolled. His mouth opened and shut, but his voice wisely decided not to come out.
Teppicymon pushed his bandaged face close to the priest's pointed nose.
'I remember you,' he growled. 'I've seen you oiling around the place. A bad hat, if ever I saw one. I remember thinking that.'
He glared around at the others.
'You're all priests, aren't you? Come to say sorry, have you? Where's Dios?'
The ancestors pressed forward, muttering. When you've been dead for hundreds of years, you're not inclined to feel generous to those people who assured you that you were going to have a lovely time. There was a scuffle in the middle of the crowd as King Psam-nut-kha, who had spent five thousand years with nothing to look at but the inside of a lid, was restrained by younger colleagues.
Teppicymon switched his attention back to Koomi, who hadn't gone anywhere.
'Foul shades, was it?' he said.
'Er,' said Koomi.
'Put him down.' Dios gently took the staff from Koomi's unresisting fingers and said, 'I am Dios, the high priest. Why are you here?'
It was a perfectly calm and reasonable voice, with overtones of concerned but indubitable authority. It was a tone of voice the pharaohs of Djelibeybi had heard for thousands of years, a voice which had regulated the days, prescribed the rituals, cut the time into carefully-turned segments, interpreted the ways of gods to men. It was the sound of authority, which stirred antique memories among the ancestors and caused them to look embarrassed and shuffle their feet.
One of the younger pharaohs lurched forward.
'You bastard,' he croaked. 'You laid us out and shut us away, one by one, and you went on. People thought the name was passed on but it was always you. How old are you, Dios?'
There was no sound. No-one moved. A breeze stirred the dust a little.
Dios sighed.
'I did not mean to,' he said. 'There was so much to do. There were never enough hours in the day. Truly, I did not realise what was happening. I thought it was refreshing, nothing more, I suspected nothing. I noted the passing of the rituals, not the years.'
'Come from a long-lived family, do you?' said Teppicymon sarcastically.
Dios stared at him, his lips moving. 'Family,' he said at last, his voice softened from its normal bark. 'Family. Yes. I must have had a family, mustn't I. But, you know, I can't remember. Memory is the first thing that goes. The pyramids don't seem to preserve it, strangely.'
'This is Dios, the footnote-keeper of history?' said Teppicymon.
'Ah.' The high priest smiled. 'Memory goes from the head. But it is all around me. Every scroll and book.'
'That's the history of the kingdom, man!'
'Yes. My memory.'
The king relaxed a little. Sheer horrified fascination was unravelling the knot of fury.
'How old are you?' he said.
'I think… seven thousand years. But sometimes it seems much longer.'
'Really seven thousand years?'
'Yes,' said Dios.
'How could any man stand it?' said the king.
Dios shrugged.
'Seven thousand years is just one day at a time,' he said. Slowly, with the occasional wince, he got down on one knee and held up his staff in shaking hands.
'O kings,' he said, 'I have always existed only to serve.'
There was a long, extremely embarrassed pause.
'We will destroy the pyramids,' said Far-re-ptah, pushing forward.
'You will destroy the kingdom,' said Dios. 'I cannot allow it.'
'You cannot allow it?'
'Yes. What will we be without the pyramids?' said Dios.
'Speaking for the dead,' said Far-re-ptah, 'we will be free.'
'But the kingdom will be just another small country,' said Dios, and to their horror the ancestors saw tears in his eyes.
'All that we hold dear, you will cast adrift in time. Uncertain. Without guidance. Changeable.'
'Then it can take its chances,' said Teppicymon. 'Stand aside, Dios.'
Dios held up his staff. The snake around it uncoiled and hissed at the king.
'Be still,' said Dios.
Dark lightning crackled between the ancestors. Dios stared at the staff in astonishment; it had never done this before.
But seven thousand years of his priests had believed, in their hearts, that the staff of Dios could rule this world and the next.
In the sudden silence there was the faint chink, high up, of a knife being wedged between two black marble slabs.
The pyramid pulsed under Teppic, and the marble was as slippery as ice. The inward slope wasn't the help he had expected.
The thing, he told himself, is not to look up or down, but straight ahead, into the marble, parcelling the impossible height into manageable sections. Just like time. That's how we survive infinity — we kill it by breaking it up into small bits.
He was aware of shouts below him, and glanced briefly over his shoulder. He was barely a third of the way up, but he could see the crowds across the river, a grey mass speckled with the pale blobs of upturned faces. Closer to, the pale army of the dead, facing the small grey group of priests, with Dios in front of them. There was some sort of argument going on.
The sun was on the horizon.
He reached up, located the next crack, found a handhold.
Dios spotted Ptaclusp's head peering over the debris, and sent a couple of priests to bring him back. IIb followed, his carefully folded brother under his arm.
'What is the boy doing?' Dios demanded.
'O Dios, he said he was going to flare off the pyramid,' said Ptaclusp.
'How can he do that?'
'O lord, he says he is going to cap it off before the sun sets.'
'Is it possible?' Dios demanded, turning to the architect. IIb hesitated.
'It may be,' he said.
'And what will happen? Will we return to the world outside?'
'Well, it depends on whether the dimensional effect ratchets, as it were, and is stable in each state, or if, on the contrary, the pyramid is acting as a piece of rubber under tension-'
His voice stuttered to a halt under the intensity of Dios's stare.
'I don't know,' he admitted.
'Back to the world outside,' said Dios. 'Not our world. Our world is the Valley. Ours is a world of order. Men need order.'
He raised his staff.
'That's my son!' shouted Teppicymon. 'Don't you dare try anything! That's the king!'
The ranks of ancestors swayed, but couldn't break the spell.
'Er, Dios,' said Koomi.
Dios turned, his eyebrows raised.
'You spoke?' he said.
'Er, if it is the king, er I — that is, we — think perhaps you should let him get on with it. Er, don't you think that would be a really good idea?'
Dios's staff kicked, and the priests felt the cold bands of restraint freeze their limbs.
'I gave my life for the kingdom,' said the high priest. 'I gave it over and over again. Everything it is, I created. I cannot fail it now.'
And then he saw the gods.
Teppic eased himself up another couple of feet and then gently reached down to pull a knife out of the marble. It wasn't going to work, though. Knife climbing was for those short and awkward passages, and frowned on anyway because it suggested you'd chosen a wrong route. It wasn't for this sort of thing, unless you had unlimited knives.
He glanced over his shoulder again as strange barred shadows flickered across the face of the pyramid.
From out of the sunset, where they had been engaged in their eternal squabbling, the gods were returning.
They staggered and lurched across the fields and reed beds, heading for the pyramid. Near-brainless though they were, they understood what it was. Perhaps they even understood what Teppic was trying to do. Their assorted animal faces made it hard to be certain, but it looked as though they were very angry.
'Are you going to control them, Dios?' said the king. 'Are you going to tell them that the world should be changeless?'
Dios stared up at the creatures jostling one another as they waded the river. There were too many teeth, too many lolling tongues. The bits of them that were human were sloughing away. A lion-headed god of justice — Put, Dios recalled the name — was using its scales as a flail to beat one of the river gods. Chefet, the Dog-Headed God of metalwork, was growling and attacking his fellows at random with his hammer; this was Chefet, Dios thought, the god that he had created to be an example to men in the art of wire and filigree and small beauty.
Yet it had worked. He'd taken a desert rabble and shown them all he could remember of the arts of civilisation and the secrets of the pyramids. He'd needed gods then.
The trouble with gods is that after enough people start believing in them, they begin to exist. And what begins to exist isn't what was originally intended.
Chefet, Chefet, thought Dios. Maker of rings, weaver of metal. Now he's out of our heads, and see how his nails grow into claws . . .
This is not how I imagined him.
'Stop,' he instructed. 'I order you to stop! You will obey me. I made you!'
They also lack gratitude.
King Teppicymon felt the power around him weaken as Dios turned all his attention to ecclesiastical matters. He saw the tiny shape halfway up the wall of the pyramid, saw it falter.
The rest of the ancestors saw it, too, and as one corpse they knew what to do. Dios could wait.
This was family.
Teppic heard the snap of the handle under his foot, slid a little, and hung by one hand. He'd got another knife in above him but . . . no, no good. He hadn't got the reach. For practical purposes his arms felt like short lengths of wet rope. Now, if he spreadeagled himself as he slid, he might be able to slow enough .
He looked down and saw the climbers coming towards him, in a tide that was tumbling upwards.
The ancestors rose up the face of the pyramid silently, like creepers, each new row settling into position on the shoulders of the generation beneath, while the younger ones climbed on over them. Bony hands grabbed Teppic as the wave of edificeers broke around him, and he was half-pushed, half-pulled up the sloping wall. Voices like the creak of sarcophagi filled his ears, moaning encouragement.
'Well done, boy,' groaned a crumbling mummy, hauling him bodily on to its shoulder. 'You remind me of me when I was alive. To you, son.'
'Got him,' said the corpse above, lifting Teppic easily on one outstretched arm. 'That's a fine family spirit, lad. Best wishes from your great-great-great-great uncle, although I don't suppose you remember me. Coming up.
Other ancestors were climbing on past Teppic as he rose from hand to hand. Ancient fingers with a grip like steel clutched at him, hoisting him onwards.
The pyramid grew narrower.
Down below, Ptaclusp watched thoughtfully.
'What a workforce,' he said. 'I mean, the ones at the bottom are supporting the whole weight!'
'Dad,' said IIb. 'I think we'd better run. Those gods are getting closer.'
'Do you think we could employ them?' said Ptaclusp, ignoring him. 'They're dead, they probably won't want high wages, and-'
'Dad!'
'Sort of self-build-'
'You said no more pyramids, dad. Never again, you said. Now come on!'
Teppic scrambled to the top of the pyramid, supported by the last two ancestors. One of them was his father.
'I don't think you've met your great-grandma,' he said, indicating the shorter bandaged figure, who nodded gently at Teppic. He opened his mouth.
'There's no time,' she said. 'You're doing fine.'
He glanced at the sun which, old professional that it was, chose that moment to drop below the horizon. The gods had crossed the river, their progress slowed only by their tendency to push and shove among themselves, and were lurching through the buildings of the necropolis. Several were clustered around the spot where Dios had been.
The ancestors dropped away, sliding back down the pyramid as fast as they had climbed it, leaving Teppic alone on a few square feet of rock.
A couple of stars came out.
He saw white shapes below as the ancestors hurried away on some private errand of their own, lurching at a surprising speed towards the broad band of the river.
The gods abandoned their interest in Dios, this strange little human with the stick and the cracked voice. The nearest god, a crocodile-headed thing, jerked on to the plaza before the pyramid, squinted up at Teppic, and reached out towards him. Teppic fumbled for a knife, wondering what sort was appropriate for gods .
And, along the Djel, the pyramids began to flare their meagre store of hoarded time.
Priests and ancestors fled as the ground began to shake. Even the gods looked bewildered.
IIb snatched his father's arm and dragged him away.
'Come on!' he yelled into his ear. 'We can't be around here when it goes off! Otherwise you'll be put to bed on a coathanger!'
Around them several other pyramids struck their flares, thin and reedy affairs that were barely visible in the afterglow.
'Dad! I said we've got to go!'
Ptaclusp was dragged backwards across the flagstones, still staring at the hulking outline of the Great Pyramid.
'There's someone still there, look,' he said, and pointed to a figure alone on the plaza.
IIb peered into the gloom.
'It's only Dios, the high priest,' he said. 'I expect he's got some plan in mind, best not to meddle in the affairs of priests, now will you come on.'
The crocodile-headed god turned its snout back and forth, trying to focus on Teppic without the advantage of binocular vision. This close, its body was slightly transparent, as though someone had sketched in all the lines and got bored before it was time to do the shading. It trod on a small tomb, crushing it to powder.
A hand like a cluster of canoes with claws on hovered over Teppic. The pyramid trembled and the stone under his feet felt warm, but it resolutely forbore from any signs of wanting to flare.
The hand descended. Teppic sank on one knee and, out of desperation, raised the knife over his head in both hands.
The light glinted for a moment off the tip of the blade and then the Great Pyramid flared.
It did it in absolute silence to begin with, sending up a spire of eye-torturing flame that turned the whole kingdom into a criss-cross of black shadow and white light, a flame that might have turned any watchers not just into a pillar of salt but into a complete condiment set of their choice. It exploded like an unwound dandelion, silent as starlight, searing as a supernova.
Only after it had been bathing the necropolis in its impossible brilliance for several seconds did the sound come, and it was sound that winds itself up through the bones, creeps into every cell of the body, and tries with some success to turn them inside out. It was too loud to be called noise. There is sound so loud that it prevents itself from being heard, and this was that kind of sound.
Eventually it condescended to drop out of the cosmic scale and became, simply, the loudest noise anyone hearing it had ever experienced.
The noise stopped, filling the air with the dark metallic clang of sudden silence. The light went out, lancing the night with blue and purple afterimages. It was not the silence and darkness of conclusion but of pause, like the moment of equilibrium when a thrown ball runs out of acceleration but has yet to have gravity drawn to its attention and, for a brief moment, thinks that the worst is over.
This time it was heralded by a shrill whistling out of the clear sky and a swirl in the air that became a glow, became a flame, became a flare that sizzled downwards into the pyramid, punching into the mass of black marble. Fingers of lightning crackled out and grounded on the lesser tombs around it, so that serpents of white fire burned their way from pyramid to pyramid across the necropolis and the air filled with the stink of burning stone.
In the middle of the firestorm the Great Pyramid appeared to lift up a few inches, on a beam of incandescence, and turn through ninety degrees. This was almost certainly the special type of optical illusion which can take place even though noone is actually looking at it.
And then, with deceptive slowness and considerable dignity, it exploded.
It was almost too crass a word. What it did was this: it came apart ponderously into building-sized chunks which drifted gently away from one another, flying serenely out and over the necropolis. Several of them struck other pyramids, badly damaging them in a lazy, unselfconscious way, and then bounded on in silence until they ploughed to a halt behind a small mountain of rubble.
Only then did the boom come. It went on for quite along time.
Grey dust rolled over the kingdom.
Ptaclusp dragged himself upright and groped ahead, gingerly, until he walked into someone. He shuddered when he thought about the kind of people he'd seen walking around lately, but thought didn't come easily because something appeared to have hit him on the head recently .
'Is that you, lad?' he ventured.
'Is that you, dad?'
'Yes,' said Ptaclusp.
'It's me, dad.'
'I'm glad it's you, son.'
'Can you see anything?'
'No. It's all mist and fog.'
'Thank the gods for that, I thought it was me.'
'It is you, isn't it? You said.'
'Yes, dad.'
'Is your brother all right?'
'I've got him safe in my pocket, dad.'
'Good. So long as nothing's happened to him.'
They inched forward, clambering over lumps of masonry they could barely see.
'Something exploded, dad,' said IIb, slowly. 'I think it was the pyramid.'
Ptaclusp rubbed the top of his head, where two tons of flying rock had come within a sixteenth of an inch of fitting him for one of his own pyramids. 'It was that dodgy cement we bought from Merco the Ephebian, I expect-'
'I think this was a bit worse than a moody lintel, dad,' said IIb. 'In fact, I think it was a lot worse.'
'It looked a bit wossname, a bit on the sandy side-'
'I think you should find somewhere to sit down, dad,' said IIb, as kindly as possible. 'Here's Two-Ay. Hang on to him.'
He crept on alone, climbing over a slab of what felt very suspiciously like black marble. What he wanted, he decided, was a priest. They had to be useful for something, and this seemed the sort of time one might need one. For solace, or possibly, he felt obscurely, to beat their head in with a rock.
What he found instead was someone on their hands and knees, coughing. IIb helped him — it was definitely a him, he'd been briefly afraid it might be an it — and sat him on another lump of, yes, almost certainly marble.
'Are you a priest?' he said, fumbling in the rubble.
'I'm Dil. Chief embalmer,' the figure muttered.
'Ptaclusp IIb, paracosmic archi-' IIb began and then, suspecting that architects were not going to be too popular around here for a while, quickly corrected himself. 'I'm an engineer,' he said. 'Are you all right?'
'Don't know. What happened?'
'I think the pyramid exploded,' IIb volunteered.
'Are we dead?'
'I shouldn't think so. You're walking and talking, after all.'
Dil shivered. 'That's no guideline, take it from me. What's an engineer?'
'Oh, a builder of aqueducts,' said IIb quickly. 'They're the coming thing, you know.'
Dil stood up, a little shakily.
'I,' he said, 'need a drink. Let's find the river.'
They found Teppic first.
He was clinging to a small, truncated pyramid section that had made a moderate-sized crater when it landed.
'I know him,' said IIb. 'He's the lad who was on top of the pyramid. That's ridiculous, how could he survive that?'
'Why's there all corn sprouting out of it, too?' wondered Dil.
'I mean, perhaps there's some kind of effect if you're right in the centre of the flare, or something,' said IIb, thinking aloud. 'A sort of calm area or something, like in the middle of a whirlpool-' He reached instinctively for his wax tablet, and then stopped himself. Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with. 'Is he dead?' he said. 'Don't look at me,' said Dil, stepping back. He'd been running through his mind the alternative occupations now open to him. Upholstery sounded attractive. At least chairs didn't get up and walk after you'd stuffed them. IIb bent over the body.
'Look what he's got in his hand,' he said, gently bending back the fingers. 'It's a piece of melted metal. What's he got that for?'
Teppic dreamed.
He saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, and one of them was riding a bicycle.
He saw some camels, singing, and the song straightened out the wrinkles in reality.
He saw a finger Write on the wall of a pyramid: Going forth is easy. Going back requires (cont. on next wall) . . .
He walked around the pyramid, where the finger continued: An effort of will, because it is much harder. Thank you.
Teppic considered this, and it occurred to him that there was one thing left to do which he had not done. He'd never known how to before, but now he could see that it was just numbers, arranged in a special way. Everything that was magical was just a way of describing the world in words it couldn't ignore.
He gave a grunt of effort.
There was a brief moment of speed. Dil and IIb looked around as long shafts of light sparkled through the mists and dust, turning the landscape into old gold.
And the sun came up.
The sergeant cautiously opened the hatch in the horse's belly. When the expected flurry of spears did not materialise he ordered Autocue to let out the rope ladder, climbed down it, and looked across the chill morning desert.
The new recruit followed him down and stood, hopping from one sandal to another, on sand that was nearly freezing now and would be frying by lunchtime.
'There,' said the sergeant, pointing, 'see the Tsortean lines, lad?'
'Looks like a row of wooden horses to me, sergeant,' said Autocue. 'The one on the end's on rockers.'
'That'll be the officers. Huh. Those Tsorteans must think we're simple.' The sergeant stamped some life into his legs, took a few breaths of fresh air, and walked back to the ladder.
'Come on, lad,' he said.
'Why've we got to go back up there?'
The sergeant paused, his foot on a rope rung.
'Use some common, laddie. They're not going to come and take our horses if they see us hanging around outside, are they? Stands to reason.'
'You sure they're going to come, then?' said Autocue. The sergeant frowned at him.
'Look, soldier,' he said, 'anyone bloody stupid enough to think we're going to drag a lot of horses full of soldiers back to our city is certainly daft enough to drag ours all the way back to theirs. QED.'
'QED, sarge?'
'It means get back up the bloody ladder, lad.'
Autocue saluted. 'Permission to be excused first, sarge?'
'Excused what?'
'Excused, sarge,' said Autocue, a shade desperately. 'I mean, it's a bit cramped in the horse, sarge, if you know what I mean.'
'You're going to have to learn a bit of will power if you want to stay in the horse soldiers, boy. You know that?'
'Yes, sarge,' said Autocue miserably.
'You've got one minute.'
'Thanks, sarge.'
When the hatch closed above him Autocue sidled over to one of the horse's massive legs and put it to a use for which it wasn't originally intended.
And it was while he was staring vaguely ahead, lost in that Zen-like contemplation which occurs at moments like this, that there was a faint pop in the air and an entire river valley opened up in front of him.
It's not the sort of thing that ought to happen to a thoughtful lad. Especially one who has to wash his own uniform.
A breeze from the sea blew into the kingdom, hinting at, no, positively roaring suggestions of salt, shellfish and sun-soaked tidelines. A few rather puzzled seabirds wheeled over the necropolis, where the wind scurried among the fallen masonry and covered with sand the memorials to ancient kings, and the birds said more with a simple bowel movement than Ozymandias ever managed to say.
The wind had a cool, not unpleasant edge to it. The people out repairing the damage caused by the gods felt an urge to turn their faces towards it, as fish in a pond turn towards an influx of clear, fresh water.
No-one worked in the necropolis. Most of the pyramids had blown their upper levels clean off, and stood smoking gently like recently-extinct volcanoes. Here and there slabs of black marble littered the landscape. One of them had nearly decapitated a fine statue of Hat, the Vulture-Headed God.
The ancestors had vanished. No-one was volunteering to go and look for them.
Around midday a ship came up the Djel under full sail. It was a deceptive ship. It seemed to wallow like a fat and unprotected hippo, and it was only after watching it for some time that anyone would realise that it was also making remarkably fast progress. It dropped anchor outside the palace.
After a while, it let down a dinghy.
Teppic sat on the throne and watched the life of the kingdom reassemble itself, like a smashed mirror that is put together again and reflects the same old light in new and unexpected ways.
No-one was quite sure on what basis he was on the throne, but no-one else was at all keen on occupying it and it was a relief to hear instructions issued in a clear, confident voice. It is amazing what people will obey, if a clear and confident voice is used, and the kingdom was well used to a clear, confident voice.
Besides, giving orders stopped him thinking about things. Like, for example, what would happen next. But at least the gods had gone back to not existing again, which made it a whole lot easier to believe in them, and the grass didn't seem to be growing under his feet any more.
Maybe I can put the kingdom together again, he thought. But then what can I do with it? If only we could find Dios. He always knew what to do, that was the main thing about him.
A guard pushed his way through the milling throng of priests and nobles.
'Excuse me, your sire,' he said. 'There's a merchant to see you. He says it's urgent.'
'Not now, man. There's representatives of the Tsortean and Ephebian armies coming to see me in an hour, and there's a great deal that's got to be done first. I can't go around seeing any salesmen who happen to be passing. What's he selling, anyway?'
'Carpets, your sire.'
'Carpets?'
It was Chidder, grinning like half a watermelon, followed by several of the crew. He walked up the hall staring around at the frescoes and hangings. Because it was Chidder, he was probably costing them out. By the time he reached the throne he was drawing a double line under the total.
'Nice place,' he said, wrapping up thousands of years of architectural accumulation in a mere two syllables. 'You'll never guess what happened, we just happened to be sailing along the coast and suddenly there was this river. One minute cliffs, next minute river. There's a funny thing, I thought. I bet old Teppic's up there somewhere.'
'Where's Ptraci?'
'I knew you were complaining about the lack of the old home comforts, so we brought you this carpet.'
'I said, where's Ptraci?'
The crew moved aside, leaving a grinning Alfonz to cut the strings around the carpet and shake it out.
It uncurled swiftly across the floor in a flurry of dust balls and moths and, eventually, Ptraci, who continued rolling until her head hit Teppic's boot.
He helped her to her feet and tried to pick bits of fluff out of her hair as she swayed backwards and forwards. She ignored him and turned to Chidder, red with breathlessness and fury.
'I could have died in there!' she shouted. 'Lots of other things have, by the smell! And the heat!'
'You said it worked for Queen wossname, Ram-Jam-Hurrah, or whoever,' said Chidder. 'Don't blame me, at home a necklace or something is usually the thing.'
'I bet she had a decent carpet,' snapped Ptraci. 'Not something stuck in a bloody hold for six months.'
'You're lucky we had one at all,' said Chidder mildly. 'It was your idea.'
'Huh,' said Ptraci. She turned to Teppic. 'Hallo,' she said. 'This was meant to be a startling original surprise.'
'It worked,' said Teppic fervently. 'It really worked.'
Chidder lay on a daybed on the palace's veranda, while three handmaidens took turns to peel grapes for him. A pitcher of beer stood cooling in the shade. He was grinning amiably.
On a blanket nearby Alfonz lay on his stomach, feeling extremely awkward. The Mistress of the Women had found out that, in addition to the tattoos on his forearms, his back was a veritable illustrated history of exotic practices, and had brought the girls out to be educated. He winced occasionally as her pointer stabbed at items of particular interest, and stuffed his fingers firmly in his great, scarred ears to shut out the giggles.
At the far end of the veranda, given privacy by unspoken agreement, Teppic sat with Ptraci. Things were not going well.
'Everything changed,' he said. 'I'm not going to be king.'
'You are the king,' she said. 'You can't change things.'
'I can. I can abdicate. It's very simple. If I'm not really the king, then I can go whenever I please. If I am the king, then the king's word is final and I can abdicate. If we can change sex by decree, we can certainly change station. They can find a relative to do the job. I must have dozens.'
'The job? Anyway, you said there was only your auntie.'
Teppic frowned. Aunt Cleph-ptah-re was not, on reflection, the kind of monarch a kingdom needed if it was going to make a fresh start. She had a number of stoutly-held views on a variety of subjects, but most of them involved the flaying alive of people she disapproved of. This meant most people under the age of thirty— five, to start with.
'Well, someone else, then,' he said. 'It shouldn't be difficult, we've always seemed to have more nobles than really necessary. We'll just have to find one who has the dream about the cows.'
'Oh, the one where there's fat cows and thin cows?' said Ptraci.
'Yes. It's sort of ancestral.'
'It's a nuisance, I know that much. One of them's always grinning and playing a wimblehorn.'
'It looks like a trombone to me,' said Teppic.
'It's a ceremonial wimblehorn, if you look closely,' she said.
'Well, I expect everyone sees it a bit differently. I don't think it matters.' He sighed, and watched the Unnamed unloading. It seemed to have more than the expected number of feather mattresses, and several of the people wandering bemusedly down the gangplank were holding toolboxes and lengths of pipe.
'I think you're going to find it difficult,' said Ptraci. 'You can't say «All those who dream about cows please step forward». It'd give the game away.'
'I can't just hang around until someone happens to mention it, can I? Be reasonable,' he snapped. 'How many people are likely to say, hey, I had this funny dream about cows last night? Apart from you, I mean.'
They stared at one another.
'And she's my sister?' said Teppic.
The priests nodded. It was left to Koomi to put it into words. He'd just spent ten minutes going through the files with the Mistress of the Women.
'Her mother was, er, your late father's favourite,' he said.
'He took a great deal of interest in her upbringing, as you know, and, er, it would appear that . . . yes. She may be your aunt, of course. The concubines are never very good at paperwork. But most likely your sister.'
She looked at him with tear-filled eyes.
'That doesn't make any difference, does it?' she whispered.
Teppic stared at his feet.
'Yes,' he said. 'I think it does, really.' He looked up at her. 'But you can be queen,' he added. He glared at the priests. 'Can't she,' he stated firmly.
The high priests looked at one another. Then they looked at Ptraci, who stood alone, her shoulders shaking. Small, palace trained, used to taking orders . . . They looked at Koomi.
'She would be ideal,' he said. There was a murmur of suddenly— confident agreement.
'There you are then,' said Teppic, consolingly.
She glared at him. He backed away.
'So I'll be off,' he said, 'I don't need to pack anything, it's all right.'
'Just like that?' she said. 'Is that all? Isn't there anything you're going to say?'
He hesitated, halfway to the door. You could stay, he told himself. It wouldn't work, though. It'd end up a terrible mess; you'd probably end up splitting the kingdom between you. Just because fate throws you together doesn't mean fate's got it right. Anyway, you've been forth.
'Camels are more important than pyramids,' he said slowly. 'It's something we should always remember.'
He ran for it while she was looking for something to throw.
The sun reached the peak of noon without beetles, and Koomi hovered by the throne like Hat, the Vulture-Headed God.
'It will please your majesty to confirm my succession as high priest,' he said.
'What?' Ptraci was sitting with her chin cupped in one hand. She waved the other hand at him. 'Oh. Yes. All right. Fine.'
'No trace has, alas, been found of Dios. We believe he was very close to the Great Pyramid when it . . . flared.'
Ptraci stared into space. 'You carry on,' she said. Koomi preened.
'The formal coronation will take some time to arrange,' he said, taking the golden mask. 'However, your graciousness will be pleased to wear the mask of authority now, for there is much formal business to be concluded.'
She looked at the mask.
'I'm not wearing that,' she said flatly.
Koomi smiled. 'Your majesty will be pleased to wear the mask of authority,' he said.
'No,' said Ptraci.
Koomi's smile crazed a little around the edges as he attempted to get to grips with this new concept. He was sure Dios had never had this trouble.
He got over the problem by sidling round it. Sidling had stood him in good stead all his life; he wasn't going to desert it now. He put the mask down very carefully on a stool.
'It is the First Hour,' he said. 'Your majesty will wish to conduct the Ritual of the Ibis, and then graciously grant an audience to the military commanders of the Tsortean and Ephebian armies. Both are seeking permission to cross the kingdom. Your majesty will forbid this. At the Second Hour, there will-'
Ptraci sat drumming her fingers on the arms of the throne. Then she took a deep breath. 'I'm going to have a bath,' she said.
Koomi rocked back and forth a bit.
'It is the First Hour,' he repeated, unable to think of anything else. 'Your majesty will wish to conduct-'
'Koomi?'
'Yes, O noble queen?'
'Shut up.'
'The Ritual of the Ibis-' Koomi moaned.
'I'm sure you're capable of doing it yourself. You look like a man who does things himself, if ever I saw one,' she added sourly.
'The commanders of the Tsortean-'
'Tell them,' Ptraci began, and then paused. 'Tell them,' she repeated, 'that they may both cross. Not one or the other, you understand? Both.'