'It's rather draughty in here, sire,' said Dios. 'Perhaps we should get on.'
'Anyway, you can't possibly afford it!'
'And we'll put your favourite frescoes and statues in with you. You'll like that, won't you,' said Teppic desperately.
'All your bits and pieces around you.'
'He will like it, won't be?' he asked Dios, as they walked back to the throne room. 'Only, I don't know, I somehow got a feeling he isn't too happy about it.'
'I assure you, sire,' said Dios, 'he can have no other desire.'
Back in the embalming room King Teppicymon XXVII tried to tap Gern on the shoulder, which had no effect. He gave up and sat down beside himself.
'Don't do it, lad,' he said bitterly. 'Never have descendants.'
And then there was the Great Pyramid itself.
Teppic's footsteps echoed on the marble tiles as he walked around the model. He wasn't sure what one was supposed to do here. But kings, he suspected, were often put in that position; there was always the good old fallback, which was known as taking an interest.
'Well, well,' he said. 'How long have you been designing pyramids?'
Ptaclusp, architect and jobbing pyramid builder to the nobility, bowed deeply.
'All my life, O light of noonday.'
'It must be fascinating,' said Teppic. Ptaclusp looked sidelong at the high priest, who nodded.
'It has its points, O fount of waters,' he ventured. He wasn't used to kings talking to him as though he was a human being. He felt obscurely that it wasn't right.
Teppic waved a hand at the model on its podium.
'Yes,' he said uncertainly. 'Well. Good. Four walls and a pointy tip. Jolly good. First class. Says it all, really.' There still seemed to be too much silence around. He plunged on.
'Good show,' he said. 'I mean; there's no doubt about it. This is.. . a. . . pyramid. And what a pyramid it is! Indeed.' This still didn't seem enough. He sought for something else. 'People will look at it in centuries to come and they'll say, they'll say . . . that is a pyramid. Um.'
He coughed. 'The walls slope nicely,' he croaked.
'But,' he said.
Two pairs of eyes swivelled towards his.
'Um,' he said.
Dios raised an eyebrow.
'Sire?'
'I seem to remember once, my father said that, you know, when he died, he'd quite like to, sort of thing, be buried at sea.'
There wasn't the choke of outrage he had expected. 'He meant the delta. It's very soft ground by the delta,' said Ptaclusp. 'It'd take months to get decent footings in. Then there's your risk of sinking. And the damp. Not good, damp, inside a pyramid.'
'No,' said Teppic, sweating under Dios's gaze, 'I think what he meant was, you know, in the sea.'
Ptaclusp's brow furrowed. 'Tricky, that,' he said thoughtfully. 'Interesting idea. I suppose one could build a small one, a million tonner, and float it out on pontoons or something…'
'No,' said Teppic, trying not to laugh, 'I think what he meant was, buried without-'
'Teppicymon XXVII means that he would want to be buried without delay,' said Dios, his voice like greased silk. 'And there is no doubt that he would require to honour the very best you can build, architect.'
'No, I'm sure you've got it wrong,' said Teppic.
Dios's face froze. Ptaclusp's slid into the waxen expression of someone with whom it is, suddenly, nothing to do. He started to stare at the floor as if his very survival depended on his memorising it in extreme detail.
'Wrong?' said Dios.
'No offence. I'm sure you mean well,' said Teppic. 'It's just that, well, he seemed very clear about it at the time and-'
'I mean well?' said Dios, tasting each word as though it was a sour grape. Ptaclusp coughed. He had finished with the floor. Now he started on the ceiling.
Dios took a deep breath. 'Sire,' he said, 'we have always been pyramid builders. All our kings are buried in pyramids. It is how we do things, sire. It is how things are done.'
'Yes, but-'
'It does not admit of dispute,' said Dios. 'Who could wish for anything else? Sealed with all artifice against the desecrations of Time-' now the oiled silk of his voice became armour, hard as steel, scornful as spears — 'Shielded for all Time against the insults of Change.'
Teppic glanced down at the high priest's knuckles. They were white, the bone pressing through the flesh as though in a rage to escape.
His gaze slid up the grey-clad arm to Dios's face. Ye gods, he thought, it's really true, he does look like they got tired of waiting for him to die and pickled him anyway. Then his eyes met those of the priest, more or less with a clang.
He felt as though his flesh was being very slowly blown off his bones. He felt that he was no more significant than a mayfly. A necessary mayfly, certainly, a mayfly that would be accorded all due respect, but still an insect with all the rights thereof. And as much free will, in the fury of that gaze, as a scrap of papyrus in a hurricane.
'The king's will is that he be interred in a pyramid,' said Dios, in the tone of voice the Creator must have used to sketch out the moon and stars.
'Er,' said Teppic.
'The finest of pyramids for the king,' said Dios.
Teppic gave up.
'Oh,' he said. 'Good. Fine. Yes. The very best, of course.' Ptaclusp beamed with relief, produced his wax tablet with a flourish, and took a stylus from the recesses of his wig. The important thing, he knew, was to clinch the deal as soon as possible. Let things slip in a situation like this' and a man could find himself with 1,500,000 tons of bespoke limestone on his hands.
'Then that will be the standard model, shall we say, O water in the desert?'
Teppic looked at Dios, who was standing and glaring at nothing now, staring the bulldogs of Entropy into submission by willpower alone.
'I think something larger,' he ventured hopelessly.
'That's the Executive,' said Ptaclusp. 'Very exclusive, O base of the eternal column. Last you a perpetuality. Also our special offer this aeon is various measurements of paracosmic significance built into the very fabric at no extra cost.'
He gave Teppic an expectant look.
'Yes. Yes. That will be fine,' said Teppic.
Dios took a deep breath. 'The king requires far more than that,' be said.
'I do?' said Teppic, doubtfully.
'Indeed, sire. It is your express wish that the greatest of monuments is erected for your father,' said Dios smoothly. This was a contest, Teppic knew, and he didn't know the rules or how to play and he was going to lose.
'It is? Oh. Yes. Yes. I suppose it is, really. Yes.'
'A pyramid unequalled along the Djel,' said Dios. 'That is the command of the king. It is only right and proper.'
'Yes, yes, something like that. Er. Twice the normal size,' said Teppic desperately, and had the brief satisfaction of seeing Dios look momentarily disconcerted.
'Sire?' he said.
'It is only right and proper,' said Teppic. Dios opened his mouth to protest, saw Teppic's expression, and shut it again.
Ptaclusp scribbled busily, his adam's apple bobbing. Something like this only happened once in a business career.
'Can do you a very nice black marble facing on the outside,' he said, without looking up. 'We may have just enough in the quarry. O king of the celestial orbs,' he added hurriedly.
'Very good,' said Teppic.
Ptaclusp picked up a fresh tablet. 'Shall we say the capstone picked out in electrum? It's cheaper to have built in right from the start, you don't want to use just silver and then say later, I wish I'd had a-'
'Electrum, yes.'
'And the usual offices?'
'What?'
'The burial chamber, that is, and the outer chamber. I'd recommend the Memphis, very select, that comes with a matching extra large treasure room, so handy for all those little things one cannot bear to leave behind.' Ptaclusp turned the tablet over and started on the other side. 'And of course a similar suite for the Queen, I take it? O King who shall live forever.'
'Eh? Oh, yes. Yes. I suppose so,' said Teppic, glancing at Dios. 'Everything. You know.'
'Then there's mazes,' said Ptaclusp, trying to keep his voice steady. 'Very popular this era. Very important, your maze, it's no good deciding you ought to have put a maze in after the robbers have been. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I'd go for the Labrys every time. Like we say, they may get in all right, but they'll never get out. It costs that little bit extra, but what's money at a time like this? O master of the waters.'
Something we don't have, said a warning voice in the back of Teppic's head. He ignored it. He was in the grip of destiny.
'Yes,' he said, straightening up. 'The Labrys. Two of them.'
Ptaclusp's stylus went through his tablet.
'His 'n' hers, O stone of stones,' he croaked. 'Very handy, very convenient. With selection of traps from stock? We can offer deadfalls, pitfalls, sliders, rolling balls, dropping spears, arrows-'
'Yes, yes,' said Teppic. 'We'll have them. We'll have them all. All of them.'
The architect took a deep breath.
'And of course you'll require all the usual steles, avenues, ceremonial sphinxes-' he began.
'Lots,' said Teppic. 'We leave it entirely up to you.'
Ptaclusp mopped his brow.
'Fine,' he said. 'Marvellous.' He blew his nose. 'Your father, if I may make so bold, O sower of the seed, is extremely fortunate in having such a dutiful son. I may add-'
'You may go,' said Dios. 'And we will expect work to start imminently.'
'Without delay, I assure you,' said Ptaclusp. 'Er.'
He seemed to be wrestling with some huge philosophical problem.
'Yes?' said Dios coldly.
'It's uh. There's the matter of uh. Which is not to say uh. Of course, oldest client, valued customer, but the fact is that uh. Absolutely no doubt about credit worthiness uh. Would not wish to suggest in any way whatsoever that uh.'
Dios gave him a stare that would have caused a sphinx to blink and look away.
'You wish to say something?' he said. 'His majesty's time is extremely limited.'
Ptaclusp worked his jaw silently, but the result was a foregone conclusion. Even gods had been reduced to sheepish mumbling in the face of Dios's face. And the carved snakes on his staff seemed to be watching him too.
'Uh. No, no. Sorry. I was just, uh, thinking aloud. I'll depart, then, shall I? Such a lot of work to be done. Uh.' He bowed low.
He was halfway to the archway before Dios added: 'Completion in three months. In time for Inundation11.'
'What?'
'You are talking to the 1,398th monarch,' said Dios icily. Ptaclusp swallowed. 'I'm sorry,' he whispered, 'I mean, what?, O great king. I mean, block haulage alone will take. Uh.' The architect's lips trembled as he tried out various comments and, in his imagination, ran them full tilt into Dios's stare. 'Tsort wasn't built in a day,' he mumbled.
'We do not believe we laid the specifications for that job,' said Dios. He gave Ptaclusp a smile. In some ways it was worse than everything else. 'We will, of course,' he said, 'pay extra.'
'But you never pa-' Ptaclusp began, and then sagged.
'The penalties for not completing on time will, of course, be terrible,' said Dios. 'The usual clause.'
Ptaclusp hadn't the nerve left to argue. 'Of course,' he said, utterly defeated. 'It is an honour. Will your eminences excuse me? There are still some hours of daylight left.'
Teppic nodded.
'Thank you,' said the architect. 'May your loins be truly fruitful. Saving your presence, Lord Dios.'
They heard him running down the steps outside.
'It will be magnificent. Too big, but — magnificent,' said Dios. He looked out between the pillars at the necropolic panorama on the far bank of the Djel.
'Magnificent,' he repeated. He winced once more at the stab of pain in his leg. Ah. He'd have to cross the river again tonight, no doubt of it. He'd been foolish, putting it off for days. But it would be unthinkable not to be in a position to serve the kingdom properly.
'Something wrong, Dios?' said Teppic.
'Sire?'
'You looked a bit pale, I thought.' A look of panic flickered over Dios's wrinkled features. He pulled himself upright.
'I assure you, sire, I am in the best of health. The best of health, sire!'
'You don't think you've been overdoing it, do you?'
This time there was no mistaking the expression of terror.
'Overdoing what, sire?'
'You're always bustling, Dios. First one up, last one to bed. You should take it easy.'
'I exist only to serve, sire,' said Dios, firmly. 'I exist only to serve.'
Teppic joined him on the balcony. The early evening sun glowed on a man-made mountain range. This was only the central massif; the pyramids stretched from the delta all the way up to the second cataract, where the Djel disappeared into the mountains. And the pyramids occupied the best land, near the river. Even the farmers would have considered it sacrilegious to suggest anything different.
Some of the pyramids were small, and made of rough-hewn blocks that contrived to look far older than the mountains that fenced the valley from the high desert. After all, mountains had always been there. Words like 'young' and 'old' didn't apply to them. But those first pyramids had been built by human beings, little bags of thinking water held up briefly by fragile accumulations of calcium, who had cut rocks into pieces and then painfully put them back together again in a better shape. They were old.
Over the millennia the fashions had fluctuated. Later pyramids were smooth and sharp, or flattened and tiled with mica. Even the steepest of them, Teppic mused, wouldn't rate more than 1.O on any edificeer's scale, although some of the stelae and temples, which flocked around the base of the pyramids like tugboats around the dreadnoughts of eternity, could be worthy of attention.
Dreadnoughts of eternity, he thought, sailing ponderously through the mists of Time with every passenger travelling first class . . .
A few stars had been let out early. Teppic looked up at them. Perhaps, he thought, there is life somewhere else. On the stars, maybe. If it's true that there are billions of universes stacked alongside one another, the thickness of a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere.
But wherever they are, no matter how mightily they try, no matter how magnificent the effort, they surely can't manage to be as godawfully stupid as us. I mean, we work at it. We were given a spark of it to start with, but over hundreds of thousands of years we've really improved on it.
He turned to Dios, feeling that he ought to repair a little bit of the damage.
'You can feel the age radiating off them, can't you,' he said conversationally.
'Pardon, sire?'
'The pyramids, Dios. They're so old.'
Dios glanced vaguely across the river. 'Are they?' he said. 'Yes, I suppose they are.'
'Will you get one?' said Teppic.
'A pyramid?' said Dios. 'Sire, I have one already. It pleased one of your forebears to make provision for me.'
'That must have been a great honour,' said Teppic. Dios nodded graciously. The staterooms of forever were usually reserved for royalty.
'It is, of course, very small. Very plain. But it will suffice for my simple needs.'
'Will it?' said Teppic, yawning. 'That's nice. And now, if you don't mind, I think I'll turn in. It's been a long day.'
Dios bowed as though he was hinged in the middle. Teppic had noticed that Dios had at least fifty finely-tuned ways of bowing, each one conveying subtle shades of meaning. This one looked like No.3, I Am Your Humble Servant.
'And a very good day it was too, if I may say so, sire. Teppic was lost for words. 'You thought so?' he said.
'The cloud effects at dawn were particularly effective.'
'They were? Oh. Do I have to do anything about the sunset?'
'Your majesty is pleased to joke,' said Dios. 'Sunsets happen by themselves, sire. Haha.'
'Haha,' echoed Teppic.
Dios cracked his knuckles. 'The trick is in the sunrise,' he said.
The crumbling scrolls of Knot said that the great orange sun was eaten every evening by the sky goddess, What, who saved one pip in time to grow a fresh sun for next morning. And Dios knew that this was so.
The Book of Staying in The Pit said that the sun was the Eye of Yay, toiling across the sky each day in His endless search for his toenails12. And Dios knew that this was so.
The secret rituals of the Smoking Mirror held that the sun was in fact a round hole in the spinning blue soap bubble of the goddess Nesh, opening into the fiery real world beyond, and the stars were the holes that the rain comes through. And Dios knew that this, also, was so.
Folk myth said the sun was a ball of fire which circled the world every day, and that the world itself was carried through the everlasting void on the back of an enormous turtle. And Dios also knew that this was so, although it gave him a bit of trouble.
And Dios knew that Net was the Supreme God, and that Fon was the Supreme God, and so were Hast, Set, Bin, Sot, Ic, Dhek, and Ptooie; that Herpetine Triskeles alone ruled the world of the dead, and so did Syncope, and Silur the Catfish-Headed God, and Orexis-Nupt.
Dios was maximum high priest to a national religion that had fermented and accreted and bubbled for more than seven thousand years and never threw a god away in case it turned out to be useful. He knew that a great many mutually-contradictory things were all true. If they were not, then ritual and belief were as nothing, and if they were nothing, then the world did not exist. As a result of this sort of thinking, the priests of the Djel could give mind room to a collection of ideas that would make even a quantum mechanic give in and hand back his toolbox.
Dios's staff knocked echoes from the stones as he limped along in the darkness down little-frequented passages until he emerged on a small jetty. Untying the boat there, the high priest climbed in with difficulty, unshipped the oars and pushed himself out into the turbid waters of the dark Djel.
His hands and feet felt too cold. Foolish, foolish. He should have done this before.
The boat jerked slowly into midstream as full night rolled over the valley. On the far bank, in response to the ancient laws, the pyramids started to light the sky.
Lights also burned late in the house of Ptaclusp Associates, Necropolitan Builders to the Dynasties. The father and his twin Sons were hunched over the huge wax designing tray, arguing.
'It's not as if they ever pay,' said Ptaclusp IIa. 'I mean it's not just a case of not being able to, they don't seem to have grasped the idea. At least dynasties like Tsort pay up within a hundred years or so. Why didn't you-'
'We've built pyramids along the Djel for the last three thousand years,' said his father stiffly, 'and we haven't lost by it, have we? No, we haven't. Because the other kingdoms look to the Djel, they say there's a family that really knows its pyramids, connysewers, they say we'll have what they're having, if you please, with knobs on. Anyway, they're real royalty,' he added, 'not like some of the ones you get these days — here today, gone next millennium. They're half gods, too. You don't expect real royalty to pay its way. That's one of the signs of real royalty, not having any money.'
'You don't get more royal than them, then. You'd need a new word,' said IIa. We're nearly royal in that case.'
'You don't understand business, my son. You think it's all book-keeping. Well, it isn't.'
'It's a question of mass. And the power to weight ratio.' They both glared at Ptaclusp IIb, who was sitting staring at the sketches. He was turning his stylus over and over in his hands, which were trembling with barely-suppressed excitement.
'We'll have to use granite for the lower slopes,' he said, talking to himself, 'the limestone wouldn't take it. Not with all the power flows. Which will be, whooeee, they'll be big. I mean we're not talking razor blades here. This thing could put an edge on a rolling pin.'
Ptaclusp rolled his eyes. He was only one generation into a dynasty and already it was trouble. One son a born accountant, the other in love with this new-fangled cosmic engineering. There hadn't been any such thing when he was a lad, there was just architecture. You drew the plans, and then got in ten thousand lads on time-and-a-half and double bubble at weekends. They just had to pile the stuff up. You didn't have to be cosmic about it.
Descendants! The gods had seen fit to give him one son who charged you for the amount of breath expended in saying 'Good morning', and another one who worshipped geometry and stayed up all night designing aqueducts. You scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and paid you back by getting educated.
'What are you talking about?' he snapped.
'The discharge alone . . .' He pulled his abacus towards him and rattled the pottery beads along the wires. 'Let's say we're talking twice the height of the Executive model, which gives us a mass of. . . plus additional coded dimensions of occult significance as per spec. . . we couldn't do this sort of thing even a hundred years ago, you realise, not with the primitive techniques we had then…' His finger became a blur.
IIa gave a snort and grabbed his own abacus.
'Limestone at two talents the ton. . .' he said. 'Wear and tear on tools . . . masonry charges . . . demurrage . . . breakages . . . oh dear, oh dear . . . on-cost . . . black marble at replacement prices . . .'
Ptaclusp sighed. Two abaci rattling in tandem the whole day long, one changing the shape of the world and the other one deploring the cost. Whatever happened to the two bits of wood and a plumbline?
The last beads clicked against the stops.
'It'd be a whole quantum leap in pyramidology,' said IIb, sitting back with a messianic grin on his face.
'It'd be a whole kwa-' IIa began.
'Quantum,' said IIb, savouring the word.
'It'd be a whole quantum leap in bankruptcy,' said IIa.
'They'd have to invent a new word for that too.'
'It'd be worth it as a loss leader,' said IIb.
'Sure enough. When it comes to making a loss, we'll be in the lead,' said IIa sourly.
'It'd practically glow! In millennia to come people will look at it and say «That Ptaclusp, he knew his pyramids all right».'
'They'll call it Ptaclusp's Folly, you mean!'
By now the brothers were both standing up, their noses a few inches apart.
'The trouble with you, sibling, is that you know the cost of everything and the value of nothing!'
'The trouble with you is — is — is that you don't!'
'Mankind must strive ever upwards!'
'Yes, on a sound financial footing, by Khuft!'
'The search for knowledge-'
'The search for probity-'
Ptaclusp left them to it and stood staring out at the yard, where, under the glow of torches, the staff were doing a feverish stocktaking.
It'd been a small business when father passed it on to him — just a yard full of blocks and various sphinxes, needles, steles and other stock items, and a thick stack of unpaid bills, most of them addressed to the palace and respectfully pointing out that our esteemed account presented nine hundred years ago appeared to have been overlooked and prompt settlement would oblige. But it had been fun in those days. There was just him, five thousand labourers, and Mrs Ptaclusp doing the books.
You had to do pyramids, dad said. All the profit was in mastabas, small family tombs, memorial needles and general jobbing necropoli, but if you didn't do pyramids, you didn't do anything. The meanest garlic farmer, looking for something neat and long lasting with maybe some green marble chippings but within a budget, wouldn't go to a man without a pyramid to his name.
So he'd done pyramids, and they'd been good ones, not like some you saw these days, with the wrong number of sides and walls you could put your foot through. And yes, somehow they'd gone from strength to strength.
To build the biggest pyramid ever..
In three months.
With terrible penalties if it wasn't done on time. Dios hadn't specified how terrible, but Ptaclusp knew his man and they probably involved crocodiles. They'd be pretty terrible, all right…
He stared at the flickering light on the long avenues of statues, including the one of bloody Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests, bought on the offchance years ago and turned down by the client owing to not being up to snuff in the beak department and unshiftable ever since even at a discount.
The biggest pyramid ever . . .
And after you'd knocked your pipes out seeing to it that the nobility had their tickets to eternity, were you allowed to turn your expertise homeward, i.e., a bijou pyramidette for self and Mrs Ptaclusp, to ensure safe delivery into the Netherworld? Of course not. Even dad had only been allowed to have a mastaba, although it was one of the best on the river, he had to admit, that red-veined marble had been ordered all the way from Howonderland, a lot of people had asked for the same, it had been good for business, that's how dad would have liked it. . .
The biggest pyramid ever . . .
And they'd never remember who was under it.
It didn't matter if they called it Ptaclusp's Folly or Ptaclusp's Glory. They'd call it Ptaclusp's.
He surfaced from this pool of thought to hear his sons still arguing.
If this was his posterity, he'd take his chances with 600-ton limestone blocks. At least they were quiet.
'Shut up, the pair of you,' he said.
They stopped, and sat down, grumbling.
'I've made up my mind,' he said.
IIb doodled fitfully with his stylus. IIa strummed his abacus.
'We're going to do it,' said Ptaclusp, and strode out of the room. 'And any son who doesn't like it will be cast into the outer darkness where there is a wailing and a crashing of teeth,' he called over his shoulder.
The two brothers, left to themselves, glowered at each other.
At last IIa said, 'What does «quantum» mean, anyway?'
IIb shrugged. 'It means add another nought,' he said.
'Oh,' said IIa, 'is that all?'
All along the river valley of the Djel the pyramids were flaring silently into the night, discharging the accumulated power of the day.
Great soundless flames erupted from their capstones and danced upwards, jagged as lightning, cold as ice.
For hundreds of miles the desert glittered with the constellations of the dead, the aurora of antiquity. But along the valley of the Djel the lights ran together in one solid ribbon of fire.
It was on the floor and it had a pillow at one end. It had to be a bed.
Teppic found he was doubting it as he tossed and turned, trying to find some part of the mattress that was prepared to meet him halfway. This is stupid, he thought, I grew up on beds like this. And pillows carved out of rock. I was born in this palace, this is my heritage, I must be prepared to accept it . . .
I must order a proper bed and a feather pillow from Ankh, first thing in the morning. I, the king, have said this shall be done.
He turned over, his head hitting the pillow with a thud.
And plumbing. What a great idea that was. It was amazing what you could do with a hole in the ground.
Yes, plumbing. And bloody doors. Teppic definitely wasn't used to having several attendants waiting on his will all the time, so performing his ablutions before bed had been extremely embarrassing. And the people, too. He was definitely going to get to know the people. It was wrong, all this skulking in palaces.
And how was a fellow supposed to sleep with the sky over the river glowing like a firework?
Eventually sheer exhaustion wrestled his body into some zone between sleeping and waking, and mad images stalked across his eyeballs.
There was the shame of his ancestors when future archaeologists translated the as-yet unpainted frescoes of his reign: '"Squiggle, constipated eagle, wiggly line, hippo's bottom, squiggle»: And in the year of the Cycle of Cephnet the Sun God Teppic had Plumbing Installed and Scorned the Pillows of his Forebears.'
He dreamed of Khuft — huge, bearded, speaking in thunder and lightning, calling down the wrath of the heavens on this descendant who was betraying the noble past.
Dios floated past his vision, explaining that as a result of an edict passed several thousand years ago it was essential that he marry a cat.
Various-headed gods vied for his attention, explaining details of godhood, while in the background a distant voice tried to attract his attention and screamed something about not wanting to be buried under a load of stone. But he had no time to concentrate on this, because he saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, one of them playing a trombone.
But that was an old dream, he dreamt that one nearly every night.
And then there was a man firing arrows at a tortoise . . .
And then he was walking over the desert and found a tiny pyramid, only a few inches high. A wind sprang up and blew away the sand, only now it wasn't a wind, it was the pyramid rising, sand tumbling down its gleaming sides .
And it grew bigger and bigger, bigger than the world, so that at last the pyramid was so big that the whole world was a speck in the centre.
And in the centre of the pyramid, something very strange happened.
And the pyramid grew smaller, taking the world with it. and vanished . . .
Of course, when you're a pharaoh, you get a very high class of obscure dream.
Another day dawned, courtesy of the king, who was curled up on the bed and using his rolled-up clothes as a pillow. Around the stone maze of the palace the servants of the kingdom began to wake up.
Dios's boat slid gently through the water and bumped into the jetty. Dios climbed out and hurried into the palace, bounding up the steps three at a time and rubbing his hands together at the thought of a fresh day laid out before him, every hour and ritual ticking neatly into place. So much to organise, so much to be needed for . . .
The chief sculptor and maker of mummy cases folded up his measure.
'You done a good job there, Master Dil,' he said.
Dil nodded. There was no false modesty between craftsmen. The sculptor gave him a nudge. 'What a team, eh?' he said. 'You pickle 'em, I crate 'em.'
Dil nodded, but rather more slowly. The sculptor looked down at the wax oval in his hands.
'Can't say I think much of the death mask, mind,' he said. Gern, who was working hard on the corner slab on one of the Queen's late cats, which he had been allowed to do all by himself, looked up in horror.
'I done it very careful,' he said sulkily.
'That's the whole point,' said the sculptor.
'I know,' said Dil sadly, 'it's the nose, isn't it.'
'It was more the chin.'
'And the chin.'
'Yes.'
'Yes.'
They looked in gloomy silence at the waxen visage of the pharaoh. So did the pharaoh.
'Nothing wrong with my chin.'
'You could put a beard on it,' said Dil eventually. 'It'd cover a lot of it, would a beard.'
'There's still the nose.'
'You could take half an inch off that. And do something with the cheekbones.'
'Yes.'
'Yes.'
Gern was horrified. 'That's the face of our late king you're talking about,' he said. 'You can't do that sort of thing! Anyway, people would notice.' He hesitated. 'Wouldn't they?'
The two craftsmen eyed one another.
'Gern,' said Dil patiently, 'certainly they'll notice. But they won't say anything. They expect us to, er, improve matters.'
'After all,' said the chief sculptor cheerfully, 'you don't think they're going to step up and say «It's all wrong, he really had a face like a short-sighted chicken», do you?'
'Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed, I must say.' The pharaoh went and sat by the cat. It seemed that people only had respect for the dead when they thought the dead were listening.
'I suppose,' said the apprentice, with some uncertainty, 'he did look a bit ugly compared to the frescoes.'
'That's the point, isn't it,' said Dil meaningfully. Gern's big honest spotty face changed slowly, like a cratered landscape with clouds passing across it. It was dawning on him that this came under the heading of initiation into ancient craft secrets.
'You mean even the painters change the-' he began.
Dil frowned at him.
'We don't talk about it,' he said.
Gern tried to force his features into an expression of worthy seriousness.
'Oh,' he said. 'Yes. I see, master.'
The sculptor clapped him on the back.
'You're a bright lad, Gern,' he said. 'You catch on. After all, it's bad enough being ugly when you're alive. Think how terrible it would be to be ugly in the netherworld.'
King Teppicymon XXVII shook his head. We all have to look alike when we're alive, he thought, and now they make sure we're identical when we're dead. What a kingdom. He looked down and saw the soul of the late cat, which was washing itself. When he was alive he'd hated the things, but just now it seemed positively companionable. He patted it gingerly on its flat head. It purred for a moment, and then attempted to strip the flesh from his hand. It was on a definite hiding to nothing there.
He was aware with growing horror that the trio was now discussing a pyramid. His pyramid. It was going to be the biggest one ever. It was going to go on a highly fertile piece of sloping ground on a prime site in the necropolis. It was going to make even the biggest existing pyramid look like something a child might construct in a sand tray. It was going to be surrounded by marble gardens and granite obelisks. It was going to be the greatest memorial ever built by a son for his father.
The king groaned.
Ptaclusp groaned.
It had been better in his father's day. You just needed a bloody great heap of log rollers and twenty years, which was useful because it kept everyone out of trouble during Inundation, when all the fields were flooded. Now you just needed a bright lad with a piece of chalk and the right incantations.
Mind you, it was impressive, if you liked that kind of thing.
Ptaclusp IIb walked around the great stone block, tidying an equation here, highlighting a hermetic inscription there. He glanced up and gave his father a brief nod.
Ptaclusp hurried back to the king, who was standing with his retinue on the cliff overlooking the quarry, the sun gleaming off the mask. A royal visit, on top of everything else 'We're ready, if it please you, O arc of the sky,' he said, breaking into a sweat, hoping against hope that Oh gods. The king was going to Put Him at his Ease again.
He looked imploringly at the high priest, who with the merest twitch of his features indicated that there was nothing he proposed to do about it. This was too much, he wasn't the only one to object to this, Dil the master embalmer had been subjected to half an hour of having to Talk about his Family only yesterday, it was wrong, people expected the king to stay in the palace, it was too . . .
The king ambled towards him in a nonchalant way designed to make the master builder feel he was among friends. Oh no, Ptaclusp thought, he's going to Remember my Name.
'I must say you've done a tremendous amount in nine weeks, it's a very good start. Er. It's Ptaclusp, isn't it?' said the king.
Ptaclusp swallowed. There was no help for it now.
'Yes, O hand upon the waters,' he said, 'O fount of-'
'I think «your majesty» or «sire» will do,' said Teppic. Ptaclusp panicked and glanced fearfully at Dios, who winced but nodded again.
'The king wishes you to address him-' a look of pain crossed his face — 'informally. In the fashion of the barba — of foreign lands.'
'You must consider yourself a very fortunate man to have such talented and hard-working sons,' said Teppic, staring down at the busy panorama of the quarry.
'I . . . will, O . . . sire,' mumbled Ptaclusp, interpreting this as an order. Why couldn't kings order people around like in the old days? You knew where you were then, they didn't go round being charming and treating you as some sort of equal, as if you could make the sun rise too.
'It must be a fascinating trade,' Teppic went on.
'As your sire wishes, sire,' said Ptaclusp. 'If your majesty would just give the word-'
'And how exactly does all this work?'
'Your sire?' said Ptaclusp, horrified.
'You make the blocks fly, do you?'
'Yes, O sire.'
'That is very interesting. How do you do it?'
Ptaclusp nearly bit through his lip. Betray Craft secrets? He was horrified. Against all expectation, Dios came to his aid.
'By means of certain secret signs and sigils, sire,' he said, 'into the origin of which it is not wise to inquire. It is the wisdom of-' he paused '-the modems.'
'So much quicker than all that heaving stuff around, I expect,' said Teppic.
'It had a certain glory, sire,' said Dios. 'Now, if I may suggest . . .
'Oh. Yes. Press on, by all means.'
Ptaclusp wiped his forehead, and ran to the edge of the quarry.
He waved a cloth.
All things are defined by names. Change the name, and you change the thing. Of course there is a lot more to it than that, but paracosmically that is what it boils down to.
Ptaclusp IIb tapped the stone lightly with his staff. The air above it wavered in the heat and then, shedding a little dust, the block rose gently until it bobbed a few feet off the ground, held in check by mooring ropes.
That was all there was to it. Teppic had expected some thunder, or at least a gout of flame. But already the workers were clustering around another block, and a couple of men were towing the first block down towards the site.
'Very impressive,' he said sadly.
'Indeed, sire,' said Dios. 'And now, we must go back to the palace. It will soon be time for the Ceremony of the Third Hour.
'Yes, yes, all right,' snapped Teppic. 'Very well done, Ptaclusp. Keep up the good work.'
Ptaclusp bowed like a seesaw in flustered excitement and confusion.
'Very good, your sire,' he said, and decided to go for the big one. 'May I show your sire the latest plans?'
'The king has approved the plans already,' said Dios. 'And, excuse me if I am mistaken, but it seems that the pyramid is well under construction.'
'Yes, yes, but,' said Ptaclusp, 'it occurred to us, this avenue here, you see, overlooking the entrance, what a place, we thought, for a statue of for instance Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests at practically cost-'
Dios glanced at the sketches.
'Are those supposed to be wings?' he said.
'Not even cost, not even cost, tell you what I'll do-' said Ptaclusp desperately.
'Is that a nose?' said Dios.
'More a beak, more a beak,' said Ptaclusp. 'Look, O priest, how about-'
'I think not,' said Dios. 'No. I really think not.' He scanned the quarry for Teppic, groaned, thrust the sketches into the builder's hands and started to run.
Teppic had strolled down the path to the waiting chariots, looking wistfully at the bustle around him, and paused to watch a group of workers who were dressing a corner piece. They froze when they felt his gaze on them, and stood sheepishly watching him.
'Well well,' said Teppic, inspecting the stone, although all he knew about stonemasonry could have been chiselled on a sand grain. 'What a splendid piece of rock.'
He turned to the nearest man, whose mouth fell open.
'You're a stonemason, are you?' he said. 'That must be a very interesting job.'
The man's eyes bulged. He dropped his chisel. 'Erk,' he said.
A hundred yards away Dios's robes flapped around his legs as he pounded down the path. He grasped the hem and galloped along, sandals flapping.
'What's your name?' said Teppic. 'Aaaargle,' said the man, terrified.
'Well, jolly good,' said Teppic, and took his unresisting hand and shook it.
'Sire!' Dios bellowed. 'No!'
And the mason spun away, holding his right hand by the wrist, fighting it, screaming . . .
Teppic gripped the arms of the throne and glared at the high priest.
'But it's a gesture of fellowship, nothing more. Where I come from-'
'Where you come from, sire, is here!' thundered Dios.
'But, good grief, cutting it off? It's too cruel!'
Dios stepped forward. Now his voice was back to its normal oil-smooth tones.
'Cruel, sire? But it will be done with precision and care, with drugs to take away the pain. He will certainly live.
'But why?'
'I did explain, sire. He cannot use the hand again without defiling it. He is a devout man and knows this very well. You see, sire, you are a god, sire.'
'But you can touch me. So can the servants!'
'I am a priest, sire,' said Dios gently. 'And the servants have special dispensation.'
Teppic bit his lip.
'This is barbaric,' he said.
Dios's features did not move.
'It will not be done,' Teppic said. 'I am the king. I forbid it to be done, do you understand?'
Dios bowed. Teppic recognised No.49, Horrified Disdain.
'Your wish will certainly be done, O fountain of all wisdom. Although, of course, the man himself may take matters into, if you will excuse me, his own hands.'
'What do you mean?' snapped Teppic.
'Sire, if his colleagues had not stopped him he would have done it himself. With a chisel, I understand.'
Teppic stared at him and thought, I am a stranger in a familiar land.
'I see,' he said eventually.
He thought a little further.
'Then the — operation is to be done with all care, and the man is to be given a pension afterwards, d'you see?'
'As you wish, sire.'
'A proper one, too.'
'Indeed, sire. A golden handshake, sire,' said Dios impassively.
'And perhaps we can find him some light job around the palace?'
'As a one-handed stonemason, sire?' Dios's left eyebrow arched a fraction.
'As whatever, Dios.'
'Certainly, sire. As you wish. I will undertake to see if we are currently short-handed in any department.'
Teppic glared at him. 'I am the king, you know,' he said sharply.
'The fact attends me with every waking hour, sire.'
'Dios?' said Teppic, as the high priest was leaving.
'Sire?'
'I ordered a feather bed from Ankh-Morpork some weeks ago. I suppose you would not know what became of it?'
Dios waved his hands in an expressive gesture. 'I gather, sire, that there is considerable pirate activity off the Khalian coast,' he said.
'Doubtless the pirates are also responsible for the non— appearance of the expert from the Guild of Plumbers and Dunnikindivers13?' Teppic said sourly.
'Yes, sire. Or possibly bandits, sire.'
'Or perhaps a giant two-headed bird swooped down and carried him off,' said Teppic.
'All things are possible, sire,' said the high priest, his face radiating politeness.
'You may go, Dios.'
'Sire. May I remind you, sire, that the emissaries from Tsort and Ephebe will be attending you at the fifth hour.'
'Anyway, you can't possibly afford it!'
'And we'll put your favourite frescoes and statues in with you. You'll like that, won't you,' said Teppic desperately.
'All your bits and pieces around you.'
'He will like it, won't be?' he asked Dios, as they walked back to the throne room. 'Only, I don't know, I somehow got a feeling he isn't too happy about it.'
'I assure you, sire,' said Dios, 'he can have no other desire.'
Back in the embalming room King Teppicymon XXVII tried to tap Gern on the shoulder, which had no effect. He gave up and sat down beside himself.
'Don't do it, lad,' he said bitterly. 'Never have descendants.'
And then there was the Great Pyramid itself.
Teppic's footsteps echoed on the marble tiles as he walked around the model. He wasn't sure what one was supposed to do here. But kings, he suspected, were often put in that position; there was always the good old fallback, which was known as taking an interest.
'Well, well,' he said. 'How long have you been designing pyramids?'
Ptaclusp, architect and jobbing pyramid builder to the nobility, bowed deeply.
'All my life, O light of noonday.'
'It must be fascinating,' said Teppic. Ptaclusp looked sidelong at the high priest, who nodded.
'It has its points, O fount of waters,' he ventured. He wasn't used to kings talking to him as though he was a human being. He felt obscurely that it wasn't right.
Teppic waved a hand at the model on its podium.
'Yes,' he said uncertainly. 'Well. Good. Four walls and a pointy tip. Jolly good. First class. Says it all, really.' There still seemed to be too much silence around. He plunged on.
'Good show,' he said. 'I mean; there's no doubt about it. This is.. . a. . . pyramid. And what a pyramid it is! Indeed.' This still didn't seem enough. He sought for something else. 'People will look at it in centuries to come and they'll say, they'll say . . . that is a pyramid. Um.'
He coughed. 'The walls slope nicely,' he croaked.
'But,' he said.
Two pairs of eyes swivelled towards his.
'Um,' he said.
Dios raised an eyebrow.
'Sire?'
'I seem to remember once, my father said that, you know, when he died, he'd quite like to, sort of thing, be buried at sea.'
There wasn't the choke of outrage he had expected. 'He meant the delta. It's very soft ground by the delta,' said Ptaclusp. 'It'd take months to get decent footings in. Then there's your risk of sinking. And the damp. Not good, damp, inside a pyramid.'
'No,' said Teppic, sweating under Dios's gaze, 'I think what he meant was, you know, in the sea.'
Ptaclusp's brow furrowed. 'Tricky, that,' he said thoughtfully. 'Interesting idea. I suppose one could build a small one, a million tonner, and float it out on pontoons or something…'
'No,' said Teppic, trying not to laugh, 'I think what he meant was, buried without-'
'Teppicymon XXVII means that he would want to be buried without delay,' said Dios, his voice like greased silk. 'And there is no doubt that he would require to honour the very best you can build, architect.'
'No, I'm sure you've got it wrong,' said Teppic.
Dios's face froze. Ptaclusp's slid into the waxen expression of someone with whom it is, suddenly, nothing to do. He started to stare at the floor as if his very survival depended on his memorising it in extreme detail.
'Wrong?' said Dios.
'No offence. I'm sure you mean well,' said Teppic. 'It's just that, well, he seemed very clear about it at the time and-'
'I mean well?' said Dios, tasting each word as though it was a sour grape. Ptaclusp coughed. He had finished with the floor. Now he started on the ceiling.
Dios took a deep breath. 'Sire,' he said, 'we have always been pyramid builders. All our kings are buried in pyramids. It is how we do things, sire. It is how things are done.'
'Yes, but-'
'It does not admit of dispute,' said Dios. 'Who could wish for anything else? Sealed with all artifice against the desecrations of Time-' now the oiled silk of his voice became armour, hard as steel, scornful as spears — 'Shielded for all Time against the insults of Change.'
Teppic glanced down at the high priest's knuckles. They were white, the bone pressing through the flesh as though in a rage to escape.
His gaze slid up the grey-clad arm to Dios's face. Ye gods, he thought, it's really true, he does look like they got tired of waiting for him to die and pickled him anyway. Then his eyes met those of the priest, more or less with a clang.
He felt as though his flesh was being very slowly blown off his bones. He felt that he was no more significant than a mayfly. A necessary mayfly, certainly, a mayfly that would be accorded all due respect, but still an insect with all the rights thereof. And as much free will, in the fury of that gaze, as a scrap of papyrus in a hurricane.
'The king's will is that he be interred in a pyramid,' said Dios, in the tone of voice the Creator must have used to sketch out the moon and stars.
'Er,' said Teppic.
'The finest of pyramids for the king,' said Dios.
Teppic gave up.
'Oh,' he said. 'Good. Fine. Yes. The very best, of course.' Ptaclusp beamed with relief, produced his wax tablet with a flourish, and took a stylus from the recesses of his wig. The important thing, he knew, was to clinch the deal as soon as possible. Let things slip in a situation like this' and a man could find himself with 1,500,000 tons of bespoke limestone on his hands.
'Then that will be the standard model, shall we say, O water in the desert?'
Teppic looked at Dios, who was standing and glaring at nothing now, staring the bulldogs of Entropy into submission by willpower alone.
'I think something larger,' he ventured hopelessly.
'That's the Executive,' said Ptaclusp. 'Very exclusive, O base of the eternal column. Last you a perpetuality. Also our special offer this aeon is various measurements of paracosmic significance built into the very fabric at no extra cost.'
He gave Teppic an expectant look.
'Yes. Yes. That will be fine,' said Teppic.
Dios took a deep breath. 'The king requires far more than that,' be said.
'I do?' said Teppic, doubtfully.
'Indeed, sire. It is your express wish that the greatest of monuments is erected for your father,' said Dios smoothly. This was a contest, Teppic knew, and he didn't know the rules or how to play and he was going to lose.
'It is? Oh. Yes. Yes. I suppose it is, really. Yes.'
'A pyramid unequalled along the Djel,' said Dios. 'That is the command of the king. It is only right and proper.'
'Yes, yes, something like that. Er. Twice the normal size,' said Teppic desperately, and had the brief satisfaction of seeing Dios look momentarily disconcerted.
'Sire?' he said.
'It is only right and proper,' said Teppic. Dios opened his mouth to protest, saw Teppic's expression, and shut it again.
Ptaclusp scribbled busily, his adam's apple bobbing. Something like this only happened once in a business career.
'Can do you a very nice black marble facing on the outside,' he said, without looking up. 'We may have just enough in the quarry. O king of the celestial orbs,' he added hurriedly.
'Very good,' said Teppic.
Ptaclusp picked up a fresh tablet. 'Shall we say the capstone picked out in electrum? It's cheaper to have built in right from the start, you don't want to use just silver and then say later, I wish I'd had a-'
'Electrum, yes.'
'And the usual offices?'
'What?'
'The burial chamber, that is, and the outer chamber. I'd recommend the Memphis, very select, that comes with a matching extra large treasure room, so handy for all those little things one cannot bear to leave behind.' Ptaclusp turned the tablet over and started on the other side. 'And of course a similar suite for the Queen, I take it? O King who shall live forever.'
'Eh? Oh, yes. Yes. I suppose so,' said Teppic, glancing at Dios. 'Everything. You know.'
'Then there's mazes,' said Ptaclusp, trying to keep his voice steady. 'Very popular this era. Very important, your maze, it's no good deciding you ought to have put a maze in after the robbers have been. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I'd go for the Labrys every time. Like we say, they may get in all right, but they'll never get out. It costs that little bit extra, but what's money at a time like this? O master of the waters.'
Something we don't have, said a warning voice in the back of Teppic's head. He ignored it. He was in the grip of destiny.
'Yes,' he said, straightening up. 'The Labrys. Two of them.'
Ptaclusp's stylus went through his tablet.
'His 'n' hers, O stone of stones,' he croaked. 'Very handy, very convenient. With selection of traps from stock? We can offer deadfalls, pitfalls, sliders, rolling balls, dropping spears, arrows-'
'Yes, yes,' said Teppic. 'We'll have them. We'll have them all. All of them.'
The architect took a deep breath.
'And of course you'll require all the usual steles, avenues, ceremonial sphinxes-' he began.
'Lots,' said Teppic. 'We leave it entirely up to you.'
Ptaclusp mopped his brow.
'Fine,' he said. 'Marvellous.' He blew his nose. 'Your father, if I may make so bold, O sower of the seed, is extremely fortunate in having such a dutiful son. I may add-'
'You may go,' said Dios. 'And we will expect work to start imminently.'
'Without delay, I assure you,' said Ptaclusp. 'Er.'
He seemed to be wrestling with some huge philosophical problem.
'Yes?' said Dios coldly.
'It's uh. There's the matter of uh. Which is not to say uh. Of course, oldest client, valued customer, but the fact is that uh. Absolutely no doubt about credit worthiness uh. Would not wish to suggest in any way whatsoever that uh.'
Dios gave him a stare that would have caused a sphinx to blink and look away.
'You wish to say something?' he said. 'His majesty's time is extremely limited.'
Ptaclusp worked his jaw silently, but the result was a foregone conclusion. Even gods had been reduced to sheepish mumbling in the face of Dios's face. And the carved snakes on his staff seemed to be watching him too.
'Uh. No, no. Sorry. I was just, uh, thinking aloud. I'll depart, then, shall I? Such a lot of work to be done. Uh.' He bowed low.
He was halfway to the archway before Dios added: 'Completion in three months. In time for Inundation11.'
'What?'
'You are talking to the 1,398th monarch,' said Dios icily. Ptaclusp swallowed. 'I'm sorry,' he whispered, 'I mean, what?, O great king. I mean, block haulage alone will take. Uh.' The architect's lips trembled as he tried out various comments and, in his imagination, ran them full tilt into Dios's stare. 'Tsort wasn't built in a day,' he mumbled.
'We do not believe we laid the specifications for that job,' said Dios. He gave Ptaclusp a smile. In some ways it was worse than everything else. 'We will, of course,' he said, 'pay extra.'
'But you never pa-' Ptaclusp began, and then sagged.
'The penalties for not completing on time will, of course, be terrible,' said Dios. 'The usual clause.'
Ptaclusp hadn't the nerve left to argue. 'Of course,' he said, utterly defeated. 'It is an honour. Will your eminences excuse me? There are still some hours of daylight left.'
Teppic nodded.
'Thank you,' said the architect. 'May your loins be truly fruitful. Saving your presence, Lord Dios.'
They heard him running down the steps outside.
'It will be magnificent. Too big, but — magnificent,' said Dios. He looked out between the pillars at the necropolic panorama on the far bank of the Djel.
'Magnificent,' he repeated. He winced once more at the stab of pain in his leg. Ah. He'd have to cross the river again tonight, no doubt of it. He'd been foolish, putting it off for days. But it would be unthinkable not to be in a position to serve the kingdom properly.
'Something wrong, Dios?' said Teppic.
'Sire?'
'You looked a bit pale, I thought.' A look of panic flickered over Dios's wrinkled features. He pulled himself upright.
'I assure you, sire, I am in the best of health. The best of health, sire!'
'You don't think you've been overdoing it, do you?'
This time there was no mistaking the expression of terror.
'Overdoing what, sire?'
'You're always bustling, Dios. First one up, last one to bed. You should take it easy.'
'I exist only to serve, sire,' said Dios, firmly. 'I exist only to serve.'
Teppic joined him on the balcony. The early evening sun glowed on a man-made mountain range. This was only the central massif; the pyramids stretched from the delta all the way up to the second cataract, where the Djel disappeared into the mountains. And the pyramids occupied the best land, near the river. Even the farmers would have considered it sacrilegious to suggest anything different.
Some of the pyramids were small, and made of rough-hewn blocks that contrived to look far older than the mountains that fenced the valley from the high desert. After all, mountains had always been there. Words like 'young' and 'old' didn't apply to them. But those first pyramids had been built by human beings, little bags of thinking water held up briefly by fragile accumulations of calcium, who had cut rocks into pieces and then painfully put them back together again in a better shape. They were old.
Over the millennia the fashions had fluctuated. Later pyramids were smooth and sharp, or flattened and tiled with mica. Even the steepest of them, Teppic mused, wouldn't rate more than 1.O on any edificeer's scale, although some of the stelae and temples, which flocked around the base of the pyramids like tugboats around the dreadnoughts of eternity, could be worthy of attention.
Dreadnoughts of eternity, he thought, sailing ponderously through the mists of Time with every passenger travelling first class . . .
A few stars had been let out early. Teppic looked up at them. Perhaps, he thought, there is life somewhere else. On the stars, maybe. If it's true that there are billions of universes stacked alongside one another, the thickness of a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere.
But wherever they are, no matter how mightily they try, no matter how magnificent the effort, they surely can't manage to be as godawfully stupid as us. I mean, we work at it. We were given a spark of it to start with, but over hundreds of thousands of years we've really improved on it.
He turned to Dios, feeling that he ought to repair a little bit of the damage.
'You can feel the age radiating off them, can't you,' he said conversationally.
'Pardon, sire?'
'The pyramids, Dios. They're so old.'
Dios glanced vaguely across the river. 'Are they?' he said. 'Yes, I suppose they are.'
'Will you get one?' said Teppic.
'A pyramid?' said Dios. 'Sire, I have one already. It pleased one of your forebears to make provision for me.'
'That must have been a great honour,' said Teppic. Dios nodded graciously. The staterooms of forever were usually reserved for royalty.
'It is, of course, very small. Very plain. But it will suffice for my simple needs.'
'Will it?' said Teppic, yawning. 'That's nice. And now, if you don't mind, I think I'll turn in. It's been a long day.'
Dios bowed as though he was hinged in the middle. Teppic had noticed that Dios had at least fifty finely-tuned ways of bowing, each one conveying subtle shades of meaning. This one looked like No.3, I Am Your Humble Servant.
'And a very good day it was too, if I may say so, sire. Teppic was lost for words. 'You thought so?' he said.
'The cloud effects at dawn were particularly effective.'
'They were? Oh. Do I have to do anything about the sunset?'
'Your majesty is pleased to joke,' said Dios. 'Sunsets happen by themselves, sire. Haha.'
'Haha,' echoed Teppic.
Dios cracked his knuckles. 'The trick is in the sunrise,' he said.
The crumbling scrolls of Knot said that the great orange sun was eaten every evening by the sky goddess, What, who saved one pip in time to grow a fresh sun for next morning. And Dios knew that this was so.
The Book of Staying in The Pit said that the sun was the Eye of Yay, toiling across the sky each day in His endless search for his toenails12. And Dios knew that this was so.
The secret rituals of the Smoking Mirror held that the sun was in fact a round hole in the spinning blue soap bubble of the goddess Nesh, opening into the fiery real world beyond, and the stars were the holes that the rain comes through. And Dios knew that this, also, was so.
Folk myth said the sun was a ball of fire which circled the world every day, and that the world itself was carried through the everlasting void on the back of an enormous turtle. And Dios also knew that this was so, although it gave him a bit of trouble.
And Dios knew that Net was the Supreme God, and that Fon was the Supreme God, and so were Hast, Set, Bin, Sot, Ic, Dhek, and Ptooie; that Herpetine Triskeles alone ruled the world of the dead, and so did Syncope, and Silur the Catfish-Headed God, and Orexis-Nupt.
Dios was maximum high priest to a national religion that had fermented and accreted and bubbled for more than seven thousand years and never threw a god away in case it turned out to be useful. He knew that a great many mutually-contradictory things were all true. If they were not, then ritual and belief were as nothing, and if they were nothing, then the world did not exist. As a result of this sort of thinking, the priests of the Djel could give mind room to a collection of ideas that would make even a quantum mechanic give in and hand back his toolbox.
Dios's staff knocked echoes from the stones as he limped along in the darkness down little-frequented passages until he emerged on a small jetty. Untying the boat there, the high priest climbed in with difficulty, unshipped the oars and pushed himself out into the turbid waters of the dark Djel.
His hands and feet felt too cold. Foolish, foolish. He should have done this before.
The boat jerked slowly into midstream as full night rolled over the valley. On the far bank, in response to the ancient laws, the pyramids started to light the sky.
Lights also burned late in the house of Ptaclusp Associates, Necropolitan Builders to the Dynasties. The father and his twin Sons were hunched over the huge wax designing tray, arguing.
'It's not as if they ever pay,' said Ptaclusp IIa. 'I mean it's not just a case of not being able to, they don't seem to have grasped the idea. At least dynasties like Tsort pay up within a hundred years or so. Why didn't you-'
'We've built pyramids along the Djel for the last three thousand years,' said his father stiffly, 'and we haven't lost by it, have we? No, we haven't. Because the other kingdoms look to the Djel, they say there's a family that really knows its pyramids, connysewers, they say we'll have what they're having, if you please, with knobs on. Anyway, they're real royalty,' he added, 'not like some of the ones you get these days — here today, gone next millennium. They're half gods, too. You don't expect real royalty to pay its way. That's one of the signs of real royalty, not having any money.'
'You don't get more royal than them, then. You'd need a new word,' said IIa. We're nearly royal in that case.'
'You don't understand business, my son. You think it's all book-keeping. Well, it isn't.'
'It's a question of mass. And the power to weight ratio.' They both glared at Ptaclusp IIb, who was sitting staring at the sketches. He was turning his stylus over and over in his hands, which were trembling with barely-suppressed excitement.
'We'll have to use granite for the lower slopes,' he said, talking to himself, 'the limestone wouldn't take it. Not with all the power flows. Which will be, whooeee, they'll be big. I mean we're not talking razor blades here. This thing could put an edge on a rolling pin.'
Ptaclusp rolled his eyes. He was only one generation into a dynasty and already it was trouble. One son a born accountant, the other in love with this new-fangled cosmic engineering. There hadn't been any such thing when he was a lad, there was just architecture. You drew the plans, and then got in ten thousand lads on time-and-a-half and double bubble at weekends. They just had to pile the stuff up. You didn't have to be cosmic about it.
Descendants! The gods had seen fit to give him one son who charged you for the amount of breath expended in saying 'Good morning', and another one who worshipped geometry and stayed up all night designing aqueducts. You scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and paid you back by getting educated.
'What are you talking about?' he snapped.
'The discharge alone . . .' He pulled his abacus towards him and rattled the pottery beads along the wires. 'Let's say we're talking twice the height of the Executive model, which gives us a mass of. . . plus additional coded dimensions of occult significance as per spec. . . we couldn't do this sort of thing even a hundred years ago, you realise, not with the primitive techniques we had then…' His finger became a blur.
IIa gave a snort and grabbed his own abacus.
'Limestone at two talents the ton. . .' he said. 'Wear and tear on tools . . . masonry charges . . . demurrage . . . breakages . . . oh dear, oh dear . . . on-cost . . . black marble at replacement prices . . .'
Ptaclusp sighed. Two abaci rattling in tandem the whole day long, one changing the shape of the world and the other one deploring the cost. Whatever happened to the two bits of wood and a plumbline?
The last beads clicked against the stops.
'It'd be a whole quantum leap in pyramidology,' said IIb, sitting back with a messianic grin on his face.
'It'd be a whole kwa-' IIa began.
'Quantum,' said IIb, savouring the word.
'It'd be a whole quantum leap in bankruptcy,' said IIa.
'They'd have to invent a new word for that too.'
'It'd be worth it as a loss leader,' said IIb.
'Sure enough. When it comes to making a loss, we'll be in the lead,' said IIa sourly.
'It'd practically glow! In millennia to come people will look at it and say «That Ptaclusp, he knew his pyramids all right».'
'They'll call it Ptaclusp's Folly, you mean!'
By now the brothers were both standing up, their noses a few inches apart.
'The trouble with you, sibling, is that you know the cost of everything and the value of nothing!'
'The trouble with you is — is — is that you don't!'
'Mankind must strive ever upwards!'
'Yes, on a sound financial footing, by Khuft!'
'The search for knowledge-'
'The search for probity-'
Ptaclusp left them to it and stood staring out at the yard, where, under the glow of torches, the staff were doing a feverish stocktaking.
It'd been a small business when father passed it on to him — just a yard full of blocks and various sphinxes, needles, steles and other stock items, and a thick stack of unpaid bills, most of them addressed to the palace and respectfully pointing out that our esteemed account presented nine hundred years ago appeared to have been overlooked and prompt settlement would oblige. But it had been fun in those days. There was just him, five thousand labourers, and Mrs Ptaclusp doing the books.
You had to do pyramids, dad said. All the profit was in mastabas, small family tombs, memorial needles and general jobbing necropoli, but if you didn't do pyramids, you didn't do anything. The meanest garlic farmer, looking for something neat and long lasting with maybe some green marble chippings but within a budget, wouldn't go to a man without a pyramid to his name.
So he'd done pyramids, and they'd been good ones, not like some you saw these days, with the wrong number of sides and walls you could put your foot through. And yes, somehow they'd gone from strength to strength.
To build the biggest pyramid ever..
In three months.
With terrible penalties if it wasn't done on time. Dios hadn't specified how terrible, but Ptaclusp knew his man and they probably involved crocodiles. They'd be pretty terrible, all right…
He stared at the flickering light on the long avenues of statues, including the one of bloody Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests, bought on the offchance years ago and turned down by the client owing to not being up to snuff in the beak department and unshiftable ever since even at a discount.
The biggest pyramid ever . . .
And after you'd knocked your pipes out seeing to it that the nobility had their tickets to eternity, were you allowed to turn your expertise homeward, i.e., a bijou pyramidette for self and Mrs Ptaclusp, to ensure safe delivery into the Netherworld? Of course not. Even dad had only been allowed to have a mastaba, although it was one of the best on the river, he had to admit, that red-veined marble had been ordered all the way from Howonderland, a lot of people had asked for the same, it had been good for business, that's how dad would have liked it. . .
The biggest pyramid ever . . .
And they'd never remember who was under it.
It didn't matter if they called it Ptaclusp's Folly or Ptaclusp's Glory. They'd call it Ptaclusp's.
He surfaced from this pool of thought to hear his sons still arguing.
If this was his posterity, he'd take his chances with 600-ton limestone blocks. At least they were quiet.
'Shut up, the pair of you,' he said.
They stopped, and sat down, grumbling.
'I've made up my mind,' he said.
IIb doodled fitfully with his stylus. IIa strummed his abacus.
'We're going to do it,' said Ptaclusp, and strode out of the room. 'And any son who doesn't like it will be cast into the outer darkness where there is a wailing and a crashing of teeth,' he called over his shoulder.
The two brothers, left to themselves, glowered at each other.
At last IIa said, 'What does «quantum» mean, anyway?'
IIb shrugged. 'It means add another nought,' he said.
'Oh,' said IIa, 'is that all?'
All along the river valley of the Djel the pyramids were flaring silently into the night, discharging the accumulated power of the day.
Great soundless flames erupted from their capstones and danced upwards, jagged as lightning, cold as ice.
For hundreds of miles the desert glittered with the constellations of the dead, the aurora of antiquity. But along the valley of the Djel the lights ran together in one solid ribbon of fire.
It was on the floor and it had a pillow at one end. It had to be a bed.
Teppic found he was doubting it as he tossed and turned, trying to find some part of the mattress that was prepared to meet him halfway. This is stupid, he thought, I grew up on beds like this. And pillows carved out of rock. I was born in this palace, this is my heritage, I must be prepared to accept it . . .
I must order a proper bed and a feather pillow from Ankh, first thing in the morning. I, the king, have said this shall be done.
He turned over, his head hitting the pillow with a thud.
And plumbing. What a great idea that was. It was amazing what you could do with a hole in the ground.
Yes, plumbing. And bloody doors. Teppic definitely wasn't used to having several attendants waiting on his will all the time, so performing his ablutions before bed had been extremely embarrassing. And the people, too. He was definitely going to get to know the people. It was wrong, all this skulking in palaces.
And how was a fellow supposed to sleep with the sky over the river glowing like a firework?
Eventually sheer exhaustion wrestled his body into some zone between sleeping and waking, and mad images stalked across his eyeballs.
There was the shame of his ancestors when future archaeologists translated the as-yet unpainted frescoes of his reign: '"Squiggle, constipated eagle, wiggly line, hippo's bottom, squiggle»: And in the year of the Cycle of Cephnet the Sun God Teppic had Plumbing Installed and Scorned the Pillows of his Forebears.'
He dreamed of Khuft — huge, bearded, speaking in thunder and lightning, calling down the wrath of the heavens on this descendant who was betraying the noble past.
Dios floated past his vision, explaining that as a result of an edict passed several thousand years ago it was essential that he marry a cat.
Various-headed gods vied for his attention, explaining details of godhood, while in the background a distant voice tried to attract his attention and screamed something about not wanting to be buried under a load of stone. But he had no time to concentrate on this, because he saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, one of them playing a trombone.
But that was an old dream, he dreamt that one nearly every night.
And then there was a man firing arrows at a tortoise . . .
And then he was walking over the desert and found a tiny pyramid, only a few inches high. A wind sprang up and blew away the sand, only now it wasn't a wind, it was the pyramid rising, sand tumbling down its gleaming sides .
And it grew bigger and bigger, bigger than the world, so that at last the pyramid was so big that the whole world was a speck in the centre.
And in the centre of the pyramid, something very strange happened.
And the pyramid grew smaller, taking the world with it. and vanished . . .
Of course, when you're a pharaoh, you get a very high class of obscure dream.
Another day dawned, courtesy of the king, who was curled up on the bed and using his rolled-up clothes as a pillow. Around the stone maze of the palace the servants of the kingdom began to wake up.
Dios's boat slid gently through the water and bumped into the jetty. Dios climbed out and hurried into the palace, bounding up the steps three at a time and rubbing his hands together at the thought of a fresh day laid out before him, every hour and ritual ticking neatly into place. So much to organise, so much to be needed for . . .
The chief sculptor and maker of mummy cases folded up his measure.
'You done a good job there, Master Dil,' he said.
Dil nodded. There was no false modesty between craftsmen. The sculptor gave him a nudge. 'What a team, eh?' he said. 'You pickle 'em, I crate 'em.'
Dil nodded, but rather more slowly. The sculptor looked down at the wax oval in his hands.
'Can't say I think much of the death mask, mind,' he said. Gern, who was working hard on the corner slab on one of the Queen's late cats, which he had been allowed to do all by himself, looked up in horror.
'I done it very careful,' he said sulkily.
'That's the whole point,' said the sculptor.
'I know,' said Dil sadly, 'it's the nose, isn't it.'
'It was more the chin.'
'And the chin.'
'Yes.'
'Yes.'
They looked in gloomy silence at the waxen visage of the pharaoh. So did the pharaoh.
'Nothing wrong with my chin.'
'You could put a beard on it,' said Dil eventually. 'It'd cover a lot of it, would a beard.'
'There's still the nose.'
'You could take half an inch off that. And do something with the cheekbones.'
'Yes.'
'Yes.'
Gern was horrified. 'That's the face of our late king you're talking about,' he said. 'You can't do that sort of thing! Anyway, people would notice.' He hesitated. 'Wouldn't they?'
The two craftsmen eyed one another.
'Gern,' said Dil patiently, 'certainly they'll notice. But they won't say anything. They expect us to, er, improve matters.'
'After all,' said the chief sculptor cheerfully, 'you don't think they're going to step up and say «It's all wrong, he really had a face like a short-sighted chicken», do you?'
'Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed, I must say.' The pharaoh went and sat by the cat. It seemed that people only had respect for the dead when they thought the dead were listening.
'I suppose,' said the apprentice, with some uncertainty, 'he did look a bit ugly compared to the frescoes.'
'That's the point, isn't it,' said Dil meaningfully. Gern's big honest spotty face changed slowly, like a cratered landscape with clouds passing across it. It was dawning on him that this came under the heading of initiation into ancient craft secrets.
'You mean even the painters change the-' he began.
Dil frowned at him.
'We don't talk about it,' he said.
Gern tried to force his features into an expression of worthy seriousness.
'Oh,' he said. 'Yes. I see, master.'
The sculptor clapped him on the back.
'You're a bright lad, Gern,' he said. 'You catch on. After all, it's bad enough being ugly when you're alive. Think how terrible it would be to be ugly in the netherworld.'
King Teppicymon XXVII shook his head. We all have to look alike when we're alive, he thought, and now they make sure we're identical when we're dead. What a kingdom. He looked down and saw the soul of the late cat, which was washing itself. When he was alive he'd hated the things, but just now it seemed positively companionable. He patted it gingerly on its flat head. It purred for a moment, and then attempted to strip the flesh from his hand. It was on a definite hiding to nothing there.
He was aware with growing horror that the trio was now discussing a pyramid. His pyramid. It was going to be the biggest one ever. It was going to go on a highly fertile piece of sloping ground on a prime site in the necropolis. It was going to make even the biggest existing pyramid look like something a child might construct in a sand tray. It was going to be surrounded by marble gardens and granite obelisks. It was going to be the greatest memorial ever built by a son for his father.
The king groaned.
Ptaclusp groaned.
It had been better in his father's day. You just needed a bloody great heap of log rollers and twenty years, which was useful because it kept everyone out of trouble during Inundation, when all the fields were flooded. Now you just needed a bright lad with a piece of chalk and the right incantations.
Mind you, it was impressive, if you liked that kind of thing.
Ptaclusp IIb walked around the great stone block, tidying an equation here, highlighting a hermetic inscription there. He glanced up and gave his father a brief nod.
Ptaclusp hurried back to the king, who was standing with his retinue on the cliff overlooking the quarry, the sun gleaming off the mask. A royal visit, on top of everything else 'We're ready, if it please you, O arc of the sky,' he said, breaking into a sweat, hoping against hope that Oh gods. The king was going to Put Him at his Ease again.
He looked imploringly at the high priest, who with the merest twitch of his features indicated that there was nothing he proposed to do about it. This was too much, he wasn't the only one to object to this, Dil the master embalmer had been subjected to half an hour of having to Talk about his Family only yesterday, it was wrong, people expected the king to stay in the palace, it was too . . .
The king ambled towards him in a nonchalant way designed to make the master builder feel he was among friends. Oh no, Ptaclusp thought, he's going to Remember my Name.
'I must say you've done a tremendous amount in nine weeks, it's a very good start. Er. It's Ptaclusp, isn't it?' said the king.
Ptaclusp swallowed. There was no help for it now.
'Yes, O hand upon the waters,' he said, 'O fount of-'
'I think «your majesty» or «sire» will do,' said Teppic. Ptaclusp panicked and glanced fearfully at Dios, who winced but nodded again.
'The king wishes you to address him-' a look of pain crossed his face — 'informally. In the fashion of the barba — of foreign lands.'
'You must consider yourself a very fortunate man to have such talented and hard-working sons,' said Teppic, staring down at the busy panorama of the quarry.
'I . . . will, O . . . sire,' mumbled Ptaclusp, interpreting this as an order. Why couldn't kings order people around like in the old days? You knew where you were then, they didn't go round being charming and treating you as some sort of equal, as if you could make the sun rise too.
'It must be a fascinating trade,' Teppic went on.
'As your sire wishes, sire,' said Ptaclusp. 'If your majesty would just give the word-'
'And how exactly does all this work?'
'Your sire?' said Ptaclusp, horrified.
'You make the blocks fly, do you?'
'Yes, O sire.'
'That is very interesting. How do you do it?'
Ptaclusp nearly bit through his lip. Betray Craft secrets? He was horrified. Against all expectation, Dios came to his aid.
'By means of certain secret signs and sigils, sire,' he said, 'into the origin of which it is not wise to inquire. It is the wisdom of-' he paused '-the modems.'
'So much quicker than all that heaving stuff around, I expect,' said Teppic.
'It had a certain glory, sire,' said Dios. 'Now, if I may suggest . . .
'Oh. Yes. Press on, by all means.'
Ptaclusp wiped his forehead, and ran to the edge of the quarry.
He waved a cloth.
All things are defined by names. Change the name, and you change the thing. Of course there is a lot more to it than that, but paracosmically that is what it boils down to.
Ptaclusp IIb tapped the stone lightly with his staff. The air above it wavered in the heat and then, shedding a little dust, the block rose gently until it bobbed a few feet off the ground, held in check by mooring ropes.
That was all there was to it. Teppic had expected some thunder, or at least a gout of flame. But already the workers were clustering around another block, and a couple of men were towing the first block down towards the site.
'Very impressive,' he said sadly.
'Indeed, sire,' said Dios. 'And now, we must go back to the palace. It will soon be time for the Ceremony of the Third Hour.
'Yes, yes, all right,' snapped Teppic. 'Very well done, Ptaclusp. Keep up the good work.'
Ptaclusp bowed like a seesaw in flustered excitement and confusion.
'Very good, your sire,' he said, and decided to go for the big one. 'May I show your sire the latest plans?'
'The king has approved the plans already,' said Dios. 'And, excuse me if I am mistaken, but it seems that the pyramid is well under construction.'
'Yes, yes, but,' said Ptaclusp, 'it occurred to us, this avenue here, you see, overlooking the entrance, what a place, we thought, for a statue of for instance Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests at practically cost-'
Dios glanced at the sketches.
'Are those supposed to be wings?' he said.
'Not even cost, not even cost, tell you what I'll do-' said Ptaclusp desperately.
'Is that a nose?' said Dios.
'More a beak, more a beak,' said Ptaclusp. 'Look, O priest, how about-'
'I think not,' said Dios. 'No. I really think not.' He scanned the quarry for Teppic, groaned, thrust the sketches into the builder's hands and started to run.
Teppic had strolled down the path to the waiting chariots, looking wistfully at the bustle around him, and paused to watch a group of workers who were dressing a corner piece. They froze when they felt his gaze on them, and stood sheepishly watching him.
'Well well,' said Teppic, inspecting the stone, although all he knew about stonemasonry could have been chiselled on a sand grain. 'What a splendid piece of rock.'
He turned to the nearest man, whose mouth fell open.
'You're a stonemason, are you?' he said. 'That must be a very interesting job.'
The man's eyes bulged. He dropped his chisel. 'Erk,' he said.
A hundred yards away Dios's robes flapped around his legs as he pounded down the path. He grasped the hem and galloped along, sandals flapping.
'What's your name?' said Teppic. 'Aaaargle,' said the man, terrified.
'Well, jolly good,' said Teppic, and took his unresisting hand and shook it.
'Sire!' Dios bellowed. 'No!'
And the mason spun away, holding his right hand by the wrist, fighting it, screaming . . .
Teppic gripped the arms of the throne and glared at the high priest.
'But it's a gesture of fellowship, nothing more. Where I come from-'
'Where you come from, sire, is here!' thundered Dios.
'But, good grief, cutting it off? It's too cruel!'
Dios stepped forward. Now his voice was back to its normal oil-smooth tones.
'Cruel, sire? But it will be done with precision and care, with drugs to take away the pain. He will certainly live.
'But why?'
'I did explain, sire. He cannot use the hand again without defiling it. He is a devout man and knows this very well. You see, sire, you are a god, sire.'
'But you can touch me. So can the servants!'
'I am a priest, sire,' said Dios gently. 'And the servants have special dispensation.'
Teppic bit his lip.
'This is barbaric,' he said.
Dios's features did not move.
'It will not be done,' Teppic said. 'I am the king. I forbid it to be done, do you understand?'
Dios bowed. Teppic recognised No.49, Horrified Disdain.
'Your wish will certainly be done, O fountain of all wisdom. Although, of course, the man himself may take matters into, if you will excuse me, his own hands.'
'What do you mean?' snapped Teppic.
'Sire, if his colleagues had not stopped him he would have done it himself. With a chisel, I understand.'
Teppic stared at him and thought, I am a stranger in a familiar land.
'I see,' he said eventually.
He thought a little further.
'Then the — operation is to be done with all care, and the man is to be given a pension afterwards, d'you see?'
'As you wish, sire.'
'A proper one, too.'
'Indeed, sire. A golden handshake, sire,' said Dios impassively.
'And perhaps we can find him some light job around the palace?'
'As a one-handed stonemason, sire?' Dios's left eyebrow arched a fraction.
'As whatever, Dios.'
'Certainly, sire. As you wish. I will undertake to see if we are currently short-handed in any department.'
Teppic glared at him. 'I am the king, you know,' he said sharply.
'The fact attends me with every waking hour, sire.'
'Dios?' said Teppic, as the high priest was leaving.
'Sire?'
'I ordered a feather bed from Ankh-Morpork some weeks ago. I suppose you would not know what became of it?'
Dios waved his hands in an expressive gesture. 'I gather, sire, that there is considerable pirate activity off the Khalian coast,' he said.
'Doubtless the pirates are also responsible for the non— appearance of the expert from the Guild of Plumbers and Dunnikindivers13?' Teppic said sourly.
'Yes, sire. Or possibly bandits, sire.'
'Or perhaps a giant two-headed bird swooped down and carried him off,' said Teppic.
'All things are possible, sire,' said the high priest, his face radiating politeness.
'You may go, Dios.'
'Sire. May I remind you, sire, that the emissaries from Tsort and Ephebe will be attending you at the fifth hour.'