Pyramids

by Fred Saberhagen

  Scheffler dropped his useless flashlight on one of the couches, and with grim determination stepped out of the doorway. Moving with the necessary slow care on the tricky footing, he made his way far enough down the passage to be able to see the sky. Yes, there was indeed an unclouded sky above. He was still standing in the shade, but he could feel the heat from that sky, and from all the rocks around him.

  The faintest of sounds was audible behind him. Wheeling, he saw that the elevator door was closing, already almost closed. Scrambling recklessly on slanted rock, he sprang toward that door. Too late to catch it before it closed, he threw himself against the outer handle.

  The door slid open for him at once.

  Scheffler let the door close again, slowly, against the gentle pressure of his hands. Then he opened it again, satisfying himself that it was not going to lock him out. But so far it had always opened for him, hadn't it? In the end Scheffler decided fatalistically that it was going to be all right.

  Turning his back on the elevator, he got down to the business of exploration, which presented difficulties from the start. Here near the elevator door the rock walls of the fissure were almost twenty feet high, and dangerously smooth. Scheffler wasn't at all sure that he would be able to climb either of them, or between them, without a fall. He began to move along the fissure, looking for an easier way up.

  At the first sharp bend of the passage, only a few yards along, he turned to look back. Already the dark gray surface of the elevator door was practically invisible within its shadowed recess.

  And when he looked up it was obvious from this point that there was no fifteen-story apartment building towering above the elevator. Only the thick brow of rock, and then the empty sky. The final proof that he was now in a different world did not really come as a surprise. Scheffler had already begun adjusting to that feet, though he had not really begun to deal with it consciously.

  He turned and moved again along the fissure. It changed direction every few yards, so that he was never able to see very far ahead. But before he had gone this way for more than fifty yards, the end of the fissure had come into sight. It opened at a slight elevation, looking out across a desert wasteland. About a mile away, at the bottom of a long gentle slope, there coursed an enormous river, both banks lined with greenery.

  Near the open mouth of the fissure the slope of its walls diminished, and simultaneously their height decreased. Here it was easy enough to scramble out. Scheffler got his head above the walls and was able to look about him freely.

  He had emerged now into the open heat and glare of that high sun. But at first Scheffler hardly noticed the sun at all.

  He should have been warned by the disappearance of the apartment building. But the scene before him was beyond any preparatory adjustment that he might have been able to make.

  The sun was high in that cloudless hearth of sky�never mind that it had been late afternoon when he left Chicago. To Scheffler's right, and again to his left, the broad river wound gently to the far horizon. From his slight elevation in the flat land he could see how the wide bands of greenery following both banks were patterned everywhere with irrigated fields. Away from the river, the world was almost entirely dry wasteland, marked here and there by low plateaus. Scheffler was standing on one of these plateaus, which was streaked by dry rocky fissures like the one he had just climbed out of. In the direction opposite the river, the horizon was brought a little closer by low, barren hills.

  On the river's near bank, about a mile from where Scheffler was standing, gray-brown buildings clustered. It was an extensive cluster. Squinting into shimmering heat, he could not tell if those distant walls were inhabited, or only ruins. At this distance he could see no signs of life among them.

  From close beside the group of buildings, whatever they might be, a canal, both banks lined with tall palms, had been dug in the general direction of Scheffler's vantage point. This waterway, following the low ground as much as possible, passed the barren rock where he was standing at a distance of about a hundred yards.

  From that point the canal went on in a straight line toward the high ground about a mile in the other direction. It appeared to stop just before it got there, in a last cluster of palm trees at the foot of a low, rounded hill of solid rock.

  Looming gigantically atop that high ground was the original of Uncle Monty's model pyramid, the whole unmistakable geometric mass of it wavering in the heat. Just as in the model, the construction ramps on this full-sized pyramid went up three-fourths of the way to the top. And above the level where the ramps terminated, the slanting sides were finished as smoothly as those of any building in Chicago. The apex was marked by a visible speck of gold.

  Scheffler, oblivious to the sun, stared open-mouthed at the pyramid for some time. Eventually he turned again, continuing to scan the circle of the horizon in hopes of coming upon something that made sense. His gaze returned to the river. White birds flew between him and that distant bordering of greenery, and for a moment he could see their wings distinctly outlined against black mud. And now he thought that the palms along the canal were dancing. The glare of the sun, almost directly overhead, seemed to reverberate within his brain.

  Without realizing that he had made a conscious decision to retreat, Scheffler found himself crouching and sliding back into the fissure in the rock. Sharp gray rock tore at the heel of his left hand as he braced himself coming down, but he was hardly aware of the damage. Once at the bottom of the fissure, down between the rough rock walls, he began to retrace his steps toward the elevator.

  The conveyance was still there, waiting for him. The door opened for him at once. Scheffler went in, pondering the fact that he had just been given a look at the Great Pyramid. Apparently the monument hadn't even been finished yet, although near the top a good share of the highly polished sheathing was already in place, making the surfaces near the top shine like the snowcap on a mountain…

  Scheffler hadn't been able to see any of the workers, of course. The pyramid had been too far away. Nor had he seen any other people, anywhere. Maybe they all took a siesta in the middle of the day. With heat like that you couldn't blame them. But the pyramid was there. The same basic, four-sided shape as the model. What else could it be? There had been the same construction ramps that Uncle Monty had discussed, angling upward along those mountainous sides…

  Dimly Scheffler became aware that he had hurt his hand. It wasn't much. It wasn't anything.

  The motion of the elevator stilled, the ghostly sounds of its passage quieted. He got up from the couch and went to open the door.

  Outside, in the darkening space of Gallery Two with its grillwork gate, he stared at the gems of Uncle Monty's great collection. Scheffler looked at the things now as if he had never seen any of them until this moment.

  Then he made his way slowly through the apartment to his bathroom, where he carefully washed his injured hand. He stared at the almost infinitesimal particles of grit, of gray stone, as they were dislodged from the inconsequential wound to go swirling down the drain. To him they looked more marvelous than moon rock.

  In his uncle's bathroom Scheffler found a package of Band-Aids, and applied one to his hand. Then he went walking through the other rooms of the apartment, staring at a hundred artifacts. They all looked different to him now than they had an hour ago.

  Then, moving mechanically, he went into the kitchen and made himself some coffee.

  And then, slowly, tentatively at first, Scheffler began to think.

  It had become quite dark in the kitchen before he noticed that the message light on the phone-answering machine was blinking at him.

  It was Becky's recorded voice that greeted him when he flipped the switch. He needed human company. He scarcely hesitated before beginning to dial her number.

  FIVE

  More than a year had passed since Ptah-hotep and Thothmes, along with most of the other subjects of Pharaoh Khufu, had observed a strange, small cloud drifting in the western sky a
t dawn and pondered its meaning.

  During that year Ptah-hotep had been promoted, and was now Chief Priest for the Rituals to Guard the Building of the Tomb. Unlike his predecessor in that august office, whose laziness had eventually been his downfall, Ptah-hotep continued as an active observer of the day-to-day progress of the construction project. Now, at midday, he was standing atop the fifty-fifth and currently highest tier of the great pyramid, looking down into a square pit that gaped at the approximate center of the structure.

  The pit in its unfinished state was about fifteen paces long by ten paces wide, and half as deep as it was wide. It had not been dug into the solid stone, but created by allowing the layers of construction to rise around it. According to the plan of construction, last modified seven years ago and still being followed by the Chief Builder, this cavity would one day serve as the final resting place of Pharaoh, whose stone sarcophagus was already in place at its bottom. The granite sarcophagus, too big to fit through the narrow interior passageway through which the funeral procession would one day drag the coffin, had been hauled up a ramp on a sledge, just as all the building blocks were hauled. Then as soon as the floor of the pit was finished the hollow stone receptacle had been carefully maneuvered into its planned position, and left there as the tiers of stonework rose around it.

  Besides the sarcophagus, the cavity already contained a number of loose granite slabs, each of carefully measured size. These slabs, like the sarcophagus, were too large to have been brought in later, through the one planned narrow passageway that would remain when the pyramid was finished. Some of these slabs were intended to provide the finished lining of red granite for the chamber holding the sarcophagus, while others were designed to be used as plugs, blocking the last means of access to the chamber after the king had died and his mummy had reached its final resting place.

  Today the scribe Thothmes was once more visiting his friend Ptah-hotep. Thothmes still held the same post that he had held a year before, and he was evidently prospering in office, for he looked a little plumper now than he had at that early morning meeting a year ago.

  Surrounded by the fire of the noonday sun, the two men sat together, taking advantage of the shade of a canopy of fine cloth held over them by Nubian slaves. They sat almost immobile in the midday heat, while round them by the thousands Pharaoh's loyal subjects thronged and chanted, coming and going in an apparent melee that was actually closely controlled by the shouts of overseers. The great plan went forward, as it had year after year, decade after decade. Gangs of men labored, according to its dictates, at dragging, shaping, hoisting, hammering and mortaring into place the day's quota of enormous and finely finished building stones.

  Inside the deep stone pit which yawned at the feet of the two officials, a swarm of some of the more skillful artisans, nagged by a few overseers who seldom shouted, were laboring under the shade of a larger canopy. Their job consisted of the final fitting and finishing of the granite slabs that were to serve as lining for the inner walls of the tomb chamber, and of the slabs that were to serve as traps and plugs. The aesthetic qualities of the latter were not of much concern, but still they had to be precisely measured and precisely cut and smoothed, so that their position when they had been set in place might be exact, and their final motion sure when it was triggered.

  "The Pharaoh plans well," Ptah-hotep observed. Since he had joined his friend atop the pyramid today, other ears had been continually within range of their conversation, which therefore had tended toward platitudes. They had been unable to exchange but little information about those aspects of the design before them that continued to be of deepest interest to them both.

  "No mere man can fathom the plans of the god-king, our Pharaoh," Thothmes said to his friend now.

  Ptah-hotep looked at the other carefully. In past years it had been possible now and then to see a twinkle in the eye of Thothmes; but today Ptah-hotep could detect no trace of mockery on the face that had just delivered that solemn utterance. Moving daily in exalted circles, at the side of the Chief Builder himself, evidently trained a man to the finest self-control in every detail of behavior.

  And just now, by a sudden and unpredictable chance, there came a moment in which no one was near enough to overhear and understand them—aides, overseers, and laborers were all at a safe distance. And Ptah-hotep had long ago made sure that his pair of Nubian shade-holders did not know the Egyptian tongue—nor, being tongueless themselves and naturally illiterate, were they well able to communicate anything that they might learn. Thothmes seized this opportunity to add, in the same tone: "Yet again the Pharaoh has changed his mind about the final arrangements for the protection of his tomb."

  "Ah," said Ptah-hotep, in something like a sigh. It was a bit of news that he and his fellow plotters had been anticipating and worrying about for years. Such repeated changes in a tomb's design were unprecedented—of course the whole scale of the project was unprecedented also. Yet, Pharaoh being Pharaoh, the news was not entirely unexpected by Ptah-hotep.

  Construction was now, of course, much farther along on the overall structure than it had been years ago when the previous changes of plan regarding the interior had been announced.

  Ptah-hotep said: "I am certain that Khufu has in mind what happened to the tomb of his father. Snefru had not been for two years in the realm of the blessed before his burial place was despoiled by skillful robbers." Both men had been much too young to have taken part in that robbery, almost a score of years in the past, but both remembered hearing the rumors of it shortly after it occurred. It had been accomplished by the same secret group, at once the cult of Set and a band of thieves, to which they themselves had belonged for years.

  And now again the moment had passed in which unguarded speech was possible. Aides to both men were again hovering near them.

  Ptah-hotep leaned a little closer to the pit. He was keeping an eye, as was his duty, upon the current progress of the work. Below him a foreman paced and shouted, and a dozen diorite hammer-stones rose and fell, smoothing a piece of granite toward perfection. A few paces away along the bottom of the pit, at the site of a projected anteroom to the burial chamber proper, some of the massive granite slugs were already being levered and wedged into the places where they were to remain poised until just after the burial of Pharaoh. Then, from those cunningly contrived niches, those tons of rock would slide down to seal forever the Ascending Passage, the last human access to this inner portion of the completed tomb.

  "And all this work presently being completed below us?" the youthful Chief Priest asked, when the next moment came in which he might speak freely.

  "All of it is to remain in place," Thothmes replied in a low voice. "And the overall size of the pyramid will remain what is called for in the present plan. The new plan—involves certain additions later in the construction."

  That cried out for explanation. But once more untrusted ears were coming near. It was obvious that any detailed discussion on this sensitive subject was going to have to wait till later.

  An exchange of information with Thothmes was not the only clandestine bit of business that Ptah-hotep was trying to accomplish today. He was attempting also to arrange secretly for the leader of one particular work-gang, a man named Sihathor, to be able to observe these inner arrangements of the pit. To this end Ptah-hotep had been instructed, by his superior in the secret cult of Set, to keep an eye out for a man who wore a red fillet with white tassels round his head.

  As usual, one gang after another was appearing in rapid succession atop the pyramid, each group of eighteen or twenty men dragging into sight a sledge supporting a mass of several tons of stone. Turning his gaze casually to keep the three ascending ramps under his surveillance, the Chief Priest was managing to eye the leader of every gang alertly. But so far no red fillet with white tassels had appeared. Headgear of any kind was uncommon among the laborers. Usually the gang leaders, like the men they directed, wore nothing but a twist of cloth about the loins.
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  Neither Thothmes nor Ptah-hotep were clothed much more heavily than that, though their short white skirts were of fine linen, and each wore tokens of his office. Thothmes now raised a hand, toying with a gold boss on his jeweled collar of rank.

  Ptah-hotep fidgeted inwardly. Doubtless, the priest supposed, Sihathor's gang was still in the process of hauling their first sledge of the day up here from the terminus of the canal. As soon as Sihathor did appear, Ptah-hotep meant to accomplish his secret purpose by calling the man here to this shaded place of observation, and asking him about some supposed irregularities in the stone-hauling quotas as reported by other gangs. Other gang leaders, chosen at random, had been interrogated earlier in the day. It was going to look as if Ptah-hotep were merely too lazy to leave his patch of shade. The eyes of Pharaoh might be anywhere.

  Sihathor, and some at least of the gang of men whose labor he now directed, were natives of one particular village about two days' journey up the Nile. Traditionally the men of that village were excellent stoneworkers. Another tradition shared by many of them, requiring many of the same skills, just as ancient but less talked about, was that of tomb-robbing.

  Ptah-hotep and Thothmes had reverted again to innocuous conversation, and were still engaged in it when a man wearing a red fillet with white tassels at last appeared. Sihathor was pulling his own share of the weight, as many of the gang leaders did, on one of the ropes attached to the sledge. He also was leading his men in chanting as they struggled to deliver their rock. Ptah-hotep had already managed to turn the conversation back to the subject of daily quotas and the honesty of their reporting. It ought to be easy to check up on, but clever, indolent men might find some way to cheat their Pharaoh out of the work they owed him.