A few tables down, I was able to get a large selection of sliced vegetables and a quantity of smooth dipping sauce made of ground legumes, the kind of thing Bunny had always been trying to get me to eat instead of roast meats and cream sauces.
I brought my offerings back to Aahz.
"What's this?" Aahz demanded.
"A snack," I said. "Look. This bread was baked fresh this morning. And these vegetables were all home grown."
Aahz looked at me as if I had gone out of my mind. "You call this food? If I eat this wallpaper paste and rabbit food I'll die of boredom! You could use these crackers for roofing tiles! What made you buy them?"
This wasn't working out the way I had hoped. "Well, you seemed as if you weren't . . . feeling well," I began. "I didn't want to bring you anything that would upset your stomach." Even as I said it, I knew how foolish it sounded. I wasn't supposed to know anything was the matter.
Aahz blew a raspberry. "That was nothing, kid. I was ticked off at an incompetent craftsman, that's all. I'm fine. In fact, blowing off steam made me feel pretty good. I'll pop back to Deva and stop in at the Pervish restaurant near the dump."
I brightened. If he felt he was up to his native cuisine, then he couldn't be very ill, not yet. No weakling ever attempted to eat Pervish food. Half the time you had to wrestle it back in the bowl before it escaped.
"No, don't bother," I said hastily, heading for the door. "I'll get something better."
Samwise's books didn't take much longer to review. That left the main puzzle to investigate: the accidents. The first variable to consider was the people involved. Aahz and I split up to interview the workforce.
The workers on site were generally cheerful. Many had come directly out of school. I had seen the ads for Glyph Art College ("If you can carve Ra-nem-het, you could be an artist!") in the local daily papyrus left around the necessary. They were overseen by long-time veterans of projects around the dimensions, including Deva and a few other places I had visited. Even the team of professional mourners were upbeat people. They only sounded sad when they were rehearsing.
Except for the accidents, they felt Samwise's pyramid wasn't that bad a place to work. I got some of the stonecarvers talking over the communal water jug about where they came from and what they thought. It was a convivial location, presided over by a shrine dedicated to the Ghord of the water cooler, Hapi-Ar, He Who Makes Others Merry Through Drink.
Very casually, I introduced the idea that the accidents and mishaps might be deliberately caused.
"Oh, no, Skeeve, no," Ba-Boon, a monkey-faced Ghord assured me. He bared his teeth. "Saboteurs? No, not at all. We are proud to be part of this operation. It is not every day you work on something that will become part of history."
I recognized some of Samwise's pep talk and grinned.
"Does everyone feel like that?" I asked.
"I am not so sure about the commitment of the Scarabs," sniffed Pe-Kid, a male who resembled a Klahd except that his skin was dark green. "You notice that none of them ever seem to get hurt."
"O My Ghordess, but that is not true," piped up Lol-Kit, a kitten-faced young female. "I was on the second mastaba when those four stones fell all at once from above. Many Scarabs were killed, and all of them were destined to be buried here!"
"I forgot about that," said the green Ghord. "But, when you are working with heavy stone, some mishaps are to be expected. It is the will of the Ancients. They must not have placated the sacred ones in the correct manner."
"You believe that's the reason?" I asked.
"Sincerely," said Pe-Kid. "The Ancients control every aspect of our life. Who is to say they are not responsible for the departure from it?"
"How can that be?" I asked. "I mean, they're not around anymore."
"Did not your parents not order your comings and goings when you were a child?" Lol-Kit asked.
"I guess so." I thought of how it was before I left home. I defied a number of rules my parents laid down, but I was always aware of them. And I was punished when they caught me.
"Think, then, of the power that your fiftieth-times great grandfather will have over you, then. That is why we pay attention to their will and desires."
That the Ghords did their best to obey those desires I knew to be the truth. Shrines abounded on every level and in the most unexpected places of the construction site. All the Ghords performed little rituals prized by whichever ancestor they wished to honor or placate, such as blowing a whistle, ringing a bell, tossing a pinch of tiny leaves in the air, turning in a circle, waving an incense stick, or saying a word like lboo.' They performed these ceremonies upon clocking in every morning. Aahz refused to do it, calling it nonsense, as did Samwise. Those weren't their ancestors, after all. Still, I felt a little guilty about not participating. When in Zyx, as Aahz might have told me, do as a Zyxian.
"Oh, yes," added a baritone Mourner, Bah-So. "Nonli lost his favorite chisel between two blocks and nearly was squashed between them before the Scarabs noticed him. It took several offerings of beer to placate the Ancients."
"You don't think it could just have been bad luck, do you?" I asked.
"Oh, no!" the Ghords agreed. "We don't believe in superstition!"
A loud blatting interrupted our conversation. The overseers of the carvers, master scribes, came to urge their workers back to their stations.
I was impressed by the workers' eagerness to get the job done. Samwise was in a hurry for his investment to pay off, and his people reflected that sense of urgency. It didn't mean they were cutting corners, though. I had never seen such fine stonework.
Throughout the day, I noticed strangers climbing the invisible ramps overhead. Most of the time they were accompanied by Ghord salespeople, but often they were following someone from a different race altogether. I guessed those were customers who had the same deal as Aahz; they wanted to reduce their own payments through commissions, but by their gestures I could see their enthusiasm for the project itself. I'd done some listening around the Bazaar. No one had ever proposed such an undertaking before. Many of the Deveel merchants thought Samwise was crazy, but I think they were just jealous. One look at Diksen's structure across the way, and it was hard not to want a piece of that.
Samwise was right about Beltasar, too. Several times during the day, the voluble Scarab came flitting after the Imp, with a high-pitched complaint about something. I tried to tune her out, but her voice carried. I could hear her almost anywhere on the site.
In spite of my efforts to steer Aahz to healthier food, he invited me to join him for lunch on the far side of the pyramid at Fat Ombur's, an open-air cookshop run by a Ghord with a bird's face but a corpulent body. ("I get this way from eating my own cooking!" he assured us. We both considered it a good sign. Aahz's motto never to trust a skinny cook almost always held true.)
Like everything else we had seen in Ghordon so far, the tables and stools were made of chunks of stone. I perched at the edge of a squared-off piece that seemed to have been a practice sheet for some pretty complicated runes. My rump was going to have reverse impressions of goats, birds, shepherd's crooks, and open eyes by the time we finished eating.
Fat Ombur did good business, for good reason. The thick, flavorful stew, which we ate with our fingers or with torn pieces of fluffy flatbread, was delicious. Even Aahz went for the grilled vegetables, snatched off a low burner heated by a tiny snoring Salamander.
"Here, my good gentlemen," Ombur said. "Eat up!" He beamed proudly.
The strips were too hot for me to eat, so I chilled them with a touch of magik. Aahz, impervious to most temperatures, grinned as he ate them by the handful. As we chewed, I listened to the mourners keening on the level above us.
"Not my idea of dinner music, but it adds to the local color," Aahz commented.
"They're actually pretty good," I said. The ululations combined in six-part harmony. Then a shrill buzzing audible over the wailing and moaning made my ears contract. I winced. "There she goes
again."
I turned toward the painful sound. Samwise picked his way through the tables, his eyebrows drawn down, as Beltasar harangued him from the air.
"... And there will be five further fines for the interruption by Deveel visitors. They prevented us from seating a cornerstone. That will cost you also a secondary penalty. ..."
"Hey, Sam!" Aahz called, waving to him. "Come and join us. Leave the bug."
Samwise hurried over. "Would that I could, Aahz," he said, aiming a thumb at the Scarab. "We'll talk later," he told her.
"We will talk now!" Beltasar shrieked. "The safety of my workers is paramount."
"What about the job?" Aahz asked.
"What?" the Scarab demanded.
"Is the job less important than your workers?"
"N-no," Beltasar said, hesitating briefly. "We wish the work to be done, but in a safe fashion!"
"Then why are you constantly leaving your own work station to harass Samwise here?" Aahz asked. "If there's no active danger, then you're pestering him unnecessarily. If there is a safety problem, then you're leaving your people in harm's way by tracking him down. That doesn't make sense to me."
"That is the way USHEBTI works! We must notify the management of violations at the time of occurrence!" "Not cost effective," Aahz said bluntly. "But it is the way we do things."
"That's a great reason," Aahz said, with a smirk.
"Are you telling us how to do our job?"
"Not how. Just when. Like now. If you're not stopping for lunch or a beer break, then you're goofing off. You just cover it by following Samwise around and haranguing him."
The Scarab blew up in outrage. "How dare you? Nine hundred generations of my family have been involved in construction. You walk in, and in one day you claim to be an expert? You must be as stupid as you are ugly!"
"Sticks and stones," Aahz said, dismissively. "I'm saying that you're wasting your employer's money. I'm limiting access to him from now on. You can say 'hello' to him in the morning, 'how was your lunch?' after the noon break, and 'goodbye' when you leave the site. Everything else will have to be a real matter of life and death."
"You're interfering with a union official!" she shrilled.
"Now, Aahz," I said, raising my hands to placate the combatants. "You can't stop her from conferring with him when she really needs to. Beltasar here is an experienced manager."
"That's right, I am!" she exclaimed, then looked puzzled. "You're defending what she's doing?" Aahz looked dubious.
"I'm saying she's doing it for a good reason. The fines are just a way of reminding Samwise they're serious. Right?" I turned the Scarab.
"Uh, right."
"So, how can she let Sam here know what she needs him to?"
Beltasar's head went back and forth between us. "Yes! How can we?"
"Well, if was me," Aahz said in his most reasonable voice, "I'd save up all the problems and report them to him at the end of the day. I'd hit him up for all the fees then. That'll give him a chance to institute better safety measures overnight. Bel here can pass out the new policies every morning to the workforce. What about that?"
"I think that sounds like a good idea. Doesn't it, Beltasar?" I asked her.
"Yes, er, no. No!" The Scarab finally realized she was being double-teamed. She beat one tiny fist against her undercarapace. "We decide how we institute new orders. We do! Otherwise, And Company faces strike action!"
Aahz shook his head. "I'm the paid representative of your employer. If you'd rather shut him down than cooperate and get the job done that you're being paid to do, be my guest."
The Scarab's bright blue eyes turned red with fury. "Perhaps we will! You will see the might of the USHEBTIS!"
"Yeah, yeah," Aahz said, waving a hand. "You and what army? Throwing your weight around?"
As if on cue, I saw a shadow appear and grow larger and larger until it covered all of us. Just in time I used all the magik force I had inside me to push Aahz back. I fell backwards on top of Samwise and Fat Ombur, who was just bringing a steaming dish to us.
A Titan guard in loincloth and headwrap crashed down on the table, splattering food in every direction. He lay moaning until Aahz helped him up.
"What happened to you?" Samwise asked.
"Scarabs," the blue-faced male puffed, pointing upward. "Under my foot. I think they did it on purpose!"
Could the green-faced Ghord have been right about the Scarabs wanting Samwise to fail?
"Impossible!" cried Beltasar indignantly. "You impugn
us!
"You tried to kill me!" the Titan bellowed, making fists. "I'll squash you like the bug you are!"
"Just you try it, big boy!" Beltasar fumed, curling her tiny forelegs into balls. I could picture steam coming out of her ear holes.
Tan-ta-ra! Tan-tan-tan! Ta-ra!
A flourish of horns drowned out the argument. A booming male voice echoed across the valley. "Make way for the Queen!"
"Oh, no!" Samwise exclaimed. "You must not tell her what just happened! Everybody to their places! Hurry!"
All the Ghords ran out of the cookshop. They bumped into one another, running around the corners of the pyramid.
"What's going on?" Aahz asked.
"The queen! The Pharaoh Suzal. She didn't tell me she was coming. Hurry up. Follow me!"
Samwise leaped onto the ramps and flew over the top of the uppermost layer of the pyramid. Aahz shrugged. I furnished us with magik, and we took to the air after him.
Chapter 9
"I hardly noticed her face."
—Asterix the Gaul
My heightened vantage point gave me a good view of the eastern part of the valley. At first, I couldn't see what was approaching because of the massive cloud of dust that surrounded us. Suddenly, the roiling cloud dispersed.
Approaching toward us across the sand was a parade. At its head were dancing girls in sheer robes, undulating and spinning. Behind them was a covey of musicians, puffing into or strumming away at a marching song. Drummers pounded the tops of skin-covered drums in time with the beat. Magicians threw balls of flame into the air and conjured rainbows. For a moment, I thought that they were responsible, too, for the stream of knives that flew in a circle at each side of the procession, but then I realized a troupe of jugglers was throwing the knives. All of them stood on Djinn-woven carpets that conveyed them over the smooth surface of the dunes.
Behind them wafted the most impressive carriage I had ever seen. At least thirty feet high, it had a curved, gilded back like that of a chair, but as wide as a street. The sides sloped down to carved arms of black wood. At the ends were finials in the shape of red hearts. It was pulled by a team of eight creatures with the bodies of lions and the heads of Klahds and massive, golden-feathered wings.
At the center and riding high enough that her head was just below the upper edge of the chair sat a slender female Ghord. Over her headcloth, which shimmered like pure silk, she wore a golden circlet that supported a golden snake's head. Cascading from underneath her crown tumbled tresses of long, blond
hair. She had high cheekbones, a slender neck, a lovely nose, large blue eyes, and a decided mouth.
I realized suddenly that I was the only one in my immediate vicinity still standing. All the Ghord workers and all the Scarabs were on their knees, foreheads touching the ground. Hastily, I did the same.
The carriage swept up and over the pier and the And Company office, then came in for a landing at the foot of the pyramid. The entourage hastened to catch up. The musicians finished their marching tune with a flourish, and launched into a regal melody. At the top of the carriage, the queen rose and descended the steps.
"What a babe," Aahz murmured.
I peeked. The fine linen of her robes outlined a figure that, while slender, was furnished with plenty of the usual female attributes. Not only that, she walked with a sway that I couldn't take my eyes from.
From the rear of the structure came girls carrying fans and Ghords of bot
h sexes wearing chains of office around their necks.
"Hail, in the name of all the Ghords of Ghordon, Eternal Ancestors Who Give Life and Light to All Creatures. Blessings upon Suzal, daughter of Geezer, she who is Pharaoh and Queen of Aegis from the Underworld to the Overheaven. All hail!"
"All hail!" echoed the Ghords around my feet.
Samwise dashed over the paving stones to be at the foot of the carriage before Queen Suzal got to the bottom. He threw himself to one knee and bowed his head. She touched his shoulder and he rose, talking with his usual animation. Suzal listened with a regal tilt of the head.
Samwise turned and beckoned enthusiastically for us to join him. We made our way to his side. Under the Pharaoh's eye, we bowed deeply.
"These are the ones I told you about, your majesty," Samwise said. "This is the Great Skeeve and, er, Aahz."
Aahz rose and bent over her hand like the practiced courtier he was.
"Hey, doll," he said.
"Hey, yourself," Suzal said, fluttering her eyelashes at him. "You have a noble face, sir, reminiscent of our scaly river Ghord, Sober, He Whom Rivers of Drink Do Not Affect."
"He and I have a lot in common," Aahz said, modestly. "I'm on my second barrel of the day. Would you . . . care to come around to the office and knock back a couple?" He raised his eyebrows suggestively. Her ministers were shocked, but Suzal looked pleased.
"You are too kind, Sober-faced one," Suzal said. "Perhaps another time I will be able to accept your hospitality. This is just a casual visit."
Casual? I glanced at her entourage: at least thirty dancing girls, twelve musicians, a pair of conjurors, and two files of courtiers in pleated linen and fancy striped headdresses.
My mouth dropped open when I spotted one of the courtiers. He stood at least two feet taller than the rest of the nobles. His body was covered in thick purple fur, and his two, large moon-shaped eyes were different sizes.
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