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 so
ul 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.
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