Pyramids tds-7

by Terry David John Pratchett

'What do you do with the pirates?'

  Chidder glanced at Alfonz.

  'That depends on future employment prospects,' he said. 'Father always says that a man down on his luck should be offered a helping hand. On terms, that is. How's the king business?'

  Teppic told him. Chidder listened intently, swilling the wine around in his glass.

  'So that's it,' he said at last. 'We heard there was going to be a war. That's why we're sailing tonight.'

  'I don't blame you,' said Teppic.

  'No, I mean to get the trade organised. With both sides, naturally, because we're strictly impartial. The weapons produced on this continent are really quite shocking. Down-right dangerous. You should come with us, too. You're a very valuable person.'

  'Never felt more valueless than right now,' said Teppic despondently.

  Chidder looked at him in amazement.

  'But you're a king!' he said.

  'Well, yes, but-'

  'Of a country which technically still exists, but isn't actually reachable by mortal man?'

  'Sadly so.'

  'And you can pass laws about, well, currency and taxation, yes?'

  'I suppose so, but-'

  'And you don't think you're valuable? Good grief, Tep, our accountants can probably think up fifty different ways to . . . well, my hands go damp just to think about it. Father will probably ask to move our head office there, for a start.'

  'Chidder, I explained. You know it. No-one can get in,' said Teppic.

  'That doesn't matter.'

  'Doesn't matter?'

  'No, because we'll just make Ankh our main branch office and pay our taxes in wherever the place is. All we need is an official address in, I don't know, the Avenue of the Pyramids or something. Take my tip and don't give in on anything until father gives you a seat on the board. You're royal, anyway, that's always impressive . .

  Chidder chattered on. Teppic felt his clothes growing hotter. So this was it. You lost your kingdom, and then it was worth more because it was a tax haven, and you took a seat on the board, whatever that was, and that made it all right.

  Ptraci defused the situation by grabbing Alfonz's arm as he was serving the pheasant.

  'The Congress of The Friendly Dog and the Two Small Biscuits!' she exclaimed, examining the intricate tattoo. 'You hardly ever see that these days. Isn't it well done? You can even make out the yoghurt.'

  Alfonz froze, and then blushed. Watching the glow spread across the great scarred head was like watching sunrise over a mountain range.

  'What's the one on your other arm?'

  Alfonz, who looked as though his past jobs had included being a battering ram, murmured something and, very shyly, showed her his forearm.

  ''S'not really suitable for ladies,' he whispered.

  Ptraci brushed aside the wiry hair like a keen explorer, while Chidder stared at her with his mouth hanging open.

  'Oh, I know that one,' she said dismissively. 'That's out of 130 Days of Pseudopolis. It's physically impossible.' She let go of the arm, and turned back to her meal. After a moment she looked up at Teppic and Chidder.

  'Don't mind me,' she said brightly. 'Do go on.

  'Alfonz, please go and put a proper shirt on,' said Chidder, hoarsely.

  Alfonz backed away, staring at his arm.

  'Er. What was I, er, saying?' said Chidder. 'Sorry. Lost the thread. Er. Have some more wine, Tep?'

  Ptraci didn't just derail the train of thought, she ripped up the rails, burned the stations and melted the bridges for scrap. And so the dinner trailed off into beef pie, fresh peaches, crystallised sea urchins and desultory small talk about the good old days at the Guild. They had been three months ago. It seemed like a lifetime. Three months in the Old Kingdom was a lifetime.

  After some time Ptraci yawned and went to her cabin, leaving the two of them alone with a fresh bottle of wine. Chidder watched her go in awed silence.

  'Are there many like her back at your place?' he said.

  'I don't know,' Teppic admitted. 'There could be. Usually they lie around the place peeling grapes or waving fans.'

  'She's amazing. She'll take them by storm in Ankh, you know. With a figure like that and a mind like . . .' He hesitated. 'Is she . . . ? I mean, are you two . . .

  'No,' said Teppic.

  'She's very attractive.'

  'Yes,' said Teppic.

  'A sort of cross between a temple dancer and a bandsaw.' They took their glasses and went up on deck, where a few lights from the city paled against the brilliance of the stars. The water was flat calm, almost oily.

  Teppic's head was beginning to spin slowly. The desert, the sun, two gloss coats of Ephebian retsina on his stomach lining and a bottle of wine were getting together to beat up his synapses.

  'I mus' say,' he managed, leaning on the rail, 'you're doing all right for yourself.'

  'It's okay,' said Chidder. 'Commerce is quite interesting. Building up markets, you know. The cut and thrust of competition in the privateering sector. You ought to come in with us, boy. It's where the future lies, my father says. Not with wizards and kings, but with enterprising people who can afford to hire them. No offence intended, you understand.'

  'We're all that's left,' said Teppic to his wine glass. 'Out of the whole kingdom. Me, her, and a camel that smells like an old carpet. An ancient kingdom, lost.'

  'Good job it wasn't a new one,' said Chidder. 'At least people got some wear out of it.'

  'You don't know what it's like,' said Teppic. 'It's like a whole great pyramid. But upside down, you understand? All that history, all those ancestors, all the people, all funnelling down to me. Right at the bottom.'

  He slumped on to a coil of rope as Chidder passed the bottle back and said, 'It makes you think, doesn't it? There's all these lost cities and kingdoms around. Like Ee, in the Great Nef. Whole countries, just gone. Just out there somewhere. Maybe people started mucking about with geometry, what do you say?'

  Teppic snored.

  After some moments Chidder swayed forward, dropped the empty bottle over the side, it went plunk — and for a few seconds a stream of bubbles disturbed the flat calm — and staggered off to bed.

  Teppic dreamed.

  And in his dream he was standing on a high place, but unsteadily, because he was balancing on the shoulders of his father and mother, and below them he could make out his grandparents, and below them his ancestors stretching away and out in a vast, all right, a vast pyramid of humanity whose base was lost in clouds.

  He could hear the murmur of shouted orders and instructions floating up to him.

  If you do nothing, we shall never have been.

  'This is just a dream,' he said, and stepped out of it into a palace where a small, dark man in a loincloth was sitting on a stone bench, eating figs.

  'Of course it's a dream,' he said. 'The world is the dream of the Creator. It's all dreams, different kinds of dreams. They're supposed to tell you things. Like: don't eat lobster last thing at night. Stuff like that. Have you had the one about the seven cows?'

  'Yes,' said Teppic, looking around. He'd dreamed quite good architecture. 'One of them was playing a trombone.'

  'It was smoking a cigar in my day. Well-known ancestral dream, that dream.'

  'What does it mean?'

  The little man picked a seed from between his teeth.

  'Search me,' he said. 'I'd give my right arm to find out. I don't think we've met, by the way. I'm Khuft. I founded this kingdom. You dream a good fig.'

  'I'm dreaming you, too?'

  'Damn right. I had a vocabulary of eight hundred words, do you think I'd really be talking like this? If you're expecting a bit of helpful ancestral advice, forget it. This is a dream. I can't tell you anything you don't know yourself.'

  'You're the founder?'

  'That's me.'

  'I . . . thought you'd be different,' said Teppic.

  'How d'you mean?'

  'Well . . . on the statue . .

  Khuft wav
ed a hand impatiently.

  'That's just public relations,' he said. 'I mean, look at me. Do I look patriarchal?'

  Teppic gave him a critical appraisal. 'Not in that loincloth,' he admitted. 'It's a bit, well, ragged.'

  'It's got years of wear left in it,' said Khuft.

  'Still, I expect it's all you could grab when you were fleeing from persecution,' said Teppic, anxious to show an understanding nature.

  Khuft took another fig and give him a lopsided look. 'How's that again?'

  'You were being persecuted,' said Teppic. 'That's why you fled into the desert.'

  'Oh, yes. You're right. Damn right. I was being persecuted for my beliefs.'

  'That's terrible,' said Teppic.

  Khuft spat. 'Damn right. I believed people wouldn't notice I'd sold them camels with plaster teeth until I was well out of town.'

  It took a little while for this to sink in, but it managed it with all the aplomb of a concrete block in a quicksand.

  'You're a criminal?' said Teppic.

  'Well, criminal's a dirty word, know what I mean?' said the little ancestor. 'I'd prefer entrepreneur. I was ahead of my time, that's my trouble.'

  'And you were running away?' said Teppic weakly.

  'It wouldn't,' said Khuft, 'have been a good idea to hang about.'

  '"And Khuft the camel herder became lost in the Desert, and there opened before him, as a Gift from the Gods, a Valley flowing with Milk and Honey»,' quoted Teppic, in a hollow voice. He added, 'I used to think it must have been awfully sticky.'

  'There I was, dying of thirst, all the camels kicking up a din, yelling for water, next minute — whoosh — a bloody great river valley, reed beds, hippos, the whole thing. Out of nowhere. I nearly got knocked down in the stampede.'

  'No!' said Teppic. 'It wasn't like that! The gods of the valley took pity on you and showed you the way in, didn't they?' He shut up, surprised at the tones of pleading in his own voice.

  Khuft sneered. 'Oh, yes? And I just happened to stumble across a hundred miles of river in the middle of the desert that everyone else had missed. Easy thing to miss, a hundred miles of river valley in the middle of a desert, isn't it? Not that I was going to look a gift camel in the mouth, you understand, I went and brought my family and the rest of the lads in soon enough. Never looked back.'

  'One minute it wasn't there, the next minute it was?' said Teppic.

  'Right enough. Hard to believe, isn't it?'

  'No,' said Teppic. 'No. Not really.' Khuft poked him with a wrinkled finger. 'I always reckoned it was the camels that did it,' he said. 'I always thought they sort of called it into place, like it was sort of potentially there but not quite, and it needed just that little bit of effort to make it real. Funny things, camels.'

  'I know.'

  'Odder than gods. Something the matter?'

  'Sorry,' said Teppic, 'it's just that this is all a bit of a shock. I mean, I thought we were really royal. I mean, we're more royal than anyone.

  Khuft picked a fig seed from between two blackened stumps which, because they were in his mouth, probably had to be called his teeth. Then he spat.

  'That's up to you,' he said, and vanished.

  Teppic walked through the necropolis, the pyramids a saw— edged skyline against the night. The sky was the arched body of a woman, and the gods stood around the horizon. They didn't look like the gods that had been painted on the walls for thousands of years. They looked worse. They looked older than Time. After all, the gods hardly ever meddled in the affairs of men. But other things were proverbial for it.

  'What can I do? I'm only human,' he said aloud.

  Someone said, Not all of you.

  Teppic awoke, to the screaming of seagulls.

  Alfonz, who was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and the expression of one who never means to take it off again, ever, was helping several other men unfurl one of Unnamed's sails. He looked down at Teppic in his bed of rope and gave him a nod.

  They were moving. Teppic sat up, and saw the dock-side of Ephebe slipping silently away in the grey morning light.

  He stood up unsteadily, groaned, clutched at his head, took a run and dived over the rail.

  Heme Krona, owner of the Camels-R-Us livery stable, walked slowly around You Bastard, humming. He examined the camel's knees. He gave one of its feet an experimental kick. In a swift movement that took You Bastard completely by surprise he jerked open the beast's mouth and examined his great yellow teeth, and then jumped away.

  He took a plank of wood from a heap in the corner, dipped a brush in a pot of black paint, and after a moment's thought carefully wrote, ONE OWNER.

  After some further consideration he added, LO MILEAGE. He was just brushing in GOOD RUNER when Teppic staggered in and leaned, panting, against the doorframe. Pools of water formed around his feet.

  'I've come for my camel,' he said.

  Krona sighed.

  'Last night you said you'd be back in an hour,' he said. 'I'm going to have to charge you for a whole day's livery, right? Plus I gave him a rub down and did his feet, the full service. That'll be five cercs, okay emir?'

  'Ah.' Teppic patted his pocket.

  'Look,' he said. 'I left home in a bit of a hurry, you see. I don't seem to have any cash on me.'

  'Fair enough, emir.' Krona turned back to his board. 'How do you spell YEARS WARENTY?'

  'I will definitely have the money sent to you,' said Teppic. Krona gave him the withering smile of one who has seen it all — asses with bodywork re-haired, elephants with plaster tusks, camels with false humps glued on — and knows the festering depths of the human soul when it gets down to business.

  'Pull the other one, rajah,' he said. 'It has got bells on.'

  Teppic fumbled in his tunic.

  'I could give you this valuable knife,' he said.

  Krona gave it a passing glance, and sniffed.

  'Sorry, emir. No can do. No pay, no camel.'

  'I could give it to you point first,' said Teppic desperately, knowing that the mere threat would get him expelled from the Guild. He was also aware that as a threat it wasn't very good. Threats weren't on the syllabus at the Guild school.

  Whereas Krona had, sitting on straw bales at the back of the stables, a couple of large men who were just beginning to take an interest in the proceedings. They looked like Alfonz's older brothers.

  Every vehicle depot of any description anywhere in the multiverse has them. They're never exactly grooms or mechanics or customers or staff. Their function is always unclear. They chew straws or smoke cigarettes in a surreptitious fashion. If there are such things as newspapers around, they read them, or at least look at the pictures.

  They started to watch Teppic closely. One of them picked up a couple of bricks and began to toss them up and down.

  'You're a young lad, I can see that,' said Krona, kindly. 'You're just starting out in life, emir. You don't want trouble.' He stepped forward.

  You Bastard's huge shaggy head turned to look at him. In the depths of his brain columns of little numbers whirred upwards again.

  'Look, I'm sorry, but I've got to have my camel back,' said Teppic. 'It's life and death!'

  Krona waved a hand at the two extraneous men.

  You Bastard kicked him. You Bastard had very concise ideas about people putting their hands in his mouth. Besides, he'd seen the bricks, and every camel knew what two bricks added up to. It was a good kick, toes well spread, powerful and deceptively slow. It picked Krona up and delivered him neatly into a steaming heap of Augean stable sweepings.

  Teppic ran, kicked away from the wall, grabbed You Bastard's dusty coat and landed heavily on his neck.

  'I'm very sorry,' he said, to such of Krona as was visible. 'I really will have some money sent to you.'

  You Bastard, at this point, was waltzing round and round in a circle. Krona's companions stayed well back as feet like plates whirred through the air.

  Teppic leaned forward and hissed into one madly-waving ea
r.

  'We're going home,' he said.

  They had chosen the first pyramid at random. The king peered at the cartouche on the door.

  '"Blessed is Queen Far-re-ptah»,' read Dil dutifully, «Ruler of the Skies, Lord of the Djel, Master of-« 'Grandma Pooney,' said the king. 'She'll do.' He looked at their startled faces. 'That's what I used to call her when I was a little boy. I couldn't pronounce Far-re-ptah, you see. Well, go on then. Stop gawking. Break the door down.'

  Gern hefted the hammer uncertainly.

  'It's a pyramid, master,' he said, appealing to Dil. 'You're not supposed to open them.'

  'What do you suggest, lad? We stick a tableknife in the slot and wiggle it about?' said the king.

  'Do it, Gern,' said Dil. 'It will be all right.'

  Gern shrugged, spat on his hands which were, in fact, quite damp enough with the sweat of terror, and swung.

  'Again,' said the king.

  The great slab boomed as the hammer hit it, but it was granite, and held. A few flakes of mortar floated down, and then the echoes came back, shunting back and forth along the dead avenues of the necropolis.

  'Again.'

  Gern's biceps moved like turtles in grease.

  This time there was an answering boom, such as might be caused by a heavy lid crashing to the ground, far away.

  They stood in silence, listening to a slow shuffling noise from inside the pyramid.

  'Shall I hit it again, sire?' said Gern. They both waved him into silence.

  The shuffling grew closer.

  Then the stone moved. It stuck once or twice, but never the less it moved, slowly, pivoting on one side so that a crack of dark shadow appeared. Dil could just make out a darker shape in the blackness.

  'Yes?' it said.

  'It's me, Grandma,' said the king.

  The shadow stood motionless.

  'What, young Pootle?' it said, suspiciously.

  The king avoided Dil's face.

  'That's right, Grandma. We've come to let you out.'

  'Who're these men?' said the shadow petulantly. 'I've got nothing, young man,' she said to Gern. 'I don't keep any money in the pyramid and you can put that weapon away, it doesn't frighten me.'

  'They're servants, Grandma,' said the king.

  'Have they got any identification?' muttered the old lady.