Pyramids

by Fred Saberhagen

"I don't have any arrangements at all with those people. I don't know anything about them. Except I talked to one of them for a couple of minutes. Ask Olivia." Then, seeing how the policewoman swayed on her feet, Scheffler was sorry he had brought her into it. In a burst of something like bravado he added: "We could try standing here and waving our arms. Maybe they'll see us."

  Pilgrim did not react to the comment. He did turn to Olivia, as if wondering whether he ought to ask her as suggested.

  But at this point Olivia spoke up unexpectedly, addressing herself to Becky and Scheffler.

  "I warn you, you must do nothing to help this man. Nothing more than you are absolutely forced to do."

  One of the small unearthly things raised its weapon, aimed at her. Pilgrim gestured it away. "No. Let her say all that she feels compelled to say. Let her say it now, and we can perhaps get on with business."

  Olivia had winced away from the weapon when it moved in her direction. Now she caught her breath and went on, speaking to Becky and Scheffler.

  "More is at stake here than you can realize. In the name of the Authority, I…" The futility of that appeal, incomprehensible to her hearers, evidently struck her. For a moment she was silent, then blurted out: "This man is guilty of what you would call genocide."

  "A lie," said Pilgrim calmly. His urbane manner was unshaken. "An absolute lie."

  Scheffler said nothing. Looking at Olivia, who now slumped in exhaustion, leaning heavily on Becky's supporting arm, he was quite willing to believe what she had told him.

  Their kidnapper asked the policewoman, with seeming courtesy: "Are you quite finished?"

  Olivia said nothing. She licked dry lips, stared at nothing, and continued to lean on Becky.

  "Then let us be on our way. Follow me, all of you." Pilgrim gestured minimally and began to lead the way along the fissure.

  When they reached the end of the rocky passageway there was still light enough in the sky to give them a good look at the pyramid. Becky gasped audibly.

  Pilgrim paused there, gazing at the monument backlighted against the sunrise, ignoring the rest of his party for the brief time it took them to catch up with him.

  In a few moments captors and captives were more or less gathered together at the end of the fissure. Pilgrim surveyed them briefly and gave the signal to advance again. They were in the process of climbing over the low rocks at the end of the fissure, and had just about got all their heads out above the level of the rocky hill, when a voice challenged them out of the gathering night.

  Scheffler ducked at once, getting his head back down between the walls, and pulling Becky down beside him. Olivia, dependent upon Becky for support, slumped into a gradual fall. One of the monsters was crouching slightly, in a good position to keep an eye on all the prisoners. The glassy helmet gleamed faintly in the twilight, and Scheffler wondered what shape and color of eyes might be inside it.

  Meanwhile Pilgrim and his two other crew members were calling and buzzing their own challenges back into the night.

  Pilgrim's voice, surprisingly loud, roared out: "Who is it, then?"

  After a pause of a few seconds, the distant voice replied: "Willis Chapel." A pause. "Is that Pilgrim?"

  "Yes." The tension in the air relaxed. It was quite obvious that the two sides recognized each other.

  Or at least they thought they did. Scheffler wasn't sure. That challenging bellow out of the dusk hadn't sounded to him like the voice of any eighty-year-old man.

  ELEVEN

  The day of Pharaoh's burial was over, the fires of sunset already beginning to fade from sky and river, when Ptah-hotep and Thothmes descended to the Palace docks. The two officials needed only a moment to select one of the numerous boats that waited almost motionless in the still water at dockside. Their choice was one of the smaller craft, that might have been able to carry six people at the most. Still it was larger than they needed; there would be no servants to do the rowing for them on this trip. Taking up paddle and pole, they launched themselves out into the broad canal that would carry them to the Nile.

  Thothmes, standing amidships, poled the boat forward, while Ptah-hotep, sitting in the stern armed with a paddle, did what he could to help. Their maneuvers with these rivermens' tools were at first a trifle awkward. But both men had some boating experience, gained on sporting expeditions into the marshes, and they experienced little real difficulty.

  When they steered out of the canal and into the river itself, the lightly loaded craft rode skittishly in the swift current that caught them up and swept them toward their destination. If all went as well as they hoped tonight, Ptah-hotep and Thothmes would probably hire boatmen tomorrow for the return trip upstream. But to be able to avoid the eyes and ears of the rivermen on this crucial trip downstream was worth a little trouble.

  Around them, the vast river ran dark and nearly silent through the deepening night. The flotilla of vessels of all types that had dotted the Nile's broad surface during the funeral procession of the Pharaoh Khufu had now dispersed.

  Almost directly ahead of their small craft, some distance inland from the western bank, the Horizon of Khufu reared its dark looming triangle against the sky. Today, somewhere near the center of that towering mass of stone, the final sealing of the inner chambers and passageways had been carried out by fiercely loyal retainers of the dead king. Whatever last tricks the Pharaoh and his Chief Builder had had in mind to foil robbery had now been played.

  Swiftly the current bore the small craft along. The torchlights of the Palace were already far behind when Thothmes paused, standing balanced like an acrobat with his pole; the water had become too deep for him to reach the bottom with it anyway. He said softly: "Is that a boat upstream from us? Following us?"

  Ptah-hotep, the better to listen, ceased to paddle, letting the boat drift freely. Looking upstream, into the south, he was able to see very little except the deepening night itself. When he held his breath he could hear nightbirds, insects, the tiny lap of waves along the wooden sides of their small boat, the almost inaudible murmuring of the night breeze crossing the immense river. There was no chanting of boatmen to be heard, no sound of oars or paddles.

  "I can see nothing out of the ordinary," he whispered. "I hear nothing. Do you see a boat following?"

  Thothmes was silent. He sat down carefully, still looking upstream and balancing his pole. At last he shrugged.

  A moment later, Ptah-hotep started paddling again. It was necessary to guide their progress now; mere drifting would not bring them to the inlet of the canal they wanted. The sound made by the faint trickle of the water from the paddle with each stroke was very faint.

  Daylight had entirely fled from the sky long before Ptah-hotep and Thothmes were able to steer their small craft from the swift river into another almost stagnant canal, this one leading straight toward the pyramid. The waning moon had not yet risen; yet the officials, Ptah-hotep in particular, were so familiar with the way that the starlight was sufficient to let them find the canal and guide their boat into it. This palm-lined waterway had been dug decades ago, to carry to the pyramid's construction the stones that came by boat from distant quarries.

  Now their course lay down the middle of the narrow canal, between the idle lines of the construction boats that were still waiting where they had been stopped at the announcement of Pharaoh's death. Most of the boats on the right bank were heavily laden with stones for the outer sheathing of the pyramid, and most of the boats on the left were empty. All were awaiting the resumption of normal daytime labor that would take place within a day or two, after the formal coronation of Dedefre.

  Many times had Ptah-hotep, in his capacity as guide and observer of the daytime work, passed in a small boat through this canal. Now even in the moonless darkness there was small chance of his missing the spot where he wanted to put ashore. At a little distance from this point, the mason and skilled robber Sihathor should be waiting for them, to receive the final confirmation that he and his workers could begin th
eir labors this very night.

  Now, taking the pole from Thothmes, and pushing hard with it against the shallow bottom, the former Chief Priest guided their vessel in toward the right-hand bank. Thothmes behind him had picked up the paddle and now plied it quietly.

  As soon as the prow of their craft had grounded, Ptah-hotep stepped ashore. He tied the boat up to a handy stake, though the chance that it might drift away in this virtually motionless water seemed very small. Caution, particularly in all matters having to do with the business of the cult of Set, was a long-ingrained habit. Thothmes watched him but said nothing.

  Now the two men crept silently inland toward the appointed place of rendezvous. This was a small but distinctive outcropping of rock, so close to the canal that it was surrounded by palm trees. Under the palms, with most of the starlight shaded out, a deeper darkness reigned.

  Thothmes and Ptah-hotep groped about, doing their best to make a minimum of noise, finding only rocks and treetrunks. They took turns whistling and calling softly. But Sihathor was not here. That was not really surprising, they decided, looking at the stars. Certainly they had arrived too early; it was not yet midnight.

  The two men settled in to wait, sitting on the large rock, beginning to judge time's passage by the slow turn of the familiar stars. Meanwhile they talked, and remarked on certain odd signs that seemed to be taking place to mark the death of Pharaoh. Several people in the Palace had reported seeing odd things among the stars last night. There were always a few such reports, of course, when many people watched the skies; but it appeared that the frequency of these signs might be increasing.

  The friends fingered their amulets, and prayed to Set for the success of their enterprise. Time passed, as time will.

  "It is midnight now," Thothmes said at last. "And the stonemason is not here yet."

  Ptah-hotep arose from the flat rock and walked out from under the vague shadow of the palms, to get a better look at the constellations, the better to judge the time.

  Looking up at the night sky, he frowned.

  "What is it?" his companion asked. His eyes, accustomed to the darkness now, had read that frown even by starlight.

  "I thought that I saw something," Ptah-hotep declared reluctantly. "Moving among the stars."

  "Something? What?"

  "I do not know. It came and went too swiftly. Like a fish—no, more like a ripple in the water of the Nile."

  "That was the comparison used by some of the people in the Palace this morning, describing to me the start of their own visions." Thothmes, moving uneasily, got to his feet and joined his friend under the unshaded sky. But now there was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen.

  Nothing else unusual occurred for some time. It was well past midnight when they reluctantly gave up on Sihathor and made their way back to their borrowed boat.

  In whispered conference the two officials now wondered if Sihathor might have failed to receive the message telling him to meet them. Another possibility was that he had misinterpreted his orders and gone straight to the pyramid. Of course, he might also have been delayed or even arrested on his way. But other cultists had assured Ptah-hotep and Thothmes that the officers detailed to guard Khufu's tomb, and the nearby cemetery, had eagerly accepted their bribes and removed themselves and their men from the immediate area.

  Untying their boat, Ptah-hotep and Thothmes pushed off again and once more paddled toward the looming shape of Khufu's pyramid, sharp-angled, black, and enigmatic against the stars.

  "Wait! Hold!" Ptah-hotep's whisper was low but piercing. Then he pointed silently, letting the boat drift with the force of his last paddle-stroke. Far behind them, almost as far back as where the straight canal joined the river, the lights of several torches gleamed. light sparked a coppery gleam from weapons.

  "Soldiers!" Thothmes whispered.

  "It may be only that some patrols have been sent out for the sake of appearances. Back there, they are still well distant from the area they have been bribed to avoid."

  "It may be so," allowed Thothmes. His tone carried more than a little doubt. Other possibilities, that neither man felt like mentioning aloud, were that there had been treachery at high levels within the cult—or that the Chief Builder, or some other enemy of Set, had fathomed the cultists' plot and sprung a trap.

  Just as suddenly as the frightening distant torches had come into sight, they disappeared again. The abruptness of the disappearance was disconcerting.

  "Did you see that? They're moving quickly, away from the canal. But which way are they moving? If they come this way we should be able to see them."

  "Let them come," said Ptah-hotep. "We are still officials of the Horizon of Khufu. We have every right to be here, at any hour we choose."

  "But they will be suspicious. And what about our stonemason? And his crew, he must have brought helpers with him."

  "They must fend for themselves. I expect that they are all crafty peasants, capable of doing so, should the soldiers happen to come across them." Ptah-hotep took up his paddle again and used it softly.

  For the distance of a spearcast the two friends made progress without incident in their small boat. Then Thothmes clutched Ptah-hotep by the arm, violently, and pointed. A giant face, many times human size but blue and dim almost to invisibility, appeared to be looking out at them from the left bank of the canal. The countenance was indistinct, and the features of it irregular, but it appeared to be alive. Those vast eyes rolled up toward the stars as the small boat drifted past. It looked to Ptah-hotep like the face of a god, some god whose name and attributes he might once have heard but could not now remember.

  The face faded out of sight even as they gaped at it. Then something, another vague apparition, that might have had the shape of a bird or of a boat, went streaking across the sky. It was come and gone again before they could be sure that it was really there.

  Shivering, the two men cast down their pole and paddle and sat close together in their boat. Thothmes, his teeth chattering, pronounced: "W-we have reached the Underworld."

  "No!"

  "We have fallen into the Underworld, I tell you!" Ptah-hotep again expressed a violent dissent. "This is not the Underworld. This is nothing like it!"

  "Oh, and have you visited the Tuat before? We have been cursed by Pharaoh, and by Ra, and by Osiris for our plotting." Thothmes was almost sobbing in his despair.

  "We have not." Ptah-hotep steeled his nerves. "Rather the power of Set is being demonstrated. The power that will enable us to rob the tomb as we had planned. We are going on."

  Thothmes, saying nothing except to mutter prayers and incantations, slumped into the bottom of the boat, covering his face with his fingers. He was abandoning his fate into the hands of Ptah-hotep and of the gods.

  Ptah-hotep understood this. He set his jaw and paddled.

  When he had reached the turning basin, he docked the boat and stepped ashore and tied their vessel up again. Thothmes, who by now was somewhat recovered, followed him ashore fatalistically. They made their way on foot toward the base of the pyramid, where now new signs of strange activity became visible. A faint, eerie light was washing over the great mass of Khufu's tomb, coming from some object in the northeastern sky. It combined with the light of the newly risen moon to produce a pale, ghostly effect.

  The source of the strange illumination was visible, and drawing closer.

  It resembled a giant, translucent bird, and it was coming silently down out of the starry sky and settling, gliding toward the ground with its immense triangular wings stiffly outspread. The apparition landed, very near the pyramid. Its light dimmed almost to nothing.

  "A god! Or the vessel of a god."

  "Or of gods. Of course. But which?"

  Quivering with fear, but excited as well with hopeful anticipation, Thothmes and Ptah-hotep advanced step by step.

  As they drew nearer, the two officials could see the shimmering, ghostly, gigantic winged shape more clearly. It looked less birdlike now,
much less alive, as it sat waiting on the sand—for what?

  "It is the barque of dead Pharaoh," Thothmes whispered.

  "No, surely. It must be that of Ra himself."

  "But what does its presence here, now, mean?"

  By now the moon was clear of the horizon, and by moonlight the vessel—if such it really was—looked both like metal and like crystal. It changed shape slightly as the two men watched it, but otherwise remained virtually motionless. Details of its configuration altered from one moment to the next, but always the outline of it was there, as insubstantial as a cloud of wind-blown sand, and yet as constant as the rocks. It was an enormous thing, dwarfed of course by the pyramid above and behind it, but certainly far bigger than any real boat that Ptah-hotep had ever seen, or any of the wooden Barques of Khufu that had been buried in their several pits around the pyramid.

  "I wonder," he muttered at last. "Though it flew it cannot be a bird or a bat. Nor is it really of the proper shape to be a boat."

  "Do you now intend to dispute with the gods as to what shape their boats must be? Let us be gone."

  "No. No, we have been summoned here to see this. Is not the night sky under the control of Set?" Ptah-hotep knew he must sound confident. But he was not really sure that he was right. He only knew that he could not turn his back without investigating the marvel before him.

  Suspended between advance and retreat, the two conspirators remained at the distance of a long arrow-flight from the winged thing, huddled among the sand and rocks.

  "Are we then to stay here through the night?"

  "Why not? The night sky belongs to Set. And we are officials concerned with the safety of Khufu's tomb. We have the right to be here."

  It was not soldiers that Thothmes had been concerned about, not any longer. But he made no further protest now.

  The remaining hours of the night passed slowly. Only with the near approach of Ra to the horizon in the east did Ptah-hotep and Thothmes dare to approach again the strange gigantic vessel resting on the sand.