The Less Lonely Planet

by Rhys Hughes

  “Summon my priests and priestesses, my astronomers and astrologers, my mystics and soothsayers, my sorcerers and sorceresses, my philosophers and metaphysicians, my wise men and wiser women, my chiromancers and necromancers, my readers of entrails, clouds and dreams, my advisors and ministers. Summon them all!”

  Gongs sound. Copper trumpets blare. From all corners of the palace, holy men and scholars and viziers and other diverse worthies come running. King Zoser remounts the steps to his throne and waits for them to gather before him. It is a long wait. Some of the priests are so old that they have to be roused from their death beds to attend their master’s call. Eventually, when the hall is crammed nearly full, King Zoser makes his announcement:

  “A giant mouse has invaded our land and is raiding all our granaries. Something must be done about it. But what?”

  There is a concerned muttering among the assembly. This muttering, King Zoser finally realises, will probably go on forever if he does not put a stop to it. He stamps his foot and silence falls like an overripe pomegranate on the head of a sleeping eunuch. “Well?” he demands.

  “Well what?” comes the unanimous reply.

  King Zoser points at one of the figures in the crowd, a very aged and very respected minister. “You there! Tell me what is to be done.” He motions for the minister to step forward. “Tell me what you think.” The minister bows deeply, joints all a-creak, and opens his toothless mouth. His jaw works silently, his teeth like burnt umber.

  “What was that?” King Zoser cups his hand around his ear. “Speak up man! I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

  Another figure steps forward. “Forgive him sire. He is so old and his voice has grown so faint that no-one has been able to understand anything he has said for the last twenty years.”

  “Who are you and what advice do you have to offer?”

  “I am Neskhons, your high Priestess, keeper of the keys of Amon, caresser of the thighs of Horus, nibbler of the lobes of...”

  “Yes, yes! But what do you think?”

  “I am not paid to think sire. I am paid merely to intone endlessly and to sway from side to side while acolytes oil my naked body and...”

  “We’ll discuss that later.” King Zoser mops his damp forehead. He points to another fellow. “You there! You are an astrologer, by the look of you. What do you think should be done about this giant mouse?”

  “Giant mouse sire?” The astrologer blinks surprised eyes.

  “Yes by Thoth! A giant mouse!”

  “Ah!” The astrologer searches his memory and finally finds what he seeks. “It has never happened before. Therefore it cannot be happening now,” he recites.

  King Zoser considers this gem. “Do you not think that such a view is a little too conservative?”

  The astrologer beams. “Thank you sire.”

  King Zoser throws up his hands in despair. “Dismiss them all!” he wails. “All of them!” Instantly gongs sound and copper trumpets blare. The diverse worthies depart as asthmatically as they came, some of the aged priests making it back to their death beds with not a second to spare. King Zoser frets and paces and clutches his royal forehead and kicks the divine cat and lets loose a single tear.

  He is comforted by a sultry hand, as sure and stable as the Nile itself (father of plane geometry, ribbon of the world) which descends on his shoulder as lightly as the ambitions of a bat. King Zoser turns round, glum and pained, but he cannot help but smile when he sees the owner of the hand and the eyes that are more than a smile.

  “Ah, dear heart, how my own heart aches! This morning there was order to the world, everything was in its place; but now the cosmos is a terrible thing indeed, a thing of gigantic fluctuations, a reality where giant mice can cross our borders unmolested!”

  “A shrew sire.” The voice is warm and soft, but very cunning. And King Zoser nods sombrely and knows again why this one is his principal wife and not some lowly concubine.

  “You have an idea, my cool sherbet, I can tell.”

  “Yes, I have an idea.”

  “As always. It is you who run this realm, my fluffy tuft, and not I. Well I am resigned and I am no fool. What is this idea of yours? And how much will it cost the treasury?”

  Long lashes blink and dimples genuflect. King Zoser melts instantly, as he never fails to do. And the lovely pink mouth opens and a whisper escapes, waving its arms and chuckling silently in a restrained celebration of an unexpected freedom.

  “I know someone who may be able to help. Do you not remember that fellow known as Imhotep? The odd one with the peculiar habits?”

  “Imhotep? It rings a copper bell, my jug of fig wine; a very battered copper bell. One without the clapper, probably. Was he the geographer who insisted that there lay lands beyond the desert which were inhabited by giants and dwarves and three-eyed men?”

  “No sire. That was cousin Hetepsekhemui. Imhotep was the one who called himself an ‘architect’. He came to you last year with a design for a pyramid.”

  King Zoser snaps his fingers. “Of course, my gorgeous wading bird, I remember now! These pyramids of his were colossal affairs that would never fall down, because they were in the shape of a building that has already fallen down. A pyramid shape no less! But how could he possibly help us? Last time he was here, I showed him the door.”

  “A very fine door as well, of that I have no doubt. But I thought I detected the germ of a real idea in his work. I believe that we could use his services to our benefit this time.”

  “How so, my delectable dung beetle?”

  “Perhaps we could commission him to design a special sort of building for us. The sort of building that has never been built before.”

  “Never been built before? What sort of building has never been built before? That is an impossible thought!”

  “A giant mousetrap sire.”

  King Zoser steps back a pace. His fingers are loose and worry the lines of astonishment that crowd around his eyes. He is the centre of this land, the centre of the universe, and wherever he moves this centre moves with him. But here, standing before him, is the true hub of all. She moves in the shadows like the dream within a dream he once had, long ago.

  “A giant mousetrap eh? What a capital idea! Summon him at once, my cool horizon, my weaver of wonders!”

  “I have already made inquiries, my liege. It appears that he is on holiday at this present time.”

  “On holiday? But where?”

  “Egypt of course. Where else is there?”

  “Ah you tease me, little copper jar. Send messengers, I implore you. We must have this mousetrap at all costs”

  She bows a deep bow, a curve like the spine of a harp, and departs into the shadows. Everywhere there are shadows. The filtered sunlight makes fine pearls of the dust of long ages; dust engendered from the trickles of purple sand that somehow always find their way in, the clippings of the beards of long-dead Kings, the desiccated skins of asps and toads.

  King Zoser is tired of this twilight. He takes himself and his crown down one of the adjoining passages and up a flight of clay steps to a short balcony overlooking the river (bringer of the fertile clays of Kush, thread in the needle of Isis) which winks and glares far below. Sacred crocodiles snap and shower among the reeds. Boats ply the aeons. And King Zoser is suddenly aware of the massive responsibility which has descended upon him. He feels his ancestors calling out to him from their tombs beyond the fertile lands, lost tombs which have sunk beneath rolling dunes as large as cities. They cry: the cause of stability lies on your shoulders; if you fail yourself, you also fail the world!

  And King Zoser makes many a shudder in the hot day and in the shimmer and haze of the distant desert he thinks that he perceives a host come to meet him. A host of all his forebears. King Narmer, first of the Pharaohs, who united the twin Kingdoms and ended the strife between the followers of Horus and Set; Menes, the digger of canals, son of lithe Nithotep, who moved the capital from Hieraconpolis to Memphis; sombre Q
aa, of whom records tell little; stern Khasekhemui, vanquisher of Libyans and sundry nomads. They file in procession towards him, angry and stately and very dead and King Zoser turns away and hides his face.

  He descends back to the throne room. A new messenger is awaiting him, face as pale as a low moon. He eyes the fellow harshly. “What now?”

  “A message O King!” The messenger’s words warble as his lips tremble. “The giant mouse is not a real mouse at all! It seems that a door opened in its belly at noon and let out a woman who spoke our tongue with a strange accent. This woman is the acorn in the mouse’s cheeks, and the acorns in her own cheeks are words of dire peril!”

  “Shrew,” corrects King Zoser. “Not a mouse. A shrew.”

  The messenger nods. “As you say, sire. But this was at Saqqara. Your general, Sinuhe, saw all. He conversed with this woman. She said terrible things in a silly voice. She claimed to be a ‘Sybil’.”

  “Sybil who?” King Zoser grows alarmed. He thinks better of allowing the messenger to reply. He tears the papyrus from his hands and devours it himself. He shakes his dour head and frightens the messenger with a fierce look. He is convinced now that the gods are mocking him; dog-faced Anubis and mysterious Ptah and bundle-of-laughs Osiris, who is King of the dead as surely as he, Zoser, is King of the living, a much harder task.

  One word he keeps repeating to himself: “No.”

  The messenger merely bows, as if this exclamation is a command; and he tries to follow this bow with thoughts of negation. He has taken King Zoser’s denial as a denial of everything and he is willing to comply. There is no desert, no sky, no fingers on earthy Geb; no horizon of the sun, no lines around the blaze-bright mouth of Ra, and these are the pearls that were his eyes no more; and there are no teeth to pierce the crocodile tongue of Sobek or desert breeze to ruffle the ostrich feather on the head of Maat; and Bes is a dwarf no longer.

  “Depart!” King Zoser is hoarse, but the messenger retreats and there is at least some stability in the fact that the King is troubled as before and holds his face in his bejewelled hands again.

  The shadow of a lean reed of a man falls long on the shifting floor. King Zoser looks up to confront this latest arrival. Behind him stands a more familiar reed, his best beloved wife, like a puppeteer who dangles idiots on strings and sticks. The shadow folds in half.

  “Your majesty! I am Imhotep, whom you have summoned. I have heard of your worries, my liege. I am the balm for your burns.”

  “Ah yes, Imhotep! The strange one? Events are moving too rapidly for one who measures his minutes as years. Not only has our land been invaded by a giant mouse, but this mouse speaks with the voice of a hag! An old woman emerges from its belly and pronounces cryptic saws!” He waves the papyrus and fans the beads of moisture on his brow. “According to this report, we have a ‘Sybil’ who claims that the giant mouse is a ‘time machine’ created by an inventor who calls himself ‘Daedalus’. She has come from a land that lies in the future, a mighty power named ‘Greece’ that exists when Egypt is falling mainly into the dust. What can this mean? Why does she claim to be stealing grain for her own people?”

  “Why indeed, sire? She is obviously a madwoman, touched by the sun, who can prate only nonsense. There is no land called ‘Greece’ and there never will be. There is only Egypt.”

  King Zoser laughs bitterly. “And yet there is something here which makes me tremble more than any bad dream. This ‘Daedalus’ seems a mighty inventor. He has created a flying machine and a labyrinth from which no man can escape and now he wishes to provide grain to feed the armies of his people, who are besieging a city called ‘Troy’. All this was faithfully reported to me by one of my most honest generals, Sinuhe of the withered arm and rheumy eye.”

  “I do not believe this, your majesty. But at any rate, I am a greater inventor than this ‘Daedalus’. I have already designed the mousetrap that your majesty requires. Possibly you would care to see the plans?”

  Cool frown, finger stroke along the temples of the divine head. King Zoser’s temples are where offerings of his own blood boil and steam their smokes up to the heaven of the roof.

  One word he keeps repeating to himself: “Yes.”

  Imhotep steps forward and offers his own piece of papyrus to his King, who takes it and glares. Insanity of insanities, sayeth the preacher, all is insanity. King Zoser slaps the design. “What is this?”

  “A mousetrap, my liege. A trap to catch a mouse.”

  “No. It is a pyramid.”

  Imhotep shuffles uneasily on his axis. “Well yes, I do admit that it bears a superficial resemblance. But it is, I can assure you, really a giant mousetrap. Yes indeed!”

  “It is four badly drawn triangles. It is another pyramid. You are trying to deceive me, I think. I do not see how a giant mouse could be trapped by such an object, unless it were hollow and lowered down onto the mouse. An impossible feat.”

  “I agree. Therefore it is not hollow. It is solid stone all the way through. A beautiful structure, if I may say so. One that will speak out to generations to come of the glory of Imhotep... I mean, the glory of King Zoser. And will be climbed by dozens for a magnificent view of the desert and possibly other pyramids which could also be built nearby.”

  “I think not.”

  Aware of his slip of the tongue, Imhotep gnashes his teeth, like flint against flint. King Zoser can almost smell the sparks.

  “It might be a good idea if you were to depart from my sight and not return until you have prepared a sensible design for a mousetrap,” King Zoser says, in a voice that is as sharp as a copper chisel. Imhotep lingers for an undecided moment and then turns smartly on his heel and flees with a long moan, his arms waving in the air.

  “That was unwise.” His principal wife shakes her noble head and strokes his arm. “You did not give him a chance.”

  “He did not deserve one.” King Zoser is stubborn. There is great shout from without. “What now?” he wails. “Have I not suffered enough?” He looks up at heaven and then down again at the weary world. The shout grows louder and there is an edge of hysteria to it. But it is, at the same time, more than a little tinged with relief.

  A figure as squat as Imhotep was lean drags itself towards the semi-divine presence and throws itself on the floor, like the stub of a dice-stick from a worn cloth bag. The figure keeps tight hold on broken spear and warped shield and it is the copper helmet alone that rolls and clatters to a standstill at the base of the throne as the figure strikes its forehead in supplication upon the stones. “Hail!”

  “And who might you be?” King Zoser chews his lip in anguish.

  “Sinuhe, my liege! Your most loyal and dedicated general. Slayer of the Nomads of the north and suppressor of the emergent kingdoms of the south. Sinuhe who has lately battled with a mystic shrew...”

  “Ah! Sinuhe of the withered arm and rheumy eye?”

  “No longer sire. They have got better. I am now Sinuhe of the warty nose and perforated ear.”

  “No wonder I did not recognise you! But what are you doing here in my palace? You are supposed to be battling the giant mouse and the harridan who is its malevolent occupant. Are you completely defeated?”

  “Quite the opposite, sire. The shrew has been destroyed and its aged pilot well and truly tamed. An earthquake struck during the battle and both fell down a crevice that opened in the belly of the world. The mouse and the Sybil are no more!”

  “An earthquake! But I felt nothing!”

  “It was a very small earthquake, sire.” Noticing King Zoser’s disbelieving expression, Sinuhe clears his throat. “An extremely small earthquake. Indeed, possibly the smallest earthquake that has ever been noted. So small that it can scarcely be described as such.”

  “Enough!” King Zoser pants. “I can bear no more sophistry! It is enough that the infernal rodent is no more. Now perhaps we can return to the more comforting business of living each day as if it is no different from any other nor ever will be...”
/>
  “That would be nice.” Sinuhe is more hopeful than enthusiastic.

  “And yet?” King Zoser knows better than to expect a neat conclusion to a sequence of events that has shaken him to his very marrow. It is true enough: if he were not one of them himself, he might almost suspect that the gods were playing a cruel joke. “You wish to make your report?”

  “Exactly, sire.” Sinuhe stands and adopts a thespian pose. He has always been fond of making reports, King Zoser recalls; his true vocation was that of actor rather than soldier. But the Acting Academy would not take him because of his withered arm and rheumy eye.

  “Well?” King Zoser frowns away the introductory theatrics.

  “There was a long and fierce battle,” Sinuhe begins. “A battle the like of which I have never witnessed before. We sent men in their hundreds against the giant shrew, but the beast was voracious. Its side was as tough as copper and our spears were blunted as they struck. While we charged, the old woman who called herself ‘Sybil’ stayed safely within the shrew’s belly and harangued us through a strange arrangement of tubes and cones that made her voice as loud as thunder. The shrew opened and closed its mouth and many of our soldiers were devoured.”

  “Hideous!” King Zoser wrinkles up his face. “But what did the old woman say? Did she offer apologies for her disruption of our semi-divine peace of mind? Did she offer compensation for the pillage of our granaries?”

  Sinuhe shakes his head. “Not at all, sire. She merely kept repeating her earlier story, as if she was attempting to justify her actions. She claimed again that she came from the future and that a mighty inventor named ‘Daedalus’ had both built the shrew and sent her back with it. She insisted that the shrew was a ‘time machine’ and that her country, which she kept reminding us was called ‘Greece’, was in desperate need of food if it was to destroy the rival state of ‘Troy’.”

  “Yes, yes! Is this all? I already know this...”

  “Not all, sire. She also said that she could have travelled to any other time or place to steal grain for her people, but that we deserved to have our grain stolen because we were a very foolish people.”