Pyramids tds-7

by Terry David John Pratchett

  This time it was heralded by a shrill whistling out of the clear sky and a swirl in the air that became a glow, became a flame, became a flare that sizzled downwards into the pyramid, punching into the mass of black marble. Fingers of lightning crackled out and grounded on the lesser tombs around it, so that serpents of white fire burned their way from pyramid to pyramid across the necropolis and the air filled with the stink of burning stone.

  In the middle of the firestorm the Great Pyramid appeared to lift up a few inches, on a beam of incandescence, and turn through ninety degrees. This was almost certainly the special type of optical illusion which can take place even though noone is actually looking at it.

  And then, with deceptive slowness and considerable dignity, it exploded.

  It was almost too crass a word. What it did was this: it came apart ponderously into building-sized chunks which drifted gently away from one another, flying serenely out and over the necropolis. Several of them struck other pyramids, badly damaging them in a lazy, unselfconscious way, and then bounded on in silence until they ploughed to a halt behind a small mountain of rubble.

  Only then did the boom come. It went on for quite along time.

  Grey dust rolled over the kingdom.

  Ptaclusp dragged himself upright and groped ahead, gingerly, until he walked into someone. He shuddered when he thought about the kind of people he'd seen walking around lately, but thought didn't come easily because something appeared to have hit him on the head recently .

  'Is that you, lad?' he ventured.

  'Is that you, dad?'

  'Yes,' said Ptaclusp.

  'It's me, dad.'

  'I'm glad it's you, son.'

  'Can you see anything?'

  'No. It's all mist and fog.'

  'Thank the gods for that, I thought it was me.'

  'It is you, isn't it? You said.'

  'Yes, dad.'

  'Is your brother all right?'

  'I've got him safe in my pocket, dad.'

  'Good. So long as nothing's happened to him.'

  They inched forward, clambering over lumps of masonry they could barely see.

  'Something exploded, dad,' said IIb, slowly. 'I think it was the pyramid.'

  Ptaclusp rubbed the top of his head, where two tons of flying rock had come within a sixteenth of an inch of fitting him for one of his own pyramids. 'It was that dodgy cement we bought from Merco the Ephebian, I expect-'

  'I think this was a bit worse than a moody lintel, dad,' said IIb. 'In fact, I think it was a lot worse.'

  'It looked a bit wossname, a bit on the sandy side-'

  'I think you should find somewhere to sit down, dad,' said IIb, as kindly as possible. 'Here's Two-Ay. Hang on to him.'

  He crept on alone, climbing over a slab of what felt very suspiciously like black marble. What he wanted, he decided, was a priest. They had to be useful for something, and this seemed the sort of time one might need one. For solace, or possibly, he felt obscurely, to beat their head in with a rock.

  What he found instead was someone on their hands and knees, coughing. IIb helped him — it was definitely a him, he'd been briefly afraid it might be an it — and sat him on another lump of, yes, almost certainly marble.

  'Are you a priest?' he said, fumbling in the rubble.

  'I'm Dil. Chief embalmer,' the figure muttered.

  'Ptaclusp IIb, paracosmic archi-' IIb began and then, suspecting that architects were not going to be too popular around here for a while, quickly corrected himself. 'I'm an engineer,' he said. 'Are you all right?'

  'Don't know. What happened?'

  'I think the pyramid exploded,' IIb volunteered.

  'Are we dead?'

  'I shouldn't think so. You're walking and talking, after all.'

  Dil shivered. 'That's no guideline, take it from me. What's an engineer?'

  'Oh, a builder of aqueducts,' said IIb quickly. 'They're the coming thing, you know.'

  Dil stood up, a little shakily.

  'I,' he said, 'need a drink. Let's find the river.'

  They found Teppic first.

  He was clinging to a small, truncated pyramid section that had made a moderate-sized crater when it landed.

  'I know him,' said IIb. 'He's the lad who was on top of the pyramid. That's ridiculous, how could he survive that?'

  'Why's there all corn sprouting out of it, too?' wondered Dil.

  'I mean, perhaps there's some kind of effect if you're right in the centre of the flare, or something,' said IIb, thinking aloud. 'A sort of calm area or something, like in the middle of a whirlpool-' He reached instinctively for his wax tablet, and then stopped himself. Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with. 'Is he dead?' he said. 'Don't look at me,' said Dil, stepping back. He'd been running through his mind the alternative occupations now open to him. Upholstery sounded attractive. At least chairs didn't get up and walk after you'd stuffed them. IIb bent over the body.

  'Look what he's got in his hand,' he said, gently bending back the fingers. 'It's a piece of melted metal. What's he got that for?'

  Teppic dreamed.

  He saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, and one of them was riding a bicycle.

  He saw some camels, singing, and the song straightened out the wrinkles in reality.

  He saw a finger Write on the wall of a pyramid: Going forth is easy. Going back requires (cont. on next wall) . . .

  He walked around the pyramid, where the finger continued: An effort of will, because it is much harder. Thank you.

  Teppic considered this, and it occurred to him that there was one thing left to do which he had not done. He'd never known how to before, but now he could see that it was just numbers, arranged in a special way. Everything that was magical was just a way of describing the world in words it couldn't ignore.

  He gave a grunt of effort.

  There was a brief moment of speed. Dil and IIb looked around as long shafts of light sparkled through the mists and dust, turning the landscape into old gold.

  And the sun came up.

  The sergeant cautiously opened the hatch in the horse's belly. When the expected flurry of spears did not materialise he ordered Autocue to let out the rope ladder, climbed down it, and looked across the chill morning desert.

  The new recruit followed him down and stood, hopping from one sandal to another, on sand that was nearly freezing now and would be frying by lunchtime.

  'There,' said the sergeant, pointing, 'see the Tsortean lines, lad?'

  'Looks like a row of wooden horses to me, sergeant,' said Autocue. 'The one on the end's on rockers.'

  'That'll be the officers. Huh. Those Tsorteans must think we're simple.' The sergeant stamped some life into his legs, took a few breaths of fresh air, and walked back to the ladder.

  'Come on, lad,' he said.

  'Why've we got to go back up there?'

  The sergeant paused, his foot on a rope rung.

  'Use some common, laddie. They're not going to come and take our horses if they see us hanging around outside, are they? Stands to reason.'

  'You sure they're going to come, then?' said Autocue. The sergeant frowned at him.

  'Look, soldier,' he said, 'anyone bloody stupid enough to think we're going to drag a lot of horses full of soldiers back to our city is certainly daft enough to drag ours all the way back to theirs. QED.'

  'QED, sarge?'

  'It means get back up the bloody ladder, lad.'

  Autocue saluted. 'Permission to be excused first, sarge?'

  'Excused what?'

  'Excused, sarge,' said Autocue, a shade desperately. 'I mean, it's a bit cramped in the horse, sarge, if you know what I mean.'

  'You're going to have to learn a bit of will power if you want to stay in the horse soldiers, boy. You know that?'

  'Yes, sarge,' said Autocue miserably.

  'You've got one minute.'

  'Thanks, sarge.'

  When the hatch closed above him Autocue sidled over to o
ne of the horse's massive legs and put it to a use for which it wasn't originally intended.

  And it was while he was staring vaguely ahead, lost in that Zen-like contemplation which occurs at moments like this, that there was a faint pop in the air and an entire river valley opened up in front of him.

  It's not the sort of thing that ought to happen to a thoughtful lad. Especially one who has to wash his own uniform.

  A breeze from the sea blew into the kingdom, hinting at, no, positively roaring suggestions of salt, shellfish and sun-soaked tidelines. A few rather puzzled seabirds wheeled over the necropolis, where the wind scurried among the fallen masonry and covered with sand the memorials to ancient kings, and the birds said more with a simple bowel movement than Ozymandias ever managed to say.

  The wind had a cool, not unpleasant edge to it. The people out repairing the damage caused by the gods felt an urge to turn their faces towards it, as fish in a pond turn towards an influx of clear, fresh water.

  No-one worked in the necropolis. Most of the pyramids had blown their upper levels clean off, and stood smoking gently like recently-extinct volcanoes. Here and there slabs of black marble littered the landscape. One of them had nearly decapitated a fine statue of Hat, the Vulture-Headed God.

  The ancestors had vanished. No-one was volunteering to go and look for them.

  Around midday a ship came up the Djel under full sail. It was a deceptive ship. It seemed to wallow like a fat and unprotected hippo, and it was only after watching it for some time that anyone would realise that it was also making remarkably fast progress. It dropped anchor outside the palace.

  After a while, it let down a dinghy.

  Teppic sat on the throne and watched the life of the kingdom reassemble itself, like a smashed mirror that is put together again and reflects the same old light in new and unexpected ways.

  No-one was quite sure on what basis he was on the throne, but no-one else was at all keen on occupying it and it was a relief to hear instructions issued in a clear, confident voice. It is amazing what people will obey, if a clear and confident voice is used, and the kingdom was well used to a clear, confident voice.

  Besides, giving orders stopped him thinking about things. Like, for example, what would happen next. But at least the gods had gone back to not existing again, which made it a whole lot easier to believe in them, and the grass didn't seem to be growing under his feet any more.

  Maybe I can put the kingdom together again, he thought. But then what can I do with it? If only we could find Dios. He always knew what to do, that was the main thing about him.

  A guard pushed his way through the milling throng of priests and nobles.

  'Excuse me, your sire,' he said. 'There's a merchant to see you. He says it's urgent.'

  'Not now, man. There's representatives of the Tsortean and Ephebian armies coming to see me in an hour, and there's a great deal that's got to be done first. I can't go around seeing any salesmen who happen to be passing. What's he selling, anyway?'

  'Carpets, your sire.'

  'Carpets?'

  It was Chidder, grinning like half a watermelon, followed by several of the crew. He walked up the hall staring around at the frescoes and hangings. Because it was Chidder, he was probably costing them out. By the time he reached the throne he was drawing a double line under the total.

  'Nice place,' he said, wrapping up thousands of years of architectural accumulation in a mere two syllables. 'You'll never guess what happened, we just happened to be sailing along the coast and suddenly there was this river. One minute cliffs, next minute river. There's a funny thing, I thought. I bet old Teppic's up there somewhere.'

  'Where's Ptraci?'

  'I knew you were complaining about the lack of the old home comforts, so we brought you this carpet.'

  'I said, where's Ptraci?'

  The crew moved aside, leaving a grinning Alfonz to cut the strings around the carpet and shake it out.

  It uncurled swiftly across the floor in a flurry of dust balls and moths and, eventually, Ptraci, who continued rolling until her head hit Teppic's boot.

  He helped her to her feet and tried to pick bits of fluff out of her hair as she swayed backwards and forwards. She ignored him and turned to Chidder, red with breathlessness and fury.

  'I could have died in there!' she shouted. 'Lots of other things have, by the smell! And the heat!'

  'You said it worked for Queen wossname, Ram-Jam-Hurrah, or whoever,' said Chidder. 'Don't blame me, at home a necklace or something is usually the thing.'

  'I bet she had a decent carpet,' snapped Ptraci. 'Not something stuck in a bloody hold for six months.'

  'You're lucky we had one at all,' said Chidder mildly. 'It was your idea.'

  'Huh,' said Ptraci. She turned to Teppic. 'Hallo,' she said. 'This was meant to be a startling original surprise.'

  'It worked,' said Teppic fervently. 'It really worked.'

  Chidder lay on a daybed on the palace's veranda, while three handmaidens took turns to peel grapes for him. A pitcher of beer stood cooling in the shade. He was grinning amiably.

  On a blanket nearby Alfonz lay on his stomach, feeling extremely awkward. The Mistress of the Women had found out that, in addition to the tattoos on his forearms, his back was a veritable illustrated history of exotic practices, and had brought the girls out to be educated. He winced occasionally as her pointer stabbed at items of particular interest, and stuffed his fingers firmly in his great, scarred ears to shut out the giggles.

  At the far end of the veranda, given privacy by unspoken agreement, Teppic sat with Ptraci. Things were not going well.

  'Everything changed,' he said. 'I'm not going to be king.'

  'You are the king,' she said. 'You can't change things.'

  'I can. I can abdicate. It's very simple. If I'm not really the king, then I can go whenever I please. If I am the king, then the king's word is final and I can abdicate. If we can change sex by decree, we can certainly change station. They can find a relative to do the job. I must have dozens.'

  'The job? Anyway, you said there was only your auntie.'

  Teppic frowned. Aunt Cleph-ptah-re was not, on reflection, the kind of monarch a kingdom needed if it was going to make a fresh start. She had a number of stoutly-held views on a variety of subjects, but most of them involved the flaying alive of people she disapproved of. This meant most people under the age of thirty— five, to start with.

  'Well, someone else, then,' he said. 'It shouldn't be difficult, we've always seemed to have more nobles than really necessary. We'll just have to find one who has the dream about the cows.'

  'Oh, the one where there's fat cows and thin cows?' said Ptraci.

  'Yes. It's sort of ancestral.'

  'It's a nuisance, I know that much. One of them's always grinning and playing a wimblehorn.'

  'It looks like a trombone to me,' said Teppic.

  'It's a ceremonial wimblehorn, if you look closely,' she said.

  'Well, I expect everyone sees it a bit differently. I don't think it matters.' He sighed, and watched the Unnamed unloading. It seemed to have more than the expected number of feather mattresses, and several of the people wandering bemusedly down the gangplank were holding toolboxes and lengths of pipe.

  'I think you're going to find it difficult,' said Ptraci. 'You can't say «All those who dream about cows please step forward». It'd give the game away.'

  'I can't just hang around until someone happens to mention it, can I? Be reasonable,' he snapped. 'How many people are likely to say, hey, I had this funny dream about cows last night? Apart from you, I mean.'

  They stared at one another.

  'And she's my sister?' said Teppic.

  The priests nodded. It was left to Koomi to put it into words. He'd just spent ten minutes going through the files with the Mistress of the Women.

  'Her mother was, er, your late father's favourite,' he said.

  'He took a great deal of interest in her upbringing, as you k
now, and, er, it would appear that . . . yes. She may be your aunt, of course. The concubines are never very good at paperwork. But most likely your sister.'

  She looked at him with tear-filled eyes.

  'That doesn't make any difference, does it?' she whispered.

  Teppic stared at his feet.

  'Yes,' he said. 'I think it does, really.' He looked up at her. 'But you can be queen,' he added. He glared at the priests. 'Can't she,' he stated firmly.

  The high priests looked at one another. Then they looked at Ptraci, who stood alone, her shoulders shaking. Small, palace trained, used to taking orders . . . They looked at Koomi.

  'She would be ideal,' he said. There was a murmur of suddenly— confident agreement.

  'There you are then,' said Teppic, consolingly.

  She glared at him. He backed away.

  'So I'll be off,' he said, 'I don't need to pack anything, it's all right.'

  'Just like that?' she said. 'Is that all? Isn't there anything you're going to say?'

  He hesitated, halfway to the door. You could stay, he told himself. It wouldn't work, though. It'd end up a terrible mess; you'd probably end up splitting the kingdom between you. Just because fate throws you together doesn't mean fate's got it right. Anyway, you've been forth.

  'Camels are more important than pyramids,' he said slowly. 'It's something we should always remember.'

  He ran for it while she was looking for something to throw.

  The sun reached the peak of noon without beetles, and Koomi hovered by the throne like Hat, the Vulture-Headed God.

  'It will please your majesty to confirm my succession as high priest,' he said.

  'What?' Ptraci was sitting with her chin cupped in one hand. She waved the other hand at him. 'Oh. Yes. All right. Fine.'

  'No trace has, alas, been found of Dios. We believe he was very close to the Great Pyramid when it . . . flared.'

  Ptraci stared into space. 'You carry on,' she said. Koomi preened.

  'The formal coronation will take some time to arrange,' he said, taking the golden mask. 'However, your graciousness will be pleased to wear the mask of authority now, for there is much formal business to be concluded.'

  She looked at the mask.

  'I'm not wearing that,' she said flatly.