Pyramids

‘Magnificent,’ he repeated. He winced once more at the stab of pain in his leg. Ah. He’d have to cross the river again tonight, no doubt of it. He’d been foolish, putting it off for days. But it would be unthinkable not to be in a position to serve the kingdom properly …

‘Something wrong, Dios?’ said Teppic.

‘Sire?’

‘You look a bit pale, I thought.’

A look of panic flickered over Dios’s wrinkled features. He pulled himself upright.

‘I assure you, sire, I am in the best of health. The best of health, sire!’

‘You don’t think you’ve been overdoing it, do you?’

This time there was no mistaking the expression of terror.

‘Overdoing what, sire?’

‘You’re always bustling, Dios. First one up, last one to bed. You should take it easy.’

‘I exist only to serve, sire,’ said Dios, firmly. ‘I exist only to serve.’

Teppic joined him on the balcony. The early evening sun glowed on a man-made mountain range. This was only the central massif; the pyramids stretched from the delta all the way up to the second cataract, where the Djel disappeared into the mountains. And the pyramids occupied the best land, near the river. Even the farmers would have considered it sacrilegious to suggest anything different.

Some of the pyramids were small, and made of rough-hewn blocks that contrived to look far older than the mountains that fenced the valley from the high desert. After all, mountains had always been there. Words like ‘young’ and ‘old’ didn’t apply to them. But those first pyramids had been built by human beings, little bags of thinking water held up briefly by fragile accumulations of calcium, who had cut rocks into pieces and then painfully put them back together again in a better shape. They were old.

Over the millennia the fashions had fluctuated. Later pyramids were smooth and sharp, or flattened and tiled with mica. Even the steepest of them, Teppic mused, wouldn’t rate more than 1.0 on any edificeer’s scale, although some of the stelae and temples, which flocked around the base of the pyramids like tugboats around the dreadnoughts of eternity, could be worthy of attention.

Dreadnoughts of eternity, he thought, sailing ponderously through the mists of Time with every passenger travelling first class …

A few stars had been let out early. Teppic looked up at them. Perhaps, he thought, there is life somewhere else. On the stars, maybe. If it’s true that there are billions of universes stacked alongside one another, the thickness of a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere.

But wherever they are, no matter how mightily they try, no matter how magnificent the effort, they surely can’t manage to be as godawfully stupid as us. I mean, we work at it. We were given a spark of it to start with, but over hundreds of thousands of years we’ve really improved on it.

He turned to Dios, feeling that he ought to repair a little bit of the damage.

‘You can feel the age radiating off them, can’t you,’ he said conversationally.

‘Pardon, sire?’

‘The pyramids, Dios. They’re so old.’

Dios glanced vaguely across the river. ‘Are they?’ he said. ‘Yes, I suppose they are.’

‘Will you get one?’ said Teppic.

‘A pyramid?’ said Dios. ‘Sire, I have one already. It pleased one of your forebears to make provision for me.’

‘That must have been a great honour,’ said Teppic. Dios nodded graciously. The staterooms of forever were usually reserved for royalty.

‘It is, of course, very small. Very plain. But it will suffice for my simple needs.’

‘Will it?’ said Teppic, yawning. ‘That’s nice. And now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll turn in. It’s been a long day.’

Dios bowed as though he was hinged in the middle. Teppic had noticed that Dios had at least fifty finely-tuned ways of bowing, each one conveying subtle shades of meaning. This one looked like No. 3, I Am Your Humble Servant.

‘And a very good day it was too, if I may say so, sire.’

Teppic was lost for words. ‘You thought so?’ he said.

‘The cloud effects at dawn were particularly effective.’

‘They were? Oh. Do I have to do anything about the sunset?’

‘Your majesty is pleased to joke,’ said Dios. ‘Sunsets happen by themselves, sire. Haha.’

‘Haha,’ echoed Teppic.

Dios cracked his knuckles. ‘The trick is in the sunrise,’ he said.

The crumbling scrolls of Knot said that the great orange sun was eaten every evening by the sky goddess, What, who saved one pip in time to grow a fresh sun for next morning. And Dios knew that this was so.

The Book of Staying in The Pit said that the sun was the Eye of Yay, toiling across the sky each day in His endless search for his toenails[12]. And Dios knew that this was so.

The secret rituals of the Smoking Mirror held that the sun was in fact a round hole in the spinning blue soap bubble of the goddess Nesh, opening into the fiery real world beyond, and the stars were the holes that the rain comes through. And Dios knew that this, also, was so.