Pyramids

Ptaclusp sighed. Two abaci rattling in tandem the whole day long, one changing the shape of the world and the other one deploring the cost. Whatever happened to the two bits of wood and a plumbline?

The last beads clicked against the stops.

‘It’d be a whole quantum leap in pyramidology,’ said IIb, sitting back with a messianic grin on his face.

‘It’d be a whole kwa—’ IIa began.

‘Quantum,’ said IIb, savouring the word.

‘It’d be a whole quantum leap in bankruptcy,’ said IIa. ‘They’d have to invent a new word for that too.’

‘It’d be worth it as a loss leader,’ said IIb.

‘Sure enough. When it comes to making a loss, we’ll be in the lead,’ said IIa sourly.

‘It’d practically glow! In millennia to come people will look at it and say “That Ptaclusp, he knew his pyramids all right”.’

‘They’ll call it Ptaclusp’s Folly, you mean!’

By now the brothers were both standing up, their noses a few inches apart.

‘The trouble with you, sibling, is that you know the cost of everything and the value of nothing!’

‘The trouble with you is — is — is that you don’t!’

‘Mankind must strive ever upwards!’

‘Yes, on a sound financial footing, by Khuft!’

‘The search for knowledge—’

‘The search for probity—’

Ptaclusp left them to it and stood staring out at the yard, where, under the glow of torches, the staff were doing a feverish stocktaking.

It’d been a small business when father passed it on to him — just a yard full of blocks and various sphinxes, needles, steles and other stock items, and a thick stack of unpaid bills, most of them addressed to the palace and respectfully pointing out that our esteemed account presented nine hundred years ago appeared to have been overlooked and prompt settlement would oblige. But it had been fun in those days. There was just him, five thousand labourers, and Mrs Ptaclusp doing the books.

You had to do pyramids, dad said. All the profit was in mastabas, small family tombs, memorial needles and general jobbing necropoli, but if you didn’t do pyramids, you didn’t do anything. The meanest garlic farmer, looking for something neat and long lasting with maybe some green marble chippings but within a budget, wouldn’t go to a man without a pyramid to his name.

So he’d done pyramids, and they’d been good ones, not like some you saw these days, with the wrong number of sides and walls you could put your foot through. And yes, somehow they’d gone from strength to strength.

To build the biggest pyramid ever …

In three months …

With terrible penalties if it wasn’t done on time. Dios hadn’t specified how terrible, but Ptaclusp knew his man and they probably involved crocodiles. They’d be pretty terrible all right …

He stared at the flickering light on the long avenues of statues, including the one of bloody Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests, bought on the offchance years ago and turned down by the client owing to not being up to snuff in the beak department and unshiftable ever since even at a discount.

The biggest pyramid ever …

And after you’d knocked your pipes out seeing to it that the nobility had their tickets to eternity, were you allowed to turn your expertise homeward, i.e., a bijou pyramidette for self and Mrs Ptaclusp, to ensure safe delivery into the Netherworld? Of course not. Even dad had only been allowed to have a mastaba, although it was one of the best on the river, he had to admit, that red-veined marble had been ordered all the way from Howonderland, a lot of people had asked for the same, it had been good for business, that’s how dad would have liked it …

The biggest pyramid ever …

And they’d never remember who was under it.

It didn’t matter if they called it Ptaclusp’s Folly or Ptaclusp’s Glory. They’d call it Ptaclusp’s.

He surfaced from this pool of thought to hear his sons still arguing.

If this was his posterity, he’d take his chances with 600-ton limestone blocks. At least they were quiet.

‘Shut up, the pair of you,’ he said.

They stopped, and sat down, grumbling.

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ he said.

IIb doodled fitfully with his stylus. IIa strummed his abacus.

‘We’re going to do it,’ said Ptaclusp, and strode out of the room. ‘And any son who doesn’t like it will be cast into the outer darkness where there is a wailing and a crashing of teeth,’ he called over his shoulder.

The two brothers, left to themselves, glowered at each other.

At last IIa said, ‘What does “quantum” mean, anyway?’

IIb shrugged. ‘It means add another nought,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ said IIa, ‘is that all?’

All along the river valley of the Djel the pyramids were flaring silently into the night, discharging the accumulated power of the day.

Great soundless flames erupted from their capstones and danced upwards, jagged as lightning, cold as ice.

For hundreds of miles the desert glittered with the constellations of the dead, the aurora of antiquity. But along the valley of the Djel the lights ran together in one solid ribbon of fire.

It was on the floor and it had a pillow at one end. It had to be a bed.