‘Yes, yes,’ said Teppic. ‘We’ll have them. We’ll have them all. All of them.’
The architect took a deep breath.
‘And of course you’ll require all the usual steles, avenues, ceremonial sphinxes-‘ he began.
‘Lots,’ said Teppic. ‘We leave it entirely up to you.’
Ptaclusp mopped his brow.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Marvellous.’ He blew his nose. ‘Your father, if I may make so bold, O sower of the seed, is extremely fortunate in having such a dutiful son. I may add-‘
‘You may go,’ said Dios. ‘And we will expect work to start imminently.’
‘Without delay, I assure you,’ said Ptaclusp. ‘Er.’
He seemed to be wrestling with some huge philosophical problem.
‘Yes?’ said Dios coldly.
‘It’s uh. There’s the matter of uh. Which is not to say uh. Of course, oldest client, valued customer, but the fact is that uh. Absolutely no doubt about credit worthiness uh. Would not wish to suggest in any way whatsoever that uh.’
Dios gave him a stare that would have caused a sphinx to blink and look away.
‘You wish to say something?’ he said. ‘His majesty’s time is extremely limited.’
Ptaclusp worked his jaw silently, but the result was a foregone conclusion. Even gods had been reduced to sheepish mumbling in the face of Dios’s face. And the carved snakes on his staff seemed to be watching him too.
‘Uh. No, no. Sorry. I was just, uh, thinking aloud. I’ll depart, then, shall I? Such a lot of work to be done. Uh.’ He bowed low.
He was halfway to the archway before Dios added: ‘Completion in three months. In time for Inundation.'[12]
‘What?’
‘You are talking to the 1,398th monarch,’ said Dios icily. Ptaclusp swallowed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, ‘I mean, what?, O great king. I mean, block haulage alone will take. Uh.’ The architect’s lips trembled as he tried out various comments and, in his imagination, ran them full tilt into Dios’s stare. ‘Tsort wasn’t built in a day,’ he mumbled.
‘We do not believe we laid the specifications for that job,’ said Dios. He gave Ptaclusp a smile. In some ways it was worse than everything else. ‘We will, of course,’ he said, ‘pay extra.’
‘But you never pa-‘ Ptaclusp began, and then sagged.
‘The penalties for not completing on time will, of course, be terrible,’ said Dios. ‘The usual clause.’
Ptaclusp hadn’t the nerve left to argue. ‘Of course,’ he said, utterly defeated. ‘It is an honour. Will your eminences excuse me? There are still some hours of daylight left.’
Teppic nodded.
‘Thank you,’ said the architect. ‘May your loins be truly fruitful. Saving your presence, Lord Dios.’
They heard him running down the steps outside.
‘It will be magnificent. Too big, but – magnificent,’ said Dios. He looked out between the pillars at the necropolic panorama on the far bank of the Djel.
‘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 looked 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.O 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.[14] 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.
Folk myth said the sun was a ball of fire which circled the world every day, and that the world itself was carried through the everlasting void on the back of an enormous turtle. And Dios also knew that this was so, although it gave him a bit of trouble.
And Dios knew that Net was the Supreme God, and that Fon was the Supreme God, and so were Hast, Set, Bin, Sot, Ic, Dhek, and Ptooie; that Herpetine Triskeles alone ruled the world of the dead, and so did Syncope, and Silur the Catfish-Headed God, and Orexis-Nupt.
Dios was maximum high priest to a national religion that had fermented and accreted and bubbled for more than seven thousand years and never threw a god away in case it turned out to be useful. He knew that a great many mutually-contradictory things were all true. If they were not, then ritual and belief were as nothing, and if they were nothing, then the world did not exist. As a result of this sort of thinking, the priests of the Djel could give mind room to a collection of ideas that would make even a quantum mechanic give in and hand back his toolbox.