‘It’s terrified!’ Ptraci yelled. ‘Animals always know about this sort of thing!’
‘What sort of thing!’
‘Forest fires and things!’
‘We haven’t got any trees!’
‘Well, floods and – and things! They’ve got some strange natural instinct!’
. . . Phi* 1700[u/v]. Lateral e/v. Equals a tranche of seven to twelve . . .
The sound hit them. It was as silent as a dandelion clock striking midnight, but it had pressure. It rolled over them, suffocating as velvet, nauseating as a battered saveloy.
And was gone.
You Bastard slowed to a walk, a complicated procedure that involved precise instructions to each leg in turn.
There was a feeling of release, a sense of stress withdrawn. You Bastard stopped. In the pre-dawn glow he’d spotted a clump of thorned syphacia bushes growing in the rocks by the track.
. . angle left. x equals 37. y equals 19. z equals 43. Bite . . .
Peace descended. There was no sound except for the eructations of the camel’s digestive tract and the distant warbling of a desert owl.
Ptraci slid off her perch and landed awkwardly.
‘My bottom,’ she announced, to the desert in general, ‘is one huge blister.’
Teppic jumped down and half-ran, half-staggered up the scree by the roadside, then jogged across the cracked limestone plateau until he could get a good look at the valley.
It wasn’t there any more.
It was still dark when Dil the master embalmer woke up, his body twanging with the sensation that something was wrong. He slipped out of bed, dressed hurriedly, and pulled aside the curtain that did duty as a door.
The night was soft and velvety. Behind the chirrup of the insects there was another sound, a frying noise, a faint sizzling on the edge of hearing.
Perhaps that was what had woken him up.
The air was warm and damp. Curls of mist rose from the river, and-
The pyramids weren’t flaring.
He’d grown up in this house: it had been in the family of the master embalmers for thousands of years, and he’d seen the pyramids flare so often that he didn’t notice them, any more than he noticed his own breathing. But now they were dark and silent, and the silence cried out and the darkness glared.
But that wasn’t the worst part. As his horrified eyes stared up at the empty sky over the necropolis they saw the stars, and what the stars were stuck to.
Dil was terrified. And then, when he had time to think about it, he was ashamed of himself. After all, he thought, it’s what I’ve always been told is there. It stands to reason. I’m just seeing it properly for the first time.
There. Does that make me feel any better?
No.
He turned and ran down the street, sandals flapping, until he reached the house that held Gern and his numerous family. He dragged the protesting apprentice from the communal sleeping mat and pulled him into the street, turned his face to the sky and hissed. ‘Tell me what you can see!’
Gern squinted.
‘I can see the stars, master,’ he said.
‘What are they on, boy?’
Gern relaxed slightly. ‘That’s easy, master. Everyone knows the stars are on the body of the goddess Nept who arches herself from . . . oh, bloody hell.’
‘You can see her, too?’
‘Oh, mummy,’ whispered Gern, and slid to his knees.
Dil nodded. He was a religious man. It was a great comfort knowing that the gods were there. It was knowing they were here that was the terrible part.
Because the body of a woman arched over the heavens, faintly blue, faintly shadowy in the light of the watery stars.
She was enormous, her statistics interstellar. The shadow between her galactic breasts was a dark nebula, the curve of her stomach a vast wash of glowing gas, her navel the seething, dark incandescence in which new stars were being born. She wasn’t supporting the sky. She was the sky.
Her huge sad face, upside down on the turnwise horizon, stared directly at Dil. And Dil was realising that there are few things that so shake belief as seeing, clearly and precisely, the object of that belief. Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed any more.
‘Oh, Sod,’ moaned Gern.
Dil struck him across the arm.
‘Stop that,’ he said. ‘And come with me.’
‘Oh, master, whatever shall we do?’
Dil looked around at the sleeping city. He hadn’t the faintest idea.
‘We’ll go to the palace,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s probably a trick of the, of the, of the dark. Anyway, the sun will be up presently.’
He strode off, wishing he could change places with Gern and show just a hint of gibbering terror. The apprentice followed him at a sort of galloping creep.
‘I can see shadows against the stars, master! Can you see them, master? Around the edge of the world, master!’
‘Just mists, boy,’ said Dil, resolutely keeping his eyes fixed in front of him and maintaining a dignified posture as appropriate to the Keeper of the Left Hand Door of the Matron Lodge and holder of several medals for needlework.
‘There,’ he said. ‘See, Gern, the sun is coming up!’
They stood and watched it.
Then Gern whimpered, very quietly.
Rising up the sky, very slowly, was a great flaming ball. And it was being pushed by a dung beetle bigger than worlds.
BOOK III
The Book of the New Son
The sun rose and, because this wasn’t the Old Kingdom out here, it was a mere ball of flaming gas. The purple night of the high desert evaporated under its blowlamp glare. Lizards scuffled into cracks in the rocks. You Bastard settled himself down in the sparse shadow of what was left of the syphacia bushes, peered haughtily at the landscape, and began to chew cud and calculate square roots in base seven.
Teppic and Ptraci eventually found the shade of a limestone overhang, and sat glumly staring out at the waves of heat wobbling off the rocks.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Ptraci. ‘Have you looked everywhere?’
‘It’s a country! It can’t just bloody well fall through a hole in the ground!’
‘Where is it, then?’ said Ptraci evenly.
Teppic growled. The heat struck like a hammer, but he strode out over the rocks as though three hundred square miles could perhaps have been hiding under a pebble or behind a bush.
The fact was that the track dipped between the cliffs, but almost immediately rose again and continued across the dunes into what was quite clearly Tsort. He’d recognised a wind-eroded sphinx that had been set up as a boundary marker; legend said it prowled the borders in times of dire national need, although legend wasn’t sure why.
He knew they had galloped into Ephebe. He should be looking across the fertile, pyramid-speckled valley of the Djel that lay between the two countries.
He’d spent an hour looking for it.
It was inexplicable. It was uncanny. It was also extremely embarrassing.
He shaded his eyes and stared around for the thousandth time at the silent, baking landscape. And moved his head. And saw Djelibeybi.
It flashed across his vision in an instant. He jerked his eyes back and saw it again, a brief flash of misty colour that vanished as soon as he concentrated on it.
Some minutes later Ptraci peered out of the shade and saw him get down on his hands and knees. When he started turning over rocks she decided it was time he should come back in out of the sun.
He shook her hand off his shoulder, and gestured impatiently. ‘I’ve found it!’ He pulled a knife from his boot and started poking at the stones.
‘Where?’
‘Here!’
She laid a ringed hand on his forehead.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I see. Yes. Good. Now I think you’d better come into the shade.’
‘No, I mean it! Here! Look!’
She hunkered down and stared at the rock, to humour him.
‘There’s a crack,’ she said, doubtfully.
‘Look at it, will you? You have to turn your head and sort of look out of the corner of your eye.’ Teppic’s dagger smacked into the crack, which was no more than a faint line on the rock.
‘Well, it goes on a long way,’ said Ptraci, staring along the burning pavement.
‘All the way from the Second Cataract to the Delta,’ said Teppic. ‘Covering your eye with one hand helps. Please give it a try. Please!’
She put one hesitant hand over her eye and squinted obediently at the rock.
Eventually she said. ‘It’s no good, I can’t – seeee-‘ She stayed motionless for a moment and then flung herself sideways on to the rocks. Teppic stopped trying to hammer the knife into the crack and crawled over to her.
‘I was right on the edge!’ she wailed.
‘You saw it?’ he said hopefully.