‘You were being persecuted,’ said Teppic. ‘That’s why you fled into the desert.’
‘Oh, yes. You’re right. Damn right. I was being persecuted for my beliefs.’
‘That’s terrible,’ said Teppic.
Khuft spat. ‘Damn right. I believed people wouldn’t notice I’d sold them camels with plaster teeth until I was well out of town.’
It took a little while for this to sink in, but it managed it with all the aplomb of a concrete block in a quicksand.
‘You’re a criminal?’ said Teppic.
‘Well, criminal’s a dirty word, know what I mean?’ said the little ancestor. ‘I’d prefer entrepreneur. I was ahead of my time, that’s my trouble.’
‘And you were running away?’ said Teppic weakly.
‘It wouldn’t,’ said Khuft, ‘have been a good idea to hang about.’
‘”And Khuft the camel herder became lost in the Desert, and there opened before him, as a Gift from the Gods, a Valley flowing with Milk and Honey”,’ quoted Teppic, in a hollow voice. He added, ‘I used to think it must have been awfully sticky.’
‘There I was, dying of thirst, all the camels kicking up a din, yelling for water, next minute – whoosh – a bloody great river valley, reed beds, hippos, the whole thing. Out of nowhere. I nearly got knocked down in the stampede.’
‘No!’ said Teppic. ‘It wasn’t like that! The gods of the valley took pity on you and showed you the way in, didn’t they?’ He shut up, surprised at the tones of pleading in his own voice.
Khuft sneered. ‘Oh, yes? And I just happened to stumble across a hundred miles of river in the middle of the desert that everyone else had missed. Easy thing to miss, a hundred miles of river valley in the middle of a desert, isn’t it? Not that I was going to look a gift camel in the mouth, you understand, I went and brought my family and the rest of the lads in soon enough. Never looked back.’
‘One minute it wasn’t there, the next minute it was?’ said Teppic.
‘Right enough. Hard to believe, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ said Teppic. ‘No. Not really.’ Khuft poked him with a wrinkled finger. ‘I always reckoned it was the camels that did it,’ he said. ‘I always thought they sort of called it into place, like it was sort of potentially there but not quite, and it needed just that little bit of effort to make it real. Funny things, camels.’
‘I know.’
‘Odder than gods. Something the matter?’
‘Sorry,’ said Teppic, ‘it’s just that this is all a bit of a shock. I mean, I thought we were really royal. I mean, we’re more royal than anyone.
Khuft picked a fig seed from between two blackened stumps which, because they were in his mouth, probably had to be called his teeth. Then he spat.
‘That’s up to you,’ he said, and vanished.
Teppic walked through the necropolis, the pyramids a saw-edged skyline against the night. The sky was the arched body of a woman, and the gods stood around the horizon. They didn’t look like the gods that had been painted on the walls for thousands of years. They looked worse. They looked older than Time. After all, the gods hardly ever meddled in the affairs of men. But other things were proverbial for it.
‘What can I do? I’m only human,’ he said aloud.
Someone said, Not all of you.
Teppic awoke, to the screaming of seagulls.
Alfonz, who was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and the expression of one who never means to take it off again, ever, was helping several other men unfurl one of Unnamed’s sails. He looked down at Teppic in his bed of rope and gave him a nod.
They were moving. Teppic sat up, and saw the dock-side of Ephebe slipping silently away in the grey morning light.
He stood up unsteadily, groaned, clutched at his head, took a run and dived over the rail.
Heme Krona, owner of the Camels-R-Us livery stable, walked slowly around You Bastard, humming. He examined the camel’s knees. He gave one of its feet an experimental kick. In a swift movement that took You Bastard completely by surprise he jerked open the beast’s mouth and examined his great yellow teeth, and then jumped away.
He took a plank of wood from a heap in the corner, dipped a brush in a pot of black paint, and after a moment’s thought carefully wrote, ONE OWNER.
After some further consideration he added, LO MILEAGE. He was just brushing in GOOD RUNER when Teppic staggered in and leaned, panting, against the doorframe. Pools of water formed around his feet.
‘I’ve come for my camel,’ he said.
Krona sighed.
‘Last night you said you’d be back in an hour,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to charge you for a whole day’s livery, right? Plus I gave him a rub down and did his feet, the full service. That’ll be five cercs, okay emir?’
‘Ah.’ Teppic patted his pocket.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I left home in a bit of a hurry, you see. I don’t seem to have any cash on me.’
‘Fair enough, emir.’ Krona turned back to his board. ‘How do you spell YEARS WARENTY?’
‘I will definitely have the money sent to you,’ said Teppic. Krona gave him the withering smile of one who has seen it all – asses with bodywork re-haired, elephants with plaster tusks, camels with false humps glued on – and knows the festering depths of the human soul when it gets down to business.
‘Pull the other one, rajah,’ he said. ‘It has got bells on.’
Teppic fumbled in his tunic.
‘I could give you this valuable knife,’ he said.
Krona gave it a passing glance, and sniffed.
‘Sorry, emir. No can do. No pay, no camel.’
‘I could give it to you point first,’ said Teppic desperately, knowing that the mere threat would get him expelled from the Guild. He was also aware that as a threat it wasn’t very good. Threats weren’t on the syllabus at the Guild school.
Whereas Krona had, sitting on straw bales at the back of the stables, a couple of large men who were just beginning to take an interest in the proceedings. They looked like Alfonz’s older brothers.
Every vehicle depot of any description anywhere in the multiverse has them. They’re never exactly grooms or mechanics or customers or staff. Their function is always unclear. They chew straws or smoke cigarettes in a surreptitious fashion. If there are such things as newspapers around, they read them, or at least look at the pictures.
They started to watch Teppic closely. One of them picked up a couple of bricks and began to toss them up and down.
‘You’re a young lad, I can see that,’ said Krona, kindly. ‘You’re just starting out in life, emir. You don’t want trouble.’ He stepped forward.
You Bastard’s huge shaggy head turned to look at him. In the depths of his brain columns of little numbers whirred upwards again.
‘Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to have my camel back,’ said Teppic. ‘It’s life and death!’
Krona waved a hand at the two extraneous men.
You Bastard kicked him. You Bastard had very concise ideas about people putting their hands in his mouth. Besides, he’d seen the bricks, and every camel knew what two bricks added up to. It was a good kick, toes well spread, powerful and deceptively slow. It picked Krona up and delivered him neatly into a steaming heap of Augean stable sweepings.
Teppic ran, kicked away from the wall, grabbed You Bastard’s dusty coat and landed heavily on his neck.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he said, to such of Krona as was visible. ‘I really will have some money sent to you.’
You Bastard, at this point, was waltzing round and round in a circle. Krona’s companions stayed well back as feet like plates whirred through the air.
Teppic leaned forward and hissed into one madly-waving ear.
‘We’re going home,’ he said.
They had chosen the first pyramid at random. The king peered at the cartouche on the door.
‘”Blessed is Queen Far-re-ptah”,’ read Dil dutifully, “Ruler of the Skies, Lord of the Djel, Master of-”
‘Grandma Pooney,’ said the king. ‘She’ll do.’ He looked at their startled faces. ‘That’s what I used to call her when I was a little boy. I couldn’t pronounce Far-re-ptah, you see. Well, go on then. Stop gawking. Break the door down.’
Gern hefted the hammer uncertainly.
‘It’s a pyramid, master,’ he said, appealing to Dil. ‘You’re not supposed to open them.’
‘What do you suggest, lad? We stick a tableknife in the slot and wiggle it about?’ said the king.
‘Do it, Gern,’ said Dil. ‘It will be all right.’
Gern shrugged, spat on his hands which were, in fact, quite damp enough with the sweat of terror, and swung.
‘Again,’ said the king.
The great slab boomed as the hammer hit it, but it was granite, and held. A few flakes of mortar floated down, and then the echoes came back, shunting back and forth along the dead avenues of the necropolis.