A camel in distress isn’t a shy creature. It doesn’t hang around in bars, nursing a solitary drink. It doesn’t phone up old friends and sob at them. It doesn’t mope, or write long soulful poems about Life and how dreadful it is when seen from a bedsitter. It doesn’t know what angst is.
All a camel has got is a pair of industrial-strength lungs and a voice like a herd of donkeys being chainsawed.
Teppic advanced through the blaring. You Bastard reared his head and turned it this way and that, triangulating. His eyes rolled madly as he did the camel trick of apparently looking at Teppic with his nostrils.
He spat.
He tried to spit.
Teppic grabbed his halter and pulled on it.
‘Come on, you bastard,’ he said. ‘There’s water. You can smell it. All you have to do is work out how to get there!’
He turned to the assembled soldiers. They were staring at him with expressions of amazement, apart from those who hadn’t removed their helmets and who were staring at him with expressions of metallic ferocity.
Teppic snatched a water skin from one of them, pulled out the stopper and tipped it on to the ground in front of the camel’s twitching nose.
‘There’s a river here,’ he hissed. ‘You know where it is, all you’ve got to do is go there!’
The soldiers looked around nervously. So did several Tsorteans, who had wandered up to see what was going on.
You Bastard got to his feet, knees trembling, and started to spin around in a circle. Teppic clung on.
. . . let d equal 4, thought You Bastard desperately. Let a.d equal 90. Let not-d equal 45 . . .
‘I need a stick!’ shouted Teppic, as he was whirled past the sergeant. ‘They never understand anything unless you hit them with a stick, it’s like punctuation to a camel!’
‘Is a sword any good?’
‘No!’
The sergeant hesitated, and then passed Teppic his spear. He grabbed it point-end first, fought for balance, and then brought it smartly across the camel’s flank, raising a cloud of dust and hair.
You Bastard stopped. His ears turned like radar aerials. He stared at the rock wall, rolling his eyes. Then, as Teppic grabbed a handful of hair and pulled himself up, the camel started to trot.
. . . Think fractals . . .
‘Ere, you’re going to run straight-‘ the sergeant began.
There was silence. It went on for a long time.
The sergeant shifted uneasily. Then he looked across the rocks to the Tsorteans, and caught the eye of their leader. With the unspoken understanding that is shared by centurions and sergeant-majors everywhere, they walked towards one another along the length of the rocks and stopped by the barely visible crack in the cliff.
The Tsortean sergeant ran his hand over it.
‘You’d think there’d be some, you know, camel hairs or something,’ he said.
‘Or blood,’ said the Ephebian.
‘I reckon it’s one of them unexplainable phenomena.’
‘Oh. That’s all right, then.’
The two men stared at the stone for a while.
‘Like a mirage,’ said the Tsortean, helpfully.
‘One of them things, yes.’
‘I thought I heard a seagull, too.’
‘Daft, isn’t it. You don’t get them out here.’
The Tsortean coughed politely, and stared back at his men.
Then he leaned closer.
‘The rest of your people will be along directly, I expect,’ he said.
The Ephebian stepped a bit closer and when he spoke, it was out of the corner of his mouth while his eyes apparently remained fully occupied by looking at the rocks.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘And yours too, may I ask?’
‘Yes. I expect we’ll have to massacre you if ours get here first.’
‘Likewise, I shouldn’t wonder. Still, can’t be helped.’
‘One of those things, really,’ agreed the Tsortean. The other man nodded. ‘Funny old world, when you come to think about it.’
‘You’ve put your finger on it, all right.’ The sergeant loosened his breastplate a bit, glad to be out of the sun. ‘Rations okay on your side?’ he said.
‘Oh, you know. Mustn’t grumble.’
‘Like us, really.’
”Cos if you do grumble, they get even worse.’
‘Just like ours. Here, you haven’t got any figs on your side, have you? I could just do with a fig.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Just thought I’d ask.’
‘Got plenty of dates, if they’re any good to you.’
‘We’re okay on dates, thanks.’
‘Sorry.’
The two men stood awhile, lost in their own thoughts. Then the Ephebian put on his helmet again, and the Tsortean adjusted his belt.
‘Right, then.’
‘Right, then.’
They squared their shoulders, stuck out their chins, and marched away. A moment later they turned about smartly and, exchanging the merest flicker of an embarrassed grin, headed back to their own sides.
BOOK IV
The Book of 101 Things A Boy Can Do
Teppic had expected-
-what?
Possibly the splat of flesh hitting rock. Possibly, although this was on the very edge of expectation, the sight of the Old Kingdom spread out below him.
He hadn’t expected chilly, damp mists.
It is now known to science that there are many more dimensions than the classical four. Scientists say that these don’t normally impinge on the world because the extra dimensions are very small and curve in on themselves, and that since reality is fractal most of it is tucked inside itself. This means either that the universe is more full of wonders than we can hope to understand or, more probably, that scientists make things up as they go along.
But the multiverse is full of little dimensionettes, playstreets of creation where creatures of the imagination can romp without being knocked down by serious actuality. Sometimes, as they drift through the holes in reality, they impinge back on this universe, when they give rise to myths, legends and charges of being Drunk and Disorderly.
And it was into one of these that You Bastard, by a trivial miscalculation, had trotted.
Legend had got it nearly right. The Sphinx did lurk on the borders of the kingdom. The legend just hadn’t been precise about what kind of borders it was talking about.
The Sphinx is an unreal creature. It exists solely because it has been imagined. It is well-known that in an infinite universe everything that can be imagined must exist somewhere, and since many of them are not things that ought to exist in a well-ordered space-time frame they get shoved into a side dimension. This may go some way to explaining the Sphinx’s chronic bad temper, although any creature created with the body of a lion, bosom of a woman and wings of an eagle has a serious identity crisis and doesn’t need much to make it angry.
So it had devised the Riddle.
Across various dimensions it had provided the Sphinx with considerable entertainment and innumerable meals.
This was not known to Teppic as he led You Bastard through the swirling mists, but the bones he crunched underfoot gave him enough essential detail.
A lot of people had died here. And it was reasonable to assume that the more recent ones had seen the remains of the earlier ones, and would therefore have proceeded stealthily. And that hadn’t worked.
No sense in creeping along, then. Besides, some of the rocks that loomed out of the mists had a very distressing shape. This one here, for example, looked exactly like-
‘Halt,’ said the Sphinx.
There was no sound but the drip of the mist and the occasional sucking noise of You Bastard trying to extract moisture from the air.
‘You’re a sphinx,’ said Teppic.
‘The Sphinx,’ corrected the Sphinx.
‘Gosh. We’ve got any amount of statues to you at home.’ Teppic looked up, and then further up. ‘I thought you’d be smaller,’ he added.
‘Cower, mortal,’ said the Sphinx. ‘For thou art in the presence of the wise and the terrible.’ It blinked. ‘Any good, these statues?’
‘They don’t do you justice,’ said Teppic, truthfully.
‘Do you really think so? People often get the nose wrong,’ said the Sphinx. ‘My right profile is best, I’m told, and-‘ It dawned on the Sphinx that it was sidetracking itself. It coughed sternly.
‘Before you can pass me, O mortal,’ it said, ‘you must answer my riddle.’
‘Why?’ said Teppic.
‘What?’ The Sphinx blinked at him. It hadn’t been designed for this sort of thing.
‘Why? Why? Because. Er. Because, hang on, yes, because I will bite your head off if you don’t. Yes, I think that’s it.’
‘Right,’ said Teppic. ‘Let’s hear it, then.’
The Sphinx cleared its throat with a noise like an empty lorry reversing in a quarry.
‘What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?’ said the Sphinx smugly.
Teppic considered this.
‘That’s a tough one,’ he said, eventually.
‘The toughest,’ said the Sphinx.
‘Um.’
‘You’ll never get it.’
‘Ah,’ said Teppic.