Pyramids

You’ve done a good job, Master Dil, she said, but I’m going to drag this country kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat.”
    “Cobra,” said Gern.
    “What?”
    “It’s the Century of the Cobra. Not the Fruitbat.”
    “Whatever,” said Dil irritably. He stared miserably into his mug. That was the trouble now, he reflected. You had to start remembering what century it was.
    He glared at a tray of canapes. That was the thing these days. Everyone fiddling about…
    He picked up an olive and turned it over and over in his fingers.
    “Can’t say I’d feel the same about the old job, mind,” said Gern, draining the jug, “but I bet you were proud, master—Dil, I mean. You know, when all your stitching held up like that.”
    Dil, his eyes not leaving the olive, reached dreamily down to his belt and grasped one of his smaller knives for intricate jobs.
    “I said, you must have felt very sorry it was all over,” said Gern.
    Dil swiveled around to get more light, and breathed heavily as he concentrated.
    “Still, you’ll get over it,” said Gern. “The important thing is not to let it prey on your mind—”
    “Put this stone somewhere,” said Dil.
    “Sorry?”
    “Put this stone somewhere,” said Dil.
    Gern shrugged, and took it out of his fingers.
    “Right,” said Dil, his voice suddenly vibrant with purpose. “Now pass me a piece of red pepper…”

    And the sun shone on the delta, that little infinity of reed beds and mud banks where the Djel was laying down the silt of the continent. Wading birds bobbed for food in the green maze of stems, and billions of zig-zag midges danced over the brackish water. Here at least time, had always passed, as the delta breathed twice daily the cold, fresh water of the tide.
    It was coming in now, the foam-crested cusp of it trickling between the reeds.
    Here and there soaked and ancient bandages unwound, wriggled for a while like incredibly old snakes and then, with the minimum of fuss, dissolved.

    T HIS I S M OST I RREGULAR .
    We’re sorry. It’s not our fault .
    H OW M ANY O F Y OU A RE T HERE ?
    More than 1,300, I’m afraid .
    V ERY W ELL , T HEN . P LEASE F ORM A N O RDERLY Q UEUE .

    You Bastard was regarding his empty hay rack.
    It represented a sub-array in the general cluster “hay,” containing arbitrary values between zero and K.
    It didn’t have any hay in it. It might in fact have a negative value of hay in it, but to the hungry stomach the difference between no hay and minus-hay was not of particular interest.
    It didn’t matter how he worked it out, the answer was always the same. It was an equation of classical simplicity. It had a certain clean elegance which he was not, currently, in a position to admire.
    You Bastard felt ill-used and hard done by. There was nothing particularly unusual about this, however, since that is the normal state of mind for a camel. He knelt patiently while Teppic packed the saddlebags.
    “We’ll avoid Ephebe,” Teppic said, ostensibly to the camel. “We’ll go up the end of the Circle Sea, perhaps to Quirm or over the Ramtops. There’s all sorts of places. Maybe we’ll even look for a few of those cities, eh? I expect you’d like that.”
    It’s a mistake trying to cheer up camels. You may as well drop meringues into a black hole.
    The door at the far end of the stable swung open. It was a priest. He looked rather flustered. The priests had been doing a lot of unaccustomed running around today.
    “Er,” he began. “Her majesty commands you not to leave the kingdom.”
    He coughed.
    He said, “Is there a reply?”
    Teppic considered. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so.”
    “So I shall tell her that you will be attending on her presently, shall I?” said the priest hopefully.
    “No.”
    “It’s all very well for you to say,” said the priest sourly, and slunk off.
    He was replaced a few minutes later by Koomi, very red in the face.
    “Her majesty requests that you do not leave the kingdom,” he said.
    Teppic climbed onto You Bastard’s back, and tapped the camel lightly with a prod.
    “She really means it,” said Koomi.
    “I’m sure she does.”
    “She could have you thrown to the sacred crocodiles, you know.”
    “I haven’t seen many of them around today. How are they?” said Teppic, and gave the camel another thump.
    He rode out into the knife-edged daylight and along the packed-earth streets, which time had turned into a surface harder than stone. They