Pyramids

down; Chidder’s were already in position.
    Below them, pouring darkly across the dehydrated mud, the Ankh was rising.

    Dios, First Minister and high priest among high priests, wasn’t a naturally religious man. It wasn’t a desirable quality in a high priest, it affected your judgment, made you unsound . Start believing in things and the whole business became a farce.
    Not that he had anything against belief. People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people. The gods were necessary. He just required that they stayed out of the way and let him get on with things.
    Mind you, it was a blessing that he had the looks for it. If your genes saw fit to give you a tall frame, a bald head and a nose you could plow rocks with, they probably had a definite aim in mind.
    He instinctively distrusted people to whom religion came easily. The naturally religious, he felt, were unstable and given to wandering in the desert and having revelations—as if the gods would lower themselves to that sort of thing. And they never got anything done. They started thinking that rituals weren’t important. They started thinking that you could talk to the gods direct. Dios knew, with the kind of rigid and unbending certainty you could pivot the world on, that the gods of Djelibeybi liked ritual as much as anyone else. After all, a god who was against ritual would be like a fish who was against water.
    He sat on the steps of the throne with his staff across his knees, and passed on the king’s orders. The fact that they were not currently being issued by any king was not a problem. Dios had been high priest now for, well, more years than he cared to remember, he knew quite clearly what orders a sensible king would be giving, and he gave them.
    Anyway, the Face of the Sun was on the throne, and that was what mattered. It was a solid gold, head-enveloping mask, to be worn by the current ruler on all public occasions; its expression, to the sacrilegious, was one of good-natured constipation. For thousands of years it had symbolized kingship in Djelibeybi. It had also made it very difficult to tell kings apart.
    This was extremely symbolic as well, although no one could remember what of.
    There was a lot of that sort of thing in the Old Kingdom. The staff across his knees, for example, with its very symbolic snakes entwined symbolically around an allegorical camel prod. The people believed this gave the high priests power over the gods and the dead, but this was probably a metaphor, i.e., a lie.
    Dios shifted position.
    “Has the king been ushered to the Room of Going Forth?” he said.
    The circle of lesser high priests nodded.
    “Dil the embalmer is attending upon him at this instant, O Dios.”
    “Very well. And the builder of pyramids has been instructed?”
    Hoot Koomi, high priest of Khefin, the Two-Faced God of Gateways, stepped forward.
    “I took the liberty of attending to that myself, O Dios,” he purred.
    Dios tapped his fingers on his staff. “Yes,” he said, “I have no doubt that you did.”
    It was widely expected by the priesthood that Koomi would be the one to succeed Dios in the event of Dios ever actually dying, although hanging around waiting for Dios to die had never seemed to be a rewarding occupation. The only dissenting opinion was that of Dios himself, who, if he had any friends, would probably have confided in them certain conditions that would need to apply first, viz., blue moons, aerial pigs and he, Dios, being seen in Hell. He would probably have added that the only difference between Koomi and a sacred crocodile was the crocodile’s basic honesty of purpose.
    “Very well,” he said.
    “If I may remind your lordship?” said Koomi. The faces of the other priests went a nice safe blank as Dios glared.
    “Yes, Koomi?”
    “The prince, O Dios. Has he been summoned?”
    “No,” said Dios.
    “Then how will he know?” said Koomi.
    “He will know,” said Dios firmly.
    “How will this be?”
    “He will know . And now you are all dismissed. Go away. See to your gods!”
    They scurried out, leaving Dios alone on the steps. It had been his accustomed position for so long that he’d polished a groove in the stonework, into which he fitted exactly.
    Of course the prince would know. It was part of the neatness of things. But in the grooves of his mind, ground deep by the years of ritual and due observance, Dios detected a certain uneasiness. It was not at home in there.