Pyramids

long day.”
    Dios bowed as though he was hinged in the middle. Teppic had noticed that Dios had at least fifty finely-tuned ways of bowing, each one conveying subtle shades of meaning. This one looked like No. 3, I Am Your Humble Servant.
    “And a very good day it was too, if I may say so, sire.”
    Teppic was lost for words. “You thought so?” he said.
    “The cloud effects at dawn were particularly effective.”
    “They were? Oh. Do I have to do anything about the sunset?”
    “Your majesty is pleased to joke,” said Dios. “Sunsets happen by themselves, sire. Haha.”
    “Haha,” echoed Teppic.
    Dios cracked his knuckles. “The trick is in the sunrise,” he said.
    The crumbling scrolls of Knot said that the great orange sun was eaten every evening by the sky goddess, What, who saved one pip in time to grow a fresh sun for next morning. And Dios knew that this was so.
    The Book of Staying in The Pit said that the sun was the Eye of Yay, toiling across the sky each day in His endless search for his toenails. * And Dios knew that this was so.
    The secret rituals of the Smoking Mirror held that the sun was in fact a around hole in the spinning blue soap bubble of the goddess Nesh, opening into the fiery real world beyond, and the stars were the holes that the rain comes through. And Dios knew that this, also, was so.
    Folk myth said the sun was a ball of fire which circled the world every day, and that the world itself was carried through the everlasting void on the back of an enormous turtle. And Dios also knew that this was so, although it gave him a bit of trouble.
    And Dios knew that Net was the Supreme God, and that Fon was the Supreme God, and so were Hast, Set, Bin, Sot, Io, Dhek, and Ptooie; that Herpetine Triskeles alone ruled the world of the dead, and so did Syncope, and Silur the Catfish-Headed God, and Orexis-Nupt.
    Dios was maximum high priest to a national religion that had fermented and accreted and bubbled for more than seven thousand years and never threw a god away in case it turned out to be useful. He knew that a great many mutually-contradictory things were all true. If they were not, then ritual and belief were as nothing, and if they were nothing, then the world did not exist. As a result of this sort of thinking, the priests of the Djel could give mindroom to a collection of ideas that would make even a quantum mechanic give in and hand back his toolbox.
    Dios’s staff knocked echoes from the stones as he limped along in the darkness down little-frequented passages until he emerged on a small jetty. Untying the boat there, the high priest climbed in with difficulty, unshipped the oars and pushed himself out into the turbid waters of the dark Djel.
    His hands and feet felt too cold. Foolish, foolish. He should have done this before.
    The boat jerked slowly into midstream as full night rolled over the valley. On the far bank, in response to the ancient laws, the pyramids started to light the sky.

    Lights also burned late in the house of Ptaclusp Associates, Necropolitan Builders to the Dynasties. The father and his twin sons were hunched over the huge wax designing tray, arguing.
    “It’s not as if they ever pay ,” said Ptaclusp IIa. “I mean it’s not just a case of not being able to, they don’t seem to have grasped the idea . At least dynasties like Tsort pay up within a hundred years or so. Why didn’t you—”
    “We’ve built pyramids along the Djel for the last three thousand years,” said his father stiffly, “and we haven’t lost by it, have we? No, we haven’t. Because the other kingdoms look to the Djel, they say there’s a family that really knows its pyramids, conny-sewers, they say we’ll have what they’re having, if you please, with knobs on. Anyway, they’re real royalty,” he added, “not like some of the ones you get these days—here today, gone next millennium. They’re half gods, too. You don’t expect real royalty to pay its way. That’s one of the signs of real royalty, not having any money.”
    “You don’t get more royal than them, then. You’d need a new word,” said IIa. “ We’re nearly royal in that case.”
    “You don’t understand business, my son. You think it’s all bookkeeping. Well, it isn’t.”
    “ It’s a question of mass. And the power to weight ratio. ”
    They both glared at Ptaclusp IIb, who was sitting staring at the sketches. He was turning his stylus over and over in his hands, which were trembling