Pyramids

how terrible, but Ptaclusp knew his man and they probably involved crocodiles. They’d be pretty terrible, all right…
    He stared at the flickering light on the long avenues of statues, including the one of bloody Hat the Vulture-Headed God of Unexpected Guests, bought on the off-chance years ago and turned down by the client owing to not being up to snuff in the beak department and unshiftable ever since even at a discount.
    The biggest pyramid ever…
    And after you’d knocked your pipes out seeing to it that the nobility had their tickets to eternity, were you allowed to turn your expertise homeward, i.e., a bijou pyramidette for self and Mrs. Ptaclusp, to ensure safe delivery into the Netherworld? Of course not. Even dad had only been allowed to have a mastaba, although it was one of the best on the river, he had to admit, that red-veined marble had been ordered all the way from Howonderland, a lot of people had asked for the same, it had been good for business, that’s how dad would have liked it…
    The biggest pyramid ever…
    And they’d never remember who was under it.
    It didn’t matter if they called it Ptaclusp’s Folly or Ptaclusp’s Glory. They’d call it Ptaclusp’s .
    He surfaced from this pool of thought to hear his sons still arguing.
    If this was his posterity, he’d take his chances with 600-ton limestone blocks. At least they were quiet.
    “Shut up, the pair of you,” he said.
    They stopped, and sat down, grumbling.
    “I’ve made up my mind,” he said.
    IIb doodled fitfully with his stylus. IIa strummed his abacus.
    “We’re going to do it,” said Ptaclusp, and strode out of the room. “And any son who doesn’t like it will be cast into the outer darkness where there is a wailing and a crashing of teeth,” he called over his shoulder.
    The two brothers, left to themselves, glowered at each other.
    At last IIa said, “What does ‘quantum’ mean, anyway?”
    IIb shrugged. “It means add another nought,” he said.
    “Oh,” said IIa, “is that all?”

    All along the river valley of the Djel the pyramids were flaring silently into the night, discharging the accumulated power of the day.
    Great soundless flames erupted from their capstones and danced upward, jagged as lightning, cold as ice.
    For hundreds of miles the desert glittered with the constellations of the dead, the aurora of antiquity. But along the valley of the Djel the lights ran together in one solid ribbon of fire.

    It was on the floor and it had a pillow at one end. It had to be a bed.
    Teppic found he was doubting it as he tossed and turned, trying to find some part of the mattress that was prepared to meet him halfway. This is stupid, he thought, I grew up on beds like this. And pillows carved out of rock. I was born in this palace, this is my heritage, I must be prepared to accept it…
    I must order a proper bed and a feather pillow from Ankh, first thing in the morning. I, the king, have said this shall be done.
    He turned over, his head hitting the pillow with a thud. And plumbing. What a great idea that was. It was amazing what you could do with a hole in the ground.
    Yes, plumbing. And bloody doors. Teppic definitely wasn’t used to having several attendants waiting on his will all the time, so performing his ablutions before bed had been extremely embarrassing. And the people, too. He was definitely going to get to know the people. It was wrong, all this skulking in palaces.
    And how was a fellow supposed to sleep with the sky over the river glowing like a firework?
    Eventually sheer exhaustion wrestled his body into some zone between sleeping and waking, and mad images stalked across his eyeballs.
    There was the shame of his ancestors when future archaeologists translated the as-yet unpainted frescoes of his reign: “‘Squiggle, constipated eagle, wiggly line, hippo’s bottom, squiggle’: And in the year of the Cycle of Cephnet the Sun God Teppic had Plumbing Installed and Scorned the Pillows of his Forebears.”
    He dreamed of Khuft—huge, bearded, speaking in thunder and lightning, calling down the wrath of the heavens on this descendant who was betraying the noble past.
    Dios floated past his vision, explaining that as a result of an edict passed several thousand years ago it was essential that he marry a cat.
    Various-headed gods vied for his attention, explaining details of godhood, while in the background a distant voice tried to attract his attention and screamed something about not