Pyramids

wanting to be buried under a load of stone. But he had no time to concentrate on this, because he saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, one of them playing a trombone.
    But that was an old dream, he dreamed that one nearly every night…
    And then there was a man firing arrows at a tortoise…
    And then he was walking over the desert and found a tiny pyramid, only a few inches high. A wind sprang up and blew away the sand, only now it wasn’t a wind, it was the pyramid rising, sand tumbling down its gleaming sides…
    And it grew bigger and bigger, bigger than the world, so that at last the pyramid was so big that the whole world was a speck in the center.
    And in the center of the pyramid, something very strange happened.
    And the pyramid grew smaller, taking the world with it, and vanished…
    Of course, when you’re a pharaoh, you get a very high class of obscure dream.

    Another day dawned, courtesy of the king, who was-curled up on the bed and using his rolled-up clothes as a pillow. Around the stone maze of the palace the servants of the kingdom began to wake up.
    Dios’s boat slid gently through the water and bumped into the jetty. Dios climbed out and hurried into the palace, bounding up the steps three at a time and rubbing his hands together at the thought of a fresh day laid out before him, every hour and ritual ticking neatly into place. So much to organize, so much to be needed for…

    The chief sculptor and maker of mummy cases folded up his measure.
    “You done a good job there, Master Dil,” he said.
    Dil nodded. There was no false modesty between craftsmen.
    The sculptor gave him a nudge. “What a team, eh?” he said. “You pickle ’em, I crate ’em.”
    Dil nodded, but rather more slowly. The sculptor looked down at the wax oval in his hands.
    “Can’t say I think much of the death mask, mind,” he said.
    Gern, who was working hard on the corner slab on one of the Queen’s late cats, which he had been allowed to do all by himself, looked up in horror.
    “I done it very careful,” he said sulkily.
    “That’s the whole point,” said the sculptor.
    “I know,” said Dil sadly, “it’s the nose, isn’t it.”
    “It was more the chin.”
    “And the chin.”
    “Yes.”
    “Yes.”
    They looked in gloomy silence at the waxen visage of the pharaoh. So did the pharaoh.
    “ Nothing wrong with my chin. ”
    “You could put a beard on it,” said Dil eventually. “It’d cover a lot of it, would a beard.”
    “There’s still the nose.”
    “You could take half an inch off that. And do something with the cheekbones.”
    “Yes.”
    “Yes.”
    Gern was horrified. “That’s the face of our late king you’re talking about,” he said. “You can’t do that sort of thing! Anyway, people would notice.” He hesitated. “Wouldn’t they?”
    The two craftsmen eyed one another.
    “Gern,” said Dil patiently, “certainly they’ll notice. But they won’t say anything. They expect us to, er, improve matters.”
    “After all,” said the chief sculptor cheerfully, “you don’t think they’re going to step up and say ‘It’s all wrong, he really had a face like a short-sighted chicken,’ do you?”
    “ Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed, I must say. ” The pharaoh went and sat by the cat. It seemed that people only had respect for the dead when they thought the dead were listening.
    “I suppose,” said the apprentice, with some uncertainty, “he did look a bit ugly compared to the frescoes.”
    “That’s the point, isn’t it,” said Dil meaningfully.
    Gern’s big honest spotty face changed slowly, like a cratered landscape with clouds passing across it. It was dawning on him that this came under the heading of initiation into ancient craft secrets.
    “You mean even the painters change the—” he began.
    Dil frowned at him.
    “We don’t talk about it,” he said.
    Gern tried to force his features into an expression of worthy seriousness.
    “Oh,” he said. “Yes. I see, master.”
    The sculptor clapped him on the back.
    “You’re a bright lad, Gern,” he said. “You catch on. After all, it’s bad enough being ugly when you’re alive. Think how terrible it would be to be ugly in the Netherworld.”
    King Teppicymon XXVII shook his head. We all have to look alike when we’re alive, he thought, and now they make sure we’re identical when we’re dead. What a kingdom. He looked down and saw the soul of the late cat, which was washing