‘Is that you, lad?’ he ventured.
‘Is that you, Dad?’
‘Yes,’ said Ptaclusp.
‘It’s me, Dad.’
‘I’m glad it’s you, Son.’
‘Can you see anything?’
‘No. It’s all mist and fog.’
‘Thank the gods for that, I thought it was me.’
‘It is you, isn’t it? You said.’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘Is your brother all right?’
‘I’ve got him safe in my pocket, Dad.’
‘Good. So long as nothing’s happened to him.’
They inched forward, clambering over lumps of masonry they could barely see.
‘Something exploded, Dad,’ said IIb, slowly. ‘I think it was the pyramid.’
Ptaclusp rubbed the top of his head, where two tons of flying rock had come within a sixteenth of an inch of fitting him for one of his own pyramids. ‘It was that dodgy cement we bought from Merco the Ephebian, I expect—’
‘I think this was a bit worse than a moody lintel, Dad,’ said IIb. ‘In fact, I think it was a lot worse.’
‘It looked a bit wossname, a bit on the sandy side—’
‘I think you should find somewhere to sit down, Dad,’ said IIb, as kindly as possible. ‘Here’s Two-Ay. Hang on to him.’
He crept on alone, climbing over a slab of what felt very suspiciously like black marble. What he wanted, he decided, was a priest. They had to be useful for something, and this seemed the sort of time one might need one. For solace, or possibly, he felt obscurely, to beat his head in with a rock.
What he found instead was someone on their hands and knees, coughing. IIb helped him — it was definitely a him, he’d been briefly afraid it might be an it — and sat him on another lump of, yes, almost certainly marble.
‘Are you a priest?’ he said, fumbling in the rubble.
‘I’m Dil. Chief embalmer,’ the figure muttered.
‘Ptaclusp IIb, paracosmic archi—’ IIb began and then, suspecting that architects were not going to be too popular around here for a while, quickly corrected himself. ‘I’m an engineer,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Don’t know. What happened?’
‘I think the pyramid exploded,’ IIb volunteered.
‘Are we dead?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. You’re walking and talking, after all.’
Dil shivered. ‘That’s no guideline, take it from me. What’s an engineer?’
‘Oh, a builder of aqueducts,’ said IIb quickly. ‘They’re the coming thing, you know.’
Dil stood up, a little shakily.
‘I,’ he said, ‘need a drink. Let’s find the river.’
They found Teppic first.
He was clinging to a small, truncated pyramid section that had made a moderate-sized crater when it landed.
‘I know him,’ said IIb. ‘He’s the lad who was on top of the pyramid. That’s ridiculous, how could he survive that?’
‘Why’s there all corn sprouting out of it, too?’ wondered Dil.
‘I mean, perhaps there’s some kind of effect if you’re right in the centre of the flare, or something,’ said IIb, thinking aloud. ‘A sort of calm area or something, like in the middle of a whirlpool—’ He reached instinctively for his wax tablet, and then stopped himself. Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with. ‘Is he dead?’ he said.
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Dil, stepping back. He’d been running through his mind the alternative occupations now open to him. Upholstery sounded attractive. At least chairs didn’t get up and walk after you’d stuffed them.
IIb bent over the body.
‘Look what he’s got in his hand,’ he said, gently bending back the fingers. ‘It’s a piece of melted metal. What’s he got that for?’
… Teppic dreamed.
He saw seven fat cows and seven thin cows, and one of them was riding a bicycle.
He saw some camels, singing, and the song straightened out the wrinkles in reality.
He saw a finger write on the wall of a pyramid: Going forth is easy. Going back requires (cont. on next wall) …
He walked around the pyramid, where the finger continued: An effort of will, because it is much harder. Thank you.
Teppic considered this, and it occurred to him that there was one thing left to do which he had not done. He’d never known how to before, but now he could see that it was just numbers, arranged in a special way. Everything that was magical was just a way of describing the world in words it couldn’t ignore.
He gave a grunt of effort.
There was a brief moment of speed.
Dil and IIb looked around as long shafts of light sparkled through the mists and dust, turning the landscape into old gold.
And the sun came up.
The sergeant cautiously opened the hatch in the horse’s belly. When the expected flurry of spears did not materialize he ordered Autocue to let out the rope ladder, climbed down it, and looked across the chill morning desert.
The new recruit followed him down and stood, hopping from one sandal to another, on sand that was nearly freezing now and would be frying by lunchtime.
‘There,’ said the sergeant, pointing, ‘see the Tsortean lines, lad?’
‘Looks like a row of wooden horses to me, sergeant,’ said Autocue. ‘The one on the end’s on rockers.’
‘That’ll be the officers. Huh. Those Tsorteans must think we’re simple.’ The sergeant stamped some life into his legs, took a few breaths of fresh air, and walked back to the ladder.
‘Come on, lad,’ he said.
‘Why’ve we got to go back up there?’
The sergeant paused, his foot on a rope rung.
‘Use some common, laddie. They’re not going to come and take our horses if they see us hanging around outside, are they? Stands to reason.’
‘You sure they’re going to come, then?’ said Autocue. The sergeant frowned at him.
‘Look, soldier,’ he said, ‘anyone bloody stupid enough to think we’re going to drag a lot of horses full of soldiers back to our city is certainly daft enough to drag ours all the way back to theirs. QED.’
‘QED, sarge?’
‘It means get back up the bloody ladder, lad.’
Autocue saluted. ‘Permission to be excused first, sarge?’
‘Excused what?’
‘Excused, sarge,’ said Autocue, a shade desperately. ‘I mean, it’s a bit cramped in the horse, sarge, if you know what I mean.’
‘You’re going to have to learn a bit of will power if you want to stay in the horse soldiers, boy. You know that?’
‘Yes, sarge,’ said Autocue miserably.
‘You’ve got one minute.’
‘Thanks, sarge.’
When the hatch closed above him Autocue sidled over to one of the horse’s massive legs and put it to a use for which it wasn’t originally intended.
And it was while he was staring vaguely ahead, lost in the Zen-like contemplation which occurs at moments like this, that there was a faint pop in the air and an entire valley opened up in front of him.{46}
It’s not the sort of thing that ought to happen to a thoughtful lad. Especially one who has to wash his own uniform.
A breeze from the sea blew into the kingdom, hinting at, no, positively roaring suggestions of salt, shellfish and sun-soaked tidelines. A few rather puzzled seabirds wheeled over the necropolis, where the wind scurried among the fallen masonry and covered with sand the memorials to ancient kings, and the birds said more with a simple bowel movement than Ozymandias ever managed to say.{47}
The wind had a cool, not unpleasant edge to it. The people out repairing the damage caused by the gods felt an urge to turn their faces towards it, as fish in a pond turn towards an influx of clear, fresh water.