sands, and the blocks were hardly even masonry; they were no more than roughly squared boulders. It had clearly been built long before the Kingdom got the hang of pyramids. It was barely more than a pile.
Hacked into the doorseal, angular and deep, were the hieroglyphs of the Kingdom: KHUFT HAD ME MADE. THE FIRST.
Several ancestors clustered around it.
'Oh dear,' said the king. 'This might be going too far.'
'The First,' whispered Dil. 'The First into the Kingdom: No— one here before but hippos and crocodiles. From inside that pyramid seventy centuries look out at us. Older than anything-'
'Yes, yes, all right,' said Teppicymon. 'No need to get carried away. He was a man, just like all of us.'
''AndKhuftthecamelherderlookeduponthevalley. . .'' Dil began.
'After seven thousand yeares, he wyll be wantyng to look upon yt again,' said Ashk-ur-men-tep bluntly.
'Even so,' said the king. 'It does seem a bit . .
'The dead are equal,' said Ashk-ur-men-tep. 'You, younge manne. Calle hym forth.'
'Who, me?' said Gern. 'But he was the Fir-'
'Yes, we've been through all that,' said Teppicymon. 'Do it. Everyone's getting impatient. So is he, I expect.'
Gern rolled his eyes, and hefted the hammer. Just as it was about to hiss down on the seal Dil darted forward, causing Gern to dance wildly across the ground in a groin-straining effort to avoid interring the hammer in his master's head.
'It's open!' said Dil. 'Look! The seal just swings aside!'
'Youe meane he iss oute?'
Teppicymon tottered forward and grabbed the door of the pyramid. It moved quite easily. Then he examined the stone beneath it. Derelict and half-covered though it was, someone had taken care to keep a pathway clear to the pyramid. And the stone was quite worn away, as by the passage of many feet.
This was not, by the nature of things, the normal state of affairs for a pyramid. The whole point was that once you were in, you were in.
The mummies examined the worn entrance and creaked at one another in surprise. One of the very ancient ones, who was barely holding himself together, made a noise like deathwatch beetle finally conquering a rotten tree.
'What'd he say?' said Teppicymon.
The mummy of Ashk-ur-men-tep translated. 'He saide yt ys Spooky,' he croaked.
The late king nodded. 'I'm going in to have a look. You two live ones, you come with me.'
Dil's face fell.
'Oh, come on, man,' snapped Teppicymon, forcing the door back. 'Look, I'm not frightened. Show a bit of backbone. Everyone else is.'
'But we'll need some light,' protested Dil.
The nearest mummies lurched back sharply as Gern timidly took a tinderbox out of his pocket.
'We'll need something to burn,' said Dil. The mummies shuffled further back, muttering.
'There's torches in here,' said Teppicymon, his voice slightly muffled. 'And you can keep them away from me, lad.'
It was a small pyramid, mazeless, without traps, just a stone passage leading upwards. Tremulously, expecting at any moment to see unnamed terrors leap out at them, the embalmers followed the king into a small, square chamber that smelled of sand. The roof was black with soot.
There was no sarcophagus within, no mummy case, no terror named or nameless. The centre of the floor was occupied by a raised block, with a blanket and a pillow on it.
Neither of them looked particularly old. It was almost disappointing.
Gern craned to look around.
'Quite nice, really,' he said. 'Comfy.'
'No,' said Dil.
'Hey, master king, look here,' said Gern, trotting over to one of the walls. 'Look. Someone's been scratching things. Look, all little lines all over the wall.'
'And this wall,' said the king, 'and the floor. Someone's been counting. Every ten have been crossed through, you see. Someone's been counting things. Lots of things.' He stood back.
'What things?' said Dil, looking behind him.
'Very strange,' said the king. He leaned forward. 'You can barely make out the inscriptions underneath.'
'Can you read it, king?' said Gern, showing what Dil considered to be unnecessary enthusiasm.
'No. It's one of the really ancient dialects. Can't make out a blessed hieroglyph,' said Teppicymon. 'I shouldn't think there's a single person alive today who can read it.'
'That's a shame,' said Gern.
'True enough,' said the king, and sighed. They stood in gloomy silence.
'So perhaps we could ask one of the dead ones?' said Gern.
'Er. Gern,' said Dil, backing away.
The king slapped the apprentice on the back, pitching him forward.
'Damn clever idea!' he said. 'We'll just go and get one of the real early ancestors. Oh.' He sagged. 'That's no good. No-one will be able to understand them-'
'Gern!' said Dil, his eyes growing wider.
'No, it's all right, king,' said Gern, enjoying the new-found freedom of thought, 'because, the reason being, everyone understands someone, all we have to do is sort them out.'
'Bright lad. Bright lad,' said the king.
'Gern!'
They both looked at him in astonishment.
'You all right, master?' said Gern. 'You've gone all white.'
'The t-' stuttered Dil, rigid with terror.
'The what, master?'
'The t— look at the t-'
'He ought to have a lie down,' said the king. 'I know his sort. The artistic type. Highly strung.'
Dil took a deep breath.
'Look at the sodding torch, Gern!' he shouted.
They looked.
Without any fuss, turning its black ashes into dry straw, the torch was burning backwards.
The Old Kingdom lay stretched out before Teppic, and it was unreal.
He looked at You Bastard, who had stuck his muzzle in a wayside spring and was making a noise like the last drop in the milkshake glass27. You Bastard looked real enough. There's nothing like a camel for looking really solid. But the landscape had an uncertain quality, as if it hadn't quite made up its mind to be there or not.
Except for the Great Pyramid. It squatted in the middle distance as real as the pin that nails a butterfly to a board. It was contriving to look extremely solid, as though it was sucking all the solidity out of the landscape into itself.
Well, he was here. Wherever here was.
How did you kill a pyramid?
And what would happen if you did?
He was working on the hypothesis that everything would snap back into place. Into the Old Kingdom's pool of recirculated time.
He watched the gods for a while, wondering what the hell they were, and how it didn't seem to matter. They looked no more real than the land over which they strode, about incomprehensible errands of their own. The world was no more than a dream. Teppic felt incapable of surprise. If seven fat cows had wandered by, he wouldn't have given them a second glance.
