Young Autocue stuttered: 'What'll happen now, sergeant?'
The sergeant moved a foot tentatively. The atmosphere would have induced claustrophobia in a sardine.
'Well, lad. They'll find us, see, and be so impressed they'll drag us all the way back to their city, and then when it's dark we'll leap out and put them to the sword. Or put the sword to them. One or the other. And then we'll sack the city, bum the walls and sow the ground with salt. You remember, lad, I showed you on Friday.'
'Oh.'
Moisture dripped from a score of brows. Several of the men were trying to compose a letter home, dragging styli across wax that was close to melting.
'And then what will happen, sergeant?'
'Why, lad, then we'll go home heroes.'
'Oh.'
The older soldiers sat stolidly looking at the wooden walls. Autocue shifted uneasily, still worried about something.
'My mum said to come back with my shield or on it, sergeant,' he said.
'Jolly good, lad. That's the spirit.'
'We will be all right, though. Won't we, sergeant?'
The sergeant stared into the fetid darkness.
After a while, someone started to play the harmonica.
Ptaclusp half-turned his head from the scene and a voice by his ear said, 'You're the pyramid builder, aren't you?'
Another figure had joined them in their bolthole, one who was black-clad and moved in a way that made a cat's tread sound like a one-man band.
Ptaclusp nodded, unable to speak. He had had enough shocks for one day.
'Well, switch it off. Switch it off now.'
IIb leaned over.
'Who're you?' he said.
'My name is Teppic.'
'What, like the king?'
'Yes. Just like the king. Now turn it off.'
'It's a pyramid! You can't turn off pyramids!' said IIb.
'Well, then, make it flare.'
'We tried that last night.' IIb pointed to the shattered capstone. 'Unroll Two-Ay, dad.'
Teppic regarded the flat brother.
'It's some sort of wall poster, is it?' he said eventually.
IIb looked down. Teppic saw the movement, and looked down also; he was ankle-deep in green sprouts.
'Sorry,' he said. 'I can't seem to shake it off.'
'It can be dreadful,' said IIb frantically. 'I know how it is, I had this verruca once, nothing would shift it.'
Teppic hunkered down by the cracked stone.
'This thing,' he said. 'What's the significance? I mean, it's coated with metal. Why?'
'There's got to be a sharp point for the flare,' said IIb.
'Is that all? This is gold, isn't it?'
'It's electrum. Gold and silver alloy. The capstone has got to be made of electrum.'
Teppic peeled back the foil.
'This isn't all metal,' he said mildly.
'Yes. Well,' said Ptaclusp. 'We found, er, that foil works just as well.'
'Couldn't you use something cheaper? Like steel?' Ptaclusp sneered. It hadn't been a good day, sanity was a distant memory, but there were certain facts he knew for a fact.
'Wouldn't last for more than a year or two,' he said. 'What with the dew and so forth. You'd lose the point. Wouldn't last more than two or three hundred times.'
Teppic leaned his head against the pyramid. It was cold, and it hummed. He thought he could hear, under the throbbing, a faint rising tone.
The pyramid towered over him. (IIb could have told him that this was because the walls sloped in at precisely 56 degrees, and an effect known as battering made the pyramid loom even higher than it really was. He probably would have used words like perspective and virtual height as well.
The black marble was glassy smooth. The masons had done well. The cracks between each silky panel were hardly wide enough to insert a knife. But wide enough, all the same.
'How about once?' he said.
Koomi chewed his fingernails distractedly.
'Fire,' he said. 'That'd stop them. They're very inflammable. Or water. They'd probably dissolve.'
'Some of them were destroying pyramids,' said the high priest of Juf, the Cobra-Headed God of Papyrus.
'People always come back from the dead in such a bad temper,' said another priest.
Koomi watched the approaching army in mounting bewilderment.
'Where's Dios?' he said.
The old high priest was pushed to the front of the crowd.
'What shall I say to them?' Koomi demanded.
It would be wrong to say that Dios smiled. It wasn't an action he often felt called upon to perform. But his mouth creased at the edges and his eyes went half-hooded.
'You could tell them,' he said, 'that new times demand new men. You could tell them that it is time to make way for younger people with fresh ideas. You could tell them that they are outmoded. You could tell them all that.'
'They'll kill me!'
'Would they be that anxious for your eternal company, I wonder?'
'You're still high priest!'
'Why don't you talk to them?' said Dios. 'Don't forget to tell them that they are to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Century of the Cobra.' He handed Koomi the staff. 'Or whatever this century is called,' he added.
Koomi felt the eyes of the assembled brethren and sistren upon him. He cleared his throat, adjusted his robe, and turned to face the mummies.
They were chanting something, one word, over and over again. He couldn't quite make it out, but it seemed to have worked them up into a rage.
He raised the staff, and the carved wooden snakes looked unusually alive in the flat light.
The gods of the Disc — and here is meant the great consensus gods, who really do exist in Dunmanifestin, their semi-detached Valhalla on the world's impossibly high central mountain, where they pass the time observing the petty antics of mortal men and organising petitions about how the influx of the Ice Giants has lowered property values in the celestial regions — the gods of Disc have always been fascinated by humanity's incredible ability to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time.
They're not talking here of such easy errors as 'It's perfectly safe', or 'The ones that growl a lot don't bite', but of simple little sentences which are injected into difficult situations with the same general effect as a steel bar dropped into the bearings of a 3,000 rpm, 660 megawatt steam turbine.
And connoisseurs of mankind's tendency to put his pedal extremity where his tongue should be are agreed that when the judges' envelopes are opened then Hoot Koomi's fine performance in 'Begone from this place, foul shades' will be a contender for all— time bloody stupid greeting.
The front row of ancestors halted, and were pushed forward a little by the press of those behind.
King Teppicymon XXVII, who by common consent among the other twenty-six Teppicymons was spokesman, lurched on alone and picked up the trembling Koomi by his arms.
