Teppic had strolled down the path to the waiting chariots, looking wistfully at the bustle around him, and paused to watch a group of workers who were dressing a corner piece. They froze when they felt his gaze on them, and stood sheepishly watching him.
“Well, well,” said Teppic, inspecting the stone, although all he knew about stonemasonry could have been chiseled on a sand grain. “What a splendid piece of rock.”
He turned to the nearest man, whose mouth fell open.
“You’re a stonemason, are you?” he said. “That must be a very interesting job.”
The man’s eyes bulged. He dropped his chisel. “Erk,” he said.
A hundred yards away Dios’s robes flapped around his legs as he pounded down the path. He grasped the hem and galloped along, sandals flapping.
“What’s your name?” said Teppic. “Aaaargle,” said the man, terrified.
“Well, jolly good,” said Teppic, and took his unresisting hand and shook it.
“Sire!” Dios bellowed. “No!”
And the mason spun away, holding his right hand by the wrist, fighting it, screaming…
Teppic gripped the arms of the throne and glared at the high priest.
“But it’s a gesture of fellowship, nothing more. Where I come from—”
“
Where you come from, sire, is here!
” thundered Dios.
“But, good grief, cutting it off? It’s too cruel!”
Dios stepped forward. Now his voice was back to its normal oil-smooth tones.
“Cruel, sire? But it will be done with precision and care, with drugs to take away the pain. He will certainly live.”
“But
why
?”
“I did explain, sire. He cannot use the hand again without defiling it. He is a devout man and knows this very well. You see, sire, you are a
god
, sire.”
“But
you
can touch me. So can the servants!”
“I am a priest, sire,” said Dios gently. “And the servants have special dispensation.”
Teppic bit his lip.
“This is barbaric,” he said.
Dios’s features did not move.
“It will not be done,” Teppic said. “I am the king. I forbid it to be done, do you understand?”
Dios bowed. Teppic recognized No. 49, Horrified Disdain.
“Your wish will certainly be done, O fountain of all wisdom. Although, of course, the man himself may take matters into, if you will excuse me, his own hands.”
“What do you mean?” snapped Teppic.
“Sire, if his colleagues had not stopped him he would have done it himself. With a chisel, I understand.”
Teppic stared at him and thought, I am a stranger in a familiar land.
“I see,” he said eventually.
He thought a little further.
“Then the—operation is to be done with all care, and the man is to be given a pension afterward, d’you see?”
“As you wish, sire.”
“A proper one, too.”
“Indeed, sire. A golden handshake, sire,” said Dios impassively.
“And perhaps we can find him some light job around the palace?”
“As a one-handed stonemason, sire?” Dios’s left eyebrow arched a fraction.
“As whatever, Dios.”
“Certainly, sire. As you wish. I will undertake to see if we are currently short-handed in any department.”
Teppic glared at him. “I
am
the king, you know,” he said sharply.
“The fact attends me with every waking hour, sire.”
“Dios?” said Teppic, as the high priest was leaving.
“Sire?”
“I ordered a feather bed from Ankh-Morpork some weeks ago. I suppose you would not know what became of it?”
Dios waved his hands in an expressive gesture.
“I gather, sire, that there is considerable pirate activity off the Khalian coast,” he said.
“Doubtless the pirates are also responsible for the non-appearance of the expert from the Guild of Plumbers and Dunnikindivers?”
*
Teppic said sourly.
“Yes, sire. Or possibly bandits, sire.”
“Or perhaps a giant two-headed bird swooped down and carried him off,” said Teppic.
“All things are possible, sire,” said the high priest, his face radiating politeness.
“You may go, Dios.”
“Sire. May I remind you, sire, that the emissaries from Tsort and Ephebe will be attending you at the fifth hour.”
“Yes. You may go.”
Teppic was left alone, or at least as alone as he ever was, which meant that he was all by himself except for two fan wavers, a butler, two enormous Howonder guards by the door, and a couple of handmaidens.
Oh, yes. Handmaidens. He hadn’t quite come to terms with the handmaidens yet. Presumably Dios chose them, as he seemed to oversee everything in the palace, and he had shown surprisingly good taste in the matter of, for example, olive skins, bosoms and legs. The clothing these two wore would between them have covered a small saucer. And this was odd, because the net effect was to turn them into two attractive and mobile pieces of furniture, as sexless as pillars. Teppic sighed with the recollection of women in Ankh-Morpork who could be clothed from neck to ankle in brocade and still cause a classroom full of boys to blush to the roots of their hair.
He reached down for the fruit bowl. One of the girls immediately grasped his hand, moved it gently aside, and took a grape.
“Please don’t peel it,” said Teppic. “The peel’s the best part. Full of nourishing vitamins and minerals. Only I don’t suppose you’ve heard about them, have you, they’ve only been invented recently,” he added, mainly to himself. “I mean, within the last seven thousand years,” he finished sourly.
So much for time flowing past, he thought glumly. It might do that everywhere else, but not here. Here it just piles up, like snow. It’s as though the pyramids slow us down, like those things they used on the boat, whatd’you-callem, sea anchors. Tomorrow here is just like yesterday, warmed over.
She peeled the grape anyway, while the snowflake seconds drifted down.
At the site of the Great Pyramid the huge blocks of stone floated into place like an explosion in reverse. They were
flowing
between the quarry and the site, drifting silently across the landscape above deep rectangular shadows.
“I’ve got to hand it to you,” said Ptaclusp to his son, as they stood side by side in the observation tower. “It’s astonishing. One day people will wonder how we did it.”
“All that business with the log rollers and the whips is old hat,” said IIb. “You can throw them away.” The young architect smiled, but there was a manic hint to the rictus.
It
was
astonishing. It was more astonishing than it ought to be. He kept getting the feeling that the pyramid was…
He shook himself mentally. He should be ashamed of that sort of thinking. You could get superstitious if you weren’t careful, in this job.
It was natural for things to form a pyramid—well, a cone, anyway. He’d experimented this morning. Grain, salt, sand…not water, though, that’d been a mistake. But a pyramid was only a neat cone, wasn’t it, a cone which had decided to be a bit tidier.
Perhaps he’d overdone it just a gnat on the paracosmic measurements?
His father slapped him on the back.
“Very well done,” he repeated. “You know, it almost looks as though it’s building itself!”
IIb yelped and bit his wrist, a childish trait that he always resorted to when he was nervous. Ptaclusp didn’t notice, because at that moment one of the foremen was running to the foot of the tower, waving his ceremonial measuring rod.
Ptaclusp leaned over.
“What?” he demanded.
“I said, please to come at once, O master!”
On the pyramid itself, on the working surface about halfway up, where some of the detailed work on the inner chambers was in progress, the word “impressive” was no longer appropriate. The word “terrifying” seemed to fit the bill.
Blocks were stacking up in the sky overhead in a giant, slow dance, passing and re-passing, their mahouts yelling at one another and at the luckless controllers down on the pyramid top, who were trying to shout instructions above the noise.
Ptaclusp waded into the cluster of workers around the center. Here, at least, there was silence. Dead silence.
“All right, all right,” he said. “What’s going…oh.”
Ptaclusp IIb peered over his father’s shoulder, and stuck his wrist in his mouth.
The thing was wrinkled. It was ancient. It clearly had once been a living thing. It lay on the slab like a very obscene prune.
“It was my lunch,” said the chief plasterer. “It was my bloody lunch. I was really looking forward to that apple.”
“But it can’t start yet,” whispered IIb. “It can’t form temporal nodes yet, I mean, how does it
know
it’s going to be a pyramid?”
“I put my hand down for it, and it felt just like…it felt pretty unpleasant,” the plasterer complained.
“And it’s a negative node, too,” added IIb. “We shouldn’t be getting them at
all
.”
“Is it still there?” said Ptaclusp, and added, “Tell me yes.”
“If more blocks have been set into position it won’t be,” said his son, looking around wildly. “As the center of mass changes, you see, the nodes will be pulled around.”
Ptaclusp pulled the young man to one side.
“What are you telling me now?” he demanded, in a camel whisper
*
“We ought to put a cap on it,” mumbled IIb. “Flare off the trapped time. Wouldn’t be any problems then…”
“How can we cap it? It isn’t damn well finished,” said Ptaclusp. “What have you been and gone and done? Pyramids don’t start accumulating until they’re finished. Until they’re
pyramids
, see? Pyramid energy, see? Named after pyramids. That’s why it’s called pyramid energy.”
“It must be something to do with the mass, or something,” the architect hazarded, “and the speed of construction. The time is getting trapped in the fabric. I mean, in theory you could get small nodes during construction, but they’d be so weak you wouldn’t notice; if you went and stood in one may be you’d become a few hours older or younger or—” he began to gabble.
“I recall when we did Kheneth XIV’s tomb the fresco painter said it took him two hours to do the painting in the Queen’s Room, and we said it was three days and fined him,” said Ptaclusp, slowly. “There was a lot of Guild fuss, I remember.”
“You just said that,” said IIb.
“Said what?”
“About the fresco painter. Just a moment ago.”
“No, I didn’t. You couldn’t have been listening,” said Ptaclusp.
“Could have sworn you did. Anyway, this is worse than that business,” said his son. “And it’s probably going to happen again.”
“We can expect more like it?”
“Yes,” said IIb. “We shouldn’t get negative nodes, but it looks as though we will. We can expect fast flows and reverse flows and probably even short loops. I’m afraid we can expect all kinds of temporal anomalies. We’d better get the men off.”
“I suppose you couldn’t work out a way we could get them to work in fast time and pay them for slow time?” said Ptaclusp. “It’s just a thought. Your brother’s bound to suggest it.”
“No! Keep everyone off! We’ll get the blocks in and cap it first!”
“All right, all right. I was just thinking out loud. As if we didn’t have enough problems…”
Ptaclusp waded into the cluster of workers around the center. Here, at least, there was silence. Dead silence.
“All right, all right,” he said. “What’s going…oh.”
Ptaclusp IIb peered over his father’s shoulder, and stuck his wrist in his mouth.
The thing was wrinkled. It was ancient. It clearly had once been a living thing. It lay on the slab like a very obscene prune.
“It was my lunch,” said the chief plasterer. “It was my bloody lunch. I was really looking forward to that apple.”
Ptaclusp hesitated. This all seemed very familiar. He’d had this feeling before. An overwhelming sensation of
reja vu
.
*
He met the horrified gaze of his son. Together, dreading what they might see, they turned around slowly.
They saw themselves standing behind themselves, bickering over something IIb was swearing that he had already heard.
He has, too, Ptaclusp realized in dread. That’s me over there. I look a lot different from the outside. And it’s me over
here
, too. As well. Also.
It’s a loop. Just like in the river, a tiny whirlpool, only it’s in the flow of time. And I’ve just gone around it twice.
The other Ptaclusp looked up at him.
There was a long, agonizing moment of temporal strain, a noise like a mouse blowing bubblegum, and the loop broke, and the figure faded.
“I know what’s causing it,” muttered IIb indistinctly, because of his wrist. “I know the pyramid isn’t complete, but it
will
be, so the effects are sort of echoing backward, dad, we ought to stop right now, it’s too
big
, I was wrong—”
“Shut up. Can you work out where the nodes will form?” said Ptaclusp. “And come away over here, all the lads are staring. Pull yourself together, son.”
IIb instinctively put his hand to his belt abacus.
“Well, yes, probably,” he said. “It’s just a function of mass distribution and—”
“Right,” said the builder firmly. “Start doing it. And then get all the foremen to come and see me.”
There was a glint like mica in Ptaclusp’s eye. His jaw was squared like a block of granite. Maybe it’s the pyramid that’s got me thinking like this, he said, I’m thinking fast, I know it.
“And get your brother up here, too,” he added.
It
is
the pyramid effect. I’m remembering an idea I’m going to have.
Best not to think too hard about that. Be practical.
He stared around at the half-completed site. The gods knew we couldn’t do it in time, he said. Now we don’t have to. We can take as long as we like!
“Are you all right?” said IIb. “Dad, are you all right?”
“Was that one of your time loops?” said Ptaclusp dreamily. What an idea! No one would ever beat them on a contract ever again, they’d win bonuses for completion and it didn’t matter how long it took!