Pyramids

'I'm sure that, as the king's minister, you will find a way. You have our full support, O Dios.' Koomi waved an uplifted hand at the priests, who chorused wholehearted agreement. If you couldn't depend on kings and gods, you could always rely on old Dios. There wasn't one of them that wouldn't prefer the uncertain wrath of the gods to a rebuke from Dios. Dios terrified them in a very positive, human way that no supernatural entity ever could. Dios would sort it out.

'And we take no heed to these mad rumours about the king's disappearance. They are undoubtedly wild exaggerations, with no foundation,' said Koomi.

The priests nodded while, in each mind, a tiny rumour uncurled the length of its tail.

'What rumours?' said Dios out of the corner of his mouth.

'So enlighten us, master, as to the path we must now take,' said Koomi.

Dios wavered.

He did not know what to do. For him, this was a new experience. This was Change.

All he could think of, all that was pressing forward in his mind, were the words of the Ritual of the Third Hour, which he had said at this time for — how long? Too long, too long! — And he should have gone to his rest long before, but the time had never been right, there was never anyone capable, they would have been lost without him, the kingdom would founder, he would be letting everyone down, and so he'd crossed the river. . . he swore every time that it was the last, but it never was, not when the chill fetched his limbs, and the decades had become — longer. And now, when his kingdom needed him, the words of a Ritual had scored themselves into the pathways of his brain and bewildered all attempts at thought.

'Er,' he said.

You Bastard chewed happily. Teppic had tethered him too near an olive tree, which was getting a terminal pruning. Sometimes the camel would stop, gaze up briefly at the seagulls that circled everywhere above Ephebe city, and subject them to a short, deadly burst of olive stones.

He was turning over in his mind an interesting new concept in Thau-dimensional physics which unified time, space, magnetism, gravity and, for some reason, broccoli. Periodically he would make noises like distant quarry blasting, but which merely indicated that all stomachs were functioning perfectly.

Ptraci sat under the tree, feeding the tortoise on vine leaves.

Heat crackled off the white walls of the tavern but, Teppic thought, how different it was from the Old Kingdom. There even the heat was old; the air was musty and lifeless, it pressed like a vice, you felt it was made of boiled centuries. Here it was leavened by the breeze from the sea. It was edged with salt crystals. It carried exciting hints of wine; more than a hint in fact, because Xeno was already on his second amphora. This was the kind of place where things rolled up their sleeves and started.

'But I still don't understand about the tortoise,' he said, with some difficulty. He'd just taken his first mouthful of Ephebian wine, and it had apparently varnished the back of his throat.

''S quite simple,' said Xeno. 'Look, let's say this olive stone is the arrow and this, and this-' he cast around aimlessly — 'and this stunned seagull is the tortoise, right? Now, when you fire the arrow it goes from here to the seag — the tortoise, am I right?'

'I suppose so, but-'

'But, by this time, the seagu — the tortoise has moved on a bit, hasn't he? Am I right?'

'I suppose so,' said Teppic, helplessly. Xeno gave him a look of triumph.

'So the arrow has to go a bit further, doesn't it, to where the tortoise is now. Meanwhile the tortoise has flow — moved on, not much, I'll grant you, but it doesn't have to be much. Am I right? So the arrow has a bit further to go, but the point is that by the time it gets to where the tortoise is now the tortoise isn't there. So, if the tortoise keeps moving, the arrow will never hit it. It'll keep getting closer and closer but never hit it. QED.'

'Are you right?' said Teppic automatically.

'No,' said Ibid coldly. 'There's a dozen tortoise kebabs to prove him wrong. The trouble with my friend here is that he doesn't know the difference between a postulate and a metaphor of human existence. Or a hole in the ground.'

'It didn't hit it yesterday,' snapped Xeno.

'Yes, I was watching. You hardly pulled the string back. I saw you,' said Ibid.

They started to argue again.

Teppic stared into his wine mug. These men are philosophers, he thought. They had told him so. So their brains must be so big that they have room for ideas that no-one else would consider for five seconds. On the way to the tavern Xeno had explained to him, for example, why it was logically impossible to fall out of a tree.