The master scribe, Ay-Talek, a Ghordess with the head of a fishing bird, invited us to watch from the front row as her finest stonecarver began the first line of text on the stone. Cay-Man, a Ghord with a long, reptilian face, bowed to us all and picked up his tools.
"Here we go, partner," Aahz said, his hands on his hips. The client, a used-carpet salesman from the Bazaar, stood beside us with his family clustered around him. "This is our message to the future."
Cay-Man set the chisel against the face of the smooth slab and raised his hammer. I found myself holding my breath. He brought the hammer down.
Tap!
A flake of stone leaped away, leaving a curved mark. The Ghord scribes watching broke into tremendous applause.
"What's the big deal?" I asked. "It's one little chip."
"Oh, you know," said Ay-Talek. "There's nothing more daunting than a blank slab. You can hardly think of what to write first. Once you break the gray space, it seems to go so much faster."
And Cay-Man did go faster. Tap tap tap tap tap! Tappity tappity tap! Tap! Tap! The first sign took shape immediately, the client's name, and was joined in swift succession by six more. I had been studying the glyphs since our arrival. I could identify a few of the signs as Cayman dug out a thin layer of rock around them and brought them up into relief. I saw the sign for the ancient Ghordess Hat-hed, followed by three eagles and a birdie.
"Golfer," Ay-Talek translated.
Cay-Man acknowledged the applause of his fellows, then went on to chisel out the figure of a man kneeling with his arms wide apart over his head. I thought back to the lexicon. That sigil meant 'this fish was that big, I swear on my life!' My guess was confirmed as an upside down fishhook was added beside it.
"Going great guns, partner," Aahz said. "A few more hundred thousand like that and we're immortal."
Just as he said that, Cay-Man struck the head of the chisel. The carving tool seemed to spin in his hand. The next thing I knew, it was facing the wrong way. The point plunged into his palm. The carpet salesman's wife screamed.
Cay-Man knelt, clutching his hand. Tears rolled down his scaly face.
"I have an owie!" he cried.
"Don't pay any attention to him, folks!" Samwise said, holding up his hands for calm. "Someone go get Doctor Cobra."
I hurried to the carver's side and looked at the wound. To my surprise it was less than an inch long and barely bleeding.
"It's just a scratch," I said.
"It's not!" the carver wailed. "I'm going to die. Everything is starting to go black ..." He raised the uninjured hand to his forehead. The crowd crooned sympathetically.
I rolled my eyes. He was enjoying having an audience.
Between a pair of Ghordesses barged a male with a snake for a head.
"I'm Doctor Cobra," he said. "Where'sss the patient?"
Cay-Man waved a feeble hand. The doctor homed in on him. He seized the injured limb and examined it, the snake-headed male's beady eyes scrutinizing the wound.
"It is not a serious injury," he stated, "but you will require immunization against infection."
Without further warning, he bared his fangs and jabbed them into the palm of Cay-Man's hand.
"Yow!" the carver yelled. "I hate injections!"
"Yes, yes," Cobra said, as if he'd heard it all before. "But, see? It is already healing."
To my amazement, the wound started to close up from one end to the other.
"That's remarkable," I commented.
"Nothing, really," Cobra said, modestly. "It's the second most common injury on the site."
"Let's move this slab out of the way," Beltasar ordered. "It can be completed later on! Let us place it in the Phase Two work area." She zipped over the corner of the foundation and hovered above a perfectly level floor of flagstones that had been laid down beside it.
"Let me help," Aahz said. He and the used-carpet salesman joined the horde of Scarabs and Ghords who swarmed up to move the historic stone.
"No, we do not need you!" Beltasar insisted. "Ghords and Perverts ruin everything!"
"Knock it off," Aahz growled. "This is my project!"
"On your head be it." Beltasar flitted back to the stone's destination. "Proceed!"
"Together now," bellowed Inhstep, Beltasar's assistant contractor.
Hundreds of Scarabs burrowed down and lifted the huge block. Aahz stooped and got his fingertips underneath the edge.
"Hoist!" cried Inhstep.
The huge stone rose a couple of feet. Aahz's muscles popped under his fashionable tunic as he helped move it. His strength was far greater than mine. Even with help, I couldn't have moved that slab without magik. Together, the team edged slowly over the rammed foundation, backed slowly onto the new work area, and started to lower it.
A loud rumble began. I felt the ground start to shake under my feet. I was thrown to one side. I kept from falling by grabbing onto the air with a handful of magik and hanging on.
"Yeow!"
A familiar bellow reached my ears. I flew to Aahz's side. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"Stone. On. Foot!" he gritted out. I looked down and realized his toes were partway underneath the gigantic slab of rock. The Deveel merchant, by virtue of having hooves instead of feet, missed out on the same tragedy, but his fingers got caught. He was on his knees trying to tug them loose. Hundreds of
Scarabs had been knocked flat on their faces, their six limbs spread out around them. They flexed their legs to try and heave upward.
"Gee, that's awful," I said. "Does it hurt?"
"Of course it hurts!" Aahz bellowed. "Do something!"
"No problem," I said.
Having done it once with the pyramid next door, hefting one building block posed no problem. I pressed against the unseen desert bedrock, far beneath the sands, and the block rose. Aahz staggered backwards and sat down on the paving stones. I moved the slab and set it down out of the way.
"That's the most common injury," Dr. Cobra sighed, switching his narrow head from side to side. "Give me room!" he ordered, pushing back onlookers.
"Funny thing," Beltasar said, as we stepped out of the doctor's way. "All of these people are owners."
Gurn was gone, probably back to Suzal to report on us.
Chapter 17
"Now we're all in this together."
A crushed foot took a few days longer to heal than a cut palm, although in the case of a Pervect, not much longer. Aahz took advantage of Miss Tauret's cooing over him and kept the cast on his leg well past the time when he showed any pain at putting his foot on the floor. Even though having him out of commission meant I had to do all the rounds on site myself, I let him get away with sitting around. I felt responsible for him getting hurt. After the conference Guido, Nunzio, and I had had, I should have been watching more closely. If that stone had fallen on him, it could have killed him.
"You know, Miss Tauret's supposed to be greeting visitors, not just waiting on you," I said, as the receptionist slipped out of the room with an empty pitcher.
"You gotta enjoy the perks," Aahz stretched lazily. "Besides, I'm not going to haul my butt up and down those ramps with plaster on my leg. I don't have any clients coming by until tomorrow. It's not like I don't have any work. The paperwork never stops." He threw a document to me. "Here. Sign this."
I glanced at it. The papyrus was entirely written in glyphs, except for Aahz's signature down at the bottom. A second line had been drawn to the right of it with a symbol below. The figure of a male with the bee revolving around its head meant 'skinny Klahd, hair of honey.' "What is it?" I asked.