‘But she is dead?’ said Teppic.
‘I understand so,’ said the high priest, after the slightest of pauses. Yes. The past tense definitely bothered Dios.
‘I have learned seven languages,’ said Teppic, secure in the knowledge that the actual marks he had achieved in three of them would remain concealed in the ledgers of the Guild.
‘Indeed, sire?’
‘Oh, yes. Morporkian, Vanglemesht, Ephebe, Laotation and — several others …’ said Teppic.
‘Ah.’ Dios nodded, smiled, and continued to proceed down the corridor, limping slightly but still measuring his pace like the ticking of centuries. ‘The barbarian lands.’
Teppic looked at his father. The embalmers had done a good job. They were waiting for him to tell them so.
Part of him, which still lived in Ankh-Morpork, said: this is a dead body, wrapped up in bandages, surely they can’t think that this will help him get better? In Ankh, you die and they bury you or burn you or throw you to the ravens. Here, it just means you slow down a bit and get given all the best food. It’s ridiculous, how can you run a kingdom like this? They seem to think that being dead is like being deaf, you just have to speak up a bit.
But a second, older voice said: We’ve run a kingdom like this for seven thousand years. The humblest melon farmer has a lineage that makes kings elsewhere look like mayflies. We used to own the continent, before we sold it again to pay for pyramids. We don’t even think about other countries less than three thousand years old. It all seems to work.
‘Hallo, father,’ he said.
The shade of Teppicymon XXVII, which had been watching him closely, hurried across the room.
‘You’re looking well!’ he said. ‘Good to see you! Look, this is urgent. Please pay attention, it’s about death—’
‘He says he is pleased to see you,’ said Dios.
‘You can hear him?’ said Teppic. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’
‘The dead, naturally, speak through the priests,’ said the priest. ‘That is the custom, sire.’
‘But he can hear me, can he?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ve been thinking about this whole pyramid business and, look, I’m not certain about it.’
Teppic leaned closer. ‘Auntie sends her love,’ he said loudly. He thought about this. ‘That’s my aunt, not yours.’ I hope, he added.
‘I say? I say? Can you hear me?’
‘He bids you greetings from the world beyond the veil,’ said Dios.
‘Well, yes, I suppose I do, but LOOK, I don’t want you to go to a lot of trouble and build—’
‘We’re going to build you a marvellous pyramid, father. You’ll really like it there. There’ll be people to look after you and everything.’ Teppic glanced at Dios for reassurance. ‘He’ll like that, won’t he?’
‘I don’t WANT one!’ screamed the king. ‘There’s a whole interesting eternity I haven’t seen yet. I forbid you to put me in a pyramid!’
‘He says that is very proper, and you are a dutiful son,’ said Dios.
‘Can you see me? How many fingers am I holding up? Think it’s fun, do you, spending the rest of your death under a million tons of rock, watching yourself crumble to bits? It that your idea of a good epoch?’
‘It’s rather draughty in here, sire,’ said Dios. ‘Perhaps we should get on.’
‘Anyway, you can’t possibly afford it!’
‘And we’ll put your favourite frescoes and statues in with you. You’ll like that, won’t you,’ said Teppic desperately. ‘All your bits and pieces around you.’
‘He will like it, won’t he?’ he asked Dios, as they walked back to the throne room. ‘Only, I don’t know, I somehow got a feeling he isn’t too happy about it.’
‘I assure you, sire,’ said Dios, ‘he can have no other desire.’
Back in the embalming room King Teppicymon XXVII tried to tap Gern on the shoulder, which had no effect. He gave up and sat down beside himself.
‘Don’t do it, lad,’ he said bitterly. ‘Never have descendants.’
And then there was the Great Pyramid itself.
Teppic’s footsteps echoed on the marble tiles as he walked around the model. He wasn’t sure what one was supposed to do here. But kings, he suspected, were often put in that position; there was always the good old fall-back, which was known as taking an interest.
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘How long have you been designing pyramids?’
Ptaclusp, architect and jobbing pyramid builder to the nobility, bowed deeply.
‘All my life, O light of noonday.’
‘It must be fascinating,’ said Teppic. Ptaclusp looked sidelong at the high priest, who nodded.
‘It has its points, O fount of waters,’ he ventured. He wasn’t used to kings talking to him as though he was a human being. He felt obscurely that it wasn’t right.
Teppic waved a hand at the model on its podium.
‘Yes,’ he said uncertainly. ‘Well. Good. Four walls and a pointy tip. Jolly good. First class. Says it all, really.’ There still seemed to be too much silence around. He plunged on.
‘Good show,’ he said. ‘I mean, there’s no doubt about it. This is … a … pyramid. And what a pyramid it is! Indeed.’
This still didn’t seem enough. He sought for something else. ‘People will look at it in centuries to come and they’ll say, they’ll say … that is a pyramid. Um.’
He coughed. ‘The walls slope nicely,’ he croaked.
‘But,’ he said.
Two pairs of eyes swivelled towards his.
‘Um,’ he said.
Dios raised an eyebrow.
‘Sire?’
‘I seem to remember once, my father said that, you know, when he died, he’d quite like to, sort of thing, be buried at sea.’
There wasn’t the choke of outrage he had expected. ‘He meant the delta. It’s very soft ground by the delta,’ said Ptaclusp. ‘It’d take months to get decent footings in. Then there’s your risk of sinking. And the damp. Not good, damp, inside a pyramid.’
‘No,’ said Teppic, sweating under Dios’s gaze, ‘I think what he meant was, you know, in the sea.’
Ptaclusp’s brow furrowed. ‘Tricky, that,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Interesting idea. I suppose one could build a small one, a million tonner, and float it out on pontoons or something …’
‘No,’ said Teppic, trying not to laugh, ‘I think what he meant was, buried without—’
‘Teppicymon XXVII means that he would want to be buried without delay,’ said Dios, his voice like greased silk. ‘And there is no doubt that he would require to honour the very best you can build, architect.’
‘No, I’m sure you’ve got it wrong,’ said Teppic.
Dios’s face froze. Ptaclusp’s slid into the waxen expression of someone with whom it is, suddenly, nothing to do. He started to stare at the floor as if his very survival depended on his memorizing it in extreme detail.
‘Wrong?’ said Dios.
‘No offence. I’m sure you mean well,’ said Teppic. ‘It’s just that, well, he seemed very clear about it at the time and—’
‘I mean well?’ said Dios, tasting each word as though it was a sour grape. Ptaclusp coughed. He had finished with the floor. Now he started on the ceiling.
Dios took a deep breath. ‘Sire,’ he said, ‘we have always been pyramid builders. All our kings are buried in pyramids. It is how we do things, sire. It is how things are done.’