Pyramids (Discworld 7)

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 fallback, 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.

ust make you feel really proud,' said Gern.

'What?'

'Well, our mam says the king goes on living, sort of thing, after all this stuffing and stitching. Sort of in the Netherworld. With your stitching in him.'

And several sacks of straw and a couple of buckets of pitch, thought the shade of the king sadly. And the wrapping off Gern's lunch, although he didn't blame the lad, who'd just forgotten where he'd put it. All eternity with someone's lunch wrapping as part of your vital organs. There had been half a sausage left, too.

He'd become quite attached to Dil, and even to Gern. He seemed still to be attached to his body, too - at least, he felt uncomfortable if he wandered more than a few hundred yards away from it - and so in the course of the last couple of days he'd learned quite a lot about them.

Funny, really. He'd spent the whole of his life in the kingdom talking to a few priests and so forth. He knew objectively there had been other people around - servants and gardeners and so forth - but they figured in his life as blobs. He was at the top, and then his family, and then the priests and the nobles of course, and then there were the blobs. Damn fine blobs, of course, some of the finest blobs in the world, as loyal a collection of blobs as a king might hope to rule. But blobs, none the less.

But now he was absolutely engrossed in the daily details of Dil's shy hopes for advancement within the Guild, and the unfolding story of Gern's clumsy overtures to Glwenda, the garlic farmer's daughter who lived nearby. He listened in fascinated astonishment to the elaboration of a world as full of subtle distinctions of grade and station as the one he had so recently left; it was terrible to think that he might never know if Gern overcame her father's objections and won his intended, or if Dil's work on this job - on him - would allow him to aspire to the rank of Exalted Grand Ninety-Degree Variance of the Matron Lodge of the Guild of Embalmers and Allied Trades.

It was as if death was some astonishing optical device which turned even a drop of water into a complex hive of life.

He found an overpowering urge to counsel Dil on elementary politics, or apprise Gern of the benefits of washing and looking respectable. He tried it several times. They could sense him, there was no doubt about that. But they just put it down to draughts.

Now he watched Dil pad over to the big table of bandages, and come back with a thick swatch which he held reflectively against what even the king was now prepared to think of as his corpse.

'I think the linen,' he said at last. 'It's definitely his colour.'

Gern put his head on one side.

'He'd look good in the hessian,' he said. 'Or maybe the calico.'

'Not the calico. Definitely not the calico. On him it's too big.'

'He could moulder into it. With wear, you know.'

Dil snorted. 'Wear? Wear? You shouldn't talk to me about calico and wear. What happens if someone robs the tomb in a thousand years' time and him in calico, I'd like to know. He'd lurch halfway down the corridor, maybe throttle one of them, I'll grant you, but then he's coming undone, right? The elbows'll be out in no time, I'll never live it down.'

'But you'll be dead, master!'

'Dead? What's that got to do with it?' Dil riffled through the samples. 'No, it'll be the hessian. Got plenty of give in it, hessian. Good traction, too. He'll really be able to lurch up speed in the passages, if he ever needs to.'

The king sighed. He'd have preferred something lightweight in taffeta.

'And go and shut the door,' Dil added. 'It's getting breezy in here.'

'And now it's time,' said the high priest, 'for us to see our late father.' He allowed himself a quiet smile. 'I am sure he is looking forward to it,' he added.

Teppic considered this. It wasn't something he was looking forward to, but at least it would get everyone's mind off him marrying relatives. He reached down in what he hoped was a kingly fashion to stroke one of the palace cats. This also was not a good move. The creature sniffed it, went cross-eyed with the effort of thought, and then bit his fingers.

'Cats are sacred,' said Dios, shocked at the words Teppic uttered.

'Long-legged cats with silver fur and disdainful expressions are, maybe,' said Teppic, nursing his hand, 'I don't know about this sort. I'm sure sacred cats don't leave dead ibises under the bed. And I'm certain that sacred cats that live surrounded by endless sand don't come indoors and do it in the king's sandals, Dios.'