'You negotiated his dinner?'
Gaspode's voice was muffled by meat. 'I reckon ten per cent is ver' fair. Very fair, in the circumstances.'
'You know, you really are a son of a bitch,' said Victor.
'Proud of it,' said Gaspode, indistinctly. He bolted the last of the steak. 'What shall we do now?'
'I'm supposed to get an early night. We're starting for Ankh very early tomorrow,' said Victor doubtfully.
'Still not made any progress with the book?'
'No.'
'Let me have a look, then.'
'Can you read?'
'Dunno. Never tried.'
Victor looked around them. No-one was paying him any attention. They never did. Once the handles stopped turning, no-one bothered about performers; it was like being temporarily invisible.
He sat down on a pile of lumber, opened the book randomly at an early page, and held it out in front of Gaspode's critical stare.
Eventually the dog said, 'It's got all marks on it.'
Victor sighed. 'That's writing,' he said.
Gaspode squinted. 'What, all them little pictures?'
'Early writing was like that. People drew little pictures to represent ideas.'
'So . . . if there's a lot of one picture, it means it's an important idea?'
'What? Well, yes. I suppose so.'
'Like the dead man.'
Victor was lost.
'The dead man on the beach?'
'No. The dead man on the pages. See? Everywhere, there's the dead man.'
Victor gave him an odd look, and then turned the book around and peered at it.
'Where? I don't see any dead men.'
Gaspode snorted.
'Look, all over the page,' he said. 'He looks just like those tombs you get in old temples and stuff. You know? Where they do this statchoo of the stiff lyin' on top of the tomb, with his arms crossed an' holdin' his sword. Dead noble.'
'Good grief! You're right! It does look sort of . . . dead . . . '
'Prob'ly all the writing's goin' on about what a great guy he was when he was alive,' said Gaspode knowledgeably. 'You know, “Slayer of thousands” stuff. Prob'ly he left a lot of money for priests to say prayers and light candles and sacrifice goats and stuff. There used to be a lot of that sort of thing. You know, you'd get dese guys whorin' and drinkin' and carryin' on regardless their whole life, and then when the old Grim Reaper starts sharpenin' his scythe they suddenly becomes all pious and pays a lot of priests to give their soul a quick wash-and-brush-up and gen'rally keep on tellin' the gods what a decent chap they was.'
'Gaspode?' said Victor levelly.
'What?'