'Yes, sire. We cannot be too careful, sire. Clearly they are not here, sire.'

'You look as if you could do with a breath of fresh air,' said Teppic, upbraiding himself for doing this but doing it, nevertheless. Dios at a loss was an awe-inspiring sight, and slightly disconcerting; it made one instinctively fear for the stability of things.

'Yes, sire. Thank you, sire.'

'Have a sit down and someone will bring you a glass of water. And then we will go and inspect the pyramid.'

Dios sat down.

There was a terrible little splintering noise.

'He's sat on the boat,' said the king. 'First humorous thing I've ever seen him do.'

The pyramid gave a new meaning to the word 'massive'. It bent the landscape around it. It seemed to Teppic that its very weight was deforming the shape of things, stretching the kingdom like a lead ball on a rubber sheet.

He knew that was a ridiculous idea. Big though the pyramid was, it was tiny compared to, say, a mountain.

But big, very big, compared to anything else. Anyway, mountains were meant to be big, the fabric of the universe was used to the idea. The pyramid was a made thing, and much bigger than a made thing ought to be.

It was also very cold. The black marble of its sides was shining white with frost in the roasting afternoon sun. He was foolish enough to touch it and left a layer of skin on the surface.

'It's freezing!'

'It's storing already, O breath of the river,' said Ptaclusp, who was sweating. 'It's the wossname, the boundary effect.'

'I note that you have ceased work on the burial chambers,' said Dios.

'The men . . . the temperature . . . boundary effects a bit too much to risk . . .' muttered Ptaclusp. 'Er.'

Teppic looked from one to the other.

'What's the matter?' he said. 'Are there problems?'

'Er,' said Ptaclusp.

'You're way ahead of schedule. Marvellous work,' said Teppic. 'You've put a tremendous amount of labour on the job.'

'Er. Yes. Only.'

There was silence except for the distant sounds of men at work, and the faint noise of the air sizzling where it touched the pyramid.

'It's bound to be all right when we get the capstone on, the pyramid builder managed eventually. 'Once it's flaring properly, no problem. Er.'

He indicated the electrum capstone. It was surprisingly small, only a foot or so across, and rested on a couple of trestles.

'We should be able to put it on tomorrow,' said Ptaclusp. 'Would your sire still be honouring us with the capping-out ceremony?' In his nervousness he gripped the hem of his robe and began to twist it. 'There's drinks,' he stuttered. 'And a silver trowel that you can take away with you. Everyone shouts hurrah and throws their hats in the air.

'Certainly,' said Dios. 'It will be an honour.'

'And for us too, your sire,' said Ptaclusp loyally.

'I meant for you,' said the high priest. He turned to the wide courtyard between the base of the pyramid and the river, which was lined with statues and stelae commemorating King Teppicymon's mighty deeds[20], and pointed.

'And you can get rid of that,' he added.

Ptaclusp gave him a look of unhappy innocence.

'That statue,' said Dios, 'is what I am referring to.,

'Oh. Ah. Well, we thought once you saw it in place, you see, in the right light, and what with Hat the Vulture-Headed God being very-'

'It goes,' said Dios.

'Right you are, your reverence,' said Ptaclusp miserably. It was, right now, the least of his problems, but on top of everything else he was beginning to think that the statue was following him around.

Dios leaned closer.

'You haven't seen a young woman anywhere on the site, have you?' he demanded.

'No women on the site, my lord,' said Ptaclusp. 'Very bad luck.'

'This one was provocatively dressed,' the high priest said.

'No, no women.'

'The palace is not far, you see. There must be many places to hide over here,' Dios continued, insistently.

Ptaclusp swallowed. He knew that, all right. Whatever had possessed him.

'I assure you, your reverence,' he said.

Dios gave him a scowl, and then turned to where Teppic, as it turned out, had been.

'Please ask him not to shake hands with anybody,' said the builder, as Dios hurried after the distant glint of sunlight on gold. The king still didn't seem to be able to get alongside the idea that the last thing the people wanted was a man of the people. Those workers who couldn't get out of the way in time were thrusting their hands behind their back.

Alone now, Ptaclusp fanned himself and staggered into the shade of his tent.

Where, waiting to see him, were Ptaclusp IIa, Ptaclusp IIa, Ptaclusp IIa and Ptaclusp IIa. Ptaclusp always felt uneasy in the presence of accountants, and four of them together was very bad, especially when they were all the same person. Three Ptaclusp IIbs were there as well; the other two, unless it was three by now, were out on the site.

He waved his hands in a conciliatory way.

'All right, all right,' he said. 'What are today's problems?'

One of the IIas pulled a stack of wax tablets towards him

'Have you any idea, father,' he began, employing that thin; razor-edged voice that accountants use to preface something unexpected and very expensive, 'what calculus is?'

'You tell me,' said Ptaclusp, sagging on to a stool.

'It's what I've had to invent to deal with the wages bill, father,' said another IIa.

'I thought that was algebra?' said Ptaclusp.

'We passed algebra last week,' said a third IIa. 'It's calculus now. I've had to loop myself another four times to work on it, and there's three of me working on-' he glanced at his brothers - 'quantum accountancy.'

'What's that for?' said his father wearily.

'Next week.' The leading accountant glared at the top slab. 'For example,' he said. 'You know Rthur the fresco painter?'

'What about him?'

'He - that is, they - have put in a bill for two years' work.'

'Oh.'

'They said they did it on Tuesday. On account of how time is fractal in nature, they said.'

'They said that?' said Ptaclusp.

'It's amazing what they pick up,' said one of the accountants, glaring at the paracosmic architects.

Ptaclusp hesitated. 'How many of them are there?'

'How should we know? We know there were fifty-three. Then he went critical. We've certainly seen him around a lot.' Two of the IIas sat back and steepled their fingers, always a bad sign in anyone having anything to do with money. 'The problem is,' one of them continued, 'that after the initial enthusiasm a lot of the workers looped themselves unofficially so that they could stay at home and send themselves out to work.'

'But that's ridiculous,' Ptaclusp protested weakly. 'They're not different people, they're just doing it to themselves.'

'That's never stopped anyone, father,' said IIa. 'How many men have stopped drinking themselves stupid at the age of twenty to save a stranger dying of liver failure at forty?'

There was silence while they tried to work this one out.

'A stranger-?' said Ptaclusp uncertainly.

'I mean himself, when older,' snapped IIa. 'That was philosophy,' he added.

'One of the masons beat himself up yesterday,' said one of the IIbs gloomily. 'He was fighting with himself over his wife. Now he's going mad because he doesn't know whether it's an earlier version of him or someone he hasn't been yet. He's afraid he's going to creep up on him. There's worse than that, too. Dad, we're paying forty thousand people, and we're only employing two thousand.'

'It's going to bankrupt us, that's what you're going to say,' said Ptaclusp. 'I know. It's all my fault. I just wanted something to hand on to you, you know. I didn't expect all this. It seemed too easy to start with.'

One of the IIas cleared his throat.

'It's . . . uh . . . not quite as bad as all that,' he said quietly.

'What do you mean?'

The accountant laid a dozen copper coins on the table.

'Well, er,' he said. 'You see, eh, it occurred to me, since there's all this movement in time, that it's not just people who can be looped, and, er, look, you see these coins?'

One coin vanished.

'They're all the same coin, aren't they,' said one of his brothers.

'Well, yes,' said the IIa, very embarrassed, because interfering with the divine flow of money was alien to his personal religion. 'The same coin at five minute intervals.'

'And you're using this trick to pay the men?' said Ptaclusp dully.

'It's not a trick! I give them the money,' said IIa primly. 'What happens to it afterwards isn't my responsibility, is it?'

'I don't like any of this,' said his father.

'Don't worry. It all evens out in the end,' said one of the IIas. 'Everyone gets what's coming to them.'

'Yes. That's what I'm afraid of,' said Ptaclusp.

'It's just a way of letting your money work for you,' said another son. 'It's probably quantum.'

'Oh, good,' said Ptaclusp weakly.

'We'll get the block on tonight, don't worry,' said one of the IIbs. 'After it's flared the power off we can all settle down.'

'I told the king we'd do it tomorrow.' The Ptaclusp IIbs went pale in unison. Despite the heat, it suddenly seemed a lot colder in the tent.

'Tonight, father,' said one of them. 'Surely you mean tonight?

'Tomorrow,' said Ptaclusp, firmly. 'I've arranged an awning and people throwing lotus blossom. There's going to be a band. Tocsins and trumpets and tinkling cymbals. And speeches and a meat tea afterwards. That's the way we've always done it. Attracts new customers. They like to have a look round.'

'Father, you've seen the way it soaks up. . . you've seen the frost . .

'Let it soak. We Ptaclusps don't go around capping off pyramids as though we were finishing off a garden wall. We don't knock off like a wossname in the night. People expect a ceremony.

'But-'

'I'm not listening. I've listened to too much of this new-fangled stuff. Tomorrow. I've had the bronze plaque made, and the velvet curtains and everything.'

One of the IIas shrugged. 'It's no good arguing with him,' he said. 'I'm from three hours ahead. I remember this meeting. We couldn't change his mind.'

'I'm from two hours ahead,' said one of his clones. 'I remember you saying that, too.'

Beyond the walls of the tent, the pyramid sizzled with accumulated time.

There is nothing mystical about the power of pyramids.

Pyramids are dams in the stream of time. Correctly shaped and orientated, with the proper paracosmic measurements correctly plumbed in, the temporal potential of the great mass of stone can be diverted to accelerate or reverse time over a very small area, in the same way that a hydraulic ram can be induced to pump water against the flow.

The original builders, who were of course ancients and therefore wise, knew this very well and the whole point of a correctly-built pyramid was to achieve absolute null time in the central chamber so that a dying king, tucked up there, would indeed live forever - or at least, never actually die. The time that should have passed in the chamber was stored in the bulk of the pyramid and allowed to flare off once every twenty-four hours.

After a few aeons people forgot this and thought you could achieve the same effect by a) ritual b) pickling people and c) storing their soft inner bits in jars.

This seldom works.

And so the art of pyramid tuning was lost, and all the knowledge became a handful of misunderstood rules and hazy recollections. The ancients were far too wise to build very big pyramids. They could cause very strange things, things that would make mere fluctuations in time look tiny by comparison.

By the way, contrary to popular opinion pyramids don't sharpen razor blades. They just take them back to when they weren't blunt. It's probably because of quantum.