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Over the millennia the fashions had fluctuated Later pyramids were smooth and sharp, or flattened and tiled with mica Even the steepest of them, Teppic mused, wouldn't rate h some of the stelae and teboats around the dreadnoughts of eternity, could be worthy of attention

Dreadnoughts of eternity, he thought, sailing ponderously through thefirst class

A few stars had been let out early Teppic looked up at theht, there is life somewhere else On the stars, maybe If it's true that there are billions of universes stacked alongside one another, the thickness of a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere

But wherever they are, no nificent the effort, they surely can't odawfully stupid as us I iven a spark of it to start with, but over hundreds of thousands of years we've really i that he ought to repair a little bit of the da off them, can't you,' he said conversationally

'Pardon, sire?'

'The pyrauely across the river 'Are they?' he said 'Yes, I suppose they are'

'Will you get one?' said Teppic

'A pyramid?' said Dios 'Sire, I have one already It pleased one of your forebears to reat honour,' said Teppic Dios nodded graciously The staterooms of forever were usually reserved for royalty

'It is, of course, very small Very plain But it will suffice for'That's nice And now, if you don'tday'

Dios bowed as though he was hinged in the middle Teppic had noticed that Dios had at least fifty finely-tuned ways of bowing, each one conveying subtle shades ofThis one looked like No3, I Aood day it was too, if I ht so?' he said

'The cloud effects at daere particularly effective'

'They were? Oh Do I have to do anything about the sunset?'

'Your majesty is pleased to joke,' said Dios 'Sunsets happen by themselves, sire Haha'

'Haha,' echoed Teppic

Dios cracked his knuckles 'The trick is in the sunrise,' he said

The crue sun was eaten every evening by the sky goddess, What, who saved one pip in ti And Dios knew that this was so

The Book of Staying in The Pit said that the sun was the Eye of Yay, toiling across the sky each day in His endless search for his toenails[14] And Dios knew that this was so

The secret rituals of the S Mirror held that the sun was in fact a round hole in the spinning blue soap bubble of the goddess Nesh, opening into the fiery real world beyond, and the stars were the holes that the rain coh And Dios knew that this, also, was so

Folk myth said the sun was a ball of fire which circled the world every day, and that the world itself was carried through the everlasting void on the back of an enorh it gave him a bit of trouble

And Dios knew that Net was the Supreme God, and that Fon was the Supreme God, and so were Hast, Set, Bin, Sot, Ic, Dhek, and Ptooie; that Herpetine Triskeles alone ruled the world of the dead, and so did Syncope, and Silur the Catfish-Headed God, and Orexis-Nupt

Dios was ion that had fermented and accreted and bubbled for od away in case it turned out to be useful He knew that a great s were all true If they were not, then ritual and belief were as nothing, and if they were nothing, then the world did not exist As a result of this sort of thinking, the priests of the Djel could give mind room to a collection of ideas that would ive in and hand back his toolbox

Dios's staff knocked echoes fro in the darkness down little-frequented passages until he eh priest climbed in with difficulty, unshipped the oars and pushed himself out into the turbid waters of the dark Djel

His hands and feet felt too cold Foolish, foolish He should have done this before

The boat jerked slowly into ht rolled over the valley On the far bank, in response to the ancient laws, the pyrahts also burned late in the house of Ptaclusp Associates, Necropolitan Builders to the Dynasties The father and his twin Sons were hunched over the huge wax designing tray, arguing

'It's not as if they ever pay,' said Ptaclusp IIa 'Iable to, they don't seerasped the idea At least dynasties like Tsort pay up within a hundred years or so Why didn't you-'

'We've built pyra the Djel for the last three thousand years,' said his father stiffly, 'and we haven't lost by it, have we? No, we haven't Because the other kingdoms look to the Djel, they say there's a family that really knows its pyra, if you please, with knobs on Anyway, they're real royalty,' he added, 'not like soone next ods, too You don't expect real royalty to pay its way That's one of the signs of real royalty, not having any et more royal than them, then You'd need a neord,' said IIa We're nearly royal in that case'

'You don't understand business,Well, it isn't'

'It's a question of lared at Ptaclusp IIb, as sitting staring at the sketches He was turning his stylus over and over in his hands, which were tre with barely-suppressed exciteranite for the lower slopes,' he said, talking to himself, 'the limestone wouldn't take it Not with all the power flows Which will be, whooeee, they'll be big Icould put an edge on a rolling pin'

Ptaclusp rolled his eyes He was only one generation into a dynasty and already it was trouble One son a born accountant, the other in love with this new-fangled cos when he was a lad, there was just architecture You drew the plans, and then got in ten thousand lads on time-and-a-half and double bubble at weekends They just had to pile the stuff up You didn't have to be cosods had seen fit to give hied you for the a', and another one orshipped geo aqueducts You scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and paid you back by getting educated

'What are you talking about?' he snapped