'Nothing wrong with that,' she snapped. 'And see about plumbing. Apparently pipes are the thing.'

'For the asses' milk?' said Koomi, who was now totally lost in the desert.[32]

'Shut up, Koomi.'

'Yes, O queen,' said Koomi, miserably.

He'd wanted changes. It was just that he'd wanted things to stay the same, as well.

The sun dropped to the horizon, entirely unaided. For some people, it was turning out to be quite a good day. The reddened light lit up the three male members of the Ptaclusp dynasty, as they pored over plans for-

'It's called a bridge,' said IIb.

'Is that like an aqueduct?' said Ptaclusp.

'In reverse, sort of thing,' said IIb. 'The water goes underneath, we go over the top.'

'Oh. The k- the queen won't like that,' said Ptaclusp.

'The royal family's always been against chaining the holy river with dams and weirs and suchlike.'

IIb gave a triumphant grin. 'She suggested it,' he said. 'And she graciously went on to say, could we see to it there's places for people to stand and drop rocks on the crocodiles.'

'She said that?'

'Large pointy rocks, she said.'

'My word,' said Ptaclusp. He turned to his other son.

'You sure you're all right?' he said.

'Feeling fine, dad,' said IIa.

'No-' Ptaclusp groped 'headaches or anything?'

'Never felt better,' said IIa.

'Only you haven't asked about the cost,' said Ptaclusp. 'I thought perhaps you were still feeling fl- ill.'

'The queen has been pleased to ask me to have a look at the royal finances,' said IIa. 'She said priests can't add up.' His recent experiences had left him with no ill effects other than a profitable tendency to think at right angles to everyone else, and he sat wreathed in smiles while his mind constructed tariff rates, docking fees and a complex system of value added tax which would shortly give the merchant venturers of Ankh-Morpork a nasty shock.

Ptaclusp thought about all the miles of the virgin Djel, totally unbridged. And there was plenty of dressed stone around now, millions of tons of the stuff. And you never knew, perhaps on some of those bridges there'd be room for a statue or two. He had the very thing.

He put his arms around his sons' shoulders.

'Lads,' he said proudly. 'It's looking really quantum.'

The setting sun also shone on Dil and Gern, although in this case it was by a roundabout route through the lightwell of the palace kitchens. They'd ended up there for no very obvious reason. It was just that it was so depressing in the embalming room, all alone.

The kitchen staff worked around them, recognising the air of impenetrable gloom that surrounded the two embalmers. It was never a very sociable job at the best of times and embalmers didn't make friends easily. Anyway, there was a coronation feast to prepare.

They sat amid the bustle, observing the future over a jug of beer.

'I expect,' said Gern, 'that Gwlenda can have a word with her dad.'

'That's it, boy,' said Dil wearily. 'There's a future there. People will always want garlic.'

'Bloody boring stuff, garlic,' said Gern, with unusual ferocity. 'And you don't get to meet people. That's what I liked about our job. Always new faces.'

'No more pyramids,' said Dil, without rancour. 'That's what she said. You've done a good job, Master Dil, she said, but I'm going to drag this country kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat.'

'Cobra,' said Gern.

'What?'

'It's the Century of the Cobra. Not the Fruitbat.'

'Whatever,' said Dil irritably. He stared miserably into his mug. That was the trouble now, he reflected. You had to start remembering what century it was.

He glared at a tray of canapes. That was the thing these days. Everyone fiddling about .

He picked up an olive and turned it over and over in his fingers.

'Can't say I'd feel the same about the old job, mind,' said Gern, draining the jug, 'but I bet you were proud, master - Dil, I mean. You know, when all your stitching held up like that.'

Dil, his eyes not leaving the olive, reached dreamily down to his belt and grasped one of his smaller knives for intricate jobs.

'I said, you must have felt very sorry it was all over,' said Gern.

Dil swivelled around to get more light, and breathed heavily as he concentrated.

'Still, you'll get over it,' said Gern. 'The important thing is not to let it prey on your mind-'

'Put this stone somewhere,' said Dil.

'Sorry?'

'Put this stone somewhere,' said Dil.

Gern shrugged, and took it out of his fingers.

'Right,' said Dil, his voice suddenly vibrant with purpose.

'Now pass me a piece of red pepper .

And the sun shone on the delta, that little infinity of reed beds and mud banks where the Djel was laying down the silt of the continent. Wading birds bobbed for food in the green maze of stems, and billions of zig-zag midges danced over the brackish water. Here at least time had always passed, as the delta breathed twice daily the cold, fresh water of the tide.

It was coming in now, the foam-crested cusp of it trickling between the reeds.

Here and there soaked and ancient bandages unwound, wriggled for a while like incredibly old snakes and then, with the mininum of fuss, dissolved.

THIS IS MOST IRREGULAR.

We 're sorry. It's not our fault.

HOW MANY OF YOU ARE THERE?

More than 1,300, I'm afraid.

VERY WELL, THEN. PLEASE FORM AN ORDERLY QUEUE.

You Bastard was regarding his empty hay rack.

It represented a sub-array in the general cluster 'hay', containing arbitrary values between zero and K.

It didn't have any hay in it. It might in fact have a negative value of hay in it, but to the hungry stomach the difference between no hay and minus-hay was not of particular interest.

It didn't matter how he worked it out, the answer was always the same. It was an equation of classical simplicity. It had a certain clean elegance which he was not, currently, in a position to admire.

You Bastard felt ill-used and hard done by. There was nothing particularly unusual about this, however, since that is the normal state of mind for a camel. He knelt patiently while Teppic packed the saddlebags.

'We'll avoid Ephebe,' Teppic said, ostensibly to the camel. 'We'll go up the end of the Circle Sea, perhaps to Quirm or over the Ramtops. There's all sorts of places. Maybe we'll even look for a few of those cities, eh? I expect you'd like that.'

It's a mistake trying to cheer up camels. You may as well drop meringues into a black hole.

The door at the far end of the stable swung open. It was a priest. He looked rather flustered. The priests had been doing a lot of unaccustomed running around today.

'Er,' he began. 'Her majesty commands you not to leave the kingdom.'

He coughed.

He said, 'Is there a reply?'

Teppic considered. 'No,' he said, 'I don't think so.'

'So I shall tell her that you will be attending on her presently, shall I?' said the priest hopefully.

'No.'

'It's all very well for you to say,' said the priest sourly, and slunk off.

He was replaced a few minutes later by Koomi, very red in the face.

'Her majesty requests that you do not leave the kingdom,' he said.

Teppic climbed on to You Bastard's back, and tapped the camel lightly, with a prod.

'She really means it,' said Koomi.

'I'm sure she does.'

'She could have you thrown to the sacred crocodiles, you know.'

'I haven't seen many of them around today. How are they?' said Teppic, and gave the camel another thump.

He rode out into the knife-edged daylight and along the packed-earth streets, which time had turned into a surface harder than stone. They were thronged with people. And every single person ignored him.

It was a marvellous feeling.

He rode gently along the road to the border and did not stop until he was up in the escarpment, the valley spreading out behind him. A hot wind off the desert rattled the syphacia bushes as he tethered You Bastard in the shade, climbed a little further up the rocks, and looked back.

The valley was old, so old that you could believe it had existed first and had watched the rest of the world form around it. Teppic lay with his head on his arms.

Of course, it had made itself old. It had been gently stripping itself of futures for thousands of years. Now change was hitting it like the ground hitting an egg.

Dimensions were probably more complicated than people thought. Probably so was time. Probably so were people, although people could be more predictable.

He watched the column of dust rise outside the palace and work its way through the city, across the narrow patchwork of fields, disappear for a minute in a group of palm trees near the escarpment, and reappear at the foot of the slope. Long before he could see it he knew there'd be a chariot somewhere in the cloud of sand.

He slid back down the rocks and squatted patiently by the roadside. The chariot rattled by eventually, halted some way on, turned awkwardly in the narrow space, and trundled back.

'What will you do?' shouted Ptraci, leaning over the rail.

Teppic bowed.

'And none of that,' she snapped.

'Don't you like being king?'

She hesitated. 'Yes,' she said. 'I do-'

'Of course you do,' said Teppic. 'It's in the blood. In the old days people would fight like tigers. Brothers against sisters, cousins against uncles. Dreadful.'

'But you don't have to go! I need you!'

'You've got advisers,' said Teppic mildly.

'I didn't mean that,' she snapped. 'Anyway, there's only Koomi, and he's no good.'

'You're lucky. I had Dios, and he was good. Koomi will be much better, you can learn a lot by not listening to what he has to say. You can go a long way with incompetent advisers. Besides, Chidder will help, I'm sure. He's full of ideas.'

She coloured. 'He advanced a few when we were on the ship.'

'There you are, then. I knew the two of you would get along like a house on fire.' Screams, flames, people running for safety .

'And you're going back to be an Assassin, are you?' she sneered.

'I don't think so. I've inhumed a pyramid, a pantheon and the entire old kingdom. It may be worth trying something else. By the way, you haven't been finding little green shoots springing up wherever you walk, have you?'

'No. What a stupid idea.'

Teppic relaxed. It really was all over, then. 'Don't let the grass grow under your feet, that's the important thing,' he said. 'And you haven't seen any seagulls around?'

'There's lots of them today, or didn't you notice?'

'Yes. That's good, I think.'

You Bastard watched them talk a little more, that peculiar trailing-off, desultory kind of conversation that two people of opposite sexes engage in when they have something else on their minds. It was much easier with camels, when the female merely had to check the male's methodology.

Then they kissed in a fairly chaste fashion, insofar as camels are any judge. A decision was reached.

You Bastard lost interest at this point, and decided to eat his lunch again.

IN THE BEGINNING...

It was peaceful in the valley. The river, its banks as yet untamed, wandered languidly through thickets of rush and papyrus. Ibises waded in the shallows; in the deeps, hippos rose and sank slowly, like pickled eggs.

The only sound in the damp silence was the occasional plop of a fish or hiss of a crocodile.

Dios lay in the mud for some time. He wasn't sure how he'd got there, or why half his robes were torn off and the other half scorched black. He dimly recalled a loud noise and a sensation of extreme speed while, at the same time, he'd been standing still. Right at this moment, he didn't want any answers. Answers implied questions, and questions never got anyone anywhere. Questions only spoiled things. The mud was cool and soothing, and he didn't need to know anything else for a while.