You Bastard was thinking: . . Delta squared. Thus, dimensional pressure k will result in a ninety-degree transformation in Chi(16/x/pu)t for a K-bundle of any three invariables. Or four minutes, plus or minus ten seconds The camel looked down at the great pads of his feet.

Let speed equal gallop.

'How did you make it do that?' said Teppic.

'I didn't! It's doing it by itself! Hang on!'

This wasn't easy. Teppic had saddled the camel but neglected the harness. Ptraci had handfuls of camel hair to hang on to. All he had was handfuls of Ptraci. No matter where he tried to put his hands, they encountered warm, yielding flesh. Nothing in his long education had prepared him for this, whereas everything in Ptraci's obviously had. Her long hair whipped his face and smelled beguilingly of rare perfume21. 'Are you all right?' he shouted above the wind.

'I'm hanging on with my knees!'

'That must be very hard!'

'You get special training!'

Camels gallop by throwing their feet as far away from them as possible and then running to keep up. Knee joints clicking like chilly castanets, You Bastard thrashed up the sloping road out of the valley and windmilled along the narrow gorge that led, under towering limestone cliffs, to the high desert beyond.

And behind them, tormented beyond measure by the inexorable tide of geometry, unable to discharge its burden of Time, the Great Pyramid screamed, lifted itself off its base and, its bulk swishing through the air as unstoppably as something completely unstoppable, ground around precisely ninety degrees and did something perverted to the fabric of time and space.

You Bastard sped along the gorge, his neck stretched out to its full extent, his mighty nostrils flaring like jet intakes.

'It's terrified!' Ptraci yelled. 'Animals always know about this sort of thing!'

'What sort of thing!'

'Forest fires and things!'

'We haven't got any trees!'

'Well, floods and — and things! They've got some strange natural instinct!'

. . . Phi* 1700 u/v. Lateral e/v. Equals a tranche of seven to twelve . . .

The sound hit them. It was as silent as a dandelion clock striking midnight, but it had pressure. It rolled over them, suffocating as velvet, nauseating as a battered saveloy.

And was gone.

You Bastard slowed to a walk, a complicated procedure that involved precise instructions to each leg in turn.

There was a feeling of release, a sense of stress withdrawn. You Bastard stopped. In the pre-dawn glow he'd spotted a clump of thorned syphacia bushes growing in the rocks by the track.

. . angle left. x equals 37. y equals 19. z equals 43. Bite . . .

Peace descended. There was no sound except for the eructations of the camel's digestive tract and the distant warbling of a desert owl.

Ptraci slid off her perch and landed awkwardly.

'My bottom,' she announced, to the desert in general, 'is one huge blister.'

Teppic jumped down and half-ran, half-staggered up the scree by the roadside, then jogged across the cracked limestone plateau until he could get a good look at the valley.

It wasn't there any more.

It was still dark when Dil the master embalmer woke up, his body twanging with the sensation that something was wrong. He slipped out of bed, dressed hurriedly, and pulled aside the curtain that did duty as a door.

The night was soft and velvety. Behind the chirrup of the insects there was another sound, a frying noise, a faint sizzling on the edge of hearing.

Perhaps that was what had woken him up.

The air was warm and damp. Curls of mist rose from the river, and— The pyramids weren't flaring.

He'd grown up in this house: it had been in the family of the master embalmers for thousands of years, and he'd seen the pyramids flare so often that he didn't notice them, any more than he noticed his own breathing. But now they were dark and silent, and the silence cried out and the darkness glared.

But that wasn't the worst part. As his horrified eyes stared up at the empty sky over the necropolis they saw the stars, and what the stars were stuck to.

Dil was terrified. And then, when he had time to think about it, he was ashamed of himself. After all, he thought, it's what I've always been told is there. It stands to reason. I'm just seeing it properly for the first time.

There. Does that make me feel any better?

No.

He turned and ran down the street, sandals flapping, until he reached the house that held Gern and his numerous family. He dragged the protesting apprentice from the communal sleeping mat and pulled him into the street, turned his face to the sky and hissed. 'Tell me what you can see!'

Gern squinted.

'I can see the stars, master,' he said.

'What are they on, boy?'

Gern relaxed slightly. 'That's easy, master. Everyone knows the stars are on the body of the goddess Nept who arches herself from . . . oh, bloody hell.'

'You can see her, too?'

'Oh, mummy,' whispered Gern, and slid to his knees.

Dil nodded. He was a religious man. It was a great comfort knowing that the gods were there. It was knowing they were here that was the terrible part.

Because the body of a woman arched over the heavens, faintly blue, faintly shadowy in the light of the watery stars.

She was enormous, her statistics interstellar. The shadow between her galactic breasts was a dark nebula, the curve of her stomach a vast wash of glowing gas, her navel the seething, dark incandescence in which new stars were being born. She wasn't supporting the sky. She was the sky.

Her huge sad face, upside down on the turnwise horizon, stared directly at Dil. And Dil was realising that there are few things that so shake belief as seeing, clearly and precisely, the object of that belief. Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.

'Oh, Sod,' moaned Gern.

Dil struck him across the arm.

'Stop that,' he said. 'And come with me.'

'Oh, master, whatever shall we do?'

Dil looked around at the sleeping city. He hadn't the faintest idea.

'We'll go to the palace,' he said firmly. 'It's probably a trick of the, of the, of the dark. Anyway, the sun will be up presently.'

He strode off, wishing he could change places with Gern and show just a hint of gibbering terror. The apprentice followed him at a sort of galloping creep.

'I can see shadows against the stars, master! Can you see them, master? Around the edge of the world, master!'

'Just mists, boy,' said Dil, resolutely keeping his eyes fixed in front of him and maintaining a dignified posture as appropriate to the Keeper of the Left Hand Door of the Matron Lodge and holder of several medals for needlework.

'There,' he said. 'See, Gern, the sun is coming up!'

They stood and watched it.

Then Gern whimpered, very quietly.

Rising up the sky, very slowly, was a great flaming ball. And it was being pushed by a dung beetle bigger than worlds.