Edward Hoch - Isaac Asimov's Worlds of Fantasy. Book 6 - Mythical Beasties

What had happened to the race of people who had sculptured her? Hall wondered. To the race of people who had built the three pyramids over which she was standing guard?

Did that same race of people have something to do with the building of the Egyptian pyramids? Did- Nothing happened to the race of people who built the pyramids, Daniel Hall. And nothing is going to happen to them if they can help it. As the words formed themselves in his mind, he saw that the Brobdingnagian head was turning toward him. Simultaneously he realized that, far from being inanimate, the massive leonine body was rampant with life. At length, me mysterious eyes met his and regarded him like a pair of intelligent golden suns. He stood stark stil] in the starlight, a statue now himself.

In the final analysis there was no reason why a sphinx couldn't be alive. Statues were sculptured of men, too, but this did not mean that men were made of stone.

Even the poor Egyptian child who dressed your wound in the Temple of Hathor is less anthropocentric than you are, Daniel Hall. She realized I was alive the moment she saw me.

And yet you allowed yourself to know resentment simply because her thought world ruled out the possibility of your being her equal, thereby forcing her to think of you as a slave. For shame, Daniel Hall.' "And now what happens?" Hall asked, half in cynicism, half in fear. "Are you going to devour me?"

There, your anthropocentric nature is influencing you again!

You think that merely because a being is larger than you are, it must be evil. And the larger it is, the more evil it becomes in your mind, and the more partial to human flesh. No, I'm not going to devour you, Daniel Hall-it is you and your kind who are going to devour me and my sisters. That is. you would be going to devour us if we hadn't taken the necessary steps to prevent you from doing so, although the possibility exists that you may still succeed. You are on the verge of devouring us, not because you want to at the moment, but because you haven't bothered to find out whether or not we exist.

"That's not true!" Hall objected. "I was sent here myself to find out!"

And so was one of the members of the Uvelian forces. But even if either or both of you were able to report your respective findings to your respective headquarters the battle would still take place, and you know it. Incidentally, it's unnecessary for you to speak, to say nothing of shout. I can receive thoughts as well as send them.

It was you who seized our controls then-who-who caused us to crash.

It was I who seized your controls and caused you to crash, Daniel Hall. My sister in the neighboring demesne took care of your opponent. If our project is successful, we will need both of you. However, although I caused you to crash, Daniel Hail, I had no intention of causing you bodily injury.

Small details are beyond the scope of our telekinesis. But I see that thanks to the skillful ministrations of Ahura, you've fully recovered.

Ahura?

The little Egyptian princess whom you were so rude to a few minutes ago in the Temple of Hathor.

She's no more of an Egyptian princess than you are! Hall "said." Egypt was consolidated with the Union of Terran States over a hundred years ago when the capital was built at Kafr el Haram, and couldn't recognize a princess even if she wanted to. Egyptian princesses were out of style long before that time anyway.

But millennia ago. they were not. Ahura wasn't lying to you-she realty is Cheops' daughter.

But don't you see?-that's more incredible yet.' Cheops' daughter has been dead for over five thousand years!

No, said the Sphinx, Cheops' daughter is very much alive.

However, until yesterday she had been unaware of the fact for quite some time. Not long after I arrived on your planet some fifty-two hundred of your years ago and instituted the project my sisters and I had agreed upon, it came to my attention that in his zeal to see his sepulcher erected Cheops had placed her in the stews. Since I had told him that if he would put all of the resources of his kingdom at my disposal the first pyramid would be his. f felt responsible for his action; and, as I had intended to take back someone like Ahura anyway, I stole her from the stews, placed her in suspended animation, built a special capsule for her. and had one of my sisters come and get her. She was then entombed in a special vault on Pomos-NRGC 984-D to you, Daniel Hall-until such time as I should have need of her. Two days ago I brought her here, dressed her in clothing similar to what she was accustomed to, placed her in the Temple of Hathor. and revived her. Ahura is not her real name. incidentally. She thinks of her ordeal in the stews as having happened only a few days ago and has unconsciously taken the first step toward creating a new identity. 1 interceded in time, but the experience left its mark just the same.

Drowning, Hall grabbed for the first straw he saw. But according to Herodotus, she stayed in the stews for a long lime, and also according to Herodotus, she made each of the patrons pay off with a building block for a small pyramid which she later built in front of her father's.

Come now, Daniel Hall, you aren't even convinced of that yourself. You simultaneously think of Herodotus as the ' 'Father of History" and as the "Father of Lies." However, as his Egyptian history can't possibly be anything more than recorded hearsay, he can't have been deliberately lying in this case. Probably he merely repeated the myths which the generations that followed the fourth dynasty dreamed up to supplement their knowledge of Cheops, Chephren, and Mykerinos. In any event, what he wrote about Ahura is untrue.

Hall had already forgotten Ahura- You said you arrived on Earth fifty-two hundred years ago. That means you're over five thousand years old!

Right, said the Sphinx. Even older if you count my incubation period, which you really should in view of the fact that members of my race mature before they even see the light of day. Altogether, we have a longevity of some fifteen thousand years-your years, that is. So you see. I've still got quite a few to go-or will have if the preventive measures my sisters and I have taken succeed in averting the Armageddon which the Terran and Uvelian space navies are so determined to bring off in our skies. Her golden eyes traversed the heavens, returned to Hall. No Pleiades yet, I see. Well, there will be soon. Incidentally. I stole the expression from your mind, Daniel Hall.

"Pleiades'* was the term used by ground observers to describe a space fleet in planetary orbit. But at the moment Hall was concerned with more important matters than Terran war terminology. You and your sisters-you' re parthenogenetic, aren't you? he said.

Righl again, Daniel Hall.

And does each of your sisters have a set of pyramids like these?

Not all of them. no-only those who have need for them at the moment.

Who built them for you?

We built them ourselves-not as a team, but as individuals. 1 myself built the set of Gizeh.

Come off it! Hail said. How could you build a pyramid? 1 have spread my left forefoot. Look at it. Daniel Hall. and tell me what you see.

Hall looked. /-/ see, he said a long time later, a set of five powerful appendages. Two of them-the ones which correspond to my thumb and forefinger-appear to be some manner of gripping tools. The next one appears to be a stone-cutting tool, and the last two appear to be tools thai can be adapted for almost any kind of work.

Good. Basically, my sisters and 1 are equipped/or quarrying and building, but through the ages our race extended its abilities to encompass innumerable other fields. The stone used in the set of pyramids behind you, 1 quarried in the mountains that form the western boundary of my dhen-or demesne: hence, transporation was no problem. Owing to the distribution of our dhens, it rarely is on our planet. However, the stone used in the Gizeh pyramids in many instances had to be quarried in neighboring countries: hence, transporation was a problem, and I had to enlist the aid of the reigning pharaohs. It's doubtful whether I could have succeeded without their cooperation in any case. The job took almost one hundred and fifty of their years-practically the whole of the fourth dynasty, ft needn't have taken that long, but the liming had to be perfect, and besides, I wanted it to look as though mankind alone were responsible for it. The first pyramid became Cheops', the next. Chephren's. and the last, Mykerinos'.