“For the sake of argument, try to accept it, like a good little reader of Herodotus. And to further suspend disbelief, let’s say our workforce labored in shifts, twenty-four hours a day including Sundays and holidays. That’s a daily assemblage of twenty-four blocks, which in a year would yield…?” He frowned heavily. “I don’t seem to have a pencil…”

“Eighty-seven hundred and sixty,” I told him.

“Then how long would it take to complete our pyramid of two million, three hundred thousand blocks?”

I winced.

“Well?” he scolded triumphantly. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Two hundred and sixty-four years.”

“So there you have it. Unlikely,” he mimicked my voice with uncanny fidelity, “not to say impossible.”

“But the pyramid was built—it’s no illusion. How did they manage…?”

Again he said, “I know how,” and the hair on my neck woke up. His voice continued, the intonations of a pedant before a captive seminar. “Egypt in so many ways has provided the furniture of our minds…” Now the voice came as if from deep in a vault, a sepulchre. “But they also knew something we don’t know—how to harness the most incredible source of energy the world has ever witnessed. They did it,” he said, as I looked at him bleakly, “with sound and music. The sharp, clean notes of a horn, the timpani of a taut goatskin drum, the crash of cymbals, the peal of bells, the rattle of bones, the percussion of copper rods that fanned the air and set off great vibrations—and those blocks of limestone rose from the quarry like birds, like perfect arrows from perfect bows, and sped through the sky and settled, stone on stone, at Gizeh. Can’t you just see them?” he asked.

And incongruously I could, the pliant limestone shaking loose the fetters of gravity, rising with the dream-slow grace of a blimp, trotting nonchalantly over the desert, galloping above the papyrus sedge, gathering speed, soaring… I shook my head hard. Reverie crashed.

“…flow of forces through the universe,” Chatterton was saying, “sonic energy, pulsations of power, and music the propellant.”

“I don’t see how,” I said.

He flushed. “You are a willful and obstructive boy,” he roared. “Your attitude fails to captivate. You’re fired!”

“That’s okay with me,” I told him. “You can talk to Abdul yourself.”

“I’ll—no.” He tugged at his robe. Surprisingly, he added, “I apologize. Let’s not be hasty.”

I had no intention of being hasty. What I didn’t need was to get canned, now that Valerie was back.

“All I meant to suggest,” he said soothingly, “was that your criticism lies within a limited concept of logic. Certainly you realize that our orderly universe is disorderly, and riddled with incongruities.”