by Gary Russell
Jaanson didn’t return the gesture. ‘We’re not friends, Mister Globb, purely expedient to one another’s needs. Let’s not get carried away.’
With a laugh, Kik the Assassin addressed the human professor. ‘I like your spirit, human. My job is to protect you both and get Cyrrus here back to his cell so he can be pardoned. Well, we both can be. I’ll make sure you get this Glamour of yours. How do we get in?’
Before Jaanson could answer, Kik the Assassin’s eyes flicked and Bernice realised with a chill they made direct contact with hers.
Neither of the humans was aware of what Kik the Assassin had seen, but she locked gazes with Bernice, not blinking. And after a few seconds she looked away, a massive grin on her face. ‘Oh, this is going to be soooo much fun!’ she shouted.
Globb and Jaanson looked at her strangely, wondering why she was being loud.
‘Apologies,’ she purred. ‘I’m just making the most of my freedom.’ She looked back at Bernice, again just slyly enough the others didn’t notice. ‘I love a challenge.’
And Bernice moved back to the others, holding Peter’s arm.
‘She saw me,’ Bernice whispered.
‘Why isn’t she telling the others?’
Bernice shrugged. ‘I can’t read her as well as the humans, but my guess – she’s looking for something to do that is more than guarding Globb and Jaanson’s Glamour. A challenge.’
Ruth frowned. ‘And we’re a challenge?’
‘I am. Not sure she knows you guys are here. That might work in our favour. I need to go in with them. Once we’re inside, follow.’ She looked at Ruth and Jack. ‘This is dangerous – I doubt she’s called Kik the Assassin because she’s cute to babies and cuddles kittens. Do exactly what Peter says at all times.’
‘We could just stay outside,’ Jack suggested. ‘You know what I’m like!’
Bernice shrugged again. ‘Something else I didn’t tell you. All four of us are trapped in that time eddy-bubble-catastrophe-thing in there. So we all need to be in there to break our future selves out of it.’
Ruth and Jack stared open-mouthed. ‘And you kept that from us because?’ Ruth asked.
Bernice smiled apologetically. ‘It never came up.’
‘Peter?’ Jack turned to the teenager. ‘You knew?’
‘Nope,’ he said. ‘But I guessed.’
‘How?’
‘By using my brain. Mum goes on lots of missions alone. Why bring us when it’s about time travel unless we’re involved. Made sense.’
‘Thanks, darling,’ Bernice said.
‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, Mum. I think you’re daft for not actually telling us, but that’s life.’ Peter smiled back at her, just baring his fangs enough. ‘Don’t mess it up, Mum, and we’ll have your back.’
Bernice nodded and moved out.
—
Bernice moved carefully across the slippery surface, from boulder to boulder, trying to stay hidden. Yes, Kik the Assassin knew she was around, but if she could come from a different place it might cut through the blue woman’s confidence or something.
Or probably not.
At one point, Bernice flopped down behind a large boulder, unable to see either where she was going or where she had been. And wondered, not for the first time, if she was getting a bit old for all this.
When she had first met the Doctor, she had been significantly younger. Sig. Nif. I. Cantly. She’d had no ties to anything or anyone; she was starting out her life as a professor, as a teacher to students. She had discovered the Doctor and his friend Ace on a cemetery world called Heaven, where they had defeated a weird spore-like life form called the Hoothi, which was trying to expand itself by reanimating the corpses. Bernice had ended up travelling with the Doctor a while after that and, although she eventually moved away from the TARDIS, the two would continue to keep coming into each other’s lives (quite literally in the Doctor’s case, as she had seen him with more than one face). And, to some extent, Bernice envied him. He had the TARDIS, he could come and go wherever he pleased. Yes, Bernice had possessed for a short period of time a couple of Time Rings that gave her limited access to the past and future but they were unreliable and, if she was quite honest, it scared her a little to use them. It became obvious to her a few years after leaving the Doctor that her body had changed in small subtle ways that people can only notice because they are their bodies; they live in them from day to day; they sense things.
Bernice could already see that she aged differently to other people. She was probably in her mid-fifties now, but she looked and felt maybe fifteen years younger than that. She had an 18-year-old son, a dead husband, and at one point had had her body stolen away from her and occupied by a less-than-charming life form.
But at the back of her mind was the feeling that one day, probably soon, this was all going to come back and bite her. It was like her life was a piece of elastic; charmed, ageless, lucky and brilliant, but eventually that elastic would spring back and she’d age thirty years in a week. Whatever those Time Rings (and maybe even the TARDIS itself) had done to her would pop up and say, ‘You had a good laugh, Benny, but here’s where you pay the piper.’ She’d once had a vision of a possible future, seeing herself dying alone on some sandy planet light years from Peter and everyone else she loved and cared about.
And yet, here she was trying to flit silently around a wet mud ball, hoping to throw herself into some weird time eddy inside a weird pyramid, and save her weird future self. Doing so would probably erase her most recent history, the future-Benny would then move forward with her life, as would Jack, Ruth and Peter, and all this would end up as some sort of daydream, a brief déjà-vu feeling.
That’s time travel for you. It doesn’t just mess up your body; it messes up your head.
Benny smiled to herself. ‘You know what, Bernice Surprise Summerfield,’ she mused to no one. ‘Let’s be honest, quibbles and fears aside, you wouldn’t change one blasted thing about your life, would you. I mean, you loved the Doctor, you loved the TARDIS. He introduced you to Jason, to Adrian, to Guy, to Bev, to Irving, and without all of that there’d be no Peter, no Joseph, no Dellah, no Collection, no Legion – hell, no Wolsey! In fact, no memories, no life. Imagine if you’d ended up leaving Heaven with everyone else, going back to uni; by now you’d be an old unsatisfied retired professor living in a caravan on Outer Space Mobile Home World.’
Still, all that aside, right now she’d be happier if her left hip wasn’t aching, if she didn’t have slight arthritis in her right knee, if the greying hairs would stay dark.
With a sigh, partially caused by pushing all those thoughts out of her mind and partially because that ruddy knee meant she wasn’t as smooth getting up as she’d have liked, Bernice moved out from behind the boulder.
And found her nose being microscopically indented by the pointy end of a rapier being held by Kik the Assassin, who smiled at her.
‘Nice try, saw you the moment you moved,’ said Kik the Assassin. ‘What do you want?’
Bernice carefully reached into her satchel and brought out the rock she’d been given earlier. ‘Open sesame?’ she said apologetically.
—
Peter Summerfield watched the blue woman lead his mother away at sword-point and drew Ruth and Jack’s attention to the fact.
‘We need to follow, discreetly.’ He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Know what that entails, Jack?’
Jack gave him a lopsided grin. ‘Oh, ye of little faith. Of course. I have survived a lot of these adventures and capers, you know.’
‘Barely,’ Peter growled.
Ruth tapped Peter. ‘That’s my husband-to-be you are dissing, young man,’ she said. ‘And Jack has saved your skin more times than you seem to recall right now, so less of the sarcasm.’
Peter thought about this. Nope, he really couldn’t remember one moment of skin-saving by Jack, but let it go. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Quietly.’
They started retracing Bernice’s path aroun
d the boulders, ensuring that the blue woman’s back was always to them.
—
‘I found this skulking in the boulders,’ Kik the Assassin said.
‘She said earlier that she’s a professor,’ Jaanson said. ‘But I’ve never heard of her.’
‘I’ve never heard of you before today, either,’ Bernice said. ‘So that’s really not very important. Much like you.’
‘You said you knew my reputation,’ Jaanson said, both affronted and clearly missing the point.
Bernice smiled at him. ‘Oh dear, poor you and your ego. Look, there’s the Pyramid Eternia, this is Aztec Moon and you’re a pompous idiot in a tweed coat and silly hat. I’ve been around, Horace. I know your type.’
Jaanson drew himself up to his full height of just under five foot seven, his jowls puffing as he tried to think of some witty riposte. Instead, he just turned on his heel. ‘Why not just kill her?’
‘Wow, thanks, Professor,’ Bernice said. ‘Nice to see the professors of the future have turned feral.’
‘Shut up,’ was Cyrrus Globb’s contribution.
‘Wait,’ Jaanson said. And Bernice’s eyes gleamed a little. ‘Did you say “of the future”?’
‘I did indeed say “of the future”. Good to know the language hasn’t deteriorated along with the manners.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘I was born in another time. Another world.’
The Professor snorted. ‘Nonsense. You are one of us. You look like us, you sound like us.’
Bernice shrugged. ‘I was born in the twenty-sixth century.’
Kik the Assassin gave Jaanson a glance. ‘I think she’s telling the truth.’
Jaanson was apoplectic – his life, his dreams were being tarnished right in front of him. ‘I have spent my life searching for the answer to free movement in time and space. I don’t expect to find it solved in this junkyard of a planet. Just kill her.’
‘Kill me,’ Bernice said quietly, with just an added dash of threat and a sprinkle of menace, ‘and you’ll remain trapped here, footprints in a time portal where you were not supposed to have walked.’
Professor Jaanson shrugged. ‘What proof have you got to your claims?’
Bernice produced the shard of Glamour.
‘And?’
Bernice shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I think it might gain us entry to the pyramid.’ She pointed at the monolithic structure nearby. ‘Fancy finding out?’
‘This is nonsense,’ Professor Jaanson said.
Cyrrus Globb clearly didn’t have much patience. He snatched the rock out of Bernice’s hand and marched over to the huge door in the pyramid. ‘Now what?’ he asked.
‘No idea,’ Bernice said truthfully. She smiled sweetly at Kik the Assassin. ‘Thank you so much for dragging me into all this.’
Kik the Assassin smiled back. ‘Don’t worry, I trust you about as much as the human professor does. But not for the same reasons.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, I think you’re up to something. I think you probably can get us inside that Pyramid. I’m just not sure why.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’ Bernice then glanced at Globb. ‘He really is a fool, isn’t he?’
Kik the Assassin shook her head. ‘Actually he’s a very successful conman. I imagine he knows exactly what he’s doing, but doesn’t want you or the Professor to know that.’
‘So why tell me?’
‘Because,’ the blue woman said with a little laugh that reminded Bernice of gargling with glass, ‘I don’t care what happens. We get in, get what the Headless Monks wanted and get out again. That way, we’re free.’
Bernice thought about this. ‘I see. And Jaanson?’
‘Never heard of him before an hour ago. I reckon he’s surplus to requirements.’
‘And me?’
‘We’ll see. I’m not sure you’re quite what you appear. That…intrigues me.’
‘I like being intriguing. Usually means I’m going to stay alive a bit longer.’
Bernice focused on Globb. So he was a conman. And he needed the actual rock, this Glamour, which that shard came from, to get his freedom. Which meant it was a bargaining chip. Trouble was, she also needed the Glamour to free her future self, so it was rather important Globb didn’t get it. Not so much a bargaining chip after all, more a hostage to fortune. Hmmm.
And then she walked forward, took the shard back out of his hand and held it against the doorway.
With a speed that surprised even Bernice, the door just melted away, revealing a huge dark cavern within.
Equally quickly, Globb retrieved the shard from her and pocketed it.
Deciding confidence was needed as much as a confidence trick, Bernice stepped into the darkness. Globb followed as did Kik the Assassin.
Professor Jaanson however stood on the threshold, unsure.
‘You wanted to see if the time portal created by the Ancients of the Universe is home, Horace,’ Bernice called out. ‘Don’t be chicken.’
And Professor Jaanson stepped into the gloom.
—
A moment later, Peter, Jack and Ruth entered through the same door, keeping quiet. Peter shifted his backpack slightly, instinctively checking just by the way it weighed that it still contained everything he suspected he might need for this mission. Ruth was checking for exits and safe routes out if it all turned bad. Jack was using his amazing eyesight to see better than the others in the dark and was focused on making sure they never lost sight of Bernice.
They moved, unspeaking, barely even acknowledging each other was there, still part of that well-oiled machine.
—
After a while, the darkness gave way to a distant light.
‘This place is bigger on the inside than the outside,’ Bernice said.
‘Impossible,’ said Jaanson. ‘Transcendental engineering is a worthless dream and a scientific impossibility.’
Bernice sighed. The future of science really was frustrating here, if he was any example.
‘Well, I can’t be bothered arguing, Horace. Maybe it’s all done with mirrors.’
‘I imagine it is,’ the Professor agreed. ‘The Ancients were notoriously imaginative.’
‘You’re just making stuff up now, aren’t you? To sound more important and educated than you actually are.’
Before Jaanson could respond, Kik the Assassin put a hand up. ‘I need to check something back at the doorway.’
Globb turned open-mouthed, but the woman waved him away. ‘We have a deal, Globb; it’s not in my interest to abandon you. Without you getting what you want, I don’t get what I want. I’ll be back shortly. Bernice Summerfield will lead you forward.’
Bernice glanced back into the gloom.
Kik the Assassin leant in close so only Bernice could hear her. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t hurt them, especially the young pup. I just need everyone together. To make sure there are no tricks.’
And she was gone faster than Bernice could think of a reply.
The light was closer now and the edges of it illuminated the sides of what was a huge chasm, created like a well in the centre (well, near as dammit) of the pyramid.
‘Fascinating…’ Professor Jaanson ran forward, finally shaking off his fear as he reached the edge of the chasm and looked down. ‘There! There, there, there!!’ He pointed excitedly at a sort of stone altar, upon which was a lump of rough stone hewn into a pyramid, to echo the big one they were within.
Bernice realised the rock was what she had the fragment of – plain, boring, white crystal running through it.
Slightly more alarming was that surrounding this altar, creating a sort of inverted funnel, like a whirlpool sucking upwards to a point, and emanating from the rock, was misty energy, still moving, like it was caught in perpetual motion.
Or, Bernice realised with dread, a time eddy.
‘Who is that?’ Globb harrumphed quietly.
Bernice focused, stared. ‘Oh my god,’ sh
e breathed. ‘There are people at the apex of that…energy.’
‘Chronon energy,’ Jaanson breathed.
Oh great, now he was acting like a scientist. And he was probably right. Especially as Benny had already guessed who was standing there.
It had to be her. Jack. Ruth. Peter. Caught frozen, being scattered through time and sending messages and postcards and whatever to get the Doctor to find them and save them.
But of course, that wasn’t going to be enough now. The vision of her future that she had spoken to was already disintegrating. It was up to her to get in there are save herself. Jump-start them.
Then maybe the Doctor would turn up, use his timey-wimey Gallifreyan whatnot to, oh who knows, probably take the Glamour away and chuck it into the heart of a supernova, make sure no one could ever try accessing the secrets of the Ancients again.
All of which might have been a plan except that suddenly sprawled beside her were Jack and Ruth, thrown some distance by Kik the Assassin.
In her other hand, she lifted Peter above her head – for the first time Bernice realised she had to be from Spyro – she had heard of the people with telescopic bones, but never seen one. But her arm was twice its original length and Peter sensibly wasn’t fighting back.
‘Please put my son down,’ Bernice said. ‘He’s not great with heights.’
‘We were just having a friendly chat,’ Kik the Assassin said. ‘It’s nice to have some decent conversation for once.’
Globb gave her a look, but she just shrugged indifferently.
‘And?’
Shaking his head, Globb pointed at Bernice. ‘More of them?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Jaanson. ‘She came with a gang. They took out the whole Church party.’
At any other time, that line would have made Bernice laugh. But now, she had to focus on the matter at hand. ‘Jack?’
‘Yes?’
How far can you jump?’
‘Why don’t I like where this line of questioning is going?’