BBC Cult Dr Who - The Sands Of Time

by BBCi Cult

  As at most funerals, almost all of the mourners were hired professionals. They tore their hair, smote their chests and shrieked as if the coffin contained Osiris himself. There was only one person present who could be termed a friend. Standing alone, crying quietly at the back of the mourners, was the handmaiden Sitamun. Alone until she was joined by the Doctor, Tegan and Atkins.

  She watched them walk out of the desert and stand at the back of the crowd. Their clothes and their conversation were strange - just as the goddess's had been strange when she first joined Sitamun and Amosis in the anteroom of the temple. Sitamun edged closer and listened, though she understood little of what the newcomers were saying.

  'I'm afraid it looks as though we may be too late,' Atkins pointed to the sarcophagus standing upright in the pyramid entrance. 'That is the casket in which your friend was incarcerated, is it not?'

  The Doctor nodded grimly. 'Looks like Blinovitch was right after all,' he said quietly. 'Still, it was worth a shot.'

  'A few hours, that's all,' Tegan wiped a tear from her cheek. 'A few sodding hours earlier and we could have stopped them.'

  'No, Tegan, no.' The Doctor patted her shoulder. 'It had already happened when we decided to come here. The web of time has crystallized at this node, it might as well be set in stone.'

  'So what do we do?'

  'Well, we'll just have to try something else. We still have a couple of options, and we're no worse off now than we were before we came.'

  Tegan was not convinced. 'It's just, you know - being so close and yet.' She searched for a way to express her frustration, anger and grief. She gave up. 'Oh, rabbits,' she said.

  'I am afraid I follow very little of this,' Atkins confessed as they watched the priests fuss round the coffin fifty yards away. 'But I'm not sure how rabbits will help. Unless you are planning some new feat of temporal prestidigitation?'

  'I'm afraid not,' the Doctor confessed.

  'Why don't we just go back to yesterday and try again to save your friend?'

  'Blooming Blinovitch,' Tegan told him.

  The Doctor tried to explain more. 'The link between the time zones - between us and the here and now, if you like - has already been established. Probably by the very fact that Nyssa was brought here. So from now on time moves on at the same relative rate. We spend a day hunting for Nyssa, and a day passes in this time. It's as if the two times, yours and Nyssa's, are joined together by a steel rod, so you can't move one without adjusting the other by the exact same amount.'

  'And why is that?'

  This threw the Doctor for a second. 'Why? Er, well according to Blinovitch it's something to do with temporal dynamics and their relationship to the real world envelope. But I think it's really because otherwise things would just be too easy.'

  Atkins considered. 'So we really are too late.'

  The Doctor did not answer immediately. He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at the sand at his feet. Then he raised his head and looked Atkins in the eye. 'That depends on what for.'

  They held each other's gaze for a long moment. Then the Doctor flashed a sudden smile, turning abruptly to the young woman who had moved so she was standing next to Atkins. 'How do you do,' he said, his teeth gleaming white in the sun, 'I'm the Doctor. How can we help?'

  The woman hesitated, looking from the Doctor to each of his companions in turn. Eventually she asked: 'You are friends of the goddess?'

  They looked at her blankly.

  'Of Nyssa?'

  The most senior priests removed the lid of the casket, leaving the base and the mummy inside standing in the pyramid doorway. The mummy itself was not completely wrapped. The head was still free of bandages, lolled to one side as if in sleep, dark hair falling in loose curls about the linen shoulders.

  At the back of the crowd of mourners, Tegan turned away, her hands to her mouth.

  'Oh God,' she gasped. 'Doctor, I can see her face.'

  High Priest Rassul, in full regalia, approached the mummy. He held up the ceremonial adze, the loose sleeves of his gold cloak falling like wings to his sides as he held it aloft. Then he turned in a swirl of golden motion and pressed the adze to the mouth of the mummy, parting the girl's lips so that the adze grazed her clenched teeth as she seemed to kiss the blade. As he held the adze in position, Rassul chanted the ancient words of power, the standard litany to restore sight, speech, and hearing to the dead.

  Except that the woman was not dead, and would not have her senses restored. Her ba, her soul, would remain forever locked with the ka, the vital force of the body, within the mummified body. And together with them...

  Next Rassul weighed the heart. He chanted the words of the incantation for the mummified woman: 'Oh heart of my being, do not witness against me. Do not betray me before my judges.' It was not her real heart, for that still beat, although more and more slowly, within the woman's breast. Instead a golden replica of a human heart was placed on one side of the scales. The Anubis-priest dropped the feather than symbolised Maat on the other side. And as the scales fell in favour of the heart, the feather lifting away. The priest dressed as Anubis hissed his appreciation, and carried the scales from the pyramid doorway.

  Then Rassul took the canopic jar. He carried it carefully, reverently, to the coffin. He held it high above his head so all could see, and then he turned and held it out to the mummified goddess. Rassul's body blocked the crowd's view, so they did not see him tear the stopper from the jar; did not see him thrust the open end towards the face of the goddess; did not see the goddess's hair blown back as if by a breeze. And they did not see Nyssa's eyes snap open, or the hint of a smile that traced across her mouth before the eyes closed again for millennia.

  'The weighing of the heart,' the Doctor said, 'is the ancient Egyptian way of sorting out the wheat from the chaff, or the sheep from the goats.'

  'It is to test innocence and purity,' Sitamun said. She did not understand what the Doctor had meant and felt she should explain.

  'Huh,' Tegan almost laughed. 'Nyssa should have no trouble there.'

  'But I don't recognize that last ceremony,' the Doctor went on, ignoring Tegan's comment. 'Do you know what it was?' he asked the handmaiden.

  'It was the return of the spirit,' she said simply.

  'Why?' Tegan said. 'Where's it gone?'

  'I do not know.'

  'Well, what does the ceremony usually mean? What does it enact?'

  Sitamun shook her head. 'I have never seen it before,' she confessed quietly. 'You mean this is your first funeral?'

  Sitamun looked at Tegan, puzzled. Then her face fell and she almost burst into tears. Tegan's words seemed to her, a temple handmaiden responsible for the souls of the dead and their departure, an accusation of negligence of her most holy duties. It was Atkins who held her hands and spoke kindly to her.

  'I am in service too,' he said. 'We are not asking you to betray a trust or to dishonour your employers in any way. But the Doctor and Miss Tegan are desperate to help their friend - our friend. And to do that, we need your help.'

  'It is not that,' Sitamun told him when she had recovered her composure a little. 'I wish you well. Nyssa was a friend of mine also.' She turned to address Tegan directly. 'I have attended many funerals, as is my station, but the ceremony of the return of the spirit is never performed.' She looked round at her new friends. 'It is a ceremony written solely for this occasion,' she said.

  The others exchanged glances.

  'And what is it? What is the ceremony about? You must know something.'

  'I know only that it concerns the jar, Doctor.'

  'Jar? What jar?' The Doctor grabbed Sitamun, her dark skin whitening under the grip of his fingers.

  'Doctor,' Atkins murmured, and gently removed the Doctor's hands from Sitamun's bare shoulders. 'Any small detail may help us,' he told her.

  Sitamun decided to start from the beginning and tell them everything. Even what she was sure they must already know. 'You friend, Nyssa,' she said, 'w
as sent to us by the gods. She appeared to us in the temple at the appointed place and hour as the perfect sacrifice to appease Horus.'

  'Appease him for what?'

  'Many years ago, many hundreds of years ago, grave robbers entered the sacred tomb of the goddess Nephthys.'

  'Who's Nephthys?' Tegan asked.

  'Sister of Osiris,' Atkins told her.

  'And more importantly,' the Doctor said, 'the wife and sister of Seth.'

  'So why the big fuss? What did they steal?'

  'Nothing,' Sitamun said. 'They all died in the tomb. It was the will of the gods.'

  'But?' prompted the Doctor.

  'But, a canopic jar was cracked.'

  'So what was in this jar?' Tegan asked. 'Raspberry jam?'

  'I do not know.'

  'And why the importance for this ceremony?'

  'I do not know. I say only what I have heard. But the jar was cracked many centuries ago, and recently it has started to crumble. The priests were worried, whispering in the temple corridors and meeting after dark.' Sitamun considered, remembered some of the looks she had seen on the faces of the priests as they left the meetings. 'The priests were scared,' she said.

  'And then Nyssa turned up, and everything was suddenly all right again?'

  Sitamun nodded. 'Yes, Doctor. And now she will be entombed in the black pyramid with the mummy of the goddess Nephthys and the sacred relics of power.'

  Behind them the priests replaced the lid heavily on the casket, and lifted it on to their shoulders.

  'Entombed for all eternity.'

  They carried it slowly into the black pyramid. As they crossed the threshold the stygean darkness swallowed them up.

  They watched as the priests re-emerged and the stone door was slotted into the opening. Then the priests bowed, and the rested oxen were led away. The mourners lined up to be paid, and started to drift back towards the huge pyramids on the distant horizon.

  The Doctor shook Sitamun's bemused hand. 'You've been very helpful,' he said. 'Thank you. And thank you for being kind to Nyssa too. I think she must have needed a friend.' He turned to Tegan and Atkins. 'Come along you two, we've got things to do.'

  'Like what?'

  'Like get back to 1896 and make sure Lord Kenilworth finds the mummy and gets it safely back to London. Otherwise, no matter what Blinovitch might think, we'll never have found out what happened to Nyssa, and she really will rest in there for all eternity.'

  Sitamun stood alone for an hour. She looked at the pyramid where her friend was buried while the three strangers walked back into the sandy wastes of the empty wilderness.

  * * *

  London, 1975

  The gleaming whiteness of the scientist's newly-laundered lab coat contrasted with the stained bandages wrapping the mummy. The scientist smiled - white teeth, white coat, in a white room standing by a white-faced bank of equipment.

  His assistant stood ready beside the stainless steel trolley, ready to wheel the mummy into the scanner. His lab coat contrasted with his dark skin.

  'How does it work?'

  The scientist turned to the control panel, tapped a dial and adjusted a knob. 'It x-rays the subject from all angles to create a three-dimensional composite image of the body. It will show the outline of the body within the bandages, and any jewellery folded inside.' He inspected a few more readings, then nodded to the assistant. 'Right, let's get started.'

  The assistant gently rolled the trolley along its track into the circular opening of the huge metal tunnel of the scanner. 'How appropriate that it should be a cat that releases the secrets of the goddess,' he said quietly, shutting the heavy lead door behind the trolley.

  'Releases?' The scientist was beside him, checking the seals on the door. 'And what cat is that?' he asked. Not really interested, most of his mind on the task ahead.

  The assistant gestured at the machine. 'C.A.T.' he spelled out.

  'Ah. Computerized Axial Tomography.' The scientist made a final minute adjustment, and threw the main switch. 'Well, let's see what secrets our friend is keeping, shall we?'

  The monitor screen glowed into life, throwing negative images onto the glass as the scanner recorded the details of the mummy from every angle. Somewhere outside an owl hooted in the night, and a train whistled in the darkness.

  The images blurred across the scientist's retina. The points of light against the dark looked more like the night sky than the innards of the mummy. He was vaguely aware of his new assistant standing beside him. The assistant was muttering something that the scientist could not catch or understand. Words in his native Egyptian tongue. Phrases that sounded full of strength and power. The volume built with the steadily increasing hum of the CAT scanner.

  The scientist continued to watch the pictures of black and white intensity blasted across his retina. He watched the woman taken to the tomb; he watched the mummy placed in the casket; he watched the tomb sealed. He felt the energy and understanding building inside his mind.

  And beside him, Sadan Rassul continued to intone the words from the scroll of Thoth, and called on the power of his goddess.

  Author's Notes: Instalment Three

  Instalment Four

  Chapter Five

  Atkins was not at all sure how to approach Lord Kenilworth. He spent most of the time in the TARDIS on its journey back to 1896 pondering the problem. The Doctor had made it clear what it was he was proposing and that he thought Atkins should perform the introductions. But Atkins felt that it might be seen as a little presumptuous for him to suggest to his master where he should direct his latest expedition.

  So as they entered the lobby of the Mena House Oberoi hotel in Giza, Atkins decided his best recourse was to repair to the bar to get his spirits up. Or rather, down.

  'What a splendid idea,' the Doctor said, pointing across the room. 'How did you know he'd be here?'

  Atkins said nothing. Now that he could see Lord Kenilworth, maps and papers spread out on the table in front of him, Atkins realised that the bar was indeed the most likely place for him to be.

  'Well, go on then,' the Doctor hissed in Atkins' ear. He elbowed him into the room, and gestured for Tegan to stay near the doorway. 'Let us handle this,' he said quietly to her. Tegan's grunt of annoyance melded with Kenilworth's snort of surprise as Atkins crossed the room towards him.

  Atkins kept his expression as blank as he could as he crossed the room. Kenilworth wiped a handkerchief across his face and stood up, as if not quite able to believe what he was seeing. 'Good God, Atkins - what the deuce?' he gruffed as Atkins came within range.

  'I'm sorry, sir. I realize this is somewhat unexpected.' Atkins bowed his head so as not to meet his employer's eye. 'But a matter has arisen.'

  'Unexpected? I should say so.' Kenilworth waved him to a chair by the table.

  Atkins sat, his legs suddenly feeling less secure as he took his weight off them.

  'So what is this matter that brings you all the way from London?' Kenilworth leaned across the maps and documents at Atkins. 'What is it that causes you to neglect your duties - and my household, I should add - and come to Cairo in person rather than send a telegram?'

  Atkins coughed politely. 'We are actually in Giza, sir,' he said, wondering how best to explain the situation.

  'I know where I am, thank you.' Kenilworth sat back in his chair. He picked up his whisky tumbler, and made to take a sip. Then he changed his mind and held it up to the light instead. 'And I rather think I may be permitted to stray a couple of miles from my residence. Especially since my butler seems to have wandered several thousand miles from his.' He nodded abruptly, then laughed. 'You gave me quite a turn though, I don't mind admitting.' Kenilworth confessed in a stage whisper. He replaced his drink on the table.

  Atkins glanced round for the Doctor. For a moment he felt panic welling up in the pit of his stomach. The Doctor was gone. Then he realized that the Doctor had followed him over to the table and was standing beside Kenilworth's chair.


  Kenilworth seemed to notice the Doctor at the same instant. 'Who the devil are you, sir?' he asked, quickly gathering up his papers and maps.

  Atkins snatched the whisky from the top of a map just before the paper it rested on was pulled away. He carefully set it down again on the bare table top. 'This gentleman, sir,' he told Kenilworth, 'has a proposition which I believe you will find of interest.'

  'Does he indeed?' Kenilworth craned back to get a good view of the Doctor's face. 'Well. sir, out with it.' He shielded his eyes from the setting sun and continued to stare at the Doctor standing over him. 'What proposition is it that causes you to hijack my man and bring him half across the globe?'

  The Doctor blinked, exchanged a look with Atkins, and stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets. 'You are looking for a tomb,' he said eventually. 'A blind pyramid south of Saqqara.'

  Kenilworth flinched visibly. 'How do you know that?' He turned to cast an accusing stare at Atkins.

  Atkins began to shake his head in denial, then changed his mind. There was no point in prevaricating. 'I think you should listen to the gentleman, sir. I have good reason to suspect he can provide useful information.'

  Kenilworth reached for his drink. His expression suggested he was not convinced.

  'Mister Atkins is right, Lord Kenilworth,' the Doctor said quietly.

  'Really? And what information, pray, can you provide me with?'

  'You must be prepared for some hardship, I'm afraid.' the Doctor had been leaning forward towards Kenilworth. Now he straightened up. 'There will be danger, death even, ahead of us. But if you're agreeable I can offer my services to your expedition.'