BBC Cult Dr Who - The Sands Of Time

by BBCi Cult

  'Why? I mean, why did they bother?'

  The Doctor was now examining a particular part of the shelf's surface. 'Oh it's all to do with power relays and receptor configuration. Boringly exact. Elegantly convoluted. Typical of Osiran technology. Take those shafts, for example.' He waved a hand vaguely at the sloping wall where Tegan had watched Macready, Kenilworth and Evans the previous day measuring a square hole.

  'They're just ventilation shafts,' she said, repeating what Atkins had told her. 'So people will believe for the next hundred years or so. Strange how they're exactly aligned with different stars in the constellation of Orion, isn't it?'

  Tegan considered this. 'Why hasn't anyone noticed?'

  'Because the Earth wobbles slightly on her axis. I don't think the Osirans allowed for that, probably didn't notice.' He looked up from the shelf thoughtfully.

  'So?'

  'So, the relative position of the constellations varies over time. The alignment doesn't work now. But when they were built, it was exact. And it will be again in about twenty-one thousand years.'

  'What happens then?'

  'Hmm? Oh I don't know. Street parties, perhaps. Tegan, what can you think of that has a perfectly round base about three inches in diameter?'

  Tegan closed her eyes for a second. 'I haven't a clue, Doctor. What?'

  'I don't know,' he said in a hurt voice, and pointed to a barely discernible mark in the dust on the shelf, an area where the dust was slightly thinner. 'But whatever it is, it's been removed from its place between the cobra and the jackal.' He looked straight at Tegan. 'I wonder why,' he said.

  Sadan Rassul stared into the falling sand and recited from the Scroll of Thoth. He had chosen a position from which he could direct his words, thoughts and power directly into the tent. The sand spiralled slowly down in a fine spray, building a perfect pyramid in the lower bowl of the hour glass.

  As he finished speaking, Rassul set the hourglass down on the ground, and watched the tent, waiting to see movement from within. The hourglass balanced at an angle on the desert floor, but Rassul paid it no heed. He knew from experience that it did not matter whether it stood angled, toppled over, or was upended. The sands had been set in their courses, and whatever happened to the outside of the hourglass, they would continue their fall, would continue to pile perfectly on the foundations laid by previous grains, until all the sand has travelled from one bowl to the other. And then, then his work would be done. And the waiting would be over.

  The tiny drops of sand continued to dribble in an almost imperceptible spray. The top bowl was almost empty, perhaps a fiftieth of the sand remaining. The pile of sand in the lower bowl continued to build its slow pyramid as Rassul lifted the hourglass and carried it back to his small encampment in the valley below.

  Beside his footprints was a small impression in the sand, an impression made by the base of the hourglass. It was a perfect circle, about three inches in diameter.

  The evening sessions were getting gradually more enthusiastic. Kenilworth had a practice of gathering the members of his expedition together every evening after dinner to discuss the day's work and exchange views and information. The first few meetings had been rather subdued, overshadowed by the strange events in the passageway and the death of Simons.

  The first evening had been mainly taken up with the Doctor giving assurances that they were over the worst problems and he did not anticipate any further automata, as Kenilworth described them, posing more fatal brain-teasers. Faced with the task of cataloguing the tomb and its contents, the others did not press the Doctor for more information. Tegan could see how relieved he was that they let the matter drop.

  This evening was the first that Margaret Evans had felt up to joining them. Initially she had not ventured from her tent, having food and water sent in. The last two nights she had dined with the others, quiet and pale. Tonight she seemed to be making an effort to get back into things. Tegan made a point of sitting next to her at one of the trestle tables, and noticed that her father seemed hardly to have noticed her demeanour. She had overheard Evans telling Macready a few days previously that his daughter was suffering from fatigue brought on by loss of sleep. And then some, thought Tegan, who had no illusions about what she had really lost.

  Perhaps because of Margaret Evans' reappearance, or perhaps because the Doctor opened the session by asking who had removed an uncatalogued object from the tomb, the proceedings were more lively than usual. Everyone denied vehemently removing anything, and Evans started again on his pet speech about scrupulous documentation. He moved from this directly into suggesting that the stone cladding of the tomb interior and the carved sections of the corridor be dismantled and stripped so they could be returned to England.

  Tegan was surprised at the suggestion, and more surprised by the nods that it elicited round the tables. But she was amazed at the Doctor's reaction.

  'You call yourself an archaeologist?' he said, standing up and leaning over the table at Evans. The small man leaned away, obviously unsettled by the sudden outburst.

  'Have you no idea of the damage done to the past by that sort of action?' the Doctor went on. 'I suppose you think that the wonders of ancient Egypt will be better displayed in the Victorian splendour of the British Museum than in their rightful place amongst the desert sands.'

  'Well, actually, ahem -' coughed Evans.

  But the Doctor cut him off. 'I don't know, when will you learn?' He looked towards the deep blue of the heavens, pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and turned a full circle. 'I know,' he said more quietly, 'that it is common practice to return home with treasures and even the insides of the tombs that have been surveyed. But I have a theory that archaeology can be better appreciated in-situ, and that if we leave it as undisturbed as possible, then others can make their own assessments with as much evidence as possible.'

  'I take your point, Doctor,' Macready agreed. 'But, given the finances that the British Museum has forwarded-'

  'Money, is that what it comes down to?' The Doctor waved his hands in frustration. 'You'll destroy it, don't you see that.'

  'It's preservation, surely,' Kenilworth interposed.

  'What? How can you claim such a thing? Even Champollion himself cut the painted royal heads from the walls of the tomb of Amenhotep III so they could be hung in the Bibliotheque Nationale.' The Doctor paced up and down in front of the group as he spoke, his voice gathering speed until he was breathless in his hurry to finish what he was saying. 'Blank squares in the adorned walls of an ancient burial chamber, just so that the rich socialites of Europe can admire the works of civilizations the living descendants of whom they regard with contempt.'

  Kenilworth blinked, but said nothing. Macready shifted uncomfortably on his bench, and Evans stared silently, mouth hanging open. Tegan and Margaret exchanged glances, each showing surprise and varying degrees of embarrassment.

  'Preservation?' the Doctor finished, almost as a whisper, 'I don't think so.'

  Kenilworth was the first to break the silence. 'Doctor,' he said, 'I don't think any of us here don't share your enthusiasm for the past and your desire to preserve it.' He looked round the others as if to gain their approval and confirmation. 'But it seems we may differ in our views about how to achieve this. Speaking for myself, I feel that whatever relics we can remove to the more civilised climes of Great Britain stand a better chance of long term survival than those left in a country where every pyramid so far discovered has been robbed of its treasures. Every pyramid until this one.'

  The Doctor nodded. 'I didn't mean to sound as if I doubted your honesty or your motives, and I apologise if that is how it sounded. But -'

  Kenilworth held up his hand. 'But,' he finished for the Doctor, 'you do express some reservations, I think, about tampering with the structure of the find. Forgive me if I misinterpret your worries, Doctor, but it seems to me that your primary concern is for the integrity of the architecture.'

  The Doctor did not answer imme
diately. He walked back to his bench and sat down, staring at the top of the table for a while. 'I suppose that's true,' he said at last. 'The artefacts can be redistributed, though it's a shame to break up any collection, provided they are scrupulously catalogued and their whereabouts recorded. But I cannot sanction the removal of one block of stone or one chip of paint from the pyramid.'

  'Is it because it's dangerous?' Tegan was wondering if the Doctor was concerned about the Osiran influences and science.

  'No, Tegan.' The Doctor shook his head sadly. 'It's because it's criminal. We're talking about breaking things that don't belong to us, and which can never be replaced.'

  'I am in charge of this expedition,' Kenilworth said loudly, standing up and looking it turn at each member of his party. 'But it is thanks to the Doctor that we are here at all. And probably that we are still alive.' He gave a short nod as if in thanks. 'So I think we should do as the Doctor asks, and disturb as little as possible. We shall remove relics we believe to be important, and we shall catalogue and document everything, including the minutiae of the structure. But the architecture remains intact. Any questions?'

  There were none.

  The session broke up soon after. Macready and Evans wandered off to compare some notes, Atkins and Kenilworth spoke quietly with the Doctor. Tegan found herself talking to Margaret Evans.

  'Is your friend always so forceful?' Margaret asked.

  'Only when he thinks it's important. Otherwise he varies from indecisive to aloof.' They spoke about the progress of the excavations and the catalogue as they made their way back towards their tents on the far side of the encampment. The canvas of the low supply tents bowed and flapped in the quickening desert breeze.

  'I wonder,' Margaret said as they passed another of the small tents, 'may I ask you a small favour?'

  Tegan shrugged. 'Depends what it is. Ask away.'

  'Would you wait here a moment?'

  'Is that it?'

  Margaret gestured to the nearest tent. 'This is where they put poor Nicholas's body. I look at him each day, just to check that he is...' She struggled for a word, and decided on 'peaceful.'

  Tegan nodded. 'He meant a lot to you, didn't he?'

  'He had been assistant to my father for a long time.' She looked down at the ground, making tiny circles in the sand with the toe of her leather boot. 'He was always so tense and jittery when I was near him. And now he seems so calm.'

  Tegan crossed her fingers behind her back. 'I'm sure he valued your company enormously,' she said.

  'Do you really think so?' Margaret's face lit up, catching the fading sunlight. In that moment she shed ten years.

  Tegan smiled back. 'I'll wait here,' she said.

  The scream came almost immediately. The flap of the tent's entrance had barely fallen back into place when Margaret re-emerged, her face white and her eyes wide and streaming.

  'He's gone,' she said between deep rasping sobs. 'Nicholas has gone.'

  A general search of the camp revealed nothing. Nebka, under Atkins' supervision, organised the reluctant Egyptian workers to check the tents and the surrounding area, but still they found nothing.

  Tegan did her best to comfort the distraught Margaret. The Doctor seemed to be wandering aimlessly round the camp, his expression getting gradually darker as the evening drew in and faded into night.

  'It's a mystery, and no mistake,' Kenilworth said as he called off the search due to bad light. 'What do you reckon, Doctor?'

  'I reckon,' the Doctor said, 'that we should all get a good night's sleep and then do our best to finish here as soon as we can.'

  'Well,' Atkins said to the Doctor as they parted company on the way to their tents, 'one thing's for sure, he didn't go for a little walk.'

  In the darkening chill of the desert night, the Doctor's expression was unreadable and his muttered words were lost in the breeze.

  The wind whistled through the canvas tents and swished across the sand dunes. It brought comfort to Kenilworth, who was used to the sound and felt almost at home when he could hear the desert. It annoyed Macready as it seemed to swell just as he was dropping off, jerking him wider awake each time. It was of no consequence to Atkins, who settled down neatly in his pyjamas and went immediately and efficiently to sleep, boots polished and clothes laid out for the next day. It irritated Evans as he was first concerned about his daughter's demeanour and wondered what could be the cause, and then worried about where he would find a personal secretary as trustworthy as Simons.

  The wind blew Rassul's thin cotton clothes about him as he knelt beside the hourglass and watched the reflections of the stars of Orion wrapped about the glass. It wailed its complementary lamentation through Margaret's tent and punctuated her sobs with its moans.

  It failed to register its existence with the Doctor as he sat cross-legged on the floor of his tent, deep in thought. And it drove Tegan to clasp a pillow over her head and think of her father's farm and the family she had lost.

  Eventually she could stand it no longer, and Tegan threw off her covers. She grabbed the cloak she had not believed she would need, but had then discovered had been packed for her anyway. Then she fumbled with the oil lamp on the low table beside her camp bed until it flickered into life.

  Tegan needed to talk to someone, and her choices were somewhat limited. She was not at all sure she was in the right mood to talk to Margaret; she was certain the Doctor was not in the right mood to talk to her. Kenilworth and Atkins would be asleep. And even if they were not, one of them would not understand the emotions she was feeling, while the other would not understand that she was feeling emotions at all.

  Which left her just one choice. If you could have a single choice. Probably not, she decided as she realized that she had walked through the camp and was pushing through the canvas cover over the entrance to the pyramid even as she decided where she was going. No choice at all.

  The corridor up to the burial chamber was steeper than she remembered. She leaned forward and pulled her cloak tighter with one hand, holding her lamp in front of her with the other. The dim light threw a faint aura in front of her, and elongated the cuts of the engraved hieroglyphics. It lingered in the cold of her breath, and drew the painted pupils of the shabti's eyes so the statues seemed to watch her as she passed.

  When she reached the chamber, Tegan placed the lamp on the shelf at the head of the coffin. It fitted neatly over the circle the Doctor had noticed between the relics.

  'Perhaps I should suggest it was an ancient Egyptian oil lamp,' Tegan said quietly to the carved figure on the coffin lid. Nyssa's painted, impassive features stared back without comment. 'Maybe they had oil lamps,' she continued, sitting down with her back to the wall and drawing up her knees. She was looking along the length of the sarcophagus towards the doorway. Her head was probably on a level with Nyssa's within the casket.

  'I hope you don't mind company, but I couldn't sleep. Could have gone to see the Doctor, I suppose. I doubt if he's asleep. But I don't think he'd understand.

  'The wind sounds just like on the farm. Dad used to say it was there to keep us company, watching over us and keeping us safe. I believed him. I believed everything Dad told me. Well, almost everything. But it's different here. It sounds more spooky. Like it's out to get us, not to watch us.

  'I can still hear Dad's voice, I can hear him saying "keeping us safe." Isn't that odd? Because I have to really think to remember what he looked like. And when I do remember, it doesn't matter where he is, he always looks like he does in the photo on the kitchen wall. Same expression, same position. Everything. Funny.

  'I hope you don't mind me talking away. It's what I do best. Well, it's what I do most of, anyway. Get lots of friends that way. You never talked much. Probably keep lots of friends that way.

  'The picture of you is quite good, by the way. Got the eyes, though the hair's not quite right. I keep thinking you will push off the lid, sit up and answer me. But I know you won't. I don't know if you can hear, and
if you can I don't know if you'll remember. I'm sorry it's taking so long, but the Doctor says we have to do what Blinovitch says, or something. God, I'm bored - how must you feel.

  'I miss you, Nyssa. I can talk to you. I mean to you, not at you.

  'It was the same with Dad. It's not the sudden wrench or loss, you get over that. It's the never-again. I can't remember how Dad looked when he was joking, though I could recognize it at once. And now I'll never know. I'll never feel his arms round me and his warmth as he hugged me home at the end of school. He was so warm, so safe. I can feel him now, holding me safe.

  'He listened, always. I was always talking sense when I spoke to Dad; I was always interesting when I spoke to Dad; I was always right when I spoke to Dad, even if he then told me something that was even more right.

  'But never again. It's not that we've lost him, it's worse. He's gone, and he's never coming back. Not ever.

  'Oh God, Nyssa, talk to me. I'm sick of what I say and how I say it. I know how everyone else feels. The Doctor listens, but only so he can disagree. Though I suppose that's better than nothing.

  'Nothing. Just me. Alone. Alone in the water trying to find the light.

  'Please talk to me, Nyssa... Please...

  'I've forgotten what your voice sounds like.'

  Tegan sat alone in the flickering quiet for a while. Her arm lay across the top of the sarcophagus, her hand stoking gently at the face. Then she pushed herself up, knees braced so that her feet pushed against the floor and her back worked its way up the wall. When her shoulders felt the edge of the shelf behind her, she reached out her arm and pushed herself away from the wall as she stood upright. Her hand pushed against the centre of a hieroglyphic.

  And she felt it give.

  Tegan held the lamp up to inspect the damage. Her first thought was that she had pushed through a plaster covering, or damaged the paint. She could imagine the Doctor's comments if she had. The hieroglyph was a set of small pictures surrounded by an upright oval border. The top symbol was a jagged horizontal line, as if the stone had been cut with crimping shears. Below it was an outlined square with a section of the lower side missing, and below that a snake. The bottom symbol was a human figure lying on its back.