BBC Cult Dr Who - The Sands Of Time

by BBCi Cult

But the Doctor gestured for her to be quiet. 'I think we should reserve our opinions for the unwrapping, Professor.'

  'Indeed, indeed.' Macready stroked his finger along the rim of the sarcophagus. 'I still find it quite astounding. This must be three thousand years old at least.'

  The Doctor nodded. 'I'd put it a bit older than that,' he said. 'Another thousand years, perhaps.'

  'Four thousand? Really?' Macready nodded slowly as he considered. 'We shall see,' he muttered, 'we shall see.'

  The Doctor yawned and stretched. 'Well,' he said to Tegan, 'I think it's time we were making a move. A brisk walk followed by a bite to eat.'

  'Don't let us keep you, Doctor.' Kenilworth shook their hands again. 'Macready and I have lots to talk about, and we'll see you for the unrolling tomorrow.' He saw them to the door. 'I'll have Atkins drop round an invitation as soon as they arrive,' he said as they entered the hallway.

  'Ah,' the Doctor said. 'Perhaps another small favour?'

  Kenilworth laughed. 'What inscrutable request is it this time?'

  'Could you perhaps ask Atkins to deliver the invitation to us outside the British Museum?'

  'The British Museum,' Kenilworth echoed, as much as anything to check he had heard correctly.

  'Er, yes. Outside the North door. At exactly midnight.'

  'Midnight.'

  The Doctor smiled broadly. 'You've got it.' He took Kenilworth's hand and shook it enthusiastically. 'Thank you so much,' he said. 'You've been very understanding.'

  'Not at all, Doctor. Not at all.' Kenilworth opened the front door.

  Tegan shook Kenilworth's hand as she followed the Doctor out. 'He's right,' she said. 'For a change. You've been great. Thanks.'

  Kenilworth watched the two figures make their way down the drive. It was already dark, and a light sprinkling of snow was settling on the ground. It was strange, Lord Kenilworth reflected as closed the front door. The Doctor and Tegan had both behaved as if they were bidding him farewell for the last time. Yet they would see each other again tomorrow afternoon.

  They arrived back at the Savoy at just after nine. The Doctor suggested he call for Tegan at ten for a late dinner. 'I've got a few things I want to think through,' he told her. 'An hour should be ample.'

  Tegan was happy to have a few minutes to herself. Several parcels had been delivered from Harrods, the fruits of her shopping expedition that morning. Not noted for her patience, Tegan was keen to unpack them right away.

  She waved to the Doctor as he unlocked the door to his room. But he seemed not to notice. She could see that he was already deep in thought. He pulled a battered notebook from his jacket pocket, and went into his room.

  By half-past ten Tegan was fed up with waiting. She paused for the briefest of moments outside the door to the Doctor's room, then knocked. There was no answer, so she opened it and went in.

  The Doctor was lying on the bed, hands clasped behind his head, staring at the ceiling. His notebook was still open, but laid face down on his chest.

  'Ah, Tegan,' he said without moving, 'do come in.'

  'You're late,' she said. 'And I'm hungry.'

  'Dinner,' the Doctor heaved himself off the bed. 'Oh yes.' The notebook fell to the floor, and he picked it up.

  'Any new clues?' Tegan asked as she followed the Doctor from the room.

  'Mmmm,' he said. 'I'll tell you after we've eaten.'

  'Don't want to spoil my appetite?' she joked.

  The Doctor glared at her, then set off down the corridor without answering.

  The dining room was almost empty. An old man sat on his own at a table near the door. A middle-aged couple occupied a booth in the far corner.

  The old man eyed the Doctor and Tegan suspiciously as they waited to be seated. The Doctor smiled at him and Tegan frowned.

  'Colonel Finklestone,' the man barked suddenly, wiping his mouth on his napkin. 'Don't have the salmon.' The waiter scowled at the man as he arrived to attend to the Doctor and Tegan.

  'Er, thank you,' the Doctor replied. 'The Doctor, and Miss Tegan Jovanka.'

  Colonel Finklestone snorted as if they had in some way insulted him, and returned his attention to his wine.

  'Doctor, Miss Jovanka,' the waiter smiled widely and nodded to them, picking up on their names, 'dinner for two?'

  'Please,' the Doctor replied. 'A table near the window perhaps?'

  'Of course, sir.' The waiter led them across the near-deserted room. 'Will this do?' he asked as they reached the table where they had eaten breakfast what seemed like several months previously.

  'Admirably, thank you.' The Doctor seated himself and accepted a menu and wine list. The waiter pulled back Tegan's chair for her as she sat down.

  'Oh no you don't,' Tegan said before he could push the chair in again, dragging it in closer to the table.

  The waiter left them to look at the menu. Tegan flicked through, remembering the brief conversation they had exchanged before.

  'I believe I'll have the oysters,' the Doctor said, laying his menu to one side and picking up the wine list. It was leather-bound, with a gold cord down the spine ending in a tassel.

  'You know you will,' Tegan said.

  'Yes, but you have to go through the motions.'

  'Why?' Tegan dropped her menu heavily on the table by her plate. It clattered against the lead crystal and disturbed the double damask. 'You keep going on about how we can't change things, but you won't prove it.'

  'I don't need to. I know.' Tegan looked out of the window. The moon was shining through the murky night, its light diffused across the surface of the Thames outside. Snow was falling lazily through the smog, spiralling its way through the young trees which edged the Embankment.

  'Doctor,' Tegan said quietly, 'in about an hour, we will arrive at the British Museum. What's to stop us - this us - going there and warning us - that us - to leave before anything happens to Nyssa?'

  The Doctor said nothing for a while. He stared out of the window, or perhaps he was watching Tegan's reflection in the glass as she continued to watch the snow.

  'You see those snowflakes,' he said at last.

  Tegan nodded.

  'As they twist and tumble their way down, they collide with each other, get swept away in the breeze, melt in a warm updraft. Now, imagine you plotted the course of one of those snowflakes, and you found that it collided with another snowflake. And you found it collided with it not just once, but twice.'

  'So?'

  'And then you changed the course of one of the snowflakes so that the first collision never happened.'

  'Yes. So what?'

  'So, would the second collision happen?'

  Tegan considered. 'Maybe. You can't tell.'

  The Doctor nodded. 'That's right. As soon as you change any of the circumstances, all bets are off. The second collision may occur, or it may not. There may be a completely different collision, or the snowflake may melt on a gas lamp before it reached its rendezvous.'

  'What's that got to do with Nyssa?'

  The Doctor beckoned to the waiter who was standing on the far side of the room. 'Everything,' he said. 'If we change things, we have no idea what will happen as a result, what collisions we set up, what courses we alter. We might all end up mummified, and that would help nobody. Maybe we should try, but that's not the way Time works. You only get one chance.' He leaned forward and looked deep into Tegan's eyes. 'We couldn't change a thing. We could go to the Museum, but we'd be delayed on the way, or miss ourselves somehow. Which is probably as well given what would happen to the temporal differential if we actually did meet.'

  'How do you know you can't change it? You won't try.' Tegan's frustration was cut short by the arrival of the waiter.

  'Oysters,' the Doctor said immediately. 'And a bottle of the Morgon.'

  Tegan had not decided, though she knew what she would not be having. She grabbed back her menu as the waiter lifted it from the table, opened it, and went for the first thing she saw. 'Ham.'

  The
waiter was still startled. He blinked, then realized that Tegan had ordered. 'Very good,' he said, bowed, and left.

  'Not having the cutlets?' the Doctor asked as soon as the waiter was out of earshot.

  'Didn't fancy them.'

  'And I thought you were making a point.' The Doctor turned his attention back to the snow outside. 'It's a shame you don't fancy the cutlets, though,' he said quietly, 'since you'll have to eat them.'

  Tegan forced herself to keep relatively calm. 'How do you know?' she asked, on hand clenching on the edge of the tablecloth.

  'Look, Tegan,' the Doctor cleared aside his cutlery and rested his hands on the table as he leaned forward. 'You want to go and warn ourselves at the British Museum to leave at once.'

  'Yes.'

  'And what do you think will happen if we do that?'

  'We'll leave,' Tegan said. 'We'll go back into the TARDIS and Nyssa will be all right.'

  The Doctor nodded. 'And if we had done that, which we didn't, then who will warn us?'

  'What?'

  'Look,' the Doctor said, pressing his hands together and raising them so that his index fingers almost touched his lips. 'If we had left straight after we arrived, either through some warning or on a whim, we would not be here now. So we could not be having this discussion, coming to a conclusion, or rushing to warn ourselves. The fact that we are here now means that we didn't - will not - leave.'

  Tegan frowned. 'So we can't change anything?'

  'Well, I have seen it done. But never without immense initial cost, and always so that history returns to its original track as soon as it gets the chance.'

  The Doctor leaned back in his seat as the waiter approached again. 'You needn't take my word for it though.'

  The Doctor tasted the wine, swilling it noisily round his mouth and smacking his lips together appreciatively. He nodded his approval, and the waiter sloshed some wine into Tegan's glass, then carefully poured for the Doctor.

  'Charming,' Tegan said as he left.

  The Doctor smiled. 'An example of what we were just discussing, surely.'

  'How so?'

  'Why were you rude to him when we arrived just now?'

  'Because he was so snotty last time.'

  The Doctor nodded. 'But for him, last time hasn't happened yet. Though when it does, at breakfast tomorrow, he'll be snotty to you. And he'll be snotty to you because you were rude to him the night before.'

  'Which for me won't have happened yet.

  'Exactly.' The Doctor sipped at his wine. 'This is rather good, you know. It's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.'

  'I'll be nice to him, then,' Tegan said.

  'Well, here's your chance.' The Doctor nodded to the waiter as he approached again, this time pushing a low trolley. 'Good luck.'

  Tegan smiled sweetly at the waiter as he removed the silver lid from the platter he presented to the Doctor. He did his best to ignore her. 'Oysters, sir.'

  Tegan continued to smile as he produced her dinner, trying to make meaningful eye contact as he set it before her.

  'Cutlets, madam,' he said.

  Tegan's smile froze. 'What?'

  'Cutlets. You asked for lamb.'

  'My compliments to the chef,' the Doctor slipped in quickly, 'these oysters are magnificent.'

  Then Tegan exploded.

  'We need to pack,' the Doctor said as they made their way up the stairs back to their rooms.

  'Oh? Why?'

  'Two reasons. First, the rooms will be needed later tonight.'

  'By us, I remember.'

  'And second, before dinner I managed to decipher some of the hieroglyphics I copied down from the tomb.'

  They paused outside Tegan's room. 'And what does that mean?' she asked.

  'I think it means that reviving Nyssa, starting irreversibly the hundred-year cycle to bring her back to life, was one of my less inspired actions.'

  'I meant to ask you,' Tegan said after a moment's pause, 'why a hundred years? Apart from the fact it's a good round figure.'

  'I've been asking myself that.'

  'And?'

  'And it just popped into my head. Which is at least part of the problem. And now the stars are set in their courses, and so...'

  'And so?'

  'And so we have to be there when she wakes. I'll see you in five minutes.'

  As she gathered together her belongings, Tegan was in an ambivalent mood. The Doctor's comments had worried her, but they were off to a time which was rather closer to her own, and where she would be reunited with Nyssa.

  She wondered what Atkins would make of the late twentieth century. She had understood enough to realize he would have to come with them until they could return him to the time after he had first left with them. Perhaps the Doctor was right after all about the way that Time crystallized like a snowflake around your actions and despite your intentions. Whether she tried to trick her way out of it, or to go with the flow, events seemed set in their pre-ordained courses.

  Before she left, Tegan carefully laid out the pale green dress she had bought in Harrods that morning.

  * * *

  Egypt - January 1897

  The three mummies stood forming a perfect triangle in front of the position where the sarcophagus had rested. They had remained there, static, for the last few months guarding the statue of Anubis while their masters had been to London and back. In front of them, Simons bowed to the jackal statue with reverence and respect.

  'Will just the one relic remain sufficient?' Rassul asked.

  Simons nodded. 'The energy you will need for the next century is not great. And when the time comes, the power will build as you need it. Orion will come into configuration and the signal strength will increase accordingly.'

  Simons pressed the central square of the Nephthys cartouche and the heavy door to the inner chamber swung open. Rassul moved aside to let the mummies file through into the room beyond. As the third of the service robots passed through, the door swung shut behind it.

  'They will return to their charge points until you need them.'

  'Until I need them?' asked Rassul. 'Surely, you-'

  But Simons was shaking his head. 'This body is already decaying, and the journey to the damper climate of England has not helped. The powers granted to you are more durable. You have waited this long, and now you begin the final stage of your journey. Another century is as nothing to you.' Simons turned back to the engraved symbol of Nephthys' name. 'For me...'

  Simons' last words were a cracked gasp. Rassul was not sure if he had actually said for me or free. But before he could decide, Simons' slowly crumpled to his knees, the bones in his legs cracking as they splintered and fractured. He pitched forwards, face smashing into the wall of the tomb. His head cracked open, dry powder cascading out and falling to the floor like sand in an hourglass.

  As Rassul watched, Simons' body slowly crumbled away until only a fine dust remained. A sudden, impossible breeze cleaned it from the stone floor, and sent it scurrying into the corners of the tomb.

  Rassul waited for a while. Simons was right, he had waited a long time. And soon it would be over. Just a few short decades, and he too would be free.

  * * *

  The Valley of the Kings, Ancient Egypt (c5000 BC)

  The rain was still falling heavily as the gods made their way into the pyramid. The rain cascaded down the smooth white slopes of the sides, and waterfalled over the entrance. A blast of lightning split the black sky, making the pyramid seem to glow. Rassul looked away as the glare hurt his eyes.

  The gods made their ponderous way inside, their work complete. Horus and Anubis were last into the structure, Isis just ahead of them. Once across the threshold, Horus turned and looked back at the assembled priests. His face was just visible through the falling water as he nodded slowly in approval.

  As Rassul watched, Horus raised his arms, made the sign of the Eye. Then he stepped back into the pyramid, out of sight in the darkness within. The next moment, without app
arent change in the pyramid's form or shape, the water was no longer falling from the edge of the door frame, but continuing its cascade down the smooth unbroken side.

  The lightning flashed again. And when Rassul blinked away the brightness and looked back, the pyramid was gone. The rain slowed, picking random holes in the dry square of sand.

  Author's Notes: Instalment Six

  Instalment Seven

  Chapter Nine The first thing that Atkins noticed was the noise. The second was how clean and clear the air was. He walked along the Embankment in something of a daze. It was the world he knew, and yet it was not.

  The trees had grown tall and strong; the buildings he recognized in the distance, like the Palace of Westminster were gleaming clean as if encased in limestone. Only Cleopatra's Needle and its attendant sphinxes stood unchanged from the last time he had walked this route. They walked by the front of the Savoy, which the Doctor remarked was now the back, and they passed the warehouse which in 1896 had been the Necropolis Funeral Company. Atkins watched in amazement as boats sped past on the river, and gaped openly as horseless carriages noisily crossed the bridges over the Thames. The Doctor did his best to explain everything, and Tegan smiled and laughed.

  When they reached Kenilworth House, the feeling of upheaval remained. He had hoped that the familiar architecture, set apart from the rest of the disjoint city would offer a still point of continuity in the turned world.

  It did not.

  They made their way round to the busy road at the front of the house, and found the driveway gates open. The jackals watched them with stony eyes, their upright ears chipped and their claws blunted by the elements. The wall bulged outwards where a tree was growing into it. The trunk was forcing its way through the brickwork in a way the architects and landscapers had neither intended nor anticipated. The house at the top of the drive, rising out of the ground like some huge ancient structure, was recognizable. Just.

  The roof had been entirely replaced, the new one rising higher with a dormer window suggesting the addition of attic rooms. The ground floor had been extended outwards from the original house, the porch stretching the width of the frontage, and an annex added to the side. The upstairs bay windows had been replaced with more streamlined double-glazing, so that with the extensions at ground level, the whole house seemed to taper inwards from the base.