The Sands Of Time Part 11

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 hards.h.i.+p, 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.'

'And what exactly are you offering?'

The Doctor turned and looked out of the window towards the pyramids. He seemed to be considering his next words, and Atkins realized that this was the point where he had to decide if he was going through with his plan, when he had to decide that this really was the best course of action.

At last the Doctor answered Kenilworth. 'I can lead you to the tomb,' he said quietly.

By the time Tegan was formally introduced to Lord Kenilworth, he was the bluff, avuncular man she had already met. He had taken to the Doctor as soon as they started to examine the maps and trace possible routes for the expedition. He found himself sucked into the Doctor's obvious enthusiasm, and impressed by his intelligence and insight.

Before long, an outline plan had evolved and Kenilworth was busily giving instructions to Atkins to relay to the Egyptian bearers concerning provisions and scheduling. Tegan dithered on the edge of the discussions. She had glanced at the maps and the pencil marks showing possible routes and stopping points. But since she already knew where they were going and what they would find, she had found it hard to maintain an interest.

She sat alone at a table in the corner of the room and watched the sun edge its way below the silhouettes of the pyramids. Outlined sharply against the light, they seemed unchanged from the pristine, gleaming structures she had seen the day before. Or three thousand years previously, depending on your point of view, she reflected. Now, if she could make out details, she would see that they were pitted and scarred.

The earliest man-made stone structures in the world were showing their age.

By the time the discussions broke up, Tegan was feeling tired, bored, and old. Atkins was charged with a.s.sembling the members of the expedition for a meeting at eleven the next morning, and Kenilworth debated whether to have one last night-cap for so long that the barman brought him a whisky to keep him company while he made his mind up.

The Doctor crouched down beside Tegan and pressed a hotel room key into her palm. 'Get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day.'

'It seems like it's a long life,' she told him.

The Doctor smiled broadly. 'You're telling me,' he said.

The huge metal blade swung in a slow arc above Tegan's head. But the intense midday heat was hardly alleviated by the large ceiling fan. She sat at the back of the bar with the Doctor, wis.h.i.+ng she had insisted on bringing clothes more designed for the climate than for the period.

Kenilworth was standing at the front of the room, one foot resting on the bra.s.s rail round the base of the bar. Everyone else sat round tables nearby, listening intently as he went over the outline arrangements for the expedition.

Tegan looked round her new colleagues and tried to remember their names as Kenilworth recapped on the details of the previous evening's discussions.

Nearest to the bar was the ever-attendant Atkins. He sat almost to attention, back rigid and straight, paying close attention to every syllable.

At the next table sat Russell Evans and his daughter Margaret. Evans was a pale, thin, greying man in his sixties, every bit as doddery as Tegan had imagined a Victorian representative of the British Museum would be. His daughter was of an uncertain age, probably in her early thirties. She was dressed in dowdy tweed despite the heat, her hair tied in a tight bun from which auburn strands struggled to escape. Her features, Tegan decided, would have been attractive had they not been so severe.

Behind Margaret was Nicholas Simons, Evans' a.s.sistant. He was young and enthusiastic, taking copious notes of everything Kenilworth said, scribbling them in a small leather-bound pocketbook. Between sentences he chewed nervously on the end of his stubby pencil, and tried to ignore the glances Margaret Evans threw his way. Tegan wondered whether he realized what was going on, or whether he was simply unnerved by anyone looking his way. She spent a few minutes trying to catch his eye and was eventually rewarded with his fleeting expression of panic and renewed scribbling. Margaret Evans glared at Tegan, who smiled innocently in reply before turning her attention to the next table.

Here sat a figure whom Tegan had at once recognized from Kenilworth's unwrapping party, although he did not know her or the Doctor. It was James Macready, an old friend of Kenilworth's who had apparently accompanied him on several previous expeditions. He was probably about Kenilworth's age, approaching fifty. In contrast to his friend he was a small man with little round gla.s.ses and thin grey hair. He nodded almost continuously and stoked away at a pipe which he never quite got round to smoking. Occasionally it approached his mouth, only to be waved in an approving gesture as Macready nodded again.

Opposite Macready was the head of the Egyptian bearers, Menet Nebka.

His men would carry the bags, coax the camels, set up camp, and do the actual excavation. It had struck Tegan that really they could have mounted the entire expedition without their British employers. But since they were entirely motivated by the money, there would hardly have been any point.

On an expedition grounded in uncertainties, their wage was the only constant.

Kenilworth laughed loudly at some joke of his own, and was rewarded by a few nods and smiles from the a.s.sembled group as they made their way from the room. Tegan grinned her approval, wondering what she had missed while she had been looking round. She would ask the Doctor later, except that she suspected he had been paying as little attention as she had. She followed them out into the heat of the desert sun.

The journey took three days. For Atkins it was three days of relief from the confusion and excitement of his trip with the Doctor and Tegan. It was also rather more stimulating to be planning the details of the expedition with Kenilworth and Macready than arranging the domestic arrangements at Kenilworth House with Miss Warne. Though he was surprised to find that he rather missed the housekeeper's company.

The Doctor, for all his expertise and pre-knowledge, took a back seat. He seemed content to be carried along and organised by the others, making only occasional comments and suggestions now that he had shown Kenilworth the point on the map for which they were aiming.

Tegan was even less interested in the arrangements than her companion.

But Atkins was not surprised at her frequent comments concerning the length of the journey, the heat, and the rate of progress. She complained almost as much as Nebka's bearers.

Atkins leaned forward in his saddle to examine the map which Kenilworth was holding. His Lords.h.i.+p steadied his camel, and drew a finger along the path of the route still to be traversed.

'Another day,' Kenilworth said. 'We'll camp here,' he pointed to a small blank area in the middle of the large blank area of the featureless paper that purported to be a map of the area. Atkins and Macready both nodded agreement, and Atkins pulled his camel round and set off back down the line of camels. He pa.s.sed the word as he went: 'Another two hours, then we'll set up camp. We should reach the excavation site by noon tomorrow.'

'Thank goodness for that,' Tegan replied, struggling to prevent her camel from sitting down and giving up on the spot. She pulled violently on the harness, and it bucked, almost throwing her off. Then it turned its head slowly round and spat at her.

'They will be at the pyramid by midday tomorrow.'

Sadan Ra.s.sul lowered his binoculars, taking care not to catch the light of the sun on the lenses as he did so. The two Egyptians behind him showed no sign of having heard him, but since the words were mainly for his own benefit, he was not worried. He crawled back from the edge of the sand dune, stood up and started down the slope towards where they had left the camels.

The two Egyptians turned to follow their master. If they smiled, it was because they knew their real work would soon begin.

The Doctor and Tegan had adjacent tents at the back of the camp. Tegan was less than impressed with her accommodation. It did keep out the sun but not the heat. And at night, it let in the freezing cold. There was barely room for one person inside, yet frequently either Macready or Evans insisted on visiting to see how she was coping with the adverse conditions.

If she was lucky, she saw the Doctor once a day. But most of the time he spent alone in his own tent, apparently asleep. Tegan suspected he was actually thinking and calculating options and possibilities. Unless he really was asleep, of course.

Simons never came near Tegan, which she a.s.sumed was partly out of a nervous sense of self-preservation, and partly as Margaret Evans rarely let him out of her sight. Atkins was always too busy, though he greeted her with characteristic politeness and a stoic lack of emotion on the rare times she ventured into the burning sunlight to see how the boring process of carrying sand from one place to another in wicker baskets was going. On these occasions, Lord Kenilworth always made time and took trouble to include her in discussions and to enthuse about how well things were going. The only way Tegan could see that progress was judged was by the relative sizes of the pile of sand and the hole in the desert floor at the base of the high sand dune.

It was on one of those rare occasions when the Doctor was with Tegan, listening as ever to her complaints about the weather and the level of local entertainment, when Atkins arrived. He stood politely in the entrance to the little tent and waited for the end of the conversation.

'h.e.l.lo, Atkins,' the Doctor smiled.

Tegan glared.

'Good afternoon to you both,' Atkins replied. 'His Lords.h.i.+p wonders if you would be good enough to join him at the excavations.'

'Who? The Doctor?'

'He asked me to convey his compliments to you both, Miss Tegan. He thought you would be interested too.'

'I've seen enough sand to last a lifetime, thank you.'

The Doctor cleared his throat. 'I don't think it's sand that Lord Kenilworth is interested in showing us,' he said. 'Is it, Atkins?'

'Indeed not, Doctor.'

'What then?'

'Nebka's men have uncovered the entrance to the pyramid.'

The short tunnel into the desert floor made the dune seem even higher. A wall of sand towered over the Doctor, Tegan and Atkins as they approached the excavations. The entrance mouth was wide, narrowing as it burrowed beneath the sandy hillside.

It looked as if the opening disappeared into total darkness. But as Tegan approached, the sun angled into the hole in the sand, and she could see that in fact the hole ended abruptly at a wall. And the wall was completely black.

Tegan shook her head and laughed. In her mind's eye she saw the Doctor, four days earlier, looking round to get his bearings, then drawing a large X in the sandy desert floor with his index finger and saying 'Dig there.'

The topography of the surrounding area had altered considerably. But Tegan could see now for the first time, with the huge pyramids of Giza outlined on the distant horizon, that they were back at the point they had visited thousands of years in the past. With a precision that anyone unfamiliar with the Doctor's casual expertise would have found difficult to believe, the excavations led directly to a buried black marble door. The door that led into the pyramid where Nyssa was entombed.

'You were right, Doctor,' Kenilworth said loudly as he greeted them.

'Incredible. I'd love to know where you get your information.'

The Doctor smiled. 'Years of research,' he said. 'Many years.'

Before Kenilworth could comment, there was a cry from the tunnel. It was followed quickly by another shout and before long a loud chorus of voices was jabbering away in Egyptian.

'What is it now?' Kenilworth asked angrily. 'They've done nothing but complain ever since we got here.'

Atkins set off to investigate. While he was gone, Macready joined them and he and Kenilworth complimented the Doctor again on his wisdom and expertise. By the time Atkins returned, Tegan was sick of hearing how clever the Doctor was. She was firmly of the opinion that the last thing one should do with an appreciation of the Doctor's undoubted brilliance was to tell him about it. And the Doctor's smug and insincere denial of his own genius was the most annoying aspect of the whole experience.

'Well, what is it?' Macready asked when Atkins returned.

'A religious problem, sir. It seems that they have uncovered some hieroglyphs around the entrance that are rather worrying to their somewhat superst.i.tious outlook.'

'Really?' the Doctor said. 'What hieroglyphs are those, I wonder?'

'It seems to concern several variations on the symbol which represents the Eye of Horus, Doctor.'

'Indeed,' Kenilworth seemed resigned to the problem. 'Very well then. I suppose we shall have to take the usual action.'

'What's that?' Tegan asked.

'First we agree to reduce their onerous duties,' Atkins replied.

'Not really a problem, since we shall want to open and examine the pyramid ourselves,' Kenilworth pointed out.

'And then,' Atkins continued, 'we offer them more money.'

Despite the offer of increased wages, and Kenilworth's insistence that once the main door was open they could retire to their tents, the Egyptians refused to do any more work. The Doctor paid little attention to the negotiations, and Tegan kept him company as he examined the doorway.

The excavation was a huge pit in the desert, at the base of a sandy mound.

On the side of the pit below the mound, the wall of sand was interrupted by the s.h.i.+ning black marble of the pyramid side. It sloped back into the sand above, revealing little more than the high doorway. The stone was still smooth and polished, which the Doctor suggested indicated either that the pyramid had been buried for much of its long life, or that it was constructed of incredibly durable material. Or both.

Around the doorway, hieroglyphics were carved into the black stone. As Tegan s.h.i.+fted position, the sun caught them and darkened the blackness in the cuts that formed their shapes. They were difficult to make out - darkness in the blackness - but the symbol the Doctor had pointed out as the eye of Horus eye of Horus was repeated several times. was repeated several times.

'It's sprung,' the Doctor said thoughtfully after a while. He stood back and framed the doorway between artist's hands, peering through the window between his thumbs and index fingers. 'There must be more to it that that,'

he said after a while.

'Why?'

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'What?' he seemed to have forgotten Tegan was with him. 'Oh, too straightforward. That's why.' He pushed experimentally at a point on the door about a third of the way up its nine-foot high edge. 'If it were that simple,' he said as he exerted more pressure and gritted his teeth, 'you could just do this.' He stepped away and waved a hand at the door to show the futility of his actions.

And with a rumble of stonework, age, and weight, the heavy door opened slowly outwards. The Doctor's smile froze on his face. 'I don't like that,' he muttered.