The Sands Of Time Part 32

What was left of the door was hanging from a bent hinge, swinging slowly in the night breeze. Henry stared at it, fumbling the b.u.t.tons on the radio. He had it almost to his mouth when a huge shape resolved out of the shadows and stepped towards him.

His first thought was that one of the exhibits from the Egyptian Rooms on the floor above had somehow come to life. But then he realized that it must just be a student prank. He was still thinking of a witty put-down when the huge bandaged hand lifted him by the neck and flung him down the corridor. His head hit the wall with a thud, leaving a sticky trail behind it as his body slid slowly to the floor.

The mummy continued on its way, hardly slowed by the encounter. It followed its fellow to the north staircase, and up to Room 66 which was just at the top of the first flight.

The Osiran sarcophagus stood in the corner of the room. It glowed with an eerie internal light as the service robots approached. They lifted it easily between them, and started on their return journey. They were just leaving by the north door as the first police cars screeched to a strobing blue halt outside the main entrance on the opposite side of the building.

The Doctor, Tegan and Atkins were sitting on the floor. The Doctor was cross-legged, staring at the ground.

Tegan was sitting with her back against the wall and her knees drawn up under her chin. She looked round at the others, avoiding catching Nyssa's attention, and thought back to the last time she had sat in a similar position on the same piece of floor. It had been a hundred years ago and thousands of miles away. But the real s.h.i.+ft was in her perspective. Then she had been desperate for Nyssa's long sleep to end. But now that Nyssa had finally awoken, Tegan was depressed and confused.

Nyssa sat close to Tegan, her frail old body seemed shrunken and bereft of energy. She stared at the Doctor, as if for rea.s.surance. Occasionally the Doctor looked up and smiled faintly at her, and Nyssa visibly relaxed a little.

But Tegan was unable to decode the communication between them, if there was any. Soon after the mummies had left, Tegan had tried to talk to Nyssa, but she had been unresponsive, answering in monosyllables or nods of the head. 'Are you OK?' Nod. 'How do you feel?' Shrug. 'Do you want to talk about it?' 'No.'

Ra.s.sul was pacing nervously up and down beside the raised dais. Vanessa stood motionless, her eyes flicking back and forth as if she were seeing events played out somewhere else. Beside her, the Osiran mummy stood ma.s.sive and silent. Its upper body swayed slightly as it kept watch over both the group sitting on the floor and Ra.s.sul.

Despite their bulk, the mummies moved almost silently. It surprised Tegan when the Doctor suddenly leaped to his feet and dusted himself down. A moment later, the two mummies entered the chamber, carrying the sarcophagus between them. They positioned it on the dais at the head of the casket in which Nyssa had slept, bowed slightly to Vanessa, and stepped back. The third mummy joined them, and together they raised their arms. From the house above the organ roared into strident life and a cacophony of powerful noise swelled through the bas.e.m.e.nt.

The Doctor helped Nyssa to her feet and led her by the elbow towards the dais. Tegan followed, and heard the Doctor whisper to Nyssa.

'Just here, where you are have a clear view of the sarcophagus.' He glanced round as Nyssa stood where he had indicated.

'Typical, Doctor,' Tegan called across at him. 'All h.e.l.l is about to break loose, and all you're worried about is getting a front row seat.'

The Doctor caught Tegan's eye, then looked quickly away again as Atkins joined them. Ra.s.sul was already beside the sarcophagus as its inner glow seemed to swell with the organ music. 'That's right,' he said to the Doctor and his friends. 'Watch the final apocalyptic becoming of the G.o.ddess.' He raised his arms high in the air, mirroring the mummies. 'Nephthys shall live once more.'

'She's using you, Ra.s.sul,' the Doctor said. 'Can't you see that yet?'

But Ra.s.sul ignored him as Vanessa went up the steps towards the glowing casket. As she approached, the carved front of the sarcophagus seemed to melt away in a blaze of light. Then the light turned in on itself and was sucked back into the casket. The sarcophagus' shape blackened so that it looked like a child's outline of a human being, a hieroglyph. Light seemed to pour in from outside, spinning and spiralling inwards and tumbling towards the vanis.h.i.+ng point.

'What's happening?' Atkins asked the Doctor .

'She's established a time tunnel back to 1926,' he replied quietly. 'Her power is greatest here, so it's the best place to start the tunnel.'

'So she can do it,' Tegan said. 'She can travel back to Nyssa's waking moment and become complete. She can become Nephthys reborn.'

'To destroy the world,' Atkins murmured.

Vanessa turned to them, as if she had heard Atkins' words. She was standing directly in front of the time tunnel so that the power and energy seemed to flow past and around her into its depths. Her eyes were holes of tumbling light and her voice had taken on an echoing melodic resonance.

'So, Horus, your naive stratagems have failed as I always knew they would.

Now I reclaim my birthright of evil. Now I begin the reign of dust and darkness. Now all life shall wither and perish under the reign of Nephthys.'

She raised her arm, the bracelet and the ring glowing with the same intensity as the time tunnel. Out of the corner of her eye, Tegan was aware that the cobra and the jackal were also strobing and glowing like alabaster lit from within.

'Abase yourselves,' she ordered. 'You are as nothing before the power of Nephthys.'

Tegan felt her knees give way, and collapsed painfully to the stone floor.

Beside her Atkins was also kneeling. The Doctor remained upright for a second longer, then he too collapsed to the ground. Nyssa seemed unaffected, standing between them and Vanessa now, watching as Vanessa stepped backwards into the tunnel. As she sank back into the darkness, her hair and white dress blew around her as if, like Eurydice, she were falling through the heavy air back into Hades itself.

There was a faint noise in the darkened bas.e.m.e.nt, like the sound of a ma.s.sive church organ playing in the distance. Slowly it grew in volume, and as it did the chamber was lit with a throbbing blue light. And in the centre of the light, at the head of the open coffin on the dais, a figure faded into existence.

Nephthys reached into the sarcophagus, lifting and cradling the bandaged head of Nyssa. The head that contained the reasoning, calculating side of herself. Slowly, carefully, reverently, she looked though the bandages, and stared into the closed mind of the sleeping woman. And reached gently into her thoughts.

For a moment she was still. Then she threw back her head and screamed.

The mind of Nephthys was there, buried inside the woman Nyssa. She could detect it, could sense its presence. But it was still too submerged in the sleeping woman to be of use.

She could also tell that Nyssa would not wake for another seventy years.

In the house above, old Lord Kenilworth stirred in his sleep, and reached out for the warmth of his wife.

While in the bas.e.m.e.nt Nephthys, acting on the instinct and impulse which was all her mind could draw on, faded back into the vortex of the time tunnel.

'Any second now, I should think,' the Doctor said.

Tegan stared at him. He was actually smiling. But before she could say anything, the sarcophagus glowed back into life in front of them.

'Prepare to meet your doom,' Ra.s.sul said in triumph as he bowed low before the blazing gateway.

A tiny dot appeared in the distance, growing slowly as it seemed to fly towards them. Nephthys was returning.

The figure that still resembled Vanessa hovered right at the edge of the time tunnel, staring out at the group kneeling in front of her. And then at Nyssa. With a sudden scream of inhuman agony, Nephthys tumbled away from view.

To reappear in the empty bas.e.m.e.nt of 1926 at the moment she had arrived before. Nyssa lay before her in the casket. Her face was still covered with the bandages, but Nephthys knew immediately that she still slept. With no deductive or reasoning powers to help her, she again acted on impulse.

Nephthys could tell from the depth of Nyssa's coma when she would wake, and stepped back into the time tunnel to return to 1996.

And found Nyssa awake, all vestiges of the mind of Nephthys gone from her brain. Even before she reached the end of the tunnel, she knew the age of the woman. She could tell when she must have woken, and returned to 1926.

'What's happening?' Tegan watched as Nephthys faded back into the tunnel for the third time. The mummies stood impa.s.sive and still, but Ra.s.sul was on his feet now, shaking his head and murmuring beneath his breath.

The Doctor got slowly to his feet. 'That's better,' he said. 'She's weakening already. I knew there had to be a local focus, now it's working for us.' He frowned and scratched his ear. 'I wonder where it is.' He reached out and patted Nyssa on the shoulder. 'You're doing an excellent job there.' Then he turned to Tegan. 'When someone travels down an Osiran time tunnel, the effects of time aren't cancelled out. You travel a distance, doesn't matter whether it's forward or back, but you age that amount. Now Osirans can take that time on to themselves. So when Nyssa was sent back to ancient Egypt, Nephthys got older to the tune of several thousand years.

Not a clever thing for Nyssa to do, but Osirans are extremely long-lived.'

'I think I understand what you're saying, Doctor,' Atkins said as he rose to his feet. 'A sort of conservation of energy or something. But how does that help us?'

The Doctor turned to watched Nephthys arrive on the threshold of the tunnel again, then fade back into the distance. 'Well, she's got n.o.body to pa.s.s the process on to, so she has to accommodate the time differential herself,' he said. 'Which means she's ageing by a hundred and forty years on each round trip. So this could take some time.' He turned back to the tunnel.

They could begin to see a difference in Nephthys now. Her face was sagging, bags under the eyes and a slackness of the jaw. On each successive appearance the difference grew more p.r.o.nounced. Her body was thinning and becoming frail, her hair fading to grey, and her face concaving to show the line of the cheek bones jutting through. Her skin was cracked and lined by the time her hair started to thin. Her scalp was scarred and wrinkled with age, and the shape of her jaw changed as her teeth began to rot. The flesh was pulled back from the bloodshot eyes so that the bone of the sockets was clearly visible beneath the stretched skin.

Then with a drawn out wail of pain and exasperation, Nephthys collapsed.

A single out-flung arm trailed over the edge of the time tunnel and into the real world. It was barely more than a strip of faded bone. As they watched it crumbled and powdered to dust, leaving a faint shadow of itself in its place.

The bracelet and ring it had been wearing survived a fraction of a second longer, then they too exploded in a puff of ashes.

Across the room, the rearing cobra collapsed back into its coils as it crumbled away, and the statue of Anubis sank lower on its haunches before its back broke under its own weight. The snarling head sat for a moment on the broken paws, then the jaw fractured and the stone deteriorated into a pile of sand.

Ra.s.sul stared across the room at the powdered relics. Then his gun clattered to the floor as he fumbled desperately in his jacket pocket. He pulled out an hourgla.s.s, held it up to the light as if in supplication.

It exploded in a crash of organ music, showering him with sand and gla.s.s, and Ra.s.sul collapsed to his knees. He knelt in front of the Doctor and his friends, reaching out towards them. Tegan thought he was begging for help, but as she watched, he curled his fingers like claws, turned them, and ripped into his own face. The flesh and tissue disintegrated as he tore at it, pulling his head to pieces. He gouged a trail down his cheek, and dust fell from the rotting bone beneath. He was still tearing at the dry stump of his shattered neck when he toppled forward. His body rolled off the dais and crashed to pieces on the floor below.

The Osiran mummies smashed and crumbled to the floor beside him, their arms still raised in supplication to their G.o.ddess Nephthys.

London - 1880 The needle stretched up above the buildings behind it, a sharp point into the sky. George Vulliamy's gaze was fixed on its growing silhouette as he approached along the Embankment. As he got closer, he could see the imperfections of the stone edges against the clouds. Closer still, and he could begin to discern the carved hieroglyphs which covered the obelisk.

But Vulliamy's mind was elsewhere. It was a miracle, he thought, that Cleopatra's Needle was there at all. It had been lost on the turbulent voyage from Alexandria - along with the lives of six sailors. Then incredibly, one might almost say miraculously, it had been rocovered, the wooden casket reappearing in the expanses of the ocean, and towed to London in January 1878. Where n.o.body had decided what to do with it.

And it was almost by chance that, after eight months of deliberation, it should be erected on the Embankment. Vulliamy could see again in his mind the great stone pillar being rotated on a wooden construction more like a child's overgrown treehouse than scaffolding. He had watched, fascinated, as it was lowered into place on the plinth. To Vulliamy it was close to a miracle that he had been asked to be a part of it all. He had supervised the steps down to the river, and planned the geometric perfections of the plinths either side of the needle. He had drawn up his plans and had the full size plaster models positioned on the plinths to judge the effect. And everyone had proclaimed his Sphinxes to be the final aesthetic touch which completed the perfect Egyptian tableau.

Almost there now. If only his wife had not been taken ill, if only he had not waited for the doctor to arrive, he would have been present for the final act.

But as it was, he had almost certainly missed it. The bronze Sphinxes he had designed would by now have replaced their plaster twins torn down the previous day. Perfection was now complete.

But something was not quite right. He peered forward squinting into the distance. The sun glimpsed out from behind a cloud and Vulliamy could see the rays of light reflecting off the bronze hide of one of his creations.

Bronze, not painted plaster, so the Sphinxes had already been hoisted into position. He knew every contour of the beasts, every curve of their metal flesh and every engraving of the hieroglyphics on their chests. He had specified every sinew of the arms and every coil of the snake on each Sphinx's head dress.

So he knew that it was impossible for the sunlight to be reflected in quite that way, at quite that angle, from the Sphinx nearest to him. The light, however, continued to s.h.i.+ne in his eyes as he approached, so he was almost there when he saw what had happened.

He was running, running like a schoolboy. He raced along the pavement, shouting to the workmen packing away their tools and nodding to each other at the end of a job well done.

Well done. He swore.

The nearest of the workmen turned to him as he pounded up. Surprise gave way to recognition. 'Mr Vulliamy, sir. A damed good job, I must say.'

'Must you?' he spat between gut-wrenching rasps.

'Indeed. Very elegant. Works of art and no mistake.'

'No mistake?' Vulliamy grabbed the man's lapels, shaking him so hard that he dropped the canva.s.s bag he was holding. A hammer and several chisels clattered across the paving slabs. 'No mistake? Look at them.

Look!'

Vulliamy spun the man round. The other workmen mirrored their fellow as they swung round to look at the Sphinxes guarding the obelisk. 'Look what you've done.' He knew from the finality of his own words that it was too late to change it. He let go the man's jacket, and sat down heavily on the ground shaking his head in disbelief. After so much, after so many minor miracles, after it had seemed that his design was somehow meant, to find this cra.s.s error.

The workmen continued to stare at the Sphinxes, apparently unable to see the problem. The beasts themselves continued to stare inwards at Cleopatra's Needle, oblivious to the consternation and confusion around them.

Vulliamy breathed deeply, his chest still aching from running. He pulled himself back to his feet, forcing his force to stay measured and relatively calm. 'How could you make such a mistake? Quite apart from the aesthetics, didn't you remember that the Sphinxes you tore down only yesterday were facing outwards outwards?'

The man Vulliamy had grabbed shook his head, his mouth working soundlessly.

'How could you do it?' Vulliamy's voice cracked, close to tears as he turned away.

'I don't know, sir. I really don't. An impulse, perhaps. Somehow it just seemed right at the time.'

Chapter Sixteen.

The Doctor picked his way through the carnage. The mummies lay across each other, crumpled and limp, their power suddenly gone. Discoloured areas of dust marked the positions where Ra.s.sul, the relics, and Nephthys'

arm had disintegrated.

The time tunnel was strobing a rea.s.suring green, the light diminis.h.i.+ng as they watched. The Doctor reached round the back of the sarcophagus for a moment, then straightened up, dusted the palms of his hands against each other, and beamed across at Tegan and the others.

'There, that should do it. Don't want the thermal balance to equalize just yet, do we. There'll be quite a fire in this enclosed s.p.a.ce, and I'd rather it was a few hours from now. The house should be safe, but it will destroy the incriminating evidence down here.' He looked at the fallen mummies and the stained stonework. 'The sands of time wash us all clean,' he said quietly. Then he brightened. 'Still, all's well that ends well, eh?' And with that he strode back across the room and slapped Tegan on the shoulder.