The Sands Of Time Part 4

Again Macready nodded. 'Unusual, I know. But possible. One does hear rumours that this happened, though this would be the first case doc.u.mented so thoroughly.'

'What?' Tegan asked. 'What are you saying? That someone loosened the bandages - someone tried to unwrap the mummy?'

The Doctor took a step towards Tegan. He seemed unsure whether to put his hand on her shoulder, and eventually settled for resting it on the lip of the coffin. 'Professor Macready is suggesting, and I think he is correct, that this poor unfortunate was bandaged up and then buried while still alive.'

'That's horrible.' Tegan wanted to turn away, but instead she leaned closer and looked into the bandaged face. It seemed so calm now, just decaying stained cloth. She tried to imagine the figure writhing and twisting, tried to imagine the heavy lid of the sarcophagus thumping down and entombing the still struggling form. Tried to imagine the darkness and the terror. 'Four thousand years ago,' she murmured as the Doctor reached into the coffin.

With Macready's help, the Doctor managed to tease free a corner of bandage with a pair of tweezers that he had produced from somewhere. He held the edge of material for a moment, looking round the faces of the a.s.sembled crowd. Kenilworth nodded to him, and the Doctor tugged gently.

The bandage pulled free and began to unravel like an old sweater. As Tegan watched in horrified amazement, the cloth fell away from the mummy's head. She watched in fascination, ready to look quickly away when the full horror of the face was revealed. She could imagine it already, the smell of the rotting bandages evoking half-remembered images of mummified faces from forgotten text books and childhood museum trips.

Four thousand years.

But as the flesh beneath the bandages glimpsed into view, it did not seem to have the pitted grey pallor of decay. Instead it looked smooth and white.

'Good grief,' Tegan heard Macready mutter as a ma.s.s of brown hair untangled from the wrappings. 'Is this why you wouldn't let us examine her until now?'

'Oh no,' the Doctor breathed, a tell-tale hand gripping the side of the sarcophagus.

Tegan said nothing. From the end of the coffin she could see clearly the whole of the mummy. She could see the four thousand year old wrappings as they clung loosely to the bandaged form. She could see the tattered ends of the cloth pulled from the mummy's head. She could taste the stench of decomposition and decay rising from the corpse's ancient shroud and she could feel the weight in her stomach lifting and rising in her throat as she looked at the face of the mummy.

The face was perfectly preserved. The eyes were shut, the mouth closed.

The hair was a tangled mess from the millennia it had spent woven into the bandages. And now that she could see the face, Tegan could recognize the shape of the rest of the body, outlined by the sarcophagus and by the rotting cloth. The figure in the coffin, dead for over four thousand years, was Nyssa.

The Legend of Osiris When Osiris the king returned victorious from the campaign, his brother Seth feigned friends.h.i.+p. Together with Nephthys, his sister-wife, Seth invited Osiris to a great banquet to celebrate his safe return.

Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, and the sister of Nephthys and Seth, begged her husband not to attend, fearing some treacherous intent. But Osiris was in good humour, magnanimous in victory. He spoke to Isis and together they agreed to go to the palace of Seth.

Seth had organised a great feast. There were grapes and figs, calves'

heads, the forelegs of oxen and hearts of cows. There were geese and ducks. The wine flowed freely and all the royalty and dignitaries of Egypt were in attendance.

Osiris was the guest of honour, made welcome by his brother Seth. He was seated at the head of the table, as befitted his position. And his brother Seth and his sisters Isis and Nephthys made merry with him.

Then, when the feast was ended and the wine was almost gone, Seth had a great sarcophagus brought into the banqueting hall. It was traced in gold and inlaid with lapis lazuli. The casket was the best workmans.h.i.+p of the greatest craftsmen in all the Kingdoms of Egypt. And Osiris asked his brother for whom such a rich gift could be intended.

Seth let it be known that the sarcophagus was a prize - the greatest prize in history. And the prize would be won by the man who best fitted the sarcophagus, that it should bear him in glory into the afterlife.

So the n.o.bility of Egypt each tried the casket for size, eager to win so great a gift from the brother of the king. But they were each by turns too short, or too tall, too fat or too thin. And it seemed that none of the guests could win so great a prize.

Then Nephthys urged her brother Osiris to try the casket himself. Osiris at first declined, his wife Isis fearing some entrapment. But Seth laughed at his brother's apprehension, and Osiris agreed to try the test.

So Osiris lowered himself into the casket, laughing with his brother Seth. It fitted Osiris as if it had been made for him. And so it had.

When Osiris was lying in the casket, Seth slammed shut the lid and, still laughing, he sealed it. Then he called his guards, and had the coffin hurled into the Nile.

As the coffin floated into the night, Seth's laughter mingled with the grief of Isis. And the tears of Isis dripped into the river and flowed after the entombed body of her brother and husband Osiris. And Nephthys saw her sister's grief, and she found it good.

(Translated by Tobias St.John, from the inscriptions of the tomb of An'anka) An'anka)

Chapter Two.

The water was clear, sunlight diffused through it like lemon juice. The liquid was warm and viscous. Tegan swam with increasing difficulty, her movements slowing as she struggled towards a surface that was not there.

She had lost all sense of direction, and the light source had turned out to be the coral-covered expanse of the ocean floor. She twisted and turned, lost in the killing colour of the reef, her lungs bursting under the pressure, her eyes glazing. Then, as the strength slipped from her like the stream of bubbles rising from her mouth, she felt herself drifting, floating.

As she sat hunched on the edge of a heavy leather armchair in front of the fire, Tegan relived the swelling terror of an afternoon swimming on the reef.

She clutched a gla.s.s of brandy she could not taste, staring at the flickering of a fire she did not see. She remembered the raw panic which welled up in her stomach and slowly permeated her whole being as she realized she had lost all sense of direction. She began to swallow water and to splutter her life away. She was barely aware of the Doctor and Kenilworth behind her as they examined the body of Nyssa, half heard their whispered discussions. But she knew she was sinking and that the surface was receding from her. This time she would not suddenly break free into the cool breeze of the Australian afternoon and gasp in retching lungfuls of air.

It had been difficult to cope with Adric's death. But even that had been so much easier. She had not actually seen him, had not actually looked into his dead face and seen the calm silent form which life had deserted. She had not begun to imagine the horror of his last desperate moments of existence, had not re-enacted them in her mind and relived them in her imagination. In a sense, Adric's death had been remote, reported, something written in a book or seen in a film. It was a death defined more by his subsequent absence that by the event itself.

But this was different. This was the mind-numbing loss of a friend brought home with vicarious immediacy. When Adric had died, it had been a sudden shock. And Nyssa and Tegan had been able to help each other to cope with the loss, had been able to comfort each other in their grief, had shared emotions which the Doctor seemed unwilling or unable to risk.

Now Tegan was alone, drowning in her grief. She sat before the fire, unable to bring herself to look at the coffin or the body of her friend behind her. She clutched the lead crystal of the brandy tumbler, feeling the gut-wrenching emptiness of the loss which she had refused to imagine the whole time that Nyssa was missing. She wondered how long the Doctor had suspected the worst; wondered if he had somehow known; wondered why he seemed not to care.

Then the Doctor was there, kneeling beside her, folding his hands round hers as they clutched the warm gla.s.s. She could see for the first time the depths of emotion and the years of hurting in his eyes as he looked at her.

She could see that he too felt the pain and the loss, even if he could not show it in the same way as she could. She knew that it would be best for him if he could give expression to his grief and voice to his pain and set it free.

'Oh Tegan,' the Doctor said. His voice was barely more than a whisper, flickering in time with the pale flames of the fire glinting off the cut facets of the gla.s.s she held so tightly in her fragile hands. As he held her, Tegan released her first painful sob. Her whole body convulsed with each heaving choke. She lowered her head till it rested on the Doctor's shoulder, and cried.

'Why?' she managed to gasp between her tears. 'Why Nyssa?'

He shook his head. 'I don't know, Tegan. I wish I did.' The Doctor turned and looked over Tegan's shoulder, back towards the sarcophagus still resting unmoved in the corner of the now deserted drawing room. 'It's strange,' he muttered. 'So long, and yet so perfectly preserved.' He shook his head slowly, still holding Tegan's hands around the gla.s.s. 'It's almost as if...' His voice tailed off, and he looked from the coffin to Tegan, then back again.

'I wonder,' the Doctor said, leaping to his feet. He looked back down at Tegan, brow creased in thought for a moment. Then his expression suddenly brightened.

'May I?' he reached down and took the gla.s.s from her hands. Tegan thought for a second he was about to help her to her feet. But instead, he drained the brandy in a single swallow, smacking his lips together appreciatively. Then he handed her back the empty gla.s.s and dashed across the room to where Kenilworth was still standing silently by the casket.

The Doctor reached inside the coffin. 'Will you time me, Lord Kenilworth?'

he asked. 'I'm going to feel her neck for a pulse again.'

'If you wish, Doctor.' Kenilworth pulled a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and flipped open the front cover. 'But there was nothing earlier.'

'Four thousand years is a very long time. An induced metabolic coma would explain the body's preservation, and it would have to be extremely deep to be sustained for that length of time.'

'You mean - she might not be dead?' Tegan put her empty gla.s.s down on the low mahogany table beside her chair and stood up. 'Nyssa's alive?' she asked.

The Doctor was staring into the casket. 'It's possible,' he said. 'We did feel for a pulse just now, but only for few seconds - perhaps thirty. In a coma this deep, there might be a pulse only every few minutes.' He paused, face creasing into a frown as if he was willing Nyssa's heart to beat. 'It is possible,' he repeated. 'Just possible.'

The bed was hard, made of some sort of rough wood. In fact it was more like a bench than a bed. The smell of fish was everywhere, which might have given Nyssa a clue that she was somewhere very close to Billingsgate. Except that she was unconscious. And she had never heard of Billingsgate.

She drifted into and out of awareness, her mind hovering between blackness and a misty haze. Sounds wafted through the gloom as she floated nearer to the surface of thought, mixing with the smell of fish, insinuating their way into Nyssa's mind. She heard rather than listened, absorbed the noises as she breathed in the smells.

'She was found at the appointed place. There at the appointed hour. She is the one.' The voice was refined, cultured but with a guttural accent which caught the vowels at the back of the throat.

But the voice which answered rasped as if it was forced through broken gla.s.s: 'You will send her back?'

'As it is written. As I remember it happening. I have seen her, and she is the one.' A pause. Then the gravelled voice sc.r.a.ped again in the darkness: 'Then the time is near. After all the millennia, a mere century and then...'

The blackness drifted in again. The mists clouded Nyssa's thought and fogged her hearing. The sounds drifted away again into the distance. A few phrases, odd words found their way through the night.

'The journey... the alignment will be right tonight, the stars are set . . .

power is building...'

'The watchers report the museum is clear . . . we must return at once . . .'

Dinner was a rather muted affair. Usually when Lord Kenilworth was recently returned from an expedition, he and his wife would talk animatedly about what had happened variously in Cairo and London over the past few months. The previous night had followed this pattern, broken only by antic.i.p.ation of the unwrapping, and by Kenilworth's strange a.s.sumptions about what Atkins had been doing in his absence.

But tonight Atkins poured a little wine into his lords.h.i.+p's gla.s.s, and listened to the silence. He had not attempted to understand why Lord Kenilworth supposed that he had accompanied him on his expedition. He must have known otherwise. And even if he did not, Lady Kenilworth was as insistent as Atkins was that Atkins had not stirred from London in the past four months. The conversation had been ended by Lady Kenilworth's suggestion that they talk about the impending unwrapping, and Kenilworth's half-heard mutterings that the Doctor had said there would be some confusion over events.

As Atkins removed the dinner plates and motioned for Beryl the maid to supply pudding bowls he reflected that the previous night had been crystal clear by comparison. After the subdued silence of the soup and the quiet politeness of the entree, conversation had risen to new levels. And confusion with it.

'Four thousand years, and you say she's just asleep?' Kenilworth shook his head and reached for his wine. 'Dashed queer business, if you ask me.'

'It's a metabolic coma,' the Doctor repeated patiently, hand palm-down over his wine gla.s.s as Atkins reached forward with the bottle.

Atkins moved on to Miss Jovanka. She watched gla.s.sy-eyed as he replenished her drink, and then all-but drained it in a single gulp. Atkins pretended not to notice, just as he feigned disinterest in the conversation.

He had heard matters from the colour of the Queen's bedroom curtains to the future foreign policy of the Empire discussed in this room, and he took it all in his measured stride.

Tonight's conversation was more unsettling than others, though. Perhaps because of his involvement on the fringes of yesterday's related discussions, perhaps because of the evident distress of the Doctor and Miss Jovanka, perhaps because of the seemingly lifeless body lying in an ancient casket in the next room... Atkins felt that tonight he might permit himself to discuss some small aspects of the deliberations with Miss Warne when they went over the plans for the household for the following day.

'Dashed queer,' Kenilworth repeated. 'Don't you think, Atkins?' he added as the butler pa.s.sed behind him.

'I'm sorry, sir? Oh I really couldn't say.'

Kenilworth snorted. 'I must say, you've clammed back up since we returned. You know I value your views on these matters.'

This was news to Atkins, but he nodded politely and hazarded an opinion as he was asked. 'If the young lady is merely asleep, sir, then could we not wake her up?'

'Good thought, good thought.'

'Well, Doctor?' Miss Jovanka seemed to take her first interest in the conversation. 'Can we help her?'

'Perhaps, Tegan. Perhaps.' The Doctor pushed his plate to one side, the food untouched. Atkins carefully removed it before the Doctor's elbow could sink into the spotted d.i.c.k. 'It is possible, though rather tricky. I have to break into the coma in precisely the right way and that depends on how long Nyssa has been unconscious, where she was found, what condition the sarcophagus has been in, all manner of things. Even how she was transported here is important. Ideally the body should have been kept as level as possible.'

Kenilworth wiped his upper lip on a napkin. 'Well, of course it was,' he said through the double damask.

The Doctor stared at him. 'Could I ask why?'

Miss Jovanka, the Doctor and Lady Kenilworth waited for the reply. Atkins contrived to fill a gla.s.s close to his lords.h.i.+p so as to hear properly.

Kenilworth eventually finished refolding his napkin. He seemed perplexed.

'The sarcophagus was kept level, even to the point of stringing it up in a hammock on the return voyage, because you insisted on it, Doctor.'

The Doctor gaped. ' I I did?' did?'

'Indeed. I'm not sure I follow what's going on here, Doctor. Your memory seems as fickle as Atkins' does. The other stuff you mentioned - location and condition of the body and all that - you know already.' He stood and motioned to Atkins. 'I think we'll take port in the drawing room.'

'But how?' Miss Jovanka called after Kenilworth as she got unsteadily to her feet. 'How does the Doctor know?'

Kenilworth turned in the doorway. 'Not you too, Tegan. He knows, as you do, because he was there when we found the tomb.'

The carriage clattered to a halt in the snowy night. Nyssa had no way of knowing how long it was since she had last been here, but she recognised the impressive stone facade of the British Museum as she was dragged roughly from the carriage.She stumbled groggily down the damp wooden steps and slipped on the cobbled street. Her foot sank through the crisp crust of ice and skidded on the slush beneath. At once she was hauled to her feet.

'Gently, Yusuf, gently.'

Nyssa found herself looking into the tanned face of a short but broadly-built man in an opera cape. It was a round face, made to appear rounder by the complete lack of hair. The face was broken into a grim smile which looked as though it was set in position. Nyssa got an impression of a depth of experience which belied the apparent age of the man. Then she saw that while his skin was smooth, it was also cobwebbed with hairline cracks, like an old oil painting of a young man. He continued to smile humourlessly at her, talking over her shoulder to the man holding her arms behind her back.

'The G.o.ddess did not choose this one so that you could bruise her fair skin.'

He reached out a callused hand and ran a rough finger along Nyssa's cheek. She flinched, tried to back away. But the man behind her held her still. 'No, Yusuf, she has a better use for her than that.' He stared into her eyes for a while. Nyssa held his gaze for a moment, then looked away, sought refuge in the dirty white of the churned up snow at her feet.