BBC Cult Dr Who - The Sands Of Time Read online

  'An invitation card?' In fact it was half a card. The faded gilt of the rounded edge ended in a jagged tear where the card had been torn across. Aubrey read the half sentences on the printed side, trying to fill in the missing words and phrases.

  'Probably you will pass that on to your next of kin just as I do,' Cedric said quietly.

  'But there is a chance, just a chance, that during your lifetime he will come.'

  'Who will?'

  'Whoever has the other half of that invitation card. He will come to claim the mummy, and you must release it to him.'

  'And when that happens?'

  Cedric Prior shrugged. He traced his finger along the edge of the ancient coffin and stared at the rotting bandages across the woman's face. 'I wish I knew,' he said quietly.

  * * *

  Chapter One

  The Doctor was deep in thought. Nyssa could tell as soon as she entered the console room. She had heard the melodious chime that meant they had landed while she was in the TARDIS corridor. Now she could see that the central column of the control console had come to a halt.

  The Doctor was leaning over the console, staring across it through the misted transparency of the central column. A single line creased his apparently young brow as he gazed into the empty middle distance.

  As Nyssa watched from the doorway, the Doctor shook his heard suddenly, sending his blond hair into a frenzy as he set off rapidly round the console. He was muttering under his breath, consulting instruments and frowning at read-outs.

  Tegan's voice came from close to Nyssa's ear - her friend was standing right behind her. 'Have we landed?'

  'Yes.' Nyssa stood aside to let Tegan into the room. 'But I'm not sure we're where the Doctor intended.'

  'So what's new?' Tegan positioned herself so that the Doctor could not help but notice her as he started another circuit of the console.

  'Ah. Tegan,' he said as he almost ran into her. 'Good. Yes. We've landed.' He plunged his hands deep into the pockets of his long cream-coloured jacket and peered over Tegan's shoulder at the console.

  'We can see that, Doctor,' Nyssa said as she joined them by the console.

  The Doctor pulled his hands from his pockets and tapped an absent-minded tattoo on the nearest control panel. 'Only,' he said quietly. Then he suddenly stopped tapping his fingers and peered closely at the controls on the panel.

  'Only what, Doctor?'

  For a moment he did not move. Then he straightened up, his face creasing into the frown of a late schoolboy with no excuse. 'We're not where we should be,' he said, as if totally surprised.

  'We guessed that,' Tegan told him.

  'Hmm?' the Doctor asked in a pained voice.

  'Where are we, then?' Nyssa asked him before they could start arguing over the exact percentage of accurate landings the Doctor had recently accomplished.

  The Doctor turned sharply towards Nyssa. 'I don't know,' he said as if the question had only just occurred to him.

  'I'll try the scanner,' Nyssa offered.

  It showed nothing.

  'It's just black,' Tegan said, earning a scowl from the Doctor and a shrug from Nyssa. 'Perhaps it is just black outside. A void of some sort.'

  'No, Nyssa. The scanner's playing up, that's all.' The Doctor closed the scanner screen and waved a hand dismissively at the control console. 'It'll sort itself out soon enough.'

  'What will?'

  'What? Oh, relative dimensional stabiliser failed. It's happened before, so the TARDIS will know how to fix it. Then we can be on our way.'

  'As simple as that?' Tegan did not seem convinced.

  'Er, well no, actually. Not quite.'

  'Thought not.'

  'We need to recalibrate. Won't take a moment.' The Doctor grinned. 'Once we have the data.'

  Tegan looked from the Doctor to Nyssa. Since the Doctor did not seem about to elaborate, Nyssa explained. 'We need to know where we are, so we can work out how to get back on course.' She hoped she had understood the problem.

  'Quite right, Nyssa. Where and when. Once we know that, we can have another go.' 'So we have to go outside.'

  The Doctor nodded. 'Exciting isn't it?' He reached for the door control, and the main doors swung heavily open.

  'Come on, you two.' The Doctor already had his Panama hat in hand. He stuck it on his head as he pushed past Nyssa and Tegan to get to the doors. 'Where's your sense of adventure?'

  'Mine died a long and lingering death somewhere in Amsterdam,' Tegan said quietly to Nyssa. 'Where's yours?'

  'I'm not sure I ever had one,' Nyssa replied. But she followed them out of the TARDIS anyway.

  The room was large and unlit. The only illumination was the moonlight which spilled in through the dusty windows. As she peered into the gloom, Tegan could make out dark shapes along the length of the room. A black river flowed round them, and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness she could see that it was a carpet. It traced a route through and around the shapes. The Doctor was already making his way down the room, peering at shadows. As she watched, he removed a pair of half-moon spectacles from his top pocket and put them on.

  Tegan made to follow him, conscious of Nyssa beside her. Something caught at her hand, just for a second, then let go. Immediately Tegan gasped in surprise and jumped back.

  Beside her, Nyssa laughed. 'It's just a rope, Tegan.'

  'I can see that.' And so she could - now. The rope stretched along the side of the carpet, cordoning off the area outside it. To get to the carpeted path, they had to step over the rope. As they made their way after the Doctor, Tegan saw that the rope was strung between low posts along the way. She was beginning to understand where they were.

  'They're caskets,' Nyssa said as they reached the first of the larger shadows. The central aisle of the room was a line of similar shapes. They were all open caskets about seven feet long and three feet wide. And each seemed to contain a body.

  Nyssa was examining the nearest casket. 'The body is wrapped in some sort of protective covering,' she pointed out. 'I think it must be an advanced process derived from cryogenics. A way of preserving a body so that it can later be restored to life.'

  This time Tegan laughed. She was glad that for once she knew more than Nyssa about something. 'Advanced process? I don't think so.'

  'Oh be charitable, Tegan.' Somehow the Doctor had popped up between them and was staring into the casket. 'The process is pretty advanced, considering. And the basic idea was exactly as Nyssa said. They thought the soul was reunited with the body after burial. So the body had to be preserved to endure the rigours of the afterlife.'

  Tegan's eyes had adjusted enough to the dim light for her to be able to see Nyssa's smirk. 'Doctor, they're mummies,' she said. 'Whatever Nyssa thinks, we're in a museum. A museum full of sarcophaguses and ancient Egyptian stuff.'

  'Sarcophagi,' the Doctor admonished. 'But you're right.'

  They looked around again, able now to see rather more clearly. The sarcophagi formed a row down the centre of the room. Along the sides of the room, more caskets and sarcophagi stood upright. The TARDIS was almost at one end of a wall, just one more box in a large collection of strange shaped caskets. Dotted about the room were low tables, each with one or more objects standing symmetrically upon it. The objects ranged from statuettes to urns, from glass cases of jewellery to fragments of papyrus.

  'And this is not just a museum,' the Doctor continued. 'This is the museum - at least as far as Earth is concerned.' He slowly turned a complete circle, surveying the room with apparent pride. 'This is the Egyptian room of the British Museum.' He set off down the room again. 'All we need to know now, is the time,' he called back over his shoulder.

  'It's night time,' Tegan called after him. 'And it's cold.' She was still wearing the camisole top and thin shorts she had taken to Amsterdam. They had been fine there, but she was conscious now that they were really little more than glorified underwear.

  'Did they really think they would revive in an afterlife?' ask
ed Nyssa. 'After this?' she gestured at the bandaged figure lying in the coffin in front of them.

  'Guess so.' Tegan shivered. 'Made for some good films though - mummies lurching to life and staggering after their victims.' She made a clumsy lunge for Nyssa, who giggled and stepped out of the way.

  'If he's going to be much longer, I'll have to get a coat.' Tegan watched as the Doctor moved slowly amongst the relics and jotted odd notes on a small pad that had appeared in his hand. 'Aren't you cold?' she asked Nyssa.

  Nyssa shook her head. She was wearing brown corduroy trousers and what appeared to be a matching velvet tunic.

  Tegan came to her decision. 'Right,' she said, 'I'll be back in a minute.' She nodded towards the distant figure of the Doctor. 'Don't let him wander off,' she told Nyssa. Then she headed back towards the TARDIS, pausing only to curse at the low loop of rope she tripped over on the way.

  Nyssa smiled as she saw Tegan trip against the rope again. She returned her friend's embarrassed wave, and watched her enter the TARDIS. Turning her attention back to the bandaged body in the sarcophagus in front of her, Nyssa wondered about the rituals and beliefs of the culture that took such care of their dead. She tried to estimate the age of the corpse, and then of its coffin. But she soon gave up, blaming both the bad light and her lack of background information. She would examine a couple of the other artefacts, and then ask the Doctor. If she felt confident enough she might even hazard an estimate of the age of one of the relics.

  The first piece that Nyssa looked at more closely was a bracelet which lay on one of the tables by the aisle. It was large and heavy, hinged to open outwards and close around the wrist or perhaps the lower arm. As she twisted it to catch the moonlight, Nyssa could see that it was gold, inlaid with a blue enamel which she did not recognize. On one half was a picture. It seemed to show a child perched on top of a clump of leaves. The figure held a staff with a looped top and wore a headress adorned with a rearing snake. The picture was framed by the twisted shapes of two other snakes, their tails meeting above the child's head. The background was faded and worn, but the reliefwork itself was well-preserved and delineated. If she looked closely enough, Nyssa could even see the line of the mouth where the figure held its finger to its lips, as if asking her to keep silent.

  She carefully replaced the bracelet on the table, none the wiser. A larger object might yield more clues. Nyssa made her way to a sarcophagus standing upright against the wall.

  The sarcophagus was larger than she had expected, a good two feet taller than Nyssa. It seemed to be made of wood, and was carved into roughly the shape of a person - presumably of its occupant. Nyssa guessed from the relative sizes of the casket she had already seen and of its occupant that there was plenty of space inside even when the casket was full. The real person would have been nowhere near as big as their coffin.

  A stream of moonlight illuminated the side and top of the sarcophagus. This was partly why Nyssa had been drawn to it, and she could see that the face painted on the head section was of a woman. The rest of the body was adorned with small pictures of animals and birds. There were also several human figures, but with the heads of other creatures. A single pattern, a stylised eye, recurred across the ornate coffin. An eyebrow looped above it as if in surprise, and two lines fell away from it. One was perpendicular to the eye, the other slid off to the left at an angle, thinning out before ending in a solid circle as large as the pupil. In the glinting dusty moonlight they looked to Nyssa like tears across the front of the coffin lid.

  It did not take Nyssa long to decide that she had no chance of deciphering the symbols and pictures without help. Instead, she turned her attention to the face of the dead woman. She had to stand on tip-toe and lean forward over the extended feet jutting out from the base of the casket. Half the face was in shadow, but she could see the rest of it quite clearly. She could see the wide staring eyes and high eyebrows, the painted cheekbone and soft line of the nose. She stared at the flaking lips, turning up slightly even as a dimpled line shadowed down from the corner of the mouth. She reached up and ran her hand over the flat paint of the curled dark hair that cascaded down from a central parting to hang unevenly over the artificial shoulders. And she felt a cold trickle of fear run its course from the nape of her neck down her spine.

  Tegan was wearing the longest, heaviest cloak she could find in the TARDIS wardrobe. She had considered changing her clothes completely, but she was not at all sure she trusted the Doctor to hang around for the length of time it might take to find something suitable. So she was wrapped entirely in a black cloak of some thick worsted material, the heavy hood pulling at her shoulders as it hung loose about her neck.

  Her first problem was negotiating the rope she remembered all too well was strung across her path. She had to hoist the cloak up and over with each leg. Once on the other side of the rope she congratulated herself on the operation, smoothed the cloak back down to her ankles, and looked round for the Doctor and Nyssa.

  She could see neither.

  But then, as her eyes adjusted again to the gloomy light, she made out a figure towards the far end of the room. As she watched, it straightened up, silhouetted for a moment against the lighter doorway in the end wall. It stuffed its hands into its trouser pockets and turned slowly one way, then back the other. Tegan smiled and set off towards the Doctor.

  She was about half way there when she caught sight of movement from the corner of her eye. Her immediate thought was that it was Nyssa examining some other artefact. But it was not a person, more of a momentary glow. She stopped and turned back towards the light source.

  But there was nothing there. Just another sarcophagus standing by the wall. It was tall and wide, shaped like an upright figure just as all the others were. The arms were crossed over the chest, each holding a staff. The headress over and around the face was alternate lines of black and a lighter colour, but it was too dark for Tegan to make out any details. She watched it for a moment. The sarcophagus stood silent, still, and lonely.

  Just as Tegan was about to move on, she became aware of a faint humming sound. It was not unlike the background noise in the TARDIS console room. She looked round to see where it was coming from. Had the TARDIS door swung open behind her, perhaps caught and kept ajar by her cloak? But the door was not open; and the sound was coming from behind her. From the sarcophagus. From the sarcophagus which was now lit with an eerie inner light that seemed to emanate from the lighter strips of the headress and spill out down the rest of the body.

  The strobing blue light mesmerised Tegan for a second. It held her attention and her mind. Then just as she broke free of the image and found her voice, the light cut out.

  'Doctor,' she called across the room. Her voice echoed over the relics and skidded across the coffins.

  In the distance, the Doctor's silhouette turned sharply in the direction of the noise and broke into a run. Lit for a moment in the doorway behind, another figure slipped silently and swiftly into the room.

  The hand was large and rough and smelled of fish. Nyssa had enough time to notice each of these facts, and to let out the beginnings of a surprised shriek before the hand closed completely over her mouth. Her cry stopped as abruptly as her assailant grabbed her.

  Across the room, Nyssa could see the dark figure of Tegan and the hurried outline of the Doctor as he arrived beside her and clasped her shoulders, asking her what was wrong. The tableau receded as Nyssa was pulled back through the room in the opposite direction. The man holding her grunted with the effort as he tried to prevent her from crying out or wrenching herself free.

  Nyssa bit and wriggled and stamped, but nothing she did seemed to shake her attacker's resolve or his grip. She pulled at the huge hand clamped to her mouth, but without success.

  In the distance the Doctor glanced briefly towards them. Nyssa could imagine him peering into the blackness and wondering where she was and what her stifled cry had been. Her eyes widened in blind appeal and she struggled all the mo
re violently.

  But the Doctor turned back to Tegan, moved her aside and started to examine the sarcophagus behind her. In a last desperate effort, Nyssa twisted in the doorway, her foot lashing out at a nearby display table and her half-free hand catching at the doorframe as she was dragged from the room.

  'Look at the workmanship,' the Doctor said again as he wiped imaginary dust from the figure's face. 'Definitely Osiran influence.' He waved a hand at the stylised line of the eyebrows by way of proof. 'Well, at least we know what drew the TARDIS off course.' He turned back to Tegan, only slightly daunted by the fact that she appeared not to be paying any attention to him and was instead looking round the room behind them. 'Probably caused the stabiliser failure too, come to that.' He jammed his hands back into his pockets and leaned suddenly forwards. 'Tegan, if you don't want to know, then please don't ask,' he finished as if continuing the previous sentence.

  As he had suspected, she did not register the change of subject or the criticism.

  'Where's Nyssa?' she asked instead.

  'Oh, I expect she's -'

  The Doctor's expectations were cut short by the sound of a table crashing to the ground. The sound echoed round the room as the table spilled its contents across the floor. Something smashed in a minor explosion of plaster. Something else skidded and rolled across the ground, spinning to a stop at the edge of the carpet.

  Tegan and the Doctor both turned towards the source of the noise, towards the far end of the room. And saw the silhouetted struggling as Nyssa was dragged through the doorway by a large dark figure.

  'Hey!' Tegan shouted, tripping on the edge of her cloak as she tried to break into a run. As she stumbled, the Doctor leaped past her and vaulted a collection of relics which stood between himself and the door. Behind him he was aware of Tegan struggling with her cloak. In front of him he saw Nyssa finally disappear from view, the door slammed shut behind her.