Doctor Who

by Alex Kingston

  ‘So I need to come up with an idea of how I can not-forget an idea.’

  The cat purred. ‘Well, this is new, at least. Maybe we’re getting somewhere at last!’

  ‘Does it affect you?’

  ‘The Silent? No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘What is there to affect? I’m a fictional character who lives in a book and is currently using a cat as a portal to your world. Good luck in hypnotising that!’

  ‘Then that’s something we can use. What else?’

  ‘You have faster reactions than average.’

  ‘How do you figure that out?’

  The cat made an unhappy yowling sound. ‘There’s a pile of bodies on the floor, but you’re not one of them.’

  All that time in Stormcage had served me well after all. Dodging through its defences again and again had honed my reflexes.

  Oh! Maybe there was the germ of an idea there …

  The first Stormcage defence, the disorientation. You had to turn off everything your senses were telling you and just charge through. Could that work here?

  ‘As soon as I enter that corridor I see the Silent and forget everything that’s gone before,’ I said, working it out as I went. ‘I can’t see my true surroundings. I can’t even hear you. But what if I cut out the Silent? What if I just charge through, eyes shut?’

  ‘It would kill you. Every one of those bodies had its neck broken.’

  ‘Then you need to be my eyes and ears,’ I told her.

  The cat sat on my shoulder, her claws digging in. I ignored the pain – it was part of the plan. With eyes closed and fingers in my ears, I took step after step downwards.

  Two quick claw pinches. That meant two more steps to go. I didn’t want to stumble at the bottom. One quick claw pinch. One more step and I was down. Now both sets of claws dug in hard. That meant the Silent had opened its mouth and was about to speak.

  I pushed my fingers in harder, stopping my ears as best as I could while yelling out ‘La la la can’t hear you!’ to better block out the sound. I strive for dignity always.

  Left claws dug in. I veered left. Right claws dug in. I veered right. Both sets – I went forward. Both in deep – I stopped. I obeyed the cat’s directions instantly.

  A double deep dig. I ran.

  Suddenly she pressed her right claws in even harder.

  I tried to change course and stumbled over something on the ground. My hands reflexively went to break my fall. I was touching something cold. Something with hands …

  ‘It’s behind you!’ Cat Malone shrieked. But my fingers had found something smooth and metallic. I grabbed it, ripped it from the dead hands that held it, turned and plunged upwards …

  There was a hiss and a burning splatter of acid blood.

  ‘Get up and run!’ the cat commanded, digging her claws in hard to underscore the message.

  I did.

  ‘One more step … Stop!’

  I stopped, and opened my eyes. I was at the very end of the corridor. Behind me I saw the Silent, curled up on the floor.

  ‘I don’t think it’s dead,’ said Cat Malone. ‘Just injured. But I don’t think it’s strong enough to affect you right now.’

  I looked past the creature. There were arrows sticking out of the walls: I counted four, just as Cat Malone had said. Then there were the bodies. At this distance I couldn’t recognise them individually, but I knew who they were. Who they had been. Nebi. Oba. Djal. Seti. My first four guides, whose reflexes weren’t as sharp as mine. My only comfort was knowing that Shenti wasn’t among them.

  But what was done was done. I looked ahead instead.

  When Howard Carter peered inside Tutankhamun’s tomb, the first things he saw were gilt couches, ritual beds carved in the shapes of animals that were to help the king to ascend to his rightful place in the afterlife. If I remembered correctly, there had been three couches: a cow, a leopard, and a hippo. Here there were four: all stylised but easily recognisable as a jackal, a falcon, a baboon and a crocodile, representations of gods or sacred animals. I was slightly surprised to find them at a burial of this period, but Cleopatra had won the hearts of many people by adopting Egyptian ways despite being of Greek lineage.

  There were other items in the room. Linen wall hangings decorated the chamber. Weapons, food, clothing, all were piled up along the edges. I went to have a closer look.

  The second my foot touched the floor, the floor turned black.

  Scorpions! A sea of scorpions, swarming towards me. Crawling on top of each other, wave after wave, faster than an incoming tide.

  I scrambled backwards, not quite in time. A single scorpion touched the toe of my sandal. By the time I’d lifted my foot off the floor, ten more were clinging on. I whipped off the shoe and thrashed it on the wall until all the arachnids had fallen away. I recognised them as pretty much the deadliest type of scorpion on the planet. Oh, of course they were.

  All that had barely taken two seconds.

  There was a further doorway ahead of us, at the opposite side of the room, but I had to cross the floor to reach it. Crossing the room would take more than two seconds.

  But there was a solution. The holy sofa things! Yes, they were a fair distance from where I stood, but I had faith in my abilities. You’re looking at the Leadworth School Hopscotch Champion 2003.

  Cat Malone gripped my shoulder again as I prepared to jump. I stopped. ‘Could you please try not to actually draw blood?’ I said. ‘There are already more holes in my shoulder than in a Swiss cheese.’

  ‘And how exactly do you expect me to stay anchored without sticking my claws in?’

  ‘Can’t you just jump by yourself?’ I said. ‘You’re a cat now. Cats can jump much further than humans.’

  She gave a feline sniff. ‘Very well.’ She crouched, wiggling her backside until she was ready to spring. Then she propelled herself through the air, landing on the falcon-headed couch.

  The couch gave way beneath her.

  With a yowl, Cat Malone leaped, grabbing on to a wall covering with her claws and hanging there as the couch tumbled down into a huge black pit below, its existence hidden by reed mats.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I cried.

  ‘This ain’t gonna take my weight!’ she shrieked.

  I didn’t know how to get to her! But she was right – already her claws were ripping through the linen, soon she’d be deposited on the floor. I didn’t know if scorpion venom could harm fictional characters, but it could most certainly harm a cat. I’d got used to having the cat about, both the original, simple feline and the mouthy Melody-alike.

  It went without saying that the scorpion venom could harm me. I did not want those things swarming over me, like the nanobots in Stormcage …

  Oh. How stupid I’d been!

  The first obstacle: the Silent who disorientates you until you can’t trust your brain or your instincts.

  The second obstacle: a multitude of small creatures that overwhelm you …

  These weren’t traps set by the Egyptians to foil grave robbers! These were traps set by Ventrian, using the Eye of Horus Device!

  He had to protect it – but he needed me to find it. He’d put clues in my book, he’d created an obstacle course based on the Stormcage defences I’d told him about!

  So how did that help? I ran over in my head all the things I’d told him. He’d found the idea of my self-inflating crocodile stepping stones hilarious …

  ‘Help!’ Cat Malone slipped down another few inches. I didn’t stop to think, I jumped for the crocodile couch, my breath held …

  It did not give way.

  I leaned over, making a bridge from bed to wall with my body. Cat Malone twisted and landed on me, pulling half a wall covering with her. With some effort, I righted myself again. One more jump and we’d be through.

  But I needed to think ahead now. What came next in Stormcage? The laser maze, of course. Funnily enough, I didn’t have my specially crafted mirrors on me right now
. But would there be lasers? Ventrian had thought the Device would be safest somewhere low-tech as there’d be nothing for it to co-opt for its purposes. That hadn’t quite worked out. Somehow it had brought a Silent to Ancient Egypt, for one thing!

  Or maybe not! Yes, that was it – I knew the Silence had been on Earth since the Stone Age. All the Eye had to do was bring one here! The scorpions were native to the desert – a locally sourced hazard; visit Egypt for all your horror needs!

  I leaned over to a pile of weapons and picked up a boomerang. I’d seen people using them to kill birds along the Nile and I’d had a few goes – not to kill anything, just to see how it was done. I knew I could throw it straight and true.

  ‘Get ready to duck, just in case,’ I told Cat Malone, as I drew back my arm.

  And – throw! It soared out of my hand, across the rest of the room, through the door, through the next room – and a whole host of spears flew out of the walls. A trap, triggered by movement. It might be primitive, but a metal spearhead would hurt just as much as a laser beam.

  I threw another boomerang, and another. Every time, more spears whipped across the room. Like the laser maze, they came from all directions and at every angle. I had to find a way of deflecting them.

  There was a shield up against the wall, and it looked like a good one. If I timed it right and went fast enough, I thought I could get through. I leaned over and picked it up. Yes, it was a good one. Strong, dense … and heavy.

  Very heavy. The sort of heaviness that would really hinder someone if they were, for example, trying to jump from a crocodile-headed bed over a field of scorpions.

  Could I throw it? Yes, but not far enough. If it landed on the floor, it would be overrun with scorpions in moments. Still, that might be my best hope.

  I grabbed the linen that had come across with Cat Malone, and tore it into strips, which I used to tie round my legs and ankles, mummy-style, then I did the same to my hands. It wouldn’t stop the scorpions stinging me, but it was at least a slight barrier.

  Cat Malone went first, landing in the doorway easily. Then I tossed the shield. It fell far short, and as I’d feared, the scorpions came scurrying out to examine it.

  There was no way I could take a run-up, so I leapt from a standing start. I almost made it – but not quite. I’d barely landed and the scorpions were already on me.

  ‘Hurry!’ Cat Malone shrieked, as if I’d fallen short just for fun. I could feel all the tiny feet scuttling up me and I threw myself forward in a less than graceful half roll, landing where Malone waited. My bandaged hands managed to brush the arachnids from my bandaged legs and the sea of them retreated, like the turn of the tide.

  ‘You know the worst thing about this?’ said Cat Malone. ‘You might have to do it all again on the way out.’

  ‘We might have to do it all again,’ I corrected. ‘And let’s hope we do get out!’

  What came next? Sticking to the Stormcage parallels, it would be the marble game. Some sort of entrance through which I would have to time –

  The pendulum blade swung out of nowhere. I dived forward as Cat Malone leapt too, both of us shrieking like cats whose tails had been trodden on. I didn’t have time to pause for a second before another blade came down too. In fact I didn’t have time even to think. There was no planning, no calculation of angles or speed of descent, just pure adrenalin-filled momentum combined with subconscious prayer. I don’t usually let people see my vulnerable side, so I was relieved there was only a cat there to witness how close I was to sobbing when I reached the end of the run.

  I looked down at the cat, who had performed some superhuman – no, that would be superfeline – gymnastics to get through. She was looking woefully at the tip of her tail, which was missing the very ends of its fur. It had been close for both of us.

  I took a deep breath and got ready to –

  Cat Malone screeched.

  Another blade sliced through the air, timed perfectly to whoosh down just as the tomb raider had started to relax, which I say from first-hand experience. I managed to dive out of the way, but if I’d had a tail, it would have been clipped too. Once again I had to reluctantly bless my upbringing. Oh, being brought up as an assassin screws you up, I won’t deny it, but by god it hones your reflexes.

  This time I looked carefully all around before I started breathing again. It looked like the coast was clear. Nevertheless, I felt wary as I made my way forward.

  My hope was that this would be the final obstacle. In Stormcage, once past the deadly doors the labyrinthine corridors were all that lay between you and your cell. There the danger was dying of hunger / thirst / old age amid its twists and turns, rather than being sliced up or stung to death. I still had the linen strips tied round my hands, so I fastened the end of one at the entrance and unwound as I went.

  The further I went, the lower the ceilings became. An unfamiliar sense of claustrophobia assailed me as I first bent my head, then my back, and finally had to crawl on hands and knees. More than once I turned a corner and found myself facing a dead end, and had to fight off a fear that I’d suddenly find the way blocked behind me, cutting off my retreat. The fictitious disaster that had befallen George Badger Senior’s expedition, the sudden rock fall that barred entrance to the tomb, swam in my mind. Ridiculous to be haunted by the product of my own imagination, one that I’d dreamed up in seconds and had covered in a single line of writing, but there it was. I was no stranger to a tomb, but rarely had one felt quite so tomblike as this nightmare structure.

  I crawled onward, unravelling the bandage-like strips behind me. Unfortunately, I ran out of linen before I ran out of paths to try.

  The only options were proceed anyway or retreat. Ha! ‘Retreat’ isn’t in my vocabulary.

  Unfortunately ‘RECKLESS’ is written there in red, mile-high capitals.

  I forced myself down a dark alley, but when it forked ahead of me I paused, trying to decide what to do.

  ‘Any ideas?’ I asked Cat Malone, not expecting a helpful answer.

  ‘Christmas,’ said the cat.

  ‘What?’

  She snuffled slightly. ‘It smells like Christmas. Mulled wine and incense.’

  Oh. ‘Cleopatra’s perfume!’ I said. ‘Cinnamon, cardamom, myrrh – is that what you’re smelling?’

  Cat Malone went backwards and forwards a few times, sniffing the ground. ‘Yes,’ she said in the end.

  I sniffed deeply myself. Yes, there was definitely a trace of spice in the air – although my nose wasn’t capable of tracking it down. A cat’s sense of smell is about 40 times stronger than a human’s, however, so I had no reason to doubt Cat Malone’s ability to smell us out a route.

  Her nose stuck to the floor, she led the way. I tried not to think of my bones lying in this godforsaken spot, a place hidden for ever. Even the Doctor would never know what became of me.

  We seemed to go on for miles – a not impossible construction for a people who had built the Pyramids and the Sphinx, but probably attributable to the power of Ventrian’s Device. I began to fear that it had created an infinite maze to which there was no actual end. My only comfort was news from Cat Malone’s nose – according to her, the scent was growing stronger.

  I threw up a prayer of thanks to any deity that might be listening when we finally turned a corner and there was space ahead of us. Oh, the joys of being able to stand upright! The pleasure of throwing out my arms and spinning on the spot like a ballerina doll! I spent a good two minutes dancing around before realising quite how exhausted I was and collapsing on to a carved wooden chest.

  Having recovered slightly, we pressed on. There were three chambers full of burial goods. One contained food for the deceased’s journey through the underworld, and I decided Cleopatra’s ghost wouldn’t begrudge me a few dried fruits or a sip or two of wine. Cat Malone preferred some salted meat.

  Finally we got to the main event. There in the chamber rested a sarcophagus, its death mask portraying a woman – there wer
e enough similarities for me to assume it was Cleopatra, those red-coloured curls were uncommon in Egypt. There was an elaborate carving on the wall, too, that clearly depicted the Cleopatra I’d encountered, cradling a child that must be meant for Caesarion. Poor kid, with his life cut so cruelly short.

  I knew from historical sources that there was a chance, if not a certainty, that Cleopatra had not been mummified – the process took many months and Octavian would have wanted her out of sight and out of mind as soon as possible. She may therefore have been simply interred, with Mark Antony’s ashes by her side. For a moment I was tempted to remove the lid and solve the mystery, but I’ve seen the bodies of enough friends – oh, I know Cleopatra and I weren’t friends as such, but I still found myself unwilling to see what death and time had done to the proud, powerful woman I’d briefly known.

  Besides, there was something else in the room that caught my eye.

  And the thing that caught my eye was an eye.

  The Eye of Horus: the all-seeing eye, symbol of protection, sign of royalty. A carved and gilded image on the tomb wall, and in its centre, the pupil of the eye – a ruby. A ruby the size of a pigeon’s egg.

  The Eye of Horus ruby was my invention, of course. I’d had no reason whatsoever to assume the real tomb of Cleopatra held such a thing, therefore it was a reasonable assumption that this was no jewel. This was the thing I’d been searching for – the thing Ventrian had hidden for me, and no one else, to find.

  The only thing that gave me pause was that from Ventrian’s description I had expected it to have an enormous aura of power. There was … something … in the air, some emanation or vibration, enough that I was aware of an unearthly presence, just not as strong as one would expect of something that could tear the universe apart. Perhaps Ventrian had managed to dampen the emanations so attention wouldn’t be drawn to this time and place.

  The Eye’s the only Rubicon.

  The clue must surely relate to this moment. Did it mean that, like Caesar’s river crossing, there was no way back, the action was irrevocable?

  ‘I guess this is it,’ I said to Cat Malone. ‘This is why I’m here. “The Eye’s the only Rubicon”,’ I murmured again. ‘And this is the Eye.’ I reached out a hand to the stone –