Doctor Who

by Alex Kingston

  I needed to get it over with. Rip off the plaster.

  I turned to the relevant page in the book. Or thought I did.

  The word ‘ruby’ wasn’t there.

  Page 153, word 44. I counted again. Again, no. The 44th word was the less than inspiring ‘in’.

  I hurriedly looked at all the pages around it, maybe I’d slipped up somehow.

  Nothing.

  I pressed random words, waiting for that explosion of equations that would let us deal with the Eye of Horus. The paper remained stubbornly solid.

  I turned to page 153 again

  … at him. ‘Thanks, Kid.’ I would have ruffled his hair, but he never takes that cap off. Oh, and he don’t have any hair. But apart from that.

  Phil gives me a funny little bow. Yeah, he’s a funny kid all round. But we suit each other.

  Someone’s banging on the door. ‘What’s going on in there!’ demands Cuttling’s voice.

  River unbolts the cabin door and opens it, to reveal Cuttling (in a pair of mustard and brown striped pyjamas) and Mrs Peterson-Lee (in what would be a simple white nightdress if she hadn’t added to it a gold-coloured belt and a gold collar that resembled nothing so much as an Egyptian Usekh and – oh, right. She was being Cleopatra. If Cleopatra had been a 60-year-old white woman with cliff-ledge bosoms who pranced around in a nightie, that is).

  Wearily, I suggest going elsewhere to explain. I mean, we’re just swimming in blood here.

  Susan Peterson-Lee is hyperventilating and fluttering her hands wildly, her eyes rolling into her head as though she’s about to faint – or maybe wants to give the impression of someone about to faint. ‘Come on, Susan,’ I say. ‘I reckon Cleopatra saw a lot worse. She bumped off a whole heap of folks, didn’t she?’

  ‘Assassination is a necessary tool of princes,’ put in Phil. ‘The alternative is to be killed oneself.’

  Oh my god.

  This was not what Ventrian had written. There had definitely been no character called ‘River’ in Ventrian’s rewrite – I think I would have noticed.

  It bore no relation to anything I’d written either.

  But what it described was very familiar – because I’d lived through it.

  There was only one conclusion I could come to. What had taken place while I was in the ‘book’ had overwritten the content of the original, and wiped out the portal to Ventrian’s research.

  I no longer had access to the information I needed to destroy the Eye of Horus.

  I went through the book and found every instance of the word ‘ruby’. I knew it was pointless, but desperation was building inside me. Was there any way I could remember the spiralling equations and formulae I’d seen just once? Could I go back in time to before the book was changed? Solution after hopeless solution was shot down.

  Although – did it really matter? Why would one want to destroy such a powerful object? In the right hands, it could be a boon for the entire universe!

  Destroying Deff would be only the start. Once I had shredded his body, atom by painful atom, I would disperse them into the void, make him never have existed at all.

  I would reorder the stars. The sun would rise and fall on my command. I would give my mother a necklace made of moons and my father –

  Melody slapped me.

  I shook my head, coming out of the trance.

  ‘You brought me here, you’re damn well staying here with me!’ she said.

  ‘I was going to use my infinite power to make my mum a necklace of moons,’ I said dreamily. ‘I think I was only going to get Dad to shave off his moustache, though.’

  I could still feel the Eye of Horus in my head. It was shaping itself around me, making an outline that it would fill to the brim with itself.

  ‘Can’t you feel it?’ I said.

  ‘Feel what?’

  There was a groan from the floor. Caesarion sat up.

  ‘Phil!’ Melody cried, and rushed to him, helping him to his feet. ‘Or – not Phil.’ She threw a wary glance at me. ‘She called you – Caesarion?’

  The boy, still slightly dazed, nodded. ‘Gaius Julius Caesar, greatest man of Rome, was my father. Cleopatra the Seventh, pharaoh of Egypt, is my mother. She sent me away because Octavian, my father’s heir in Rome, saw me as a great threat to him as being of my father’s blood as well as of the blood of many kings. My life was in grave danger. But as I reached the port of Berenice, a god visited me in the form of a beggar man.’

  Ventrian, I thought. With all that he’d been through, it wasn’t surprising he looked like a ‘beggar man’ to the young king of Egypt.

  ‘It was not yet time for me to journey through the underworld, the man said, but I must hide there, as it was a place no living man could reach,’ Caesarion continued. ‘Yet if one should come who divined my true identity, I must reveal myself to them, and give to them the jewel he left in my keeping, and I would return again to my mother’s land. This, then, is my mother’s land?’

  He looked around. I was still half-dazed myself, or I’d have realised earlier what he must be thinking. ‘This is not my mother’s land – this is my mother’s tomb!’ He was trying to act with the dignity befitting a king; in the place he had come from he was considered a man, but however his society viewed him, inside he was still a 17-year-old boy standing by his mother’s coffin. He threw himself onto the sarcophagus. ‘I have returned too late, and she is gone!’

  ‘It’s all right!’ I said hurriedly. ‘She’s not in there. She’s not dead!’

  He raised his tear-filled eyes. He didn’t believe me.

  ‘Look!’ I said. I gestured for Melody to help him up, then I took hold of the sarcophagus lid. ‘I’ll show you. The coffin’s empty.’

  Strangely, the lid was stuck tight. I’d say it was immovable – if you didn’t have the power of all things. Lucky me. I pushed the lid aside with my mind.

  The three of us looked inside the coffin.

  ‘Oh!’ I said.

  The coffin … was not empty.

  I looked down on the grisly, twisted thing staring up at me – a glimpse into hell itself.

  And I smiled.

  There it lay in the coffin: proof of what was to come. Another signpost, directing me. Showing me what must be done.

  I had infinite power at my command, and before I destroyed that power, clearly I would use it.

  I turned to Caesarion. ‘I will reunite you with your mother,’ I said. ‘Your other siblings too, if they desire it. I will hide you all from history.’

  He bowed his head. ‘I accept the judgement of the gods,’ he said.

  All I had to do was wish it, and he was gone. It was so easy!

  ‘Malone,’ I said. ‘No, not you – I mean Cat Malone.’ The cat turned her eyes to me. There was, deep inside, I thought, a slight remembrance of what had been. I thought she could understand me. I picked up my bundle from the floor and filled it with Cleopatra’s jewels – carnelians, emeralds, turquoises, red jasper, all in golden settings. (I did not include any rubies.) I tied the bag around Cat Malone. ‘Back in Alexandria, you will find a young girl called Imi,’ I said. ‘Please take these to her. Please keep her safe from harm.’

  And with a flick of my mind, the cat, too, was sent to a new life.

  Just Melody and me, now.

  ‘You’re sure as heck not sending me back into some book,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how you’re here. I don’t know how you can exist.’

  We looked at each other. There was pain in her eyes. I don’t know what she saw in mine.

  ‘Just because we don’t know how, doesn’t mean it’s wrong,’ she said. ‘If you were me, wouldn’t you want to carry on living?’

  Of course I would. And there was no reason to send Melody Malone away. I had the Eye of Horus! I had power over all things!

  Melody grabbed my wrist. ‘Look at me!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t have a mirror. But loo
k into my eyes.’

  I did.

  In her eyes, I saw my own. They were redder than any ruby, a shining red like the eyes of the sacred crocodiles of the Nile at night.

  ‘It’s taking you over.’

  ‘I can handle it,’ I told her. ‘Hey – how would you like to see New York – for real?’

  And just like that, I took us there.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  NEW YORK, AD 1939

  In my office, the closet door was open. Deff was pointing an energy weapon at me. A look of pure bewilderment crossed his face, and I realised he’d just seen Ventrian and myself disappear – and here I was again, popping into existence, but with the diadem of an Egyptian queen on my head and the look of an avenging angel in my eye.

  Oh, honey, if you didn’t want to meet an avenging angel, you should never have come to the Angel Detective Agency.

  No, that’s not me. That’s …

  Am I me?

  ‘Boo!’

  Deff jumped, startled, and I burst out laughing. No, Melody Malone burst out laughing. I couldn’t tell where I ended and she began …

  He looked from her to me and back again, and she gave him a little wave. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘You know, you look a lot better than last time I saw you.’

  I held up the Eye of Horus, still in its guise of a ruby. ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Now call off your attack dog and let my parents alone.’ Deff opened his mouth, but I didn’t let him speak. ‘You do realise that’s me doing you a big favour. I could unwind your DNA so not only do you cease to exist, but every ancestor is undone too, back to the beginning of time.’

  Without lowering his plasma pistol (did he really think he still had any authority in this situation?), he activated the communicator on his non-Raxacoricofallapatorian wrist and stammered out an order. The syntax was strangled, but I was satisfied he’d done as I requested. Bless him, perhaps he even had some idea he was going to get out of this alive.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you,’ I said. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  ‘Stick Cleopatra’s needle in my eye,’ Melody added with a chuckle.

  ‘In my Eye of Horus,’ I said, like it was the best joke ever. Melody’s eyes were glowing red now too. I could feel us becoming one with each other, one with the Eye, and I loved it.

  Deff had started whimpering and begging. ‘I slave you for all time! You have no death of me, and I servile endlessly! I much obliged to magnanimous Señorita.’

  Oh honey, I thought. I don’t need a slave. I just want to have fun!

  I could play with him all day. Hey, perhaps I would play with him for a century or two – before I sent him to his final destination.

  No. I was already bored. We flicked my hand and Deff was gone. I remembered what we’d found when we opened Cleopatra’s sarcophagus. He probably hadn’t been trapped in there that long – if I sent him back to just after I’d exited the coffin myself, assuming the book episode happened in real time, it would only have been a few days. But it had been long enough for those Slitheen talons to be reduced to nothing from clawing at the lid. It had been long enough for him to him to be covered in blood from his efforts at escape. It had been long enough for him to nearly run out of air and only just be clinging to life.

  But we had been magnanimous Señoritas. I’d promised not to kill him, and I’d kept that promise.

  With the lid off, he could start to breathe again. There was food in the tomb, and drink, and even the possibility of escape through the labyrinth and the scorpions and the Silent and so on – or so he would think. Of course, I’d made sure it was actually impossible. Nasty? Oh no. This was a better fate than Deff had meted out to many.

  Oh, I almost forgot. I needed to make sure that coffin lid was on tight. I sent a wisp of my mind back and fixed that.

  And while it was there, I sent a little message. Just a short one. ‘Dear Deff. You really shouldn’t have threatened my mum and dad. Love River.’

  And now there was just me and myself.

  ‘We’re going to have such fun,’ I told me. ‘I’m so glad I manifested you.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘I needed me to owe your life. I knew once you were here me could never let go.’

  I was one and three. Me and Melody and the Eye.

  ‘No!’ I forced the idea into my head. ‘I won’t let you! I will destroy you!’

  ‘Oh, you are silly,’ I said. ‘One person can’t destroy me. You already know that. You accept me – or you die, and I go on to someone else.’

  ‘But I’m. Not. One. Person,’ I said. ‘You. Made. Me. Two. And you don’t understand either of me … ’

  I looked at Melody. Our hands reached out to each other. We embraced. And we pushed …

  Neither of us could tell when we were me or when we were me.

  But we knew when we were not me. We knew what we had to fight.

  And as we fought, we became ourselves again – yet two selves that still felt part of one whole. I could feel Melody’s euphoria at the sensations she was experiencing, her desperation to retain this life she’d never known. I sensed her discovery of the part of me that belonged to the Doctor alone. I knew when she found my father, who razed armies to find me. I felt her heart explode when she understood the force that was my mother.

  She, who thought she’d found love with the paper-thin Harry, finally experienced what that word really meant.

  She found how someone could cherish the whole universe, and how our lives, as precious as they were to ourselves, could do nothing but serve a love that big.

  The battle raged on. I attacked, but the Eye pushed back. My life was being torn away, shredded. Time unwound. Each push propelled me further away, deeper into the void from which return is impossible.

  But I would not let go of that love.

  And it made me so powerful. Almost powerful enough to win.

  But as Ventrian had warned me, so long ago, no one person could ever destroy the Eye.

  My last drop was spent.

  And Melody surged forward. I felt that power in her too. A paper person, who had found an impossible exaltation.

  Her strength flowed into me, but momentum carried her onwards. It was as though we were on a cliff edge, and she threw herself over, a force that could not be denied, carrying the presence before her.

  The Eye was gone.

  And so was Melody Malone.

  And there I stood, alone in my office. Bereft – yet whole.

  Melody had wanted to live. I’d felt it. But she was a tough cookie from Old New York Town, and in her book, the bad guys never won.

  EPILOGUE

  NEW YORK, AD 1939

  I went to tea with Mum and Dad, and told them … some of this.

  My mother, as is a mother’s wont, understood the parts that I hadn’t told her. Not the zip-zap adventure parts; the parts that remained deep inside me.

  If there were an incarnation of motherness on Earth, it would not be Cleopatra. It would be my mother.

  But then, perhaps everyone thinks that about their own mother.

  No. It just turns out I’m the luckiest person in the universe. And I wish I deserved her.

  I’d have to content myself with knowing that because I carry her love inside me, with that of my father, with that of my husband – well, that’s how the universe was saved.

  Ventrian’s equations might have worked, I don’t know. Which is better, love or sums? That’s a question for a long winter’s night.

  Talking of drawn-out suffering, Woolton pie wasn’t on the menu, thank goodness, but I endured father’s carrot jam. ‘I’ll send you food parcels from the future when rationing starts,’ I told them.

  ‘No,’ said Amy, although she knew I was joking. ‘We’re ready to take our place here, and whatever comes with it. About Melody Malone … ’

  ‘Yes?’ I said.

  ‘We talked about me taking over, didn’t we. I think perhaps I should start now. You won
’t be able to write about her any more. She’s too real to you.’

  Once again, the maternal sixth sense was demonstrated.

  She picked up the tattered bound proofs that had made a round trip of several thousand miles and several thousand years too. ‘I’d better read your new ending,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it’s better than Ventrian’s.’ But she added, ‘Poor man,’ because she’s a nice person. She opened The Ruby’s Curse. Then she frowned. ‘“Chapter One: Stormcage, AD 5147”?’ she read. ‘You’ve put yourself in the book?’

  I snatched it from her. It was true! I was in the book! Everything I’d done – everything I’d thought. It was all there, weaving in and out of Melody’s story, as if I were narrating my own life for an unknown reader. One last trick from the Eye of Horus. Well. Perhaps it was doing me a favour, in a way. Because I’d wanted to share those deep-inside feelings with my mum, but couldn’t imagine it happening.

  ‘This can’t be published,’ I said, after I’d read through a few chapters. It wasn’t because it delved so deeply into my head; I’m not shy, you’ve probably gathered that. Thing was, it outed Mum and Dad as time travellers. That could cause problems not only now, but for their younger selves, too.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ Amy laughed, after I’d explained. ‘How about this. I’ll lock it up somewhere, leave instructions for it to be published a few years after the Angels took us. That was 2012 – I’ll make it a decade or so after that. “RIVER SONG in THE RUBY’S CURSE: A MELODY MALONE MYSTERY.” Great sensation: The incredible truth about Melody Malone. That’d be nice.’

  I could see she was set on it. ‘All right,’ I said at last.

  She was still looking through the book. ‘Yeah. I’ll get it typed up properly. We’ll leave Melody’s signature on the postscript, though. That’s a nice touch.’

  ‘What postscript?’ I said.