Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [45]
And then she heard the sound. The slight, creaking sound that brought back memories of every mummy flick she’d ever seen. One of the sarcophagi was opening.
Anji – deep inside noting she was going to be really, really embarrassed later
– screamed.
‘Hello, Anji, everyone,’ said the Doctor, stepping out of the sarcophagus. ‘Oh dear, did I – yes, I think I did, didn’t I. Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I like the new outfit, by the way.’
‘Um, she’s fainted,’ said Xernic.
To: cybertron@xprof.net
From: anji kapoor@MWFutures.co.uk
Date: 14/2/01 19:31
Subject: Oops
You know how we used to laugh at films when the heroine fainted at the slightest thing? Well, I’ve decided it’s not funny.
Ax
Send now/send later: send later
It was a deeply self-conscious Anji that the Doctor finally led into the sarcophagus. ‘Look, it’s really a lift!’ he said, far too enthusiastically. Just press the UP
hieroglyph, and it takes us back to the surface. Not exactly authentic ancient 82
EarthWorld
Egyptian I’d say, but there again they were very clever people and knew all about quite complicated things like embalming, so maybe there was more to them than met the eye. In any case, I’ve found you. You don’t seem to have Fitz, though.’
‘No, we haven’t really had much chance to look! Some teenage bimbo decided to try to kill us when we were only halfway there!’
The Doctor looked concerned. ‘I wasn’t blaming you. I’ve been kicking myself for sending you in here. Of course, I didn’t know quite what was going on back then.’ And, seeing they were a captive audience, he told them everything.
The Doctor was very adept at dodging robots. With directions from the ANJI boys, it took them no time at all to reach the Twentieth-Century London Zone, described in the guidebook as ‘The Age of Discovery: marvel at the wonders of the time that gave us space flight and moving pictures; gaze on extinct beasts such as the tiger and the whale in their natural habitat: London – the city with the swings! Feast on authentic twentieth-century cuisine: fishy chips, Coca-Cola and cheese on toes!’
Anji had leafed through the book, and was being very disapproving. Not just at the level of historical inaccuracy (which she was feeling less smug about now, after the Doctor had casually mentioned that getting past a ferocious sphinx by answering its riddles was actually from the Greek myths, not the Egyptian ones, and wasn’t it lucky that neither Anji nor the EarthWorld people had realised that), but at the assumption that the only bits of Earth’s culture that were important enough to feature were the sort that would be found in a history text book from an English middle-class school before the advent of the National Curriculum. Ancient Romans. Ancient Egyptians. Medieval England (incorporating the Dark Ages and Myths and Legends), and the Second World War.
The nearest they got to Asian culture was the Japanese Zone, which seemed to be all kimonos and raw fish, anyway. How her grandparents would wail and gnash their teeth: all the insistence on holding on to their cultural identity and it was all for nothing. Of course, the whole of the future might not be like this. But it was scary how such important things could dissolve into nothing.
An entirely different perspective. Like how she’d been worried for ages about her annual review coming up next month, and now she just had to concentrate on staying alive long enough to even have the chance of getting home again.
Made all those deadline/report/conference crises seem quite ridiculous. Had she really used to have sleepless nights about that sort of stuff? It was like looking back on your teen crush from the happiness of a stable relationship, Powerplay
83
and wondering how you could ever have cried yourself to sleep because Robert Fordham asked Joanne Davies to the end-of-term disco, or your fave pop star turned out to prefer boys. Relationship stuff. Don’t go there. Pay attention to your surroundings.
‘Hmm,’ said Anji. ‘In which version of the twentieth century was there a top pop star called