Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [23]
‘That’s all women are good for,’ growled the Assyrian, chugging the black stuff down. ‘Making bread and babies.’
‘Ah,’ snorted Ace, ‘but all men are good for is braining one another with swords.’
‘Which job would you prefer?’ he said, spilling beer down his front.
Ace laughed. ‘I can do both.’
Her laughter echoed inside her head, like the laughter of Chinese women lined up in a courtyard. Sesehaten was looking out at the desert, the immensity of the Red Land, cloaked in the blackness of the sky.
Out of nowhere the storm came, as desert storms come. Pink lightning cracked, the air stank of ozone, and the water came down. Ace stuck out her tongue to catch some. The valley rattled as the sudden flood swept through crevices and down alleys, boulders and chips flying in the torrent.
She wanted to show it to the Doctor, hear him say clever things about weather and butterflies and grains of sand. She kept thinking of things she wanted to tell him; she kept wanting to ask Bernice questions about Ancient Egypt.
They watched the storm, listening to the roar of the water. Water and movement in the silent, dusty desert. They were lucky to catch this rare moment 45
of chaos. ‘You don’t really have weather here, do you?’ said Ace. ‘The same forecast every day. Hot. Nothing changes.’
‘How much longer?’ asked Sesehaten.
‘While there’s life,’ she said firmly, ‘there’s hope. Just as long as it takes.’
‘Race you to the top!’
Ace craned her neck back. The sun was behind the top of the Great Pyramid, creating a halo of harsh light around the tip. Sedjet was already clambering agilely up the first few steps. He sat down on one of the sandstone blocks, looking down at her.
‘I thought you said you’d climbed the Pyramid before.’
‘Only about a dozen times,’ the Egyptian grinned. ‘We always come here on holidays.’
‘It’s true,’ sighed Mrs. Sedjet. ‘He has to climb to the top every time.’
‘The view is great!’
‘View? What view?’ Ace waved her hand at the desert. ‘Look, why don’t you go ahead?’
‘Are you feeling alright?’ Sedjet said, pouting. ‘The climb isn’t that hard.’
Ace shook her head. ‘I’m fine. You go ahead. Go on.’
After a bit he did, leaping up over the ruined face of the Pyramid. Ace sighed, sitting down on the sand with her back to the sandstone.
Suddenly one of the tourists did not turn out to be the Doctor.
One of Mrs. Sedjet’s servants brought her a stool. She gave Ace a maternal smile. It occurred to the time traveller that Sedjet’s wife was not much older than she was. People grew up fast here, same as they had in Uruk and Tenochtitlan. They grew up fast and died young. They were short and had terrible teeth and died of little things like dirty water and small scratches –
stupid things.
There were some compensations, though. No-one here was going to die of fall-out or air pollution or too much junk food. If they wanted to kill one another they had to do it the old-fashioned way, eye to eye, shoving forged metal through one another. And you couldn’t destroy a whole country, let alone a whole planet.
Life was lived on a smaller scale here, she thought, leaning back on the Pyramid.
Mrs. Sedjet said, ‘This is a pleasant place to visit. Though there are a few too many tourists for my tastes.’
Ace laughed shortly. ‘They’re really old, even now, aren’t they?’
‘The Pyramids? They’re the oldest thing in the world. I suppose Egyptians should be proud of them.’ She folded her hands in her lap, looking a bit lost 46
without her daughters. The servants were looking after the infants back at Akhetaten. ‘Why didn’t you care to go to the top?’
Ace blinked up at her, shading her eyes with her hands. ‘I don’t know. I guess I’m not that interested.’ She blew out a sigh. ‘Sedjet’s probably going to sulk for a week.’
‘He does like to take you everywhere.’
‘Yeah.’ Ace squirmed against the warm stone. ‘I’ve been meaning to say to you – um, well – there’s nothing going on between us,’ she blurted.