Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [58]
In exchange, she had their help and protection, their knowledge of the rift.
And of course she had a share in whatever wealth or power the Setites obtained. She was, after all, a professional.
They’d talked money, standing in Peseh’s kitchen, the Setites ogling topless girls making beer. Sesehset had laughed when she’d said, ‘You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,’ and Peseh had tried to scratch her back.
With their help, maybe she could find Sedjet. Maybe even go home. Home.
Home? This was home. But she’d find Sedjet. Maybe even find the monsters who killed the – it was a straightforward coup d’état. The priests of the other gods would follow the Setites, restoring the power of their temples. The army hated the king; they’d fall into line once they realized what was happening.
The common folk just couldn’t understand what Pharaoh was up to. They’d do what the new leaders told them to do.
Everything would go back to the way it had been. Except that from now on, Set, the god of Chaos, would be on top.
Benny was smiling. Shock was making her drunk. She wanted a drink. She wanted a tin of mangoes in sugar syrup pureed and served over crushed ice.
With a little umbrella and a shot of vodka.
Someone had been shot.
She smiled.
She wanted to get up and move around. She didn’t want to move an inch. If she moved, the hoof beats in her shoulder would intensify. They were already pounding, fast and irregular, an itch she couldn’t scratch. Her field of vision was red.
Oh. She had been shot.
She was leaning awkwardly up against a wall of the tomb, feeling the irregular texture of ancient plaster through her sweat-soaked shirt. There was dust all over her, all over everything. How long had she been here, becoming part of the find?
There was a human? movement in the low doorway nearby. ‘Vivant?’ Benny murmured. ‘ C’ est toi? ’ She tilted her head gently to see the face.
111
There was no face to see. The figure stood with its hands in its pockets, not cramped at all by the narrow space. Its face was smooth as warp shield-ing, white plastic. It wore black trousers, black vest and bow tie, white shirt and jacket, and a red (tulip? rose?) in its pocket that MADE Benny want to SCREAM!
She turned her head away from the burning flower, twitching. ‘What is that thing?’
‘This?’ The White Lady’s porcelain fingers brushed across the petals. ‘This is the blossom that lured Persephone to Hell.’ She reached into a pocket of her white jacket and took out a small device. She pushed down on a button with her perfect thumb.
Benny’s surroundings flared white, bright, a blank wall.
‘Oh no,’ she
moaned.
‘What is it?’ said the White Lady, with interest. She picked up a long, slender stick.
‘I hate dreams,’ Benny said. ‘I hate this Jungian stuff. Symbols and stuff. I detest every kind of virtual reality.’
‘You edit your own diary.’
‘Couldn’t we just get on with the story?’
‘This isn’t a dream,’ said the Lady. ‘At least, it isn’t your dream. Space-time’s broken like a sheet of safety glass, full of cracks. Dreams can trickle through those breaks.’
‘Maybe I’m just someone else’s dream,’ muttered Benny, sleepily. ‘If I pinch myself, will they wake up?’
‘What a mundane philosophical observation,’ said the White Lady. ‘And whose dream might that be, dear?’
‘I did not know then whether I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly . . . ’
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Benny giddily. ‘I just heard it somewhere, I think. Who are you, anyway? Not the Ghost of Christmas Past, I hope.’
‘Christmas,’ said the White Lady. ‘How quaint. Do you celebrate it?’
‘My mother was Catholic.’
‘Oh yes, your mother. She was killed fetching your doll, as I recall. Vaporized by a Dalek plasma blast. You must hate your child self for that.’
Bernice shook her head, angrily. ‘My mother was stunned by the blasts, she didn’t know what she was doing. I understand that now, I saw that on Belial, I know it wasn’t my fault.’
‘There is no more pain?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then consider this: your mother was killed by the first Dalek