Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [73]
‘You know a great deal more than you have told. I don’t understand how you have come to possess so much information. It is as though you can tell 137
the future as well as uncover the past.’
Benny turned serious eyes on her benefactor. ‘It’s a bad habit I picked up from an old friend,’ she said. ‘Only now perhaps I understand why he played his cards so close to his chest . . . ’ She cursed, silently. Vivant was trying hard not to look hurt. ‘I’ve shown you and told you more than I should have already.’
‘I would like to know so much more about you,’ he said.
Benny shut her eyes. In the distance, she could hear the handlers discussing the weather and someone shouting abuse at a stubborn camel. The wind was rushing past the cliff face.
Come here, come here.
Oh, God. She could understand Arabic.
A huge, crazy grin spread itself over Benny’s features. Vivant tried to match her smile, but he knew he had lost her.
‘Wait here,’ she said.
He nodded. Benny took hold of the rope and swung herself carefully over the edge and into the pit.
The TARDIS was waiting for her in a half-finished tomb, a cave whose walls had been half-smoothed before being abandoned. Part of the cave roof had fallen in; she kicked rocks and dust out of the way of the door. It opened at her touch.
The console room was dark. Immediately she stepped inside, a pale luminescence started to trickle from the walls. Benny closed her eyes for a few moments then opened them again, getting used to the dim illumination.
‘How long?’ she breathed. ‘How long have you been waiting here for me?’
There was a note taped to the console, perfectly preserved: 138
Denon sat in the dust at the top of the shaft, eyes closed. Above him, Akhenaten’s ancient stela loomed, adorned with long columns of incomprehensible language. And yet it was not so strange or mysterious as the woman who had brought him to this place.
‘Vivant!’ came a shout from below.
‘Mlle Summerfield?’ he called down, barely able to make her out in the dimness.
‘Throw me down my hat!’
Vivant picked up the Fedora. He carefully brushed the dust from the brim, held it to his face for a moment. The scent of her hair was in it.
He held it over the edge of the pit and let it go.
‘Don’t worry about me!’ came her voice. ‘Just go back to Bonaparte and get on with your job!’
‘ Ne m’ oubliez pas! ’ he shouted, and the handlers looked up as his voice carried in the morning air.
‘Believe me, Vivant Dominique Denon, you won’t be forgotten!’
The Doctor stooped to examine the soil in Thierry’s orchard. There was a great scoop taken out of the trees, a hollow surrounded by shattered trunks and fallen limbs. Tiny brown lumps – long-rotted apples – peppered the ground around the site of Kadiatu’s impact. Great shafts of golden afternoon light streaked down between the trees.
None of the broken trees had been removed. Grass and weeds were starting to peek up through the churned soil. Nothing had been disturbed at all.
In point of fact, no-one had come to disassemble and drag away Kadiatu’s spacecraft.
The Doctor heard a tiny sound behind him. A standard issue French military pistol being cocked. He went on with his examination of the soil, watching a tiny, pale green blade of grass uncurling itself. If he stared at it hard enough he imagined he could see it growing.
‘Stand up,’ said Thierry.
The Doctor stood up and turned around slowly, pushing his hands into the pockets of his coat.
Thierry towered over him, the pistol held at the end of a completely straight arm, the barrel moving in tiny circles as his aim wavered. ‘ Oui, ’ he said. There was an alcoholic quaver in his voice. ‘ Vous êtes un imbécile au plus haut point!
I have been working for your enemies all along.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said the Doctor irritably. ‘I was just wondering how you moved Kadiatu’s ship.’
If Thierry was taken aback by the Time Lord’s casualness, he didn’t show it. He reached down with his free hand to tousle the hair of the littleboy, who 140
stood next to him, eating a