'The cartouche marks a divine or royal name,' said the priest.
'Right.' Ace picked up her mallet once more, and slowly and carefully dug the Aten's name out of the stone. Tiny chips fell to the bottom of the cliff. 'And here as well,' she said., 'Who exalts Aten, makes his name great ' Sesehset had begun to read, but already Ace was chiselling out the cartouche.
'Heh,' she said. 'I've rubbed him out. That'll do for now.'
She clambered down the shaky ladder. The Setites were glancing around in the reddish dawn, nervously. Ace clapped Sesehset on the back, laughing.
'Just one more thing before we go-go,' she said.
106.
The priests watched anxiously as she scraped a series of curves and angles into the cliff, just above the height of her head. It took nearly half an hour to make a proper job of it. She was sweating in the sunlight when she'd finished.
'Right. Now we can leave.'
'Is it writing?' said Sesehset. 'I don't recognize the language.'
'It's for the twentieth century,' and Ace raised a hand to her mouth, snicker-ing like a child. 'That ought to give them something to think about.'
The priests fled the white cliffs, running for the safety of Senef's estate.
In letters three feet high, in a language that would not be spoken for thousands of years, the cliff shouted: ACE WAS HERE 107.
Chapter 9.
Raiders of the Lost Akhetaten
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do.
(G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy Orthodoxy, 1908) M Thierry's house was a modest twenty-eight room affair near the Bois de Vincennes, a little outside Paris. It was separated by a wide lawn and a pond from the orchard, with its rigidly defined rows of trees stretching off into the distance.
The lawn had not been cut for months, and weeds grew thickly between the trees. There was a crater of dried earth and grass where a stray shell had come down. The pond was slick with decay. 'I've eaten the fish,' commented Thierry dryly, leading them in through the servants' entrance.
The kitchen smelt of must and dust. 'My servants have left me to fend for myself,' joked the tall Frenchman. 'There is plenty of room for visitors, as there are only the three of us.'
As if on cue, the littleboy came through the kitchen door. He was holding a mouse-trap, turning it over and over in his hands, looking up at them with pale, incurious eyes. Thierry watched the Doctor watching the child. 'Won't you come and have some dejeuner dejeuner?' he said. 'I'm afraid a shell hit the dining-room.'
Kadiatu steered the Doctor around the littleboy and to the kitchen table.
From somewhere, a skinny woman in a grey dress emerged; despite the summer warmth, she had a black shawl wrapped around her narrow shoulders.
She brought cutlery, glasses, the remains of a leg of lamb. Kadiatu started removing great slices of meat from it while their hostess set down plates and a bowl of apples.
M Thierry did not bother to introduce his wife. 'This poor old farmhouse has taken more shells than my other home in Paris. Whole trees blown up, pan pan!'
He made the explosion with his hands. 'I'm sometimes not certain whether we'd be safer with Mlle Lethbridge-Stewart inside the walls of Paris. I remain here to try to continue running my business, but I sleep in the cellar with the wine!'
He patted Kadiatu on the hand. 'I'm pleased you're here. I feel a little guilty leaving you to the mercy of the Communards or at least I did before today.
I think you would eat the rogues alive.'
109.
The littleboy was playing with his mouse-trap, pulling back the killing bar and letting it snap against the bait.
'It's the Doctor's safety I'm worried about now,' said Kadiatu. 'The Ants found him so easily.'
'Yes,' said the Doctor, 'it makes you wonder why they waited for me to wake up first.'
Kadiatu threw him a sharp glance. 'They would have ways to locate my ship,' she explained to Thierry. 'Anything from another time.'
'There is nothing like that here,' said their host reassuringly. 'The worst we have to fear here is one army or other marching through my orchard in their big boots.'
'Well, then,' said Kadiatu, 'what are we going to do?'
Life in Egypt was one long party. If you had the money. And the King's parties were the best raves of all.
Ace stretched luxuriously, feeling muscles rippling below her tanned skin.
She felt at home, no images or memories throwing themselves up into her consciousness. No dreams. No distractions. Wu wei. Wu wei. She was an unsheathed knife and nothing else. She was an unsheathed knife and nothing else.
The Setites milled about in the palace courtyard, chatting casually with acquaintances and friends. Some of them had been invited to this little soiree.
She hadn't, but then, she was just a woman. Who was going to take any notice of her?
She'd thrown a scarlet sash over her shoulders, hiding the scar. Her skin was still too light, but it was night-time, and already the guests had stuffed themselves with food and drink and were sliding under the tables with wine running down their bellies. She'd just be part of the background blur.
Bloody typical. Bloody politicians. Filling their stomachs while Egypt fell apart.
She went to the door of the main hall, peered in. There were blind musicians playing, women dancing bare-breasted with great metallic spheres attached to their long pigtails, swinging and swaying as they moved. The air was a thick mixture of incense, perfume, alcohol.
The Pharaoh sat at the far end of the hall, on a raised dais. He was dandling a small girl on his lap. A woman, evidently the Queen, sat beside him. As Ace watched, she reached over, playfully tickled the child under the chin.
Pretty pretty. Happy families.
Just for a moment something bobbed to the surface of her empty mind. The image of a woman laughing, her embroidered sleeve in front of her mouth. A woman laughing because she'd been given an order, an order to do something silly.
110.
She shook her head, and was empty again.
This was the first time Ace had seen Pharaoh. From what Sesehset told her, he was in the habit of making appearances with the wife and kiddies, being worshipped by his adoring subjects while the soldiers looked on, making sure that everybody cheered.
It was simple. They went into the party. Ace waited for Pharaoh to leave.
She followed him, overpowered his guards and bore him away under cover of darkness. Then the Setites would start to make demands.
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'etat. 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 She had been shot. 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? C' est toi? ' She tilted her head gently to see the face. ' 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 pocket that MADE Benny want to SCREAM! 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 beams. How could she have been stunned?'
112.
Bernice opened her mouth, and closed it, two sets of memories clashing in her mind, two sticky yellow labels stuck over one another.
Her voice was choked. 'Who are you?'
The White Lady pressed her device's button again with a flourish. 'Figure 1,' she said.
The Egyptian tomb was gone, replaced by something similar but different Babylonian, thought Benny, no earlier, very early indeed, Early Sumerian.
Inside of a temple.
Time was frozen. There were people everywhere, stopped in position: people with swords, bloodied, shouting. 'It's a hologram,' said Benny.
'It's my slide show,' said the White Lady. 'I hope you like it.'
She swept the stick into the three-dimensional tableau and pointed. Benny gaped up at a huge woman, a snake, no, a Giger woman-snake, her silver flesh imprinted with fantastical circuit designs.