'What am I doing?' said Ace.
Akhenaten stood up, back to the wall. 'I'll make you a deal,' he said.
Kadiatu, Thierry and the Doctor were having wine for breakfast when the soldiers banged on the front door. There was no sign of Mme Thierry. With an expression of resignation, Thierry scooped up some bread and cheese and a cobwebbed bottle. 'This ought to placate them,' he said, 'and perhaps they'll give me a little intelligence in return. Mlle Lethbridge-Stewart, be sure they don't see you! Attendez. Attendez. ' '
Hot summer sunshine was coming through the window, lighting up the kitchen in orange and white. Kadiatu was onto her second loaf of bread, smearing great slabs of salty butter onto the slices. The Doctor was pulling a piece of cheese into smaller and smaller fragments. They sat in silence for a while, listening to Thierry cracking jokes with the soldiers. After a while the apple merchant lead them out onto the front lawn to polish off the bottle of wine.
'It's a principle of war,' said the Doctor, 'that one doesn't assume the enemy won't come, but instead one must be prepared for their coming not to assume they won't attack, but instead to make one's own position unassailable.'
'Who said that?' said Kadiatu.
123.
'Sun Tzu. Chinese general, Fourth Century BCE. That was shortly before we fell out.'
'You've known a lot of soldiers.'
'Rather too many, for an aging hippy like me,' said the Doctor, with a rueful smile. 'I can't seem to avoid you.'
'I'm not a soldier,' said Kadiatu, around a mouthful of bread.
'You'll be surprised,' said the Doctor. 'You'll be surprised. It happens to you.
It comes with the job. The healer and the warrior.'
'What happened with Sun Tzu?'
'It was the little matter of his killing two of the Emperor's wives. He only did it to win an argument.'
'What'd the King do?'
'He banished Sun Tzu for a few years, but as soon as the country's borders were threatened again, he called the old general back. I wasn't much of a military adviser I kept holding conflict resolution seminars.' Kadiatu laughed.
'I can't spend all my time putting flowers down gun barrels.'
'What about this war, then?'
The Doctor shrugged. 'The usual combination of bad timing, bad planning, breakdowns in communication, and naked greed. Genuine injustices being exploited for the sake of power. The Commune could have righted many wrongs, but it lost its chance in poor organisation and casual violence.'
'I feel paralysed,' said Kadiatu. 'As though I could wreck history if I breathe the wrong molecule of air.'
'The forces that drive history are as complicated as the forces that move the air. A butterfly's wings cause a hurricane, which causes a drought, which causes the starving farmers to work together to use what water they do have, and to count and keep records. That was how Egyptian civilisation started.
But it doesn't matter which butterfly's wings start the hurricane.'
'There must be individuals who change history. What if someone got in a time machine and killed Hitler?'
The Doctor had made a pile of tiny fragments of cheese. 'Much of history is cast in concrete, but there are disequilibrium points assassinate the wrong individual at the wrong moment, and history could unravel like a scarf.'
He raised his hands, as though looking for the right place to start a complex lecture. 'Have you ever seen a flock of birds, waiting to migrate?' Kadiatu nodded, chewing. 'Imagine the riot at Montmartre. One person is jostled in the crowd, shouts in anger. Someone else hears, shouts out a slogan. More people start to yell, move about. And once a certain initial peak of energy has been passed '
' the crowd turns into a mob and shoots those two generals from Versailles.'
124.
'The war coalesces from small events like that. It's so difficult to predict just where the disequilibrium point is. You and I have a special responsibility, Kadiatu.'
She was frowning. 'I was just wondering how many Hitlers you've disposed of over the years.'
The Doctor shook his head, yawned suddenly. 'I put things right. When someone comes from outside history and tries to derail it, I put it back on the right course.'
'That's not entirely true.'
The Time Lord looked at his hands. 'It's very difficult to keep the human race on the straight and narrow,' he conceded. 'And the more changes I make, the more changes I have to make.'
'Round and round like a hamster in a cage.'
'That's a horrible simile.'
'Listen, while I'm asking lots of questions . . . The Earth would have moved between my arrival and yours and the Ants'. How could we have appeared at the same place?'
'Perhaps someone glued the exit point in place.'
Visions of warp equations danced in her head. 'That's nonsense.'
'Hmm.'
'Just one more.'
'Mmm?'
'After the Ant tried to read your mind, why did you curl up like that?' His eyelids were flickering now, and he dragged a hand across his forehead. 'You thought I was going to beat you up. Didn't you? Is that what they did to you?
Punished you because they couldn't read your mind?'
'They're not interested in punishment,' he slurred. 'They're all brute force and no elegance, they'd knock down a wall instead of opening a door. I want the pieces of that Ant. And your handscan. Bring me the pieces. Excuse me, I think I'm going to go to sleep now.'
He managed to fold his arms under his head before it hit the table.
Kadiatu watched him for a full minute, listening to the sound of his breathing. Carefully, she took his wrist. His pulse was a complex double twitch, slow and steady. For some reason she was suddenly reminded of the first time she'd picked up a frog when she was a child the cool skin, the knowledge that she was holding something inhuman.
She stood up and peeked through the door. The soldiers were gone; Thierry was sitting on the porch, drinking the dregs of the wine.
'I'm going to Paris,' she told him. 'When will Nicolas next be here?'
'He's due at noon,' said Thierry. He blew across the top of the bottle, making a mournful, echoing note. ' Et le Docteur? Et le Docteur? ' '
125.
'Best to let him sleep,' she said. 'You've got to step down the dose, Thierry.'
'You were the one who said he was dangerous.'
'He's going to work it out. He's probably already worked it out.'
' Vraiment? Vraiment? ' Thierry leaned back in his chair and squinted up at her. 'Why has he not said anything about it?' ' Thierry leaned back in his chair and squinted up at her. 'Why has he not said anything about it?'
'You don't know him.'
'And you,' said the Frenchman, 'are not getting to know him any better.'
'Listen.' Kadiatu raised a hand, counted symptoms off on her fingers. 'Psy-chogenic amnesia, flashbacks, irritability, exaggerated startle response. He can't remember what they did to him, but he thinks it's going to happen again.
He has shell shock, Thierry. Post-traumatic stress disorder.'
' Ah oui, bien sur. J' aurais du savoir ca immediatement. Ah oui, bien sur. J' aurais du savoir ca immediatement. ' '
'At the moment, I really don't think he's a danger to anybody.'
Thierry pulled his hat down over his eyes. 'Best to let him sleep,' he echoed.
But the kitchen was already empty, dust motes dancing in the orange light.
126.
Chapter 11.
Open Wide! Come Inside!
POLONIUS: What do you eat, my lord?
HAMLET: Worlds, worlds, worlds.
(William Shakespeare, Hamlet Hamlet, non-existent folio) The TARDIS stood in a courtyard of the palace, humming softly to itself.
Ace fell against the warm, rough side of the blue box, pressing her cheek to it. She imagined she could hear the tune it was making, the gentle rising and falling of its engine pulse.
Akhenaten watched, dispassionately. 'This was found at the same time you were,' he said. She turned to look at him. 'Yes, I have spies everywhere.' He patted the TARDIS' surface, gently. 'I knew there must be some connection between this magical object and the foreign woman of Set.'
'I thought his name was forbidden.'
'Set is nothing more than a name. I have wiped him from the face of the Earth. Scratched out all the names and replaced them with my own. I will live forever and never be forgotten.' He ran an incurious finger over the TARDIS'
surface. 'What is this thing?'
'This is this is the ship of millions of years,' breathed Ace. 'I should have known, I should have known it all along. This is why I can speak Egyptian.
Why didn't I see that before?'
Akhenaten shrugged. 'We can put a great deal of effort into deluding ourselves, when our need for illusion is deep.'
She looked at him, awkwardly. 'Don't apologize,' he smiled. 'Take your ship and go.' He strode away. Not afraid to turn his back on her.
The door opened for her, as she had known it would. Ace went inside the console room. The humming here was subliminal, like the sound of her own blood flowing through her body. She closed her eyes. The door shut silently behind her, cutting off the party sounds, the smell of dust and roasting flesh.
She leant her back against the inner surface of the TARDIS doors and sank slowly to the floor.
She felt heavy, the way you feel heavy when all the water has drained out of the bath. She felt as though she could lie down on the floor, the warm white stuff, draw her knees up to her chest and curl up and never, never get up.
127.
It had been a long time since she had felt like that. She remembered coming home from the hospital, once all the papers had been signed and the phone calls had been made and her father was dead. Her mother had gone downstairs to drink warm tea laced with whisky.
Little Dorothy had curled on her bed, eyes open, listening to the rain coming down the window outside. Empty except for that sound. It was her right, to be still and silent and to have no responsibilities. She had earned it. She could go mad now, if she wanted to.
After a while she got up off the floor. 'Oh,' she said, out loud, 'I am covered in blood.'
She went for a shower.
The Doctor watched Thierry through one of the second-floor windows. The Frenchman was quietly getting plastered on several bottles of homemade wine. When he was satisfied his host wasn't going anywhere for the moment, the Doctor left the spare bedroom and went down the stairs.
The door to the cellar wasn't locked. He knocked, quietly, waited for an answer. Nothing. Carefully, he pushed the door open, and padded down the stairs.
It wasn't dark; a single tallow candle lit the cellar with ghost-story light.
Low ceiling, not much space. Brick pillars and wooden wine-racks outlined in the pale yellow radiance. Soft light, soft sound: a woman sobbing.
Gently, gently. The Doctor allowed himself to make a little noise, just enough that she'd realize someone else was there without being startled. She stifled her crying, looking around her in the dimness.
'It's alright,' he whispered. 'It's just me.'
Mme Thierry was sitting up on an improvised bed, just a mattress and sheets stacked against the wall. She was primly dressed, but her hair hung down over her face in limp curls, and her shoulders were slumped in exhaustion. ' Que Que voulez-vous? voulez-vous? ' she murmured. ' she murmured.
He came close enough that they could see each others' faces. The bruises were mostly on her shoulders and arms, where they'd be less likely to show under the bulky nineteenth century clothing. She drew her shawl around herself, but she was staring at his face, and the Doctor realised that she was looking at the purple mark on his left cheek.
He sat down, making no sudden movements, his back to one of the brick pillars.
'You shouldn't be here,' she said, after a while.
'Why don't you summon your husband?'