The sun rose for the penultimate time, beckoned by a decrepit king of golden flesh. Ra held his staff aloft, and sunlight touched each dune in turn. As the sky-god sounded his first sanction, a vessel descended on the ill-fated planet, its engines blasting sand off into the wilderness. Ra blessed the vessel, but knew that the sacrament was futile.
The sky-god spoke again, and a River Song came to the Neferkamos.
-
There are only two things in the universe which scare me. One is dying. The other is not living.
You might want to conflate the two. Fair enough, I suppose -- lots of people do. But it’s possible to be perfectly alive and yet failing to live, and there’s many a banal idiom about people who embody that attitude. Still, banal idioms aside…
You see, I’m obviously scared by death (particularly my own and my husband’s, to some extent other people’s, and to a much lesser extent, my enemies). But I am genuinely scared of waking up one day, admiring myself in the mirror, and thinking: “River, you might be beautiful, and you might be very much alive, but you’re not doing much living, are you?” That pile of unread books on my desk? Terrifies me. The ‘101 Places to See’ book that my second wife lent me with only sixty locations actually ticked off? Sends me into a cold sweat. The two pupils on my course who clearly adore each other but will likely graduate without even sharing a cocktail at the student bar? I can’t even abide thinking about them.
So as I watch my team of “archaeologists” (more on them later) inspecting their textbooks for instructions on how to put up a tent in the middle of a desert, I know I’ve got nothing to worry about. And as that mighty, X-Factor-announcer voice booms from the sky again, I smile to myself.
“PLANETARY IMPLOSION SCHEDULED IN THIRTY-EIGHT HOURS. THE CORPORATION IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY FATALITIES AFTER THIS TIME PERIOD HAS EXPIRED. PLEASE VACATE NEFERKAMOS.”
Because I know that today, we’re going to be digging, running, crying, hoping, laughing, gasping… living. Nothing animates the human spirit like a punchy deadline.
I switch my sonic trowel onto the mic setting and clear my throat.
“Listen up, you lot!” They don’t. “Shush!” I tut, and eventually, the noise dies down. “This isn’t a social…”
My no-nerve-for-cocktails duo finally look up, a little embarrassed. I continue:
“Thank you. Now… this is the quickest dig any of you will do in your lives.” I let myself smile a little. “And, well… this is also the bit where you disregard everything you’ve been taught about an archaeologist’s etiquette. For once, you don’t need to worry about preserving anything. Today and tomorrow, your efficiency is more important than your methodological precision. As I was keen to reinforce before we left campus, this whole planet is scheduled for destruction at the end of tomorrow’s work. What we’re practising is called a rescue evacuation. We dig up, bag up, and bugger off, as my third wife liked to put it, and I wouldn’t like to challenge the academic principles of Professor Summerfield.” I let that one hang in the air for a while, but I’m aware that we’re pressed for time. “Get the tents up as quickly as you can – we won’t bother packing them tomorrow, so if they fly off, they fly off. Once you’ve helped with the setup, locate the team I allocated for you, and get digging. Oh, and remember…” I sigh, roll my eyes. I can hardly help it. “Drink lots of water. We always say that, and it’s for your own good. Because somebody, every time, doesn’t listen, and passes out. And I have to write the risk assessment.” In truth, I’m well aware that most archaeologists get away without writing one at all -- haven't you ever wondered about the poor health conditions of most retired academics? “And by the way,” I add. “This work will be graded. Surprise!”
I switch off the mic, the team horrified, my job done. Now for my favourite bit…
Apophis Written by Janine Rivers
“Whoops,” I say, mildly, in one of the least professional moments of my generally unprofessional career. I’ve just released the string attached to the datum point by accident, and it’s sent the perfect horizontal line level off skew. I can almost hear the seconds ticking by on our watches as I realise that we’re going to have to draw the profile again, so I make a decision.
“We’re never going to keep clear borders in place, the sand’s too loose.”
“But,” one of the students protests, “we were taught – ”
“You were taught on cultivated land,” I reply, stricter than I want to be. “Trust me, going mad over separating out depths below the datum will waste time. It will mean we won’t be able to mark out eras as easily, but we already suspect that any civilisation on this planet was brief. We just need to dig. Have another go at setting the level line, but if it’s not exact, it doesn’t matter.”
The students nod. I look over at the one closest to me: a young human girl, ginger, beautiful by all accounts but slightly underweight, and with bags under her eyes indicative of sleepless nights in the university library. A little like my mother at her age, but only in appearance.
“You’re not wearing gloves,” I point out. She looks up. “I know it’s only sand, but when we reach the temple, you’ll need a pair.”
“I forgot to get some,” she answers, plainly. I try to size up whether she’s being dismissive or shy.
I push a little. “Yes, I forgot to get some on my first dig. I was always told they bring spares, but what they don’t mention is that ‘one size fits all’ comes with caveats. There are always more men studying archaeology.” I notice her dismayed expression. “I know, stereotype threat even persists in matriarchal societies. That’s why I learned to adapt. Women’s leather gloves -- my second-best investment as a student.”
“What was your best?” the girl asks.
“A spare pair.” I pull another pair of leather gloves out of my satchel and pass them to the girl, smiling. “One size fits all.”
“Thanks.”
“What’s your name? I don’t think I’ve seen you around in the practicals.”
“I, er… found them a bit intense at the start. My name is Char.”
“If you’re finding it all a bit much,” I say to her, as we get back to digging, “you can always come to my office hours. I’ve got plenty of advice.”
“And gloves,” she says, trying for a joke.
I laugh. “Oh, plenty of gloves. Another warning for you, Char -- you'll be expected to do a lot of heavy-lifting. In my early days, I had quite a lot of men chuck boulders at me before realising that I probably couldn’t carry the same weight as them.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “Though now, I can probably take more…”
“I’m sure I’ll manage. I think I could lift more than most of the guys here.”
I grin at her. Fighting talk -- she'll do well in the field.
Another student taps me on the shoulder, and I turn around. He is joined by two others, more or less identical in stature, all sharing the same look of bemusement. The one at the front is holding an unidentifiable object.
“We can’t tell if it’s bone… or pottery…” he looks down. “Or just a rock…”
“It’s probably for ritual purposes,” says the student next to him, and I roll my eyes.
“Pass it to me,” I say, and take a look at it. Not a clue. I touch the object to my tongue. It sticks, just slightly, and I remove it, rinsing my mouth out with water. “It’s bone.”
“How…”
“Bone sticks to the tongue, rock doesn’t.” I look around -- all the students have fallen silent. “But,” I say, backing up, “obviously that’s not a verified identification procedure, so don’t try it yourselves.” I pass it back to the student, who takes it back with a little hesitation. “Go and put it with the other bulk finds in the tray.”
“What tray?”
“The tray labelled with the context number!” I don’t know why I’m making a fuss about it; the trays will probably be muddled eventually in all the rush. “And don’t bother washing them, we haven’t got time for that. We can do it on the ship.”
I turn back, and the team are watching Char, whose trowel has just unearthed the temple roof.
-
“PLANETARY IMPLOSION SCHEDULED IN THIRTY-ONE HOURS. THE CORPORATION IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY FATALITIES AFTER THIS TIME PERIOD HAS EXPIRED. PLEASE VACATE NEFERKAMOS.”
That voice is really starting to wear thin.
I’m leaving my tent (the only one that hasn’t flown away yet), heading back to the dig, wishing I’d bothered to attend the mental wellbeing training weekend, because I could do with some positive thoughts about now. My spectroscopy machine is on the blink (or perhaps it just wants me to respect its creative process, you never know with technology these days); despite drinking two pints of water, I’m starting to notice the early warning signs of a migraine; and I appear to have lost the tremendously exciting artefact I bagged earlier on. That’s what you get when you take on elderly volunteers -- they're full of enthusiasm, but they lose everything.
I sigh with relief when I arrive back at the dig. The top five feet of the temple are now visible, and it’s glorious: pristine cream-coloured pillars supporting an edifice marked out with a completely intact mosaic of a serpent. Even the students know, I can see it on their faces -- we've hit the jackpot.
“An ouroboros,” I point out. “The serpent eating its own tail.”
“Derived from Earth culture?” askes a blueish girl taking notes on a tablet.
I shrug. “Possibly. But the ouroboros is a recurring symbol across different civilisations.” I notice the wide eyes around me. “It’s nothing sinister. You see serpents in lots of different ecosystems, and the image of a creature locked in a cycle of self-consumption is too tempting for most philosophically-conscious worlds to resist. The question is: what’s the symbol doing here?” I open the question to the team. “Thoughts?”
“Ritual purposes!” says a voice from the back, and I don’t even dignify it with a glance over my shoulder.
“Could it be cursed?” asks another pupil, Akka, who spent most of the journey here with the nervous disposition of a socially anxious rabbit, and although I really want to go into one about the comment he’s just made, I keep my voice calm. I know the message will land better that way.
“Important lesson,” I announce to the group, before I realise I’m waving my trowel around recklessly. I put it in my satchel for the moment. “Every archaeologist is prone to a bit of superstition, but if you want to advance within the discipline, you’ve got to learn to keep it at bay.”
I look around, seeing the doubt mixed in with pride, the feigned confidence of young people who all think they’re the beacon of rationality in the group. I know they need to hear more before they understand.
“Back when I was studying for my bachelor’s degree at the Luna University, I went on a dig like this one. Backwater planet, high pressure, and there I was, the girl with no experience but so many expectations. I found a river and followed the path to see where it took me. As I headed downstream, do you know what I saw? I saw my husband.” I glower, making sure to emphasise that this wasn’t one of my usual light-hearted references to an old spouse. “I saw his body, floating in the lake. My greatest fear.”
The students don’t know what to say. One of them is about to comfort me -- maybe they think this is where the tale ends. But I shake my head at them. I press on.
“So I panicked. I thought that planet was dangerous, I thought its inhabitants were coming for me and my team next.” I chuckle. “I ran back, screaming for help, so distraught. And my professor just smiled at me, told me to follow her. Not uncaring, not at all, but calm and professional. She took me back to the lake, and took a sample of the water. When we analysed the sample, we discovered there was another substance in the lake -- a substance which animated the fears and anxieties we projected onto it, which could physically take form as the thing that terrified us, even become a living creature. Do you know what that substance was?”
The blueish girl raises her hand, and I gesture keenly for her to answer.
“Phosulasen?”
“Correct!” I answer. “And we discovered it. The greatest receptacle for psychological projections in the known universe, but unfortunately, it only responds to fears. Anyway, my point is that we made a vital discovery that day -- and only after I made a rather embarrassing error of judgement.” I paused, unsure of the moral of my own story, and wondering whether I should mention that it wasn’t the only time I was wrong about my husband being dead in a lake. “Sometimes you’ll find things that surprise you. Artefacts that expand the scientific and metaphysical boundaries of our own culture. But the most important thing is that you keep a cool head, keep your options open, and don’t jump to conclusions. When things are unusual or scary, there’s usually a fascinating and beautiful explanation from them. And in most cases, they aren’t cursed.”
There was a chuckle at that last comment. I took my trowel back out my satchel.
“Right! Let’s get digging again.”
-
“It’s an… epitaph.”
“No, it’s a poem.”
“It’s an epitaph poem.”
“A poetic epitaph.”
It could be worse, I think. For late-night drunken theories, these aren’t bad. I’ve heard worse from students with three cans of lager in their systems.
I wonder whether I should impose a limit, especially when we have to be up so early for the rest of the dig tomorrow, but I look around the campfire and want nothing more than to treasure this moment. My best memories of study were like this, and when the research degrees took hold and I spent more time in the library than in the field, these were the days I yearned for. Like-minded, keen, and slightly damaged people spinning yarns about the work they love.
What I haven’t told them is that the artefact in question, the ‘poetic epitaph’, was the one my elderly volunteers misplaced. Most of those are asleep now, and knowing the older volunteers I’ve worked with before, will be the first to rise in the morning, diligently working away at the ruins before the sun has even risen. All except Ola, the well-dressed archaeological veteran who, despite a few physical limitations (rheumatoid arthritis, “that effing hip…”, “those bunions”), remains as sharp as a needle. The undergraduates adore her.
“What none of you realise,” Ola starts, “is that the artefact doesn’t have to be particularly important to the indigenous civilisation to be significant to us. Remember the Rosetta stone? That was the most practically useful discovery for language scholars, but the content of the writing was trivial in comparison.”
“What’s the Rosetta stone?” asks one of the pupils. Ola looks my way, and we share a knowing smile. They’ll learn, one day.
I hope Ola wasn’t the one who misplaced the artefact.
“What we want to hope,” continues Ola, “is that, regardless of what the writing says, the artefact can tell us something about the culture indirectly. The inscription style might give us a clue as to what tools were accessible to them. The size and shape might tell us something about the species’ physiological characteristics. Even the material alone has told us a great deal -- these people were writing on stone when they were wiped out. We’ve yet to see any evidence that there was a proliferation of plastics, metals, or even wood within their culture. We’ve yet to see any sign of industry…”
And she looks back at me again, so sad, and I know exactly what’s on her mind. And we’ll never find out. She knows, just as I do, that excavating the temple is the best use of our time. But there is so much of Neferkamos that will remain undiscovered…
Our intellectual musings are interrupted by the sound of vomiting a few yards away, and I head over to the slender silhouette leaning against the side of her tent.
“Char, are you okay?”
“I’m just… I think I had a bit too much of the…”
I hold her up. She’s right: whatever she’s been drinking, she’s had too much of it -- far too much. A lot of academic staff would take formal action against such behaviour in the field, but I look at her and see a girl half the size and half the weight of her colleagues, a girl who wants nothing more than to win their affections and prove herself worthy of the rest of them. I can’t even bring myself to cite the rules at her, but I know that there’s another sort of warning she needs to hear.
“You need to be careful, sweetie. Archaeology… well, you’ve read the prospectus and heard the speeches, it’s a noble and ancient discipline whose core values ought to be respect, preservation, and so on and so forth… but what they don’t tell you is that half of the time, you’re doing social drinking in the middle of nowhere, stumbling around in search of a mobile signal, and wondering whether what your colleague just said qualifies as sexual harassment. Trust me, I know. And I can’t solve a lot of those problems.”
She throws up again, and I try to block out my sense of smell. I offer her a spare bottle of water from my satchel.
“But like I said, you need to be careful. The drinking… can quickly become a crutch. It’s easy to look forward to it, when you spend the whole day doing menial chores around the site to no avail, but don’t let the lifestyle consume you. And you don’t have to drink as much as the rest of your colleagues if you don’t want to.”
Char nods solemnly. “I know.”
“Believe me,” I chuckle, “I’ve been there. Not just as a student, but before then, when I was… well, it doesn’t matter.”
She looks up, and I’m startled. I know that look -- she knows.
“You… really were in prison, weren’t you?” I know she’ll regret asking that one in the morning, but it doesn’t bother me as much as it should.
“Goodness. Word does spread quickly with you lot.”
“I don’t…” she stumbles, and I hold her up again. “I don’t care at all. It doesn’t matter.”
“Thank you.” I swallow, considering professional boundaries… but it’s just a question, and an honest question dignifies an answer. “I was, yes. I was only released very recently. They let me continue my studies, you see -- as far as they were concerned, it stopped me going off in the middle of the night and finding scandalous parties to gate-crash.”
“You must enjoy being free.”
“I do, yes. But I’ve been free for longer than people realise. Even in Stormcage, it was just a contract, really -- they respected my freedoms, I respected their rules. It was just like living under a slightly more stringent, slightly less democratic government. And when I say it’s undemocratic, even that’s not strictly true -- I persuaded them to put the renovation plans down to a vote, so we ended up with purple walls. And a little escape hatch, actually. My pet project.”
Char laughs. “You really aren’t like the rest of them.”
“And neither are you,” I tell her. “You’ll realise that soon enough. And when you do, my advice? Own it. Dazzle. Don’t let them box you in. And maybe stop after the first two cans, eh?”
“Maybe that’s a plan.” She gently lowers my arm and steadies herself. “I think I’m feeling well enough to go to bed. Can I take this water?”
“You most certainly can. Drink it all now, and that way you should be alright to join us tomorrow. You don’t want to miss the big day…”
“Thank you, Dr. Song.” She takes the water and climbs back into the tent. With just a smidge of hypocrisy, I pick up another can of lager and head back to the campfire before saying goodnight.
-
The students share a final drink and return to their tents. Torchlights flick off, and my personal tent becomes a functional lighthouse out in this wilderness. Here I am, wide awake, unable to see the world around me as asleep -- no, it’s too still for that. Dormant. That’s what Neferkamos is. Students, preparing for the longest and most important day of their education. A temple, waiting to be discovered again after who knows how many years. And Neferkamos itself, preparing for its final day. Preparing to die. I wonder whether there’s a sun deity, up there somewhere, waiting to beckon the day one final time.
I stop the mythical daydreaming (what’s daydreaming called at night, anyway?). It’s hard to abstract too much from reality when you’re perpetually worried about the whole operation going dreadfully, and worse, publicly, wrong. When you trace all the problems back to their roots, it boils down to the fact that this is the most underfunded excavation I’ve ever had the displeasure of leading. My team is a ragtag bunch of first-years and elderly volunteers, the cheapest but hardly the easiest pick of helpers.
The staffing budget went primarily on my epigraphers. I know! Dr. River Song, consulting someone else to translate the temple’s inscriptions. But translation isn’t the problem. I can translate anything using my natural cognitive faculties; I am, after all, a child of the TARDIS (from what other parent would I inherit curves as gorgeous as these?). Unfortunately, that turns out to be both a dream and a nightmare for an archaeologist, since everything I read translates straight into English and I can’t actually make out the original inscription. I wouldn’t know whether I was reading Egyptian hieroglyphs or pig Latin. Epigraphers are needed to identify the language in the first place.
The good news, and probably the only good news about this dig, is that I didn’t have to obtain any major permits. It’s been the most logistically straightforward dig ever, and whilst the corporation slightly resents us for complicating their risk assessment, it’s nowhere near the sort of justifiable resentment that locals have felt before when we’ve turned up with our high-tech equipment, ready to learn what’s underneath their flowerbeds.
So, as soon as we found out the corporation were planning to implode Neferkamos to make room for a runway (a very big runway), we conducted a geophysical survey. Nothing to lose, everything to gain. Our ground-penetrating radar identified architecture buried in the sand, and they decided to get someone on the job. A demanding, unpleasant, and risky job, so why not ask the convict, eh? That’s how I became excavation director, which is just slightly more insulting than it is flattering -- but I can’t complain; at least the press haven’t turned up, and I’ve been able to finally reap the rewards of months learning flotation techniques. (I just hope the rest of my career amounts to more than hopeless wet sieving.) I’m under pressure to finish a report, but frankly, they can dream on. I’ve only got two days, so I’m not going to waste them doing academic writing -- goodness, I’m not a philosopher!
So far, the spectrophotometric equipment playing up has been a major setback, as I’ve been unable to identify the chemical composition of the pigments on the pottery fragments we found. Just as we were finally making progress, we had to spend the afternoon introducing a large pumping system, since an unusually high flood a few weeks back from the River Nu brought on a rise in the underground water table, which flooded the temple area. But we love a challenge, don’t we?
And as I reflect on the day, and panic about tomorrow, I find the prospect of sleep becoming more and more distant. Unlike the pupils, I don’t need it, so I grab my satchel, make sure I’ve got my sonic trowel, give my flask a rinse. If I’m risking it out there on my own, I’ll need my oldest and most faithful companion: industrial strength coffee.
-
I shiver. I actually shiver, as I make my way over the bank, after all these years still not quite prepared for the schizoid climate of a desert planet, but enjoying the sense of impending doom nonetheless. And I’m grateful for the temporary artificial moon we planted in the planet's orbit -- they always make a dig so much easier when daylight hours are over, and you can reuse them up to thirteen times (like my dear spouse, in a way…).
“PLANETARY IMPLOSION SCHEDULED IN TWENTY HOURS. THE CORPORATION IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY FATALITIES AFTER THIS TIME PERIOD HAS EXPIRED. PLEASE VACATE NEFERKAMOS.”
And as I emerge on the other side, now half a mile away from my tent, I gasp, and it all hits me at once. Shock, excitement, fear -- knowing that something must be terribly wrong on this planet -- a dash of confusion, and perhaps some premature arousal, because there it is, right in front of me, so full of hope and promise: the Doctor’s TARDIS.
I rush up to it and bang on the door. Oh, they’ll be so surprised to see me here -- leading my own excavation, too -- and I wonder: which one of them is it? Going by the size of the windows, it’s got to be one of the older ones, but not the Ears or the Hair, because it’s got that St John’s Ambulance sign, and the frankly nauseating shade of blue tells me that, yes, this is, indeed, the Chin. Wonderful. He’s the last incarnation, this one, but you wouldn’t think it: he behaves like he’s learning everything for the first time, from the console room to the bedroom, he’s got the energy and stamina of an athlete, and, well, you know what they say on Makdesh about men with large chins…
There’s no answer, so I knock again, a little harder. But I can tell that there’s no one inside. The ship herself is sleeping, her hum a little quieter than usual, as if she hasn’t even registered my presence. How long has she been out here?
I walk on, pulling out my scanner -- maybe there’s something else here, some underground tunnels or an energy trace or something that will lead me to the Doctor. And about three minutes later, there’s a blip from the scanner, registering organic matter under the sand. Organic matter? I shudder, thinking the unthinkable. This is the final incarnation, and he has a worrying tendency to play dead in the middle of deserts.
I pull out the trowel and start digging frantically. I start to sense the shape of it; a corpse -- grains of sand are falling away to reveal patches of fabric, too, a tailored suit of some sort -- and it’s a male-presenting body, quite young, clean-shaven and dark-haired, but…
It’s not him. I sigh, relieved, if even more perplexed. The man is in his early thirties, and looks so ordinary and innocuous that he’s exactly what you’d expect to get from the Google search “man in early thirties”, just a bit more dead. I get the machine to carbon date him, and my heart skips a beat.
He’s over a thousand years old.
His preservation is hardly a mystery -- bodily decay isn’t as inevitable as you’d think; hyperarid desert sand can, theoretically, create the perfect conditions for the preservation of organic material, though I’ve never seen it happen before. But if he’s really that old, then perhaps he’s not a visitor -- perhaps he’s the most precious artefact we’ve found so far.
So I imagine he’s just another boulder and, like every other artefact, I drag him back to my tent.
-
There’s a corpse on my sleeping bag. I don’t know why I laid the body there, beyond that very human impulse to give the (long) dead some dignity in their rest -- perhaps a part of me is worried that he’ll write a complaint about the poor room service when we leave. Because there’s something odd about this body: it’s not just neatly preserved, it’s fresh. Fresh in the way that a newly-printed photograph is, still soft and impressionable and emanating the smell of ink; except this body smells of life, a life that’s almost clinging on inside, somewhere…
But I’m not looking at the body. I’m looking at the stone fragment by the side of my desk, that must have fallen off earlier: the ‘poetic epitaph’, they’d called it. I feel a pang of guilt. My elderly volunteers are innocent -- I'm the one who’s misplaced it, knocked it off the desk while I was working. Thankfully, I never made any of my suspicions public, so I don’t owe anyone any apologies.
I reach down and pick up the fragment. Maybe it’s because I’m tired, maybe it’s because there’s something wrong with the TARDIS, but something unusual happens. There’s a delay. The hieroglyphs take a few seconds to morph into English, and just briefly, I catch a glimpse of their original form, their original language, before it shifts into the more recognisable characters I’m used to. But I know this language too -- I've seen it before.
This artefact is Osiran. And before I have a chance to piece together what this discovery means for me, the corpse speaks.
“At last, my slumber ends.”
Back when I was Melody Pond, in Leadworth, embracing the ordinary life of a seven-year-old, Amelia (my mother, at the time my best friend, who swore she’d never have any children of her own -- "It’s too much work and babies smell” -- but I had good reasons to suspect that she’d change her mind”) and I caught a hedgehog somewhere in her enormous garden. We gave it food and water, and it seemed tame, so I picked it up. I remember looking into its eyes as I lifted it off the ground -- there was this strange combination of love and fear, like it was trying to figure out whether I was going to nurture it or eat it. It knew that any chance of survival it had depended on my whim, I think. And when it comes down to it, the tenderness of a benevolent master isn’t too different from that of a methodical murderer.
As the corpse speaks, I suddenly know what it was like to be that hedgehog. I am smothered by its silky tones, by the voice so much older than the body it came from; and I know that if it wants to, it could protect me from all harm -- or just crush me here and now. But I can’t fathom which it is inclined to do.
“You know who I am.”
I swallow, my throat dry. I realise that I do know, though I’m not sure how.
“Sutekh.”
“Sutekh…” the corpse repeats, and sits up, a little colour restored.
“The Destroyer,” I add, my voice quivering.
Sutekh smiles. “I have waited in the wilderness for millennia. I have waited for this day: the day of my resurrection. The day of my escape. The exodus of Sutekh.”
I try to summon some courage. I was once told that, if someone intimidates you, you should just imagine them naked -- terrible advice, ordinarily; most predators are twice as gross that way, but in this particular form, well… I smirk. No, River, I think to myself. Don’t get carried away. He’s far too old for you, and a bit too evil as well.
“That’s never going to happen,” I say, raising my voice. “Your escape, I mean. I won’t let it. I do remember your grand plan -- destroy all life in the universe, wasn’t it?” I smile again. “That was until my husband stopped you. And my foster mother, actually, but I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the details.”
“I am always prevented,” Sutekh growls. “My brother, Horus, once led seven hundred and forty Osirans against me. But always, I survive. I have evaded the Doctormany times.”
“Usually by fleeing your physical form.”
“You are quite correct. The consciousness withdraws -- I have escaped both time corridors and Ouroboros loops.”
“But fleeing your physical form,” I press on, “that’s quite a price to pay. Now you’re stuck in this body.”
“I created this form using a flesh loom. It is not… ideal. But I have laid dormant in this body for a thousand years. Osirans may survive without food and water -- we do not suffer the dependencies of your feeble form.”
“Clearly,” I say, trying not to let him get the better of me, “us feeble humans would have suffocated in your place. But then, I wouldn’t have got myself in this situation in the first place. You see, I know what’s happening here -- you're powerless.” I actually don’t know this, but I’m testing the waters, seeing how far I can push him. And it’s working. “You’re here on your own.”
“I regret that I am not in possession of a loadstone -- and I am without my service robots.”
“I see,” I tease. “You can’t call mummy to help you… literally!”
There’s a crack of thunder, and I shudder, but it’s just that same old voice from outside:
“PLANETARY IMPLOSION SCHEDULED IN NINETEEN HOURS. THE CORPORATION IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY FATALITIES AFTER THIS TIME PERIOD HAS EXPIRED. PLEASE VACATE NEFERKAMOS.”
I wish to myself that I could put that voice on ‘Do not disturb’.
“And the Doctor?” I ask.
“What of him?”
Sutekh’s face straightens out, and I realise his mistake at the time as he does. He’s not even aware that the Doctor is here. But how, then…? I think on my feet.
“You’re powerless, Sutekh. The Doctor is waiting for you in the drylands, and this planet is scheduled for imminent destruction. Your only way out is through me. We could descend into petty acts of aggression, but there isn’t time. You want to leave, and I want to dig. For the first time in your life, oh great destroyer, how do you feel about a truce?”
-
“PLANETARY IMPLOSION SCHEDULED IN TWELVE HOURS. THE CORPORATION IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY FATALITIES AFTER THIS TIME PERIOD HAS EXPIRED. PLEASE VACATE NEFERKAMOS.”
“What did you say your name was, young man?” asks Ola, pausing and mopping her brow. The heat of the midday sun is affecting us all, and I’ve given the hydration lecture another four times since the first volunteer passed out. I hate overworking them like this, but we’re all in it together with this dig. All of us, and…
Sutekh looks my way, as if trying to remember. “Seth,” he utters, hatefully. I give him the thumbs up. He cannot, under any circumstances -- I explained last night -- introduce himself as Sutekh the Destroyer. It’s simply not good for morale.
“I didn’t see you at the dig yesterday,” Ola presses on. “Were you with a different group?”
Sutekh glowers, and I interject:
“He’s very selective about his company.”
We’re nearly through to the temple now, just clearing the entrance. And, as frequently happens when a team of archaeologists are fighting heatstroke eight feet under, there is a song.
“I'm gonna be a mighty king, so enemies beware. Well, I've never seen a king of beasts with quite so little hair…”
Sing-songs at digs start up like conga lines at office Christmas parties. Once they’re underway, they’re harder to stop than actual Osiran superbeings masquerading as Egyptian deities. Another student joins in.
“I'm gonna be the main event, like no king was before. I'm brushing up on looking down, I'm working on my roar…”
I mouth the lyrics to Sutekh. He glares at me -- am I really asking the Great Destroyer to join in our Earth Classics round? -- but he knows it’s necessary to maintain his disguise, and so intones…
“Thus far, a rather uninspiring thing.”
And eight students respond, in delight:
“Oh, I just can't wait to be king!”
And as I observe Sutekh’s micro-expressions, I wonder, just for a moment, if he’s enjoying it. The call-and-response of musical theatre isn’t unlike a leader’s interactions with his people, if you imagine the chorus as a nationalistic chant, so maybe the Osiran has found a small semblance of home. Or maybe there’s something else. A sense of being welcomed, accepted, of fitting in; sharing a vision, a goal, an experience…
But this is Sutekh. I stop myself, because I know how this ends. The man in front of me, reciting the Lion King, has butchered millions. The man in front of me, smiling cheerily at his new colleagues, wiped out his own species. The man in front of me, helping me, will kill me as soon as he gets the opportunity.
Which is why I’m going to kill him first.
-
The way is cleared and I make the first tentative steps into the temple, shining my torch at the far walls. I nearly choke as I’m attacked by a cloud of dust.
“…as my eyes grew accustomed to the light”, I say, quietly, “details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold – everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ it was all I could do to get out the words, ‘Yes, wonderful things’.”
“Howard Carter,” breathes Sutekh, and I’m almost grateful he’s here to get my references.
“Who?” asks a voice at the back.
“These fools are philistines,” says Sutekh. “They are unworthy of –”
“Now now, Seth,” I lecture, “they’re just from a different generation.”
I flash my light at the altar, noting the use of limestone, and gesture to the engravings. “Osiran?” I take Sutekh’s silence as a confirmation.
Click. Click. Click.
I stop, turn around. I know that sound. I flash the torch at a young volunteer’s shoes, and they are -- high heels. I give her a look as if to say, “Really?”, and she realises that everyone else has entered the temple in bare feet. It’s never comfortable, especially with all the chipped bits of wall around us, but we don’t want to risk damaging anything with our shoes.
There’s a shelf running along the wall, and I very carefully lift the first jar off. “Oil of some sort,” I remark.
“Ooh!” There’s a hand up at the back of the room.
“Yes, go on?”
“Was that used for ritual purposes?”
I roll my eyes. “I’d guess this was used in the construction of the temple. Wet sand is easier to drag rocks across.”
“Maybe aliens built the temple,” says the same student.
“That would be the racist explanation, yes.” I lift another jar off the shelf and open it. It sticks for a moment, but soon slides away, and I recognise the consistency of crystallised honey. What the hell? I think, and stick my finger in, swirl it around the substance, and lick some off. You wouldn’t think it was over a thousand years old, I’ll say that for it! “Mmmmm.”
One of my students recoils.
“It’s fine,” I assure her, but even Sutekh is staring at me in bafflement. “What? It’s the only food produce that never spoils. Trust me, I wouldn’t touch a spoiler.” The joke’s lost on them. I pass the jar to Sutekh, who gazes at it, unsure what he’s meant to be doing with it.
The students mill around the temple, and conversations form within independent clusters. I make my way over to Sutekh, who is studying another ouroboros mosaic on the wall with something not unlike concern.
“What is it?” I whisper.
“The snake.” Sutekh points. “It is Apophis, the killer of the gods, the scourge of Osiris.”
“You were the killer of the gods,” I correct him.
“I was Head of Security for the Osiran Court.”
“You used your privilege to destroy Phaester Osiris and caused havoc across the galaxy. Remember?”
Sutekh considers, undefeated. “I was respected. The creatures I encountered on Earth were little more than ants beneath my feet, but they respected and worshipped me as a deity. My Egyptian cult was loyal, as were the Kemetics, even after my memory was slandered by Horus.”
“What was there to slander? It was all true. You were just a bit genocidal, Sutekh.”
“My reputation was conflated with that of Apophis.” He stares again at the snake. “I destroyed Phaester Osiris in a last desperate attempt to contain the Anti-God and secure my own hegemony. But…”
I’m unsure whether to believe him, whether to buy into this bogeyman he has created to elevate himself to the moral highground, but this is more than I ever learnt about Osiris and I’m keen to discover more.
“But…?” I prompt.
Sutekh turns to me, his eyes blazing, but I sense I’m not the object of his fury. “I was unaware that Apophis had escaped my homeworld back when Neferkamos crossed paths with Osiris.”
I falter. “This planet crossed paths with Osiris?”
“There was only a small settlement of people. They worshipped me and provided for me, and in return I allowed them to live.”
“How generous of you.”
“For a time.” He snarls. “Apophis foresaw my treachery and left, and I destroyed Phaester Osiris in vain.”
Do I think he regrets his slaughter? No. Do I think he mourns his people? Of course not. But I know one thing: Apophis, the God-killer, scares Sutekh. But before I have a chance to unpack what that means, I notice a group of students studying a sarcophagus curiously.
“It won’t open,” one of them says, and I shake my head -- young archaeologists -- but Ola shakes hers back at me, telling me that what they’re saying is true. A locked sarcophagus? I try to think back, wonder to myself whether this is a precedent. But I can see all the eyes in the room converging on me, waiting for an explanation, some contextual details -- the word ‘Osiris’ has been banded around the room a few times now, and it’s not one they’ve seen in their textbooks. But I’ve got a better idea.
“Seth here is an expert on Phaester Osiris,” I announce, and Sutekh, rather than glaring as I expect him to, seems to positively relish the opportunity to take centre stage. “A good team leader delegates, so I’m handing over to him.”
Sutekh clears his human throat. “Phaester Osiris was an ordinary world, but it was home to an extraordinary people.” The students are already enraptured, unaware of the shocking lack of modesty on display. “The Osirans are -- were -- an immensely powerful race of intelligent humanoids.”
“Like us?” asks one of the human students, eagerly.
“A little like me, perhaps,” Sutekh chuckles darkly. “With a cerebrum like a spiral staircase, their physical, intellectual, and psychic prowess allowed them to conquer and colonise worlds on which they would be worshipped as gods. Mars and the Ice Warriors, Earth and the Egyptians… so many great accomplishments under the names of the Osiran leaders, Horus, and Sutekh the Destroyer. Sutekh was --”
“Excuse me,” interrupts the blueish girl, and Sutekh positively seethes. “How do you spell ‘Osiran’?”
“O-S-I-R-A-N,” I answer.
Sutekh glares. “O-S-I-R-I-A-N.”
“That’s silly,” I protest. “It’s not even phonetic.” The blueish girl gives up and stops writing. “Anyway, Seth, carry on. Don’t let us hold you back.”
“The Osirans were menaced by a terrible, nightmarish ungod,” Sutekh continues, “once banished to the tenth region of the night. Apophis lurked before dawn, bent on intergalactic destruction. Its power, its potential… they were boundless as the night sky.”
“That’s so cool.” Char’s eyes flashed with wonder.
“The God-Eater is not a joke!” Sutekh roars, and the others are taken aback. “What I impart to you today is forbidden knowledge.”
Akka pipes up. “Seth’s right. We shouldn’t dabble with dangerous entities. Some of the stuff that happens when you use those names irresponsibly… it’s not cool. I read about it once in…”
My mind drifts. I’ve heard it all before. Young students dabbling in the edgiest mythology they can find because they want to see what it takes for a culture to break; their paranoid detractors, tearing up their occult texts in the dead of night, “UNGOD WORSHIPPER” scrawled on their walls in red ink. Students on both side of the chasm convinced that they’ve found the One True Evil darker and deeper than the rest, the truth behind every other demonic legend. But it isn’t smart and it doesn’t scare me: the stories never have.
-
As we leave the temple, our finds carried out in bags and trays by eager volunteers, I notice something different about the surface of Neferkamos. It’s still dry and arid, but there’s a hot gust blowing us in the direction of the tents, and something coming towards us on the horizon…
I get out my binoculars, and what I see is an insurmountable barrier, a dark and shapeless wave of grey -- a sandstorm.
“Is that what I think it is?” asks Ola, who’s crept up next to me. “I’ve done desert excavations before. They always warned us --”
“It’ll be here any moment,” I say, and immediately take control of the situation, bellowing to my scattered team members. “Okay, everyone, listen up -- there's a sandstorm on the way, and it looks like a big one. The weather conditions are heading towards unmanageable, even for archaeologists. We’ve recovered all we can from the temple; we need to pack up and go as soon as possible. Go and gather the other teams.”
The students and volunteers rush their separate ways, but they’re flagging, slowing. The young ones are struggling with their first experience of dry heat, not yet used to conserving their energy; the elderly ones are worn down by years of excavating in climates like these. This is an emergency, but no one is ready for it. Ola knows it too.
“Do we have an emergency transmat? In case --”
“On our budget?” I laugh, nervously. “If only.”
“What’s the plan?”
I can’t tell her the answer to that. My plan is a little blue box half a mile westwards, an artefact older than anything on this planet that’s shown no signs of life or occupation ever since I’ve been here. My plan is for an organised miracle, the same one that always swoops in and saves me whenever I realise there might only be one way out. And today, I wonder if that plan will be enough.
“But maybe there’s something else…” I murmur.
“What?”
Sutekh has joined us. He squints, watching the storm with complete apathy. I wish I could observe nature’s machinations in the same way. I can picture the man next to me witnessing the fall of empires with the same indifference. And how powerful such a man would be, if one could simply move him to react…
“I know you don’t care whether I live or die,” I say, urgently. “I know I’m nothing to you. But we had a pact -- I think even you can recognise that, if you really are what you say you are. If you are more than an all-consuming ungod. You’ll honour that pact, in the knowledge that when my time comes, so will I.”
He doesn’t even look at me. The storm draws closer, and I blink repeatedly as several grains of sand are blasted into my eyes.
“Please, Sutekh. God of the desert, god of the storm, show us what you’re made of. Are you really that limited by this pathetic form you’ve taken on? Are you as weak as the rest of us?”
He still doesn’t look my way, but spreads his arms out wide and closes his eyes. Ahead of me, the cloud of swirling dust shifts, uncertainly, and… disperses, left and right, upwards and downwards, like nature’s very own firework. I remain dubious of Sutekh’s dignity, but he’s certainly demonstrated his immensity now.
I sigh with relief, but all too soon.
There is a new sound now. Long and terrible, it passes over us like a wave. It is a lament: a howling, roaring, weeping, screeching, droning cacophony that rips through the air around us. But it’s the ground that breaks apart.
We rush away from the rupture, feeling the ground tremble beneath us. The river is widening, asserting its territory, and I’m glad that we all make it back because anyone caught on the brink would be dragged in by the quicksand.
The surface of the water ripples. Something is stirring beneath. At last, the surface breaks, and a head emerges, its piercing black eyes measuring up to my full height at least, and I spot my distorted reflection in them.
In its fully glory, the creature is a large golden snake, and must be miles long; as it rises from the river, it seems to have no end. The lament sounds again and I cover my ears. I think the creature is crying its name, declaring its manifestation, in the only language it knows. But I know its name in another language.
Apophis.
It is not what I expected, but I had no point of reference -- such ungods rarely appear in statues or artworks, and in the history of Egyptian and Kemetic worship, never has a cult devoted itself to the Anti-God.
Its scaly skin gleans almost metallically, and its shadow has spread over the whole camp. All around me, the gathered teams of archaeologists cower together in rudimentary formations, almost organised, but so lost and so frightened and watching me. And I think to myself: what am I to them? The teacher, the convict, or something else? What do I need to be for them? Apophis watches, unblinking, understanding the power structure, fixing its eyes on me. And then I’m saved.
The young man steps forward, his hair magnificent in the wind, brushing down his suit. He could almost be someone else, I think to myself, but his steely, arrogant confidence tells me that he is, and will always be, Sutekh.
“Apophis,” he says, and everyone watches in amazement, like he’s fearless. I know he isn’t -- you can’t kid a kidder. “I speak your name without hesitation. Without fear.”
Apophis’s eyes move away from me and find Sutekh, slanting with spite.
“My form is diminished, but you remember me,” Sutekh continues. “I stood on the prow of Ra’s starship as Phaester Osiris erupted into flames. I burnt our world to banish you -- it, which was spat out. And I swore that no man or god would ever be the better of me again.”
Apophis shrieks again and Sutekh falls back. His swagger, his electricity, his anger -- I've seen it all before, from Demon’s Run to the Charybdian Falls. Desperate madmen clinging to the façade of heroism, but already in the process of falling. This isn’t victory, it’s damage control. Sutekh is terrified.
And that’s when I work it out.
The Destroyer is trembling on the shaking ground; my students are falling apart, letting go of all their hopes and dreams, trying to remember who their gods are and how to supplicate before them; and a giant, golden snake from the dawn of time is about to consume us all, before it makes a start on the rest of the universe.
I approach the primordial watery abyss. Apophis sees me coming, but doesn’t stop me.
My students look up. Sutekh looks up.
I stop at the edge of the River Nu and lean forward.
And I lick the Apophis, the God-Eater.
-
“A very distinct mix of chemicals, with just a hint of treacle.” I turn back to my students and beam wickedly. “I’d know that taste anywhere. Phosulasen.” I looked around at their blank expressions. “Well? You were all here earlier, you all heard my lecture. What am I talking about?”
A few moments pass -- as a lecturer, I can safely say that it’s nothing to be alarmed by -- and then, tentatively, a hand is raised. “Yes, good!” I shout towards Char, the owner of that particular hand.
“The greatest receptacle for psychological projections in the known universe,” she replies, “able to take the form of our worst fears.”
“Excellent! You see, I had a feeling -- this all played out so conveniently. No signs of any nefarious plan at all, then Sutekh turns up and all of a sudden, his worst nightmare is rising out of the river -- a river which, apparently, is rich in phosulasen. But this fearsome creature is nothing more than a lump of clay, animated by the particularly potent psychic power of an Osiran God who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf. Isn’t that right, Sutekh?”
Sutekh is silent, glaring. Working out an escape, or a way of playing the situation to his advantage. He’s doing exactly what I’d do, and he knows that I know it.
“You must have awoken on this planet quite clueless,” I continue, “scared enough to allow your fears to take hold -- perfectly natural for any being in a strange new land. You projected those fears onto the landscape, creating Apophis exactly as you imagined it.”
“Sutekh is without fear.” The Osiran stands, stares down the mighty snake, and clenches his fist. Then, with nowhere to go, no language to escape to, Apophis melts into the river, its eyes very literally forming black pools that dissolve into the clear blue water. With the echo of its final lament, the God-Eater is no more.
“Phosulasen stops working once the fiction is acknowledged as just that,” says the blueish girl. “I.. read that in a textbook once.”
“Very good!” I reply. “I really need to learn your name.”
“It’s blue.”
I pause. “What… really?”
“No, you old racist, it’s Karen.”
And then Karen gasps. Behind us, Sutekh is surrounded by a cloud of black smoke, and his features are transfiguring; he’s taller, his face now enclosed in a long, slender mask, patterned with Osiran hieroglyphs, his eyes glowing green, and at last the voice fits the body…
“Kneel,” he says. “Kneel, before the might of Sutekh.”
And, tears rolling down her cheeks, Char kneels.
-
I am Sutekh the Destroyer. All other lifeforms seek to rise up and destroy me. They must not succeed. Nothing may challenge my hegemony over time and space.
I am the Typhonian Beast, Set, Sadok, Satan… I am the Destroyer, the eraser of star systems, the Lord of the Red Land. The course of history is mine to mould.
I am He before whom the sky shakes, with lightning and thunder as my heralds. I am beyond the reach of even the Time Lords. I can keep my victims alive for centuries in excruciating pain.
I am the last Osiran, the God of the Storm, champion of Chaos.
I am Sutekh the Destroyer. Where I tread I leave nothing but dust and darkness. I find that good.
-
“You are Sutekh’s plaything now,” utters the Osiran.
“Char, you don’t have to do this,” I beg her. “I’ll protect you. Just get up.”
“I’m sorry, Doctor Song,” she splutters, “I’m so sorry. But I can’t.”
Sutekh laughs. “She is mine. Her state of inebriation last night weakened her psychic defences, and I was able to make contact while you slept. She was… my insurance.”
“That’s monstrously intrusive,” I retort. “And just, well, monstrous.” I think. Again: what do they want from me? What do they need from me? What can I offer this young, brave, resilient band of misfits that they can’t do for themselves?
They’re just children -- but then so am I. Except… I’m a child of the TARDIS.
I close my eyes, leave the scene. I enter my mind, somewhere I feel safe. My cell in Stormcage, yes -- I still haven’t got comfortable anywhere else, still haven’t found myself able to rest at night; a part of me misses the security of reinforced bars, locked doors, the sense of shelter that others would call claustrophobic. I’m back in my cell, my diary is open, rain pelts at my window but I’m protected from it, and I reach out my mind. I reach out for the nearest mind and feel it, just -- we're fingertips, barely touching in the darkness. But -- yes! I know this mind.
Char, I tell her. It’s Doctor Song -- River. I know you’re frightened, but you’re not alone. You can banish him.
You don’t know what it’s like! she tells me. Being controlled… your body, your thoughts… being someone else’s puppet.
I do, I reply. Oh, believe me, I do. I’ve been the agent of another’s will, and I know how much it hurts. But you can resist -- you just have to look beyond him, search for other voices, other memories. Remember what makes you who you are. Remember how much you wanted to belong, how you wanted to show off to your colleagues.
It feels pathetic now.
No! It was beautiful, Char, and admirable, and it was what made me see so much promise in you. You weren’t just brilliant, you knew you were brilliant, and you didn’t let your insecurities hold you back, even though you had them. So remember how you wanted them to see you shine. Remember how you swore to yourself that you wouldn’t let anything stop you. Do you know what Sutekh is? He’s not a god. He’s no worse than the boy who used to talk over you in your practicals. I know you can fight him.
The connection shorts out, and I open my eyes. The sunlight is blinding, and it takes them a moment to adjust. I see Char in front of me. I see the tears rolling down her cheeks.
And I feel my own tears forming as I watch her stand, reach out her arms to me, and smile.
“That’s it, Char, come to me. You’ve done so, so well.” She walks over to me, and I place myself in front of her. Sutekh has stumbled, momentarily, but he’s back to his feet now, and fuming.
“Another psychic influence, how… inconvenient. You will live to regret this, River Song. Or perhaps you will not.”
And like that, I’m soaring up through the air, struck by whiplash, suspended several feet above the river, and something is wrapping itself around my neck, I think -- I can hardly breathe, and my throat is becoming tighter and tighter. The only sounds I can make out are the wind, and my own rasping breaths, and that voice…
“You may rival my telepathy, but you pale against my telekinesis. Feel the might of Sutekh, tiny creature. I could burn you to death with a single touch. Or I could be cruel instead…”
I writhe against an attacker who’s not even there, try to break loose, but my neck is getting tighter, burning, and I force some air up through my windpipe -- not just enough to talk, but enough to scream.
“You think you’re so smart, Sutekh, but you’ve missed something!” The burning continues, but I notice the grip loosening. He’s listening.
“Speak.”
I gasp for air, inhaling rapidly. “You… you really don’t know what’s inside that sarcophagus, do you?”
“And yet, you do. You intrigue me, plaything of Sutekh.”
“Let me go, and I’ll show you. Then, you can do what you like with me.”
“Hmm…” he contemplates. “Very well. I accept this proposal. We will return to the temple, and you will meet your fate there.”
He lets go, and I fall into the river. The water’s warm, and deep, but the shock of it sets my heart racing. And as I heave my way out and onto the sand, grains sticking unhelpfully to my wet skin, I hide a smirk at the prospect of what’s coming for the god who thought he could mess with Doctor River Song.
-
It’s just me and Sutekh in the temple now -- the other students have been instructed to pack up the finds and prepare for take-off. Oh, and part of the bargain is that Sutekh gets to kill them later, too, but I’m clinging onto my last hope that this theory might just be correct.
“You’re going to have to help me open this sarcophagus,” I warn him. “I’m strong, but it really is very tightly sealed.”
“I will open it alone,” he says. “The might of Sutekh does not require assistance.” Talk about fragile masculinity!
The lid slowly lifts, and my torch blinks, momentarily. As the dust clears, it takes a moment for us to make out the body inside -- and longer for Sutekh to process it. But it’s exactly what I was expecting to see.
The creature is truly, thoroughly dead. Its skin is grey, with the head of a jackal and large, square ears. There’s a green tinge around its closed eyes, like a sort of residue. I’ve seen this face before in textbooks -- a traditional depiction of the Egyptian god, Set.
“Familiar?” I ask.
“This cannot be…” Sutekh reaches out and touches the lifeless face. His face.
“Kneel before the might of Sutekh,” I mock. “How the mighty have fallen. It took me a while to figure it out, you see. How the Doctor came here, where he’s been, what your role in all of this was…” I frown, considering. “I think Sutekh did come to this planet. I think he fought my husband. And I think my husband won, once and for all, beating him body and soul, and imprisoning him in this temple. But in many ways, the defeat came too late. Sutekh had already impressed his own fears on the phosulasen, which animated Apophis. I imagine the Doctor had to make a tactical withdrawal.”
“But I am Sutekh!” the Osiran protested. “I am the Great Destroyer!”
“Sutekh died a thousand years ago!” I cut in. “All that survived was the phosulasen. Which we all unknowingly projected our fears onto -- of course! The epigraphers must have had their suspicions, enough to create the body in the desert. Then as soon as I saw that the fragment was Osiran, you woke up. The more we feared you, the more powerful you became. My students!” I nearly punch the air as the realisation hits me. “Terrified of ancient curses! Ridiculously superstitious! The whole time feeding the phosulasen -- enough to make you real enough to reanimate Apophis, even. But you, Apophis, all of this… it was a projection of our own fears and expectations. A myth enjoying one last revival.”
Sutekh’s eyes glow an even brighter green, but as he prepares to say something -- or maybe just smite me down -- his hand begins to disintegrate in front of him, and there’s a smell of… yes. Treacle.
“I… will survive… I survived…”
“You survived in the only place gods ever survive!” I re-join. “The human mind. Individual memory and cultural memory, working together -- a projection of an archaeologist’s knowledge and just a hint of superstition and paranoia. But you need a believer, Sutekh, a follower. Someone who needs you. Every god must be needed to survive -- a god without followers isn’t a god at all. But what have you got, out here, in the drylands, as the clock ticks towards doomsday? Nothing. No followers. No real existence. No future.”
“You cannot stop me! I am Sutekh!”
I stare at him. “An ancient, powerful force of unbound chaos, locked up inside a feeble human prison for years of its existence, finally free to unleash its will onto the world…”
“You know me well, River Song.”
“Oh, hush dear -- I wasn’t talking about you!” I straighten my hair modestly.
Sutekh’s mask now crumbles, and the grey-skinned jackal, wretched in comparison, is revealed beneath: not a god at all, but an animal. And then even that creature is dust, joining the other rocks and pottery fragments littered across the temple floor.
I look up at the ouroboros on the wall, and back down at the remains of Sutekh. It strikes me how worship and terror move in cycles like the latest fashions, how what is feared one day is revered the next. If only the believers knew they wielded that power.
“Nothing beside remains,” I whisper to myself. “Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”
With that, I lift the jar of honey off the shelf, and make my way out of the temple.
-
There is just enough time for us to gather our findings on this civilisation and bag up all the artefacts. We don’t have to worry about overstaying our welcome -- the booming voice from the sky takes to reminding us every five minutes about the planet’s immediate incineration, in case it’s slipped our minds. When it comes to deciding which artefacts are worth keeping, I tell my students to bag and label every remotely suspicious-looking rock they find. That keeps them busy for the rest of the afternoon.
The spaceship leaves, and I tell them I’ll be joining them soon. They don’t question that, knowing that I have my own vortex manipulator, but that’s not what I’m planning. I make the trek across the desert again (which takes twice as long in the midday sun), and rap four times on the door of the TARDIS (it always spooks him when I do that). He doesn’t answer, but the ship does, it door creaking open to the caress of its only daughter.
Up at the console is my husband, waiting for me, smiling. “Sorry I’m late, honey,” he says, and I just grin.
“Where the hell have you been?” I ask, more intrigued than anything.
“Trapped in a time loop for the last thousand years,” he says, making a few wild hand gestures. “I knew I’d have to stay on this planet, couldn’t risk leaving with Apophis latching onto the TARDIS, but I knew you’d turn up eventually.”
“How?”
“Well, you’re you. River Song, can’t resist an abandoned temple.”
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t. So, anyway, the time loop cut out about half an hour ago, and I had some time to dress up.” He twirls on the spot. “How do I look?”
Cream jacket, black bow tie, hair well-combed but not without that boyish scruff -- I tell him the truth. “You look fabulous. And do you know my favourite thing about you dressing up for me?”
“No?”
“Undressing you after.” I slam him up against the console and ping his braces playfully. He leans on one of the switches and there’s a bloop sound, which I try not to let spoil the moment. I slide his jacket off and then go straight for the trousers. “Hello, sweetie…”
“Whoa, steady on…”
“I’ve just taken on an Egyptian god -- and an ungod -- single-handedly,” I say, lowering my voice to a coo. “I’m ever so sorry if it… excites me.” And as I move in for a snog, the Doctor finally relents, joining in to the best of his ability as I slip my hands around his waist, slide them down to his buttocks, and, as we archaeologists say…
“The rest is history.”
- “Oh, yes,” I sigh in satisfaction. “This champagne is superb. I’ll have another glass.”
The porter leaves to prepare my next drink, as I stand alone at the viewing platform, watching… is that a pink nebulae? I do believe it is. Pink nebulae, champagne, and a jazz band. This has been a marvellous evening out.
A woman clears her throat next to me -- it's Professor Ferio, the Head of Department for Archaeology. I give her a polite nod.
“I’ve been reading your paper,” she says. “Remarkable.”
“Thank you. And do you agree?”
“With the thesis? That phosulasen is concrete proof for the existence of gods as a phenomena of human thought? Yes, I think I do -- there's a wealth of experimental evidence, after all, and I appreciate the lack of commentary on whether they do exist in reality.”
“I’m flattered, Professor. Thank you again.”
“I also greatly enjoyed the footnotes about the dangers of indulging in fanciful notions of forbidden knowledge. You’re quietly revolutionising archaeology, aren’t you, Professor Song?”
“Doctor Song,” I correct her.
“Oh, I know what I said. I was just testing out the title. I think it has a certain ring to it. And you’ve contributed a lot to the field. Perhaps it’s time…”
I blush. “Professor, I don’t know how to…”
Professor Ferio saves me from my embarrassment. “Neferkamos has been completely obliterated now. A convenient runway, I’m sure. But I do wonder… one day, another race of beings might be digging up our society and questioning our culture, our ethos, our infrastructure. Imploding planets and plundering their goods -- how might they explain that one away, do you think?”