Dalek Empire by Nicholas Briggs & Simon Guerrier

Author:Nicholas Briggs & Simon Guerrier [Briggs, Nicholas & Guerrier, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
Publisher: Big Finish
Published: 2006-12-02T22:15:46+00:00

The Eighth Wonder of the World

Simon Guerrier

… and this… (destructive) spirit,

Of barbarian legend,

Truly did not love,

… destroyed on account of order,

His master the cause neither.

… nothing much…

… an iron boxed spirit.

Sappho, P. Oxy. 1787, tr. 5

‘You do me a great discourtesy,’ laughed Charles Newton the very first time they met him. ‘I remember perfectly well who you are.’

He wiped his hand in his handkerchief before offering it to the Doctor to shake. ‘Hello, Evelyn! Hello, Doctor! I like the get-up. What brings you to the frenzy of Bodrum?’

The Doctor looked quickly at Evelyn, as if to say, ‘Sometimes this happens,’ and, ‘Don’t let on to him,’ and also, ‘But you know all this anyway, don’t you?’ The general effect of this was to cause the pom-poms on top of his hat to bounce. The Doctor’s airy local dress might have made him look even sillier than usual, but it clearly kept him cool. The awnings kept the worst of the mid-afternoon sun off the dig, but it was still a sweltering day.

Evelyn had politely declined his offer of contemporary corsets and hoops, preferring shorts and a baggy old T-shirt – the uniform of archaeologists in her own time. She raised an eyebrow at him, as if to say, ‘Just get on with it.’

Turning back to Newton, the Doctor said affably, ‘We heard you were here, Charles, so we thought we’d look in on you. How long can it have been?’

Newton considered. ‘Three or four years? You remember that dinner we had, and the dancing…’ She’d half expected him to be in full collar and coat but he had – for a nineteenth-century gentleman – a rather rakish style with a dash of the Orient. He had a full beard and dark, bushy hair, and a public-schoolboy athleticism that his biography put down to a daily swim. Evelyn felt glad she was not twenty years younger or the poor man might have been in some trouble.

‘Yes, indeed,’ laughed the Doctor as if of course he remembered.

‘It just doesn’t seem that long ago. Does it, Evelyn?’

‘No, Doctor,’ she replied, shaking her head at him. Honestly, he’d be late for his own funeral.

They were a couple of months out. He had promised her January 1857 and the chance to see history as it happened. Newton’s team were unearthing the fourth-century BCE funerary temple of King Mausolus, from which the word ‘mausoleum’ came. By Evelyn’s time, the temple stood in the British Museum in London. She had written part of her Master’s about how they’d put it all back together.

What she’d really wanted to see was who actually discovered it.

In fifty years’ time there’d be fierce debate about how Newton had not properly credited one of his team and effectively stolen the glory. He’d be dead by then – unable either to defend his reputation or admit his disgrace. She’d only just read a new book about him, which had reignited her youthful fury to know one way or the other.

At least if Newton already knew them it meant they’d get another go finding out.

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