Doctor Who NA35 - Set Piece by Kate Orman

Author:Kate Orman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2011-07-13T01:07:45+00:00

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 bar of chocolate. ‘The Ants moved it, bien sûr.

Using one of their machines.’

The Doctor glanced towards the house. ‘Brand-new clothes, new furniture, plenty of food. Wealth in the middle of devastation.’

‘There is a war on,’ said the Frenchman, ‘if you hadn’t noticed. We have as much right to stay alive as anyone else. If it’s any consolation, Doctor, you are not being sold for some false ideal, some philosophy of the rabble, but for the purest of reasons. For survival.’

He took something out of his pocket.

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