A New Course in Egyptology

Things like this don't happen. Not to me, not in Swansea, not in the Egypt Centre. The biggest excitement we get is each year, when the Christmas hamper comes from Harrods' and we have to parcel it out by raffle. At least it was until the Doctor came.

The most I was used to dealing with was misbehaving children, or their misbehaving parents, leaving filthy fingerprints on the glass cases, especially the sarcophagi case. I keep telling management that it's because the museum's free, that we get all the riff-raff, especially on a rainy day in spring with all those prospective students roaming about. But I'm only a volunteer of thirteen years, you know, and the greatest compliment I can hope to receive is, "Send the school group to Bronwen. She does the Weighing of the Heart so well."

Mind you, I've been to Karnak and Giza—I love the desert—and I do enjoy it when an expert comes in. I love talking to the children, of course, wrapping the cloth mummy for them if they're well-behaved—I did teach primary school for seventeen years—but it's a rare treat to talk Egyptology with someone who's been there. That's what I thought this Doctor was, when I first time I met him. A lecturer in Egyptology, or that he'd studied it at University—he looked too young to be a professor. I guess, after all, it wouldn't be misleading to say he was an expert—he'd certainly been there.

It was about twenty 'til four on a Friday afternoon in March, the week before the University students go on their Easter vacation. There's usually no one in at this time, right before closing, and I was the only volunteer in the galleries. I'd just finished making the sweep of the upper gallery, the House of Life, and had come down to what I assumed was the deserted lower gallery, the House of Death. As I rounded the corner, I was surprised to see a young man staring at the northernmost case, the one with Greco-Egyptian and Coptic death-masks.

He didn't seem to be our typical visitor. He was dressed in a kind of Edwardian coat—I studied ancient history at University, but I've seen enough costume dramas—but he had hippie-ish long hair. "Can I help you with anything, sir?"

He glanced toward me with the attitude of having known I was there all along. "Hmmm? No, I don't think you can, thanks."

He had a clear, pleasant voice, so I don't think he was being deliberately obnoxious. I moved closer; I admit I was curious as to which object had absorbed his interest. He was looking fixedly at the case, but I couldn't tell if it was at anything in particular. "Have you been to the Egypt Centre before?"

He didn't even turn this time. "No, not yet."

I puzzled over this answer, but then I checked my watch. "Sir, you're welcome to take your time," I said, "but I should remind you we'll be closing in fifteen minutes."

He looked straight at me. I don't know what it was—his was a perfectly ordinary face, aside from the eyes, which were piercing blue—but I felt a chill. Then he smiled. "Yes, thank you . . ." he looked down at my volunteer badge, "Bronwen. I'll only be a moment." He cleared his throat. "Look, you don't think you could possibly go off and do something else for awhile?"

"Why would you ask me to do that?" He wasn't planning on stealing anything, was he?

"Oh, it would help me to concentrate." He gave a weak smile. "You don't think I'm going to steal anything, do you?" He tutted, as if I should be ashamed of myself.

I moved closer, between him and the case. "You've hardly made yourself a paragon of innocence just now."

He frowned, as if genuinely hurt. He chewed his lip contemplatively, then he smiled again. "Well, I must say this is an impressive collection." I nodded, but I didn't let my eyes leave his hands, which were reaching into his waistcoat pockets. He suddenly thrust a palm toward me. "I'm the Doctor, by the way." I warily shook. "Yes, an impressive collection indeed." He rocked on his heels. Then he dropped to his knees suddenly, screwing his face up against the glass. "I'm especially interested in the mummy."

I wondered where I had put down my walkie-talkie. "What mummy?" Did he mean the one in the Swansea Museum? I looked at our huge wooden sarcophagi, tomb of a court musician, but empty.

"This mummy," said the so-called Doctor, shining a pen light at the glass case.

I couldn't quite get on my knees like he was doing, but I knew what he was indicating: a baby-sized casket, thought to be fake until Singleton Hospital had x-rayed it. "Sir, what are you doing?" He didn't answer, merely waved his pen light at the glass. I edged toward the table where I had set down my walkie-talkie. "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to get up—"

"Shhhhh!" he snapped from the ground, pressing an ear against the glass.

Well, I didn't need to listen to any more. I picked up the walkie-talkie. I was just about to radio University security when his voice cut through me like ice: "Bronwen, put that down."

"I'm radioing for help," I said, reduced somehow to speaking like a child.

"No, you're not," he said calmly. "Because if you do, you're going to get more people involved, and the more people you get involved, the more people might get hurt."

"Hurt?" I squeaked.

He waved me over, getting to his feet and putting away the pen light. There was such authority in his voice, I felt I had no choice but to obey. As I did, I saw that the mummy casket was moving behind the glass. It was no trick of the light. It was vibrating, and there was a faint, ominous hum. "Doctor? What have you done?"

"Me?" he snapped, taking a few steps backwards. "I'm not the one who put alien artifacts behind glass in easily accessible locations!"

I wiped my brow with my handkerchief. What had he just said?! "What are you talking about?"

"I know it doesn't look like much," he said, "but I've scanned—it's an alien life form, put into cryostasis thousands of years ago when the Deiyans walked the Earth." I wasn't impressed by his nonsense, but I couldn't very well leave the gallery while an object was moving, could I?

"I thought at first it was a different species, one I'd encountered before. But, no. Fond of hiding their technology in indigenous objects. Put Thutmose II on the throne."

"No!"

"Oh, yes. And now it's woken up." He gave me a look that suggested he enjoyed shocking people.

"Now what?" I shouted. The humming was growing louder. "Even if what you say is true—what do you mean, you scanned it?"

He pushed me back from the case, which had now started to glow. Of course I couldn't believe what I was seeing. "I'm afraid," the Doctor said, scuffing the floor with his shoe, "I may have sped up the process a little bit."

At that moment, the case shattered, sheets of glass falling upon the floor. Objects tumbled, and I screamed. The Doctor pulled me to the side, throwing us both behind the sarcophagi case. The glowing brought the mummy casket into sharp relief. I waited a moment for something to emerge from the plaster shell. I knew I was being ridiculous, but I had a nagging suspicion that everything the Doctor said was the truth. "And I thought it was a fake, all these years . . ."

"Are you all right?" he asked.

I didn't feel anything broken, which seemed a miracle to me. My heart was pounding, though. "Yes, I believe so." When he said nothing, I sprang in again: "What's it going to do? Doctor?"

"The life form inside is tiny," he said absently, almost to himself. "The majority of the casing is part of the probe. You see, it's supposed to commence its homing signal when it senses a Deiyan ship in the vicinity. But it seems to have been damaged."

"A probe for what?"

"Reconnaissance. Gathering data."

"An invasion?"

"An invasion!" he agreed. "Bronwen," he said suddenly, laughing, "you certainly catch on quickly!"

I was not about to treat the situation with anything less than dignity. "And now you've made a right mess of things, haven't you? You and your . . . whatever that was!"

"Sonic screwdriver," he said, without blinking. "Bronwen, think. Is there an object upstairs, anywhere in the collection, a weapon? A knife, a spear-tip?"

"There's a Hyskos battle axe upstairs," I ventured. I knew it well; the XVth Dynasty was one of my favorite periods.

"Perfect!" shouted the Doctor. "Now, go upstairs and bring it to me!"

"But I haven't got the key to open the cases!"

"Break the glass! Do something!" he snapped, as the sarcophagi in front of us began to rattle in their cases.

I'll have you know, a voice like his brooked no refusal, so I ran up the stairs as fast as I could—we've never had a lift installed. I knew exactly where the axe was kept. I hadn't had to break through glass since I was a girl and broke out of a shelter during the Swansea Blitz. When I returned to the Doctor, he had his sonic screwdriver pointed toward the glowing alien-mummy. Was I watching telly? I wondered. I didn't dare ask what he was doing. There was a groan, and I was certain the entire building would collapse.

"Here! Is this what you wanted?" I shouted.

He took the axe and spun it around in his free hand. "Thank you, Bronwen."

I was about to say "it's all right," out of habit, but I was struck dumb as I watched him. He tapped the axe in three places, and the dull metal retracted to reveal a maze of circuitry. "Incredible," I murmured. "How did you know?"

He grinned wolfishly. "Lucky guess."

"I don't believe in luck."

"Really?" He touched the wires with the sonic screwdriver. "Neither do I." He suddenly threw the axe through the rubble and glowing light toward the mummy. "Get down!" We both took cover under an overturned table—the one where the children had made their Playdough offering trays only hours before—as a loud explosion rocked the building. When I dared to look up, I saw the light was gone, leaving only a very charred casket amid all the glass.

"What did you do?" I asked as the Doctor moved nimbly through the wreckage. He took off his coat, the long Edwardian one, and used it to cradle the still-smoking mummy.

As an afterthought he added, "Neutralized the homing signal, returned the Deiyan to cryostasis."

"Won't they still be coming?" I demanded.

"The signal's stopped," he said, shaking his head. "But just in case . . ." He started to move toward the door.

I rubbed my sore neck. "What am I going to tell the police?"

"Er, you'll have to be creative," he said cheerfully. He glanced toward the destroyed case, the rare and wonderful objects now laid to ruin. "I'm sorry about all the glass." He pushed open the door as my walkie-talkie began to crackle.

"Doctor, wait!" I grabbed his coat sleeve. "You can't just leave!"

He looked at me thoughtfully. "Bronwen, you're a cool head in a crisis. Want to come with me?"

"Come with you? What are you talking about? You're not going anywhere, Doctor—not without doing some explaining!"

He grabbed the coat back. "Sorry, must dash." Then he was out the front door. I followed him as far as the Callaghan Building, but then he disappeared. The last thing I heard was, "Charley! Time to go!" and then a peculiar wheezing sound.

As I went back inside to await the inevitable arrival of the heddlu, I prepared myself for the worst. As I sifted through the objects from the mummy case, I was amazed to see, other than a few scorch marks, they were all intact. More to the point, the Hyskos axe was still bleeping its alien circuitry. I touched nothing. Let other people, who were used to dealing with these things, sort out this situation.

I wonder what the Doctor meant when he asked me to come with him. Perhaps if I'd been younger I would have said yes.