"You can open your eyes now."
Tegan blinked her eyes open. The sunlight was sharp in her eyes, making her blink. The atmosphere was humid and the colors around her -- she immediately knew she was on Earth. The Doctor was standing in front of her, bent at the waist as usual, smiling loosely at her.
"You enjoy that," she complained quietly. She blinked again and gazed at their surroundings. It was a beautiful open grassy field. Had she paid more attention in science class in second form, she supposed she might have known what kind of grass it was, but as it stood, she only knew that it was tall, boggy grass. She inhaled and was immediately struck with the smell of hard, hot Earth. "Are we..."
"We are," the Doctor confirmed. He turned to survey the field and beyond it what appeared to be a small settlement. Tegan came forward to the edge of the grass where he stood, and joined him, squinting into the powerful sunlight and towards the massive stacked pyramid in front of them. On the topmost part of the pyramid, greenery, seemingly more bright than that around them because of the reddish bricks it was set against outlined a building.
At the foot of the building, people milled and moved to and fro. They were too far away for her to make out any details.
The reeds next to her rustled loudly. She jumped.
"We appear to have arrived," Tren muttered at her elbow.
"Ah, yes," the Doctor stated and calmly turned to greet the other man.
"When we were supposed to?" Tegan pressed.
"Oh Tegan," the Doctor muttered. He stepped from the edge of the bog and turned around to reach out his hand to her. "Have faith in our friend Tren here. Of course we are when we are supposed to be. That building over there is a ziggurat, a religious building and from the iconography outside, I would assume it has been dedicated to the God An."
"And who's that when he's at home?"
Tren stifled a chortle, but Tegan heard it nonetheless. She was determined to enjoy herself even if it were in the face of a seemingly academic exercise of the Doctor's. She blinked and gazed at her friend to see his lips turn up into a smirk of sorts.
"We simply did a side step in spatial coordinates, Miss Tegan," Tren responded. He extricated himself from the reeds and dusted his clothes off with a flat hand.
The Doctor began quietly. "He is the main deity of the Sumerians from the Uruk era...the early era of Sumerian history. Or rather...the Akkardian people who displaced the Ubaidian..."
Tegan sighed and took the Doctor's hand to step from the marsh. "You sound like my grandmother's pastor, Doc...begats, begats and more begats." At his sigh, she continued. "Simple question: do you know when we are?"
He twisted around and squinted at the sun and slowly turned to stare at the architecture that seemed to spring from nowhere, massive and square, in the center of the village. She watched as his eyes narrowed and he bit his lip; it was endearing to see the familiar thought process. She slipped her arm through the nook in his.
The Doctor looked down and his eyes were warm. "Right after the Great Flood, Tegan....the Jendat Nasr Period of Sumeria. Look at the silt underfoot; it covers most of the ground as far as the eyes can see. That's from the Euphrates and the Tigris and a massive flood. They've invented the wheel. And..." he sniffed the air. "Smell that slight acrid aroma? They're beginning to experiment with iron smelting, I would think. Definitely soon after the Flood..."
"But that..." Tegan began and then frowned. "That covered the whole world...why would there be so many people...and how..."
"Possibly only a few decades or maybe a couple of hundred years, Tegan, since it happened. I can see the time period in the level of culture." He smiled and adjusted his hat on his head. "These people would report the flood as world wide, Tegan...it covered everything they knew."
She must have looked shocked, because he covered her hand with his. "Come on...really Tegan," he began. "It's all relativity of situations, you see. If you only know five miles from your home and don't know if anything else exists and you saw it all covered with water so that the whole lot is uninhabitable, wouldn't you say the entire world was covered with water? Of course you would. As these people did, Tegan."
"God's hat, Doc," she muttered as she covered her eyes from the direct sunlight. "Leave me one undisturbed myth, please?"
He smiled gently. "I'll try, Tegan. I will most definitely try."
**
Tren trailed behind them, slowly taking in all that he saw. Tegan recognized the look of awe on his face. It was obvious he had only been a few non Rejuvina preplanned places in the Universe; he'd never just landed himself anywhere and any time like they always did. It was a studied difference to the calm easy gait the Doctor maintained. She felt the slight swagger in the Time Lord's steps that he tried hard to hide. His eyes under his hat held the studied nonchalance of a man noticing simply everything while looking almost uninterested. She appreciated suddenly that his hand was still covering hers and he escorted her like a man showing a woman his champion cricket team. There was that infuriating knowledge that he viewed this all as a glorified education experiment even though they were walking into God knows what, but she felt safe. As usual. For the present.
The first building they passed on their trek was a small mud brick type house that looked barely large enough for one person, but she realized it held a family. She saw a woman with a child at her breast at the door and wanted to stop, to talk, but the Doctor kept her on path.
A path it appeared he had already plotted. He was making a beeline for the ziggurat, the large pyramid type structure, and the carvings on a column nearby.
He was oblivious to everything else as usual, but she knew they were drawing stares.
"Come along," he whispered as her gait slowed. "Almost there."
"But, Doctor..." she sighed. She looked to the sky for strength and quickened her stride. "What do you intend to do? Read these columns too?"
"That was the main purpose in coming here." He settled his hat further back on his head and she was amused by his very 1930's archeologist's look. He continued to stroll with nary a glance to the right or left. "I want to see if the writing matches the samples I traced yesterday from the columns on the Eye. The Sumerians were the first to use cuneiform, you know. And the samples I have from yesterday..." he patted his chest pocket proudly. "The samples clearly show the beginnings of mathematical theory inherent in the cuneiform figures. It's akin to very Early Gallifreyan writing, Tegan and that interests me immensely."
"Everything interests you immensely," she retorted. "A bloody linguist..."
She was startled as her arm was jerked by his quick stop. The Doctor bent down, his other hand alighting on her shoulder. "Are you all right, Tegan? You look worried."
"Haven't you noticed," she pressed as she quickly turned back towards the way they had come. Tren drew alongside them and uneasily glanced over his shoulder as well. "We're being watched rather closely. It's raising my hackles, Doc."
"She's right," Tren muttered. He straightened his back and adjusted his draped clothes about his shoulders. "We have apparently drawn attention, Doctor."
"Hmm," he replied as he glanced at their audience. Several women with children and a couple of men dressed in little else than a cloth covering their hips had gathered. Tegan had seen the looks like theirs previously and it was often on the faces of people holding a gun at her. She had learned about fear and force on Sylvania and something about the nearly tangible friction in the air alerted her to possible problems.
"Well, Tegan," he continued after biting his lip for a moment. "Your clothing is rather rich looking. I do believe they have yet to have mined silver and gold isn't plentiful here. Metallic color would be a new thing to them."
"And your clothes are a tad out of style," she muttered.
Tren drew in close jostling Tegan's arm in the process. "This is a new situation."
"What?" Tegan asked. A glance at the young man's face showed her that he was a little scared and more than a little sheepish.
His dark eyes turned to her. "Rejuvina technology ensures that locations for vacations have a basic understanding of language of those traveling to them or translation devices on hand."
"Rabbits," Tegan responded with a frown. "And they have neither here."
"I do admit: I should have thought of this before we left. A translator device could have been calibrated once we arrived."
As the others drew closer, Tegan shook her head. "But we all understand one another...you, me, the Doctor... It's that TARDIS ability..."
"Ah, well," the Doctor sighed as he rubbed his head. "We are all speaking English right now, Tegan. Tren is quite right in pointing out the problem. The TARDIS translational circuits won't stretch this far, I'm afraid, and my Ancient Sumerian is really extremely rusty." He glanced at the now almost humorous amount of people gathered around them. "Never mind, Tegan. We should just keep walking. The sooner we reach the columns and act as though nothing is amiss, the sooner they'll return to their business."
"Are you sure? It's like we're the main attraction."
"Brave heart, Tegan," the Doctor replied as he reached for her hand. "Trust me. In these instances it's always best to smile, nod and continue on with plans until stopped. Now, come on..."
She was pulled by him towards the columns. All other noise had stopped about them; the crunching of the hard sand underfoot and their breathing was all she could hear. It seemed that even the animals were watching them. As they neared, the Doctor switched the hand holding hers and used the other to pull out a piece of paper out of his pocket. She could smell the stone; it smelled cold, ancient to her. The writing on it reminded her of the etchings from Rassilon's tomb and Egyptian hieroglyphics wrapped in a nice neat package.
"Hmmm," the Doctor muttered. "Very interesting, don't you think, Tegan?" He let go of her hand after squeezing it. As he knelt, he pulled out a pencil and a folded leaf of paper. "Yes, the writing is very much the same, but with a more squared strike. It could be the tools they used for etching. Much more primitive by the looks of it."
Tegan shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest; she felt naked. "What do you have to do?"
"I need to take impressions of this writing. I can translate it more fully when we return to the Eye," he responded, his voice distant as he concentrated on his task. "And I shall be able to compare it to Gallifreyan in the TARDIS. I'm not quite as fluent with Ancient Gallifreyan as I am the Middle and Late varieties. Always seemed more than tedious..." he grinned up at Tegan. She spared him a momentary glance. "I rather enjoyed field trips."
"Somehow that doesn't surprise me in the least," she breathed. Her eyes trained back on the crowd about them. She saw the writing on the left side of the column, the side hidden in shadow. Tegan stepped to the side and glanced down. "Doctor...the writing is completely different on this side."
"Is it?" he frowned up at her and shifted his weight to look where she indicated. She pointed her finger at the collection of animal-based pictorial representation and knelt.
"Excellent, Tegan; you take my breath away." He quickly finished his impression of the first side and found another large piece of paper in his pocket. Skittering around, crouched, he began to make impressions of the next side. Tegan stepped back and to the side.
"And this side too!" Tegan exclaimed. The writing on this new side was even more alien to her eyes. It was more like diagonal lines and ticks in configuration.
The Doctor's eyes widened, but he continued his work, his hands working like a blur. He stopped for a moment, grabbed another piece of paper and a pencil from one of his pockets. "Here, Tegan. Do as I am doing...transfer the etchings to the paper."
She knelt and began to take impressions of the writings. Behind her, she heard Tren shuffling about on the path. He was nervous; she knew the sound of nerves. Minutes later, Tren confirmed her knowledge. "Doctor? Miss Tegan?"
"Yes, Tren?" Without looking up, the Doctor continued to madly scribble. "Could you move out of the sun?"
"Our company has not dissipated."
Tegan glanced up at Tren and then to the gathering. He was right: there were more people and they were closer to them.
"Smile, Tren. We're almost done here."
"If he doesn't find something else to impress," Tegan responded with a smile. She continued to take the impression madly until she felt Tren touching her shoulder. The crowd around them was parting. She was mesmerized as she watched the women, several of which were holding babies or toddlers, and small children stepped to the side. They lowered their heads in a show of reverence.
Against the incredibly bright blue sky, the drab earthy colors of the clothes were dull. There were a few more men in loincloths and still others with something draped about their shoulders. But as the crowd parted, she saw a tall, slender man dressed in red standing at the center. He held a stick that had writing like the first side of the column.
Tegan glanced at the other columns. Every single one of them looked like it had two different types of writing on them. She had wondered how they had landed in so close to the column that they needed to take an impression of, but realized that all of the columns would have given them at least two different languages. But she also noted that none of the people came closer than the edge of the square that the columns outlined. This man was no exception, and he appeared to contemplate them with large measure of annoyance.
"Doc?"
"Almost there, Tegan. How are you coming along?" he asked.
"Doc...we've got company," she muttered.
The man pounded his stick against the ground and shouted a long series of syllables heavy on the consonants and very unlike English. It felt like a jackhammer against her eardrum.
The Doctor mightily frowned as he heard the words. His inhale made her know that he didn't know what was going on either. He rose and stepped around, laying his hand on her shoulder.
"Ah, well...Tegan..." he sighed as she rose. He grasped at her hand. "I do believe I should have brushed up on my Sumerian language skills."
"Tell me something..." she responded as she stared at the man facing them. It was clear he was angry. "Tell me something I don't know, Doc. He looks decidedly unfriendly."
**
"Ah," the Doctor began and stepped forward. He gently pressed Tegan behind him with one of his hands while extending the other one, palm up, towards the man. The man eyed his hand with annoyance and trepidation. Tren stepped to Tegan's right. She wasn't sure if he was scared or just ignorant of what was going on, but she didn't want to take the time to look. All of her attention was on the Doctor and their inquisitor.
"Ah, yes..." the Doctor reached up and took off his hat, handing it quickly back to her. "Hello. I'm the Doctor and these are my friends, Tegan and Tren."
"Too many syllables," Tegan muttered. She laid her hand against his back and leaned in close. She opted to flash a wide smile at the group around them while the Doctor took a deep breath.
"We are friends." The Doctor tried again, but the man shook his head and banged his walking stick against the ground once more.
She winced as a string of syllables poured out of their accuser's mouth. But the Doctor leaned forward, his brow creased in concentration. Tren laid his hand on the Doctor's shoulder and shook his head.
"I don't have a clue, Doctor," the specialist sighed.
The Doctor didn't spare him a glance, however. When she looked up at him, she could see the Time Lord was mildly shocked and clearly thinking. She wondered what was going on his head, but didn't have long to wait to find out.
His words, at least she thought they were words, were long and full of consonants. There were little or no vowels and although they appeared to be words, they were alien to her ears.
Their accuser reeled as if struck. He yelled and several men appeared at the peripheral of the square in which they stood.
To Tegan's war hardened senses, it appeared that their accuser was planning to take prisoners. The air was filled with the sound of shuffling feet. She tapped the Doctor on the shoulder. "Please tell me you didn't just offer to sleep with the chief's daughter..."
The Doctor released a hard sigh that might have been a laugh or agitation. "No, Tegan, I didn't," he responded as he reached for her arm. A gentle tug brought her alongside him and into plain sight. "I don't understand what he is saying. I didn't respond in kind."
"Then what did you say?"
"Yes, Doctor," Tren added his voice to Tegan's, stepping to her far left. "If my ears weren't mistaken, I do believe I heard..."
"Very rudimentary Gallifreyan or rather I used the basic speech patterns and words of Early Gallifreyan," the Doctor replied. "I simply told him we were friends and meant no harm."
She straightened her back as the men neared them. The men were all dressed alike, in white loincloths and carried matching sticks. They neared, but it was at a slow pace. Their steps were so well placed and slow that barely any dust rose from them. And the silence hurt her ears. No one made a sound, not even the babies and children.
"But he wasn't speaking Gallifreyan," Tegan pressed.
"No, but he understood it," the Doctor said as the first of the men reached them. "Or at least it didn't sound alien to him. He didn't do this when I spoke English to him, but when I switched to a very early form of my home language...he reacted. Interesting, don't you think?"
"Interesting..." Tegan began as one of the guards reached for her. The Doctor gently eased her in front of him and slowly began to walk towards the edge of the square. "Interesting wasn't a word I'd use to describe it..."
"Trust me, Tegan. We shall be fine."
Tren wasn't so convinced, however. "But where are they taking us to be fine?"
"Hmm, well...hopefully somewhere out of the sun..." the Doctor responded with a small smile. He cast a wary glance at the accuser towards whom they were being forced. "I hope."
**
If she had thought that the pyramid was large from far away, it was immense and awe-inspiring when they neared it. Somehow, she had been forced between her two friends as they walked. Every once in a while, one of them would be pushed from behind and would stumble. Her sandals were doing little to protect her feet against the hard sun-dried mud brick path they walked and she was sure that Tren's feet hurt as well.
She squinted into the sun and up at what the Doctor had called a ziggurat. It was a triple level pyramid, three levels all constructed in the same red mud sun dried brick. The top level appeared to be all plants with a regular building. As they neared it, she saw steps leading up to a sloped walkway that ramped up the side. She had seen pictures of things like this as a child.
"The Tower of Babel," she said under her breath. "The Hanging Gardens..."
"Both of which are not built yet, Tegan," the Doctor responded. "And won't be for a few centuries; Babylon has yet to conquer this section of Akkardian peoples." He no sooner finished speaking than he was shoved hard from behind and ended up stumbling forward and falling to his knees. As he went down, one of the men behind them roughly tapped his newly healed leg. He hissed in pain.
Tegan twisted, stepping in back of the Doctor as their captors made to push him again. "Bloody brutes! Leave him be! We're walking as fast as we can."
"Tegan," he warned as he slowly climbed to his feet. Tren reached down to haul the Doctor up to his feet, but Tegan refused to budge in between the captors and the Doctor. She found her hands balling into fists and her hand felt empty. Mournfully, for a second, she realized she was missing having a firearm in her hand. With concentration, she released the fists.
The Inquisitor approached and stopped within inches of her. His mouth, when he grinned at her, held teeth that were in varying stages of decay and were flat. She was sure the Doctor would say something about his eating habits, but all she could think of to complain about was his lack of hygiene. "I've seen people like you before," she said quietly. "And they're often on the other end of a gun nozzle from me..."
A cool familiar hand grasped her elbow. Several syllables of incomprehensible words sounded over her shoulder in the Doctor's calm, calculating tone. She had heard it used most recently when he was playing ambassador; it was aimed at making situations smooth. The Inquisitor didn't move his gaze from her though, and she was damned if she was going to look away first. His smile dimmed and then the man rumbled several words.
She saw the hand heading toward her face and instinctively reached out to intercept it. The force of the blow jarred her hand and her wrist and she grunted. "Don't even think it," she whispered.
The hand that hit her face the other way she had no way of stopping. It was too fast and she didn't see it coming. She had crossed her body with her dominant hand to stop the original strike. The Doctor's hand tightened on her elbow and he was there beside her in a breath. He reached out and took a hold of the hand she held in hers and forcefully extracted it from her grasp. He wasn't kind about it and she knew that his strength could be incredible. Another string of words emanated from him, this time more forceful and clipped. Tren pulled her back by her shoulders and the Doctor released her only when she was behind him.
There was silence and then the Doctor turned her with hands to her shoulders and began to walk once more towards the bottom steps.
They walked in silence for several moments, climbing the stairs to the slanted path.
"Bloody bastards," she nearly spat as they were several steps above their leaders.
He lifted his hand as they crested the stairs and mounted the sloped path. She felt his cool fingers lightly against her cheek. "He hit you hard enough to make your body jar, Tegan," he said quietly. He stopped her and turned her face toward him with both his palms on her cheeks. His concerned visage made her feel gentled and calmed. "You'll have quite a mark on your cheek," he stated. He traced it with his finger. Their guards had gathered around them, but he didn't move. "Don't draw attention to yourself, Tegan. Women are not considered equal citizens in this society. That was why he slapped you. You were quite forceful with him."
"They hit you."
"Tegan..." he warned quietly. "Please...I have my reasons."
"You want me to take this lying down?" Tegan grumbled disbelievingly.
"I don't want you struck again..."
He turned her and ushered her ahead of their captors and up the final level of stairs. "Doctor..."
His eyes were forward, and he looked to be the calm, collected Time Lord she had known for the better part of five years. But when he spoke, she heard the warlord he had been seeping into his persona with the cold, harsh, unbending tone he used. "I would not allow it to happen again. And I'm sure that my reaction would not do our predicament here any good."
"Doc..."
"I wouldn't allow it to happen again, Tegan."
"I've had worse and have given worse in the last year."
"I wasn't with you in the last year," he responded.
With his final word, they crested the top of the stairs. As she glanced about the open aired building, she hitched a breath. "Oh rabbits and spit..."
Tegan blinked her eyes open. The sunlight was sharp in her eyes, making her blink. The atmosphere was humid and the colors around her -- she immediately knew she was on Earth. The Doctor was standing in front of her, bent at the waist as usual, smiling loosely at her.
"You enjoy that," she complained quietly. She blinked again and gazed at their surroundings. It was a beautiful open grassy field. Had she paid more attention in science class in second form, she supposed she might have known what kind of grass it was, but as it stood, she only knew that it was tall, boggy grass. She inhaled and was immediately struck with the smell of hard, hot Earth. "Are we..."
"We are," the Doctor confirmed. He turned to survey the field and beyond it what appeared to be a small settlement. Tegan came forward to the edge of the grass where he stood, and joined him, squinting into the powerful sunlight and towards the massive stacked pyramid in front of them. On the topmost part of the pyramid, greenery, seemingly more bright than that around them because of the reddish bricks it was set against outlined a building.
At the foot of the building, people milled and moved to and fro. They were too far away for her to make out any details.
The reeds next to her rustled loudly. She jumped.
"We appear to have arrived," Tren muttered at her elbow.
"Ah, yes," the Doctor stated and calmly turned to greet the other man.
"When we were supposed to?" Tegan pressed.
"Oh Tegan," the Doctor muttered. He stepped from the edge of the bog and turned around to reach out his hand to her. "Have faith in our friend Tren here. Of course we are when we are supposed to be. That building over there is a ziggurat, a religious building and from the iconography outside, I would assume it has been dedicated to the God An."
"And who's that when he's at home?"
Tren stifled a chortle, but Tegan heard it nonetheless. She was determined to enjoy herself even if it were in the face of a seemingly academic exercise of the Doctor's. She blinked and gazed at her friend to see his lips turn up into a smirk of sorts.
"We simply did a side step in spatial coordinates, Miss Tegan," Tren responded. He extricated himself from the reeds and dusted his clothes off with a flat hand.
The Doctor began quietly. "He is the main deity of the Sumerians from the Uruk era...the early era of Sumerian history. Or rather...the Akkardian people who displaced the Ubaidian..."
Tegan sighed and took the Doctor's hand to step from the marsh. "You sound like my grandmother's pastor, Doc...begats, begats and more begats." At his sigh, she continued. "Simple question: do you know when we are?"
He twisted around and squinted at the sun and slowly turned to stare at the architecture that seemed to spring from nowhere, massive and square, in the center of the village. She watched as his eyes narrowed and he bit his lip; it was endearing to see the familiar thought process. She slipped her arm through the nook in his.
The Doctor looked down and his eyes were warm. "Right after the Great Flood, Tegan....the Jendat Nasr Period of Sumeria. Look at the silt underfoot; it covers most of the ground as far as the eyes can see. That's from the Euphrates and the Tigris and a massive flood. They've invented the wheel. And..." he sniffed the air. "Smell that slight acrid aroma? They're beginning to experiment with iron smelting, I would think. Definitely soon after the Flood..."
"But that..." Tegan began and then frowned. "That covered the whole world...why would there be so many people...and how..."
"Possibly only a few decades or maybe a couple of hundred years, Tegan, since it happened. I can see the time period in the level of culture." He smiled and adjusted his hat on his head. "These people would report the flood as world wide, Tegan...it covered everything they knew."
She must have looked shocked, because he covered her hand with his. "Come on...really Tegan," he began. "It's all relativity of situations, you see. If you only know five miles from your home and don't know if anything else exists and you saw it all covered with water so that the whole lot is uninhabitable, wouldn't you say the entire world was covered with water? Of course you would. As these people did, Tegan."
"God's hat, Doc," she muttered as she covered her eyes from the direct sunlight. "Leave me one undisturbed myth, please?"
He smiled gently. "I'll try, Tegan. I will most definitely try."
**
Tren trailed behind them, slowly taking in all that he saw. Tegan recognized the look of awe on his face. It was obvious he had only been a few non Rejuvina preplanned places in the Universe; he'd never just landed himself anywhere and any time like they always did. It was a studied difference to the calm easy gait the Doctor maintained. She felt the slight swagger in the Time Lord's steps that he tried hard to hide. His eyes under his hat held the studied nonchalance of a man noticing simply everything while looking almost uninterested. She appreciated suddenly that his hand was still covering hers and he escorted her like a man showing a woman his champion cricket team. There was that infuriating knowledge that he viewed this all as a glorified education experiment even though they were walking into God knows what, but she felt safe. As usual. For the present.
The first building they passed on their trek was a small mud brick type house that looked barely large enough for one person, but she realized it held a family. She saw a woman with a child at her breast at the door and wanted to stop, to talk, but the Doctor kept her on path.
A path it appeared he had already plotted. He was making a beeline for the ziggurat, the large pyramid type structure, and the carvings on a column nearby.
He was oblivious to everything else as usual, but she knew they were drawing stares.
"Come along," he whispered as her gait slowed. "Almost there."
"But, Doctor..." she sighed. She looked to the sky for strength and quickened her stride. "What do you intend to do? Read these columns too?"
"That was the main purpose in coming here." He settled his hat further back on his head and she was amused by his very 1930's archeologist's look. He continued to stroll with nary a glance to the right or left. "I want to see if the writing matches the samples I traced yesterday from the columns on the Eye. The Sumerians were the first to use cuneiform, you know. And the samples I have from yesterday..." he patted his chest pocket proudly. "The samples clearly show the beginnings of mathematical theory inherent in the cuneiform figures. It's akin to very Early Gallifreyan writing, Tegan and that interests me immensely."
"Everything interests you immensely," she retorted. "A bloody linguist..."
She was startled as her arm was jerked by his quick stop. The Doctor bent down, his other hand alighting on her shoulder. "Are you all right, Tegan? You look worried."
"Haven't you noticed," she pressed as she quickly turned back towards the way they had come. Tren drew alongside them and uneasily glanced over his shoulder as well. "We're being watched rather closely. It's raising my hackles, Doc."
"She's right," Tren muttered. He straightened his back and adjusted his draped clothes about his shoulders. "We have apparently drawn attention, Doctor."
"Hmm," he replied as he glanced at their audience. Several women with children and a couple of men dressed in little else than a cloth covering their hips had gathered. Tegan had seen the looks like theirs previously and it was often on the faces of people holding a gun at her. She had learned about fear and force on Sylvania and something about the nearly tangible friction in the air alerted her to possible problems.
"Well, Tegan," he continued after biting his lip for a moment. "Your clothing is rather rich looking. I do believe they have yet to have mined silver and gold isn't plentiful here. Metallic color would be a new thing to them."
"And your clothes are a tad out of style," she muttered.
Tren drew in close jostling Tegan's arm in the process. "This is a new situation."
"What?" Tegan asked. A glance at the young man's face showed her that he was a little scared and more than a little sheepish.
His dark eyes turned to her. "Rejuvina technology ensures that locations for vacations have a basic understanding of language of those traveling to them or translation devices on hand."
"Rabbits," Tegan responded with a frown. "And they have neither here."
"I do admit: I should have thought of this before we left. A translator device could have been calibrated once we arrived."
As the others drew closer, Tegan shook her head. "But we all understand one another...you, me, the Doctor... It's that TARDIS ability..."
"Ah, well," the Doctor sighed as he rubbed his head. "We are all speaking English right now, Tegan. Tren is quite right in pointing out the problem. The TARDIS translational circuits won't stretch this far, I'm afraid, and my Ancient Sumerian is really extremely rusty." He glanced at the now almost humorous amount of people gathered around them. "Never mind, Tegan. We should just keep walking. The sooner we reach the columns and act as though nothing is amiss, the sooner they'll return to their business."
"Are you sure? It's like we're the main attraction."
"Brave heart, Tegan," the Doctor replied as he reached for her hand. "Trust me. In these instances it's always best to smile, nod and continue on with plans until stopped. Now, come on..."
She was pulled by him towards the columns. All other noise had stopped about them; the crunching of the hard sand underfoot and their breathing was all she could hear. It seemed that even the animals were watching them. As they neared, the Doctor switched the hand holding hers and used the other to pull out a piece of paper out of his pocket. She could smell the stone; it smelled cold, ancient to her. The writing on it reminded her of the etchings from Rassilon's tomb and Egyptian hieroglyphics wrapped in a nice neat package.
"Hmmm," the Doctor muttered. "Very interesting, don't you think, Tegan?" He let go of her hand after squeezing it. As he knelt, he pulled out a pencil and a folded leaf of paper. "Yes, the writing is very much the same, but with a more squared strike. It could be the tools they used for etching. Much more primitive by the looks of it."
Tegan shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest; she felt naked. "What do you have to do?"
"I need to take impressions of this writing. I can translate it more fully when we return to the Eye," he responded, his voice distant as he concentrated on his task. "And I shall be able to compare it to Gallifreyan in the TARDIS. I'm not quite as fluent with Ancient Gallifreyan as I am the Middle and Late varieties. Always seemed more than tedious..." he grinned up at Tegan. She spared him a momentary glance. "I rather enjoyed field trips."
"Somehow that doesn't surprise me in the least," she breathed. Her eyes trained back on the crowd about them. She saw the writing on the left side of the column, the side hidden in shadow. Tegan stepped to the side and glanced down. "Doctor...the writing is completely different on this side."
"Is it?" he frowned up at her and shifted his weight to look where she indicated. She pointed her finger at the collection of animal-based pictorial representation and knelt.
"Excellent, Tegan; you take my breath away." He quickly finished his impression of the first side and found another large piece of paper in his pocket. Skittering around, crouched, he began to make impressions of the next side. Tegan stepped back and to the side.
"And this side too!" Tegan exclaimed. The writing on this new side was even more alien to her eyes. It was more like diagonal lines and ticks in configuration.
The Doctor's eyes widened, but he continued his work, his hands working like a blur. He stopped for a moment, grabbed another piece of paper and a pencil from one of his pockets. "Here, Tegan. Do as I am doing...transfer the etchings to the paper."
She knelt and began to take impressions of the writings. Behind her, she heard Tren shuffling about on the path. He was nervous; she knew the sound of nerves. Minutes later, Tren confirmed her knowledge. "Doctor? Miss Tegan?"
"Yes, Tren?" Without looking up, the Doctor continued to madly scribble. "Could you move out of the sun?"
"Our company has not dissipated."
Tegan glanced up at Tren and then to the gathering. He was right: there were more people and they were closer to them.
"Smile, Tren. We're almost done here."
"If he doesn't find something else to impress," Tegan responded with a smile. She continued to take the impression madly until she felt Tren touching her shoulder. The crowd around them was parting. She was mesmerized as she watched the women, several of which were holding babies or toddlers, and small children stepped to the side. They lowered their heads in a show of reverence.
Against the incredibly bright blue sky, the drab earthy colors of the clothes were dull. There were a few more men in loincloths and still others with something draped about their shoulders. But as the crowd parted, she saw a tall, slender man dressed in red standing at the center. He held a stick that had writing like the first side of the column.
Tegan glanced at the other columns. Every single one of them looked like it had two different types of writing on them. She had wondered how they had landed in so close to the column that they needed to take an impression of, but realized that all of the columns would have given them at least two different languages. But she also noted that none of the people came closer than the edge of the square that the columns outlined. This man was no exception, and he appeared to contemplate them with large measure of annoyance.
"Doc?"
"Almost there, Tegan. How are you coming along?" he asked.
"Doc...we've got company," she muttered.
The man pounded his stick against the ground and shouted a long series of syllables heavy on the consonants and very unlike English. It felt like a jackhammer against her eardrum.
The Doctor mightily frowned as he heard the words. His inhale made her know that he didn't know what was going on either. He rose and stepped around, laying his hand on her shoulder.
"Ah, well...Tegan..." he sighed as she rose. He grasped at her hand. "I do believe I should have brushed up on my Sumerian language skills."
"Tell me something..." she responded as she stared at the man facing them. It was clear he was angry. "Tell me something I don't know, Doc. He looks decidedly unfriendly."
**
"Ah," the Doctor began and stepped forward. He gently pressed Tegan behind him with one of his hands while extending the other one, palm up, towards the man. The man eyed his hand with annoyance and trepidation. Tren stepped to Tegan's right. She wasn't sure if he was scared or just ignorant of what was going on, but she didn't want to take the time to look. All of her attention was on the Doctor and their inquisitor.
"Ah, yes..." the Doctor reached up and took off his hat, handing it quickly back to her. "Hello. I'm the Doctor and these are my friends, Tegan and Tren."
"Too many syllables," Tegan muttered. She laid her hand against his back and leaned in close. She opted to flash a wide smile at the group around them while the Doctor took a deep breath.
"We are friends." The Doctor tried again, but the man shook his head and banged his walking stick against the ground once more.
She winced as a string of syllables poured out of their accuser's mouth. But the Doctor leaned forward, his brow creased in concentration. Tren laid his hand on the Doctor's shoulder and shook his head.
"I don't have a clue, Doctor," the specialist sighed.
The Doctor didn't spare him a glance, however. When she looked up at him, she could see the Time Lord was mildly shocked and clearly thinking. She wondered what was going on his head, but didn't have long to wait to find out.
His words, at least she thought they were words, were long and full of consonants. There were little or no vowels and although they appeared to be words, they were alien to her ears.
Their accuser reeled as if struck. He yelled and several men appeared at the peripheral of the square in which they stood.
To Tegan's war hardened senses, it appeared that their accuser was planning to take prisoners. The air was filled with the sound of shuffling feet. She tapped the Doctor on the shoulder. "Please tell me you didn't just offer to sleep with the chief's daughter..."
The Doctor released a hard sigh that might have been a laugh or agitation. "No, Tegan, I didn't," he responded as he reached for her arm. A gentle tug brought her alongside him and into plain sight. "I don't understand what he is saying. I didn't respond in kind."
"Then what did you say?"
"Yes, Doctor," Tren added his voice to Tegan's, stepping to her far left. "If my ears weren't mistaken, I do believe I heard..."
"Very rudimentary Gallifreyan or rather I used the basic speech patterns and words of Early Gallifreyan," the Doctor replied. "I simply told him we were friends and meant no harm."
She straightened her back as the men neared them. The men were all dressed alike, in white loincloths and carried matching sticks. They neared, but it was at a slow pace. Their steps were so well placed and slow that barely any dust rose from them. And the silence hurt her ears. No one made a sound, not even the babies and children.
"But he wasn't speaking Gallifreyan," Tegan pressed.
"No, but he understood it," the Doctor said as the first of the men reached them. "Or at least it didn't sound alien to him. He didn't do this when I spoke English to him, but when I switched to a very early form of my home language...he reacted. Interesting, don't you think?"
"Interesting..." Tegan began as one of the guards reached for her. The Doctor gently eased her in front of him and slowly began to walk towards the edge of the square. "Interesting wasn't a word I'd use to describe it..."
"Trust me, Tegan. We shall be fine."
Tren wasn't so convinced, however. "But where are they taking us to be fine?"
"Hmm, well...hopefully somewhere out of the sun..." the Doctor responded with a small smile. He cast a wary glance at the accuser towards whom they were being forced. "I hope."
**
If she had thought that the pyramid was large from far away, it was immense and awe-inspiring when they neared it. Somehow, she had been forced between her two friends as they walked. Every once in a while, one of them would be pushed from behind and would stumble. Her sandals were doing little to protect her feet against the hard sun-dried mud brick path they walked and she was sure that Tren's feet hurt as well.
She squinted into the sun and up at what the Doctor had called a ziggurat. It was a triple level pyramid, three levels all constructed in the same red mud sun dried brick. The top level appeared to be all plants with a regular building. As they neared it, she saw steps leading up to a sloped walkway that ramped up the side. She had seen pictures of things like this as a child.
"The Tower of Babel," she said under her breath. "The Hanging Gardens..."
"Both of which are not built yet, Tegan," the Doctor responded. "And won't be for a few centuries; Babylon has yet to conquer this section of Akkardian peoples." He no sooner finished speaking than he was shoved hard from behind and ended up stumbling forward and falling to his knees. As he went down, one of the men behind them roughly tapped his newly healed leg. He hissed in pain.
Tegan twisted, stepping in back of the Doctor as their captors made to push him again. "Bloody brutes! Leave him be! We're walking as fast as we can."
"Tegan," he warned as he slowly climbed to his feet. Tren reached down to haul the Doctor up to his feet, but Tegan refused to budge in between the captors and the Doctor. She found her hands balling into fists and her hand felt empty. Mournfully, for a second, she realized she was missing having a firearm in her hand. With concentration, she released the fists.
The Inquisitor approached and stopped within inches of her. His mouth, when he grinned at her, held teeth that were in varying stages of decay and were flat. She was sure the Doctor would say something about his eating habits, but all she could think of to complain about was his lack of hygiene. "I've seen people like you before," she said quietly. "And they're often on the other end of a gun nozzle from me..."
A cool familiar hand grasped her elbow. Several syllables of incomprehensible words sounded over her shoulder in the Doctor's calm, calculating tone. She had heard it used most recently when he was playing ambassador; it was aimed at making situations smooth. The Inquisitor didn't move his gaze from her though, and she was damned if she was going to look away first. His smile dimmed and then the man rumbled several words.
She saw the hand heading toward her face and instinctively reached out to intercept it. The force of the blow jarred her hand and her wrist and she grunted. "Don't even think it," she whispered.
The hand that hit her face the other way she had no way of stopping. It was too fast and she didn't see it coming. She had crossed her body with her dominant hand to stop the original strike. The Doctor's hand tightened on her elbow and he was there beside her in a breath. He reached out and took a hold of the hand she held in hers and forcefully extracted it from her grasp. He wasn't kind about it and she knew that his strength could be incredible. Another string of words emanated from him, this time more forceful and clipped. Tren pulled her back by her shoulders and the Doctor released her only when she was behind him.
There was silence and then the Doctor turned her with hands to her shoulders and began to walk once more towards the bottom steps.
They walked in silence for several moments, climbing the stairs to the slanted path.
"Bloody bastards," she nearly spat as they were several steps above their leaders.
He lifted his hand as they crested the stairs and mounted the sloped path. She felt his cool fingers lightly against her cheek. "He hit you hard enough to make your body jar, Tegan," he said quietly. He stopped her and turned her face toward him with both his palms on her cheeks. His concerned visage made her feel gentled and calmed. "You'll have quite a mark on your cheek," he stated. He traced it with his finger. Their guards had gathered around them, but he didn't move. "Don't draw attention to yourself, Tegan. Women are not considered equal citizens in this society. That was why he slapped you. You were quite forceful with him."
"They hit you."
"Tegan..." he warned quietly. "Please...I have my reasons."
"You want me to take this lying down?" Tegan grumbled disbelievingly.
"I don't want you struck again..."
He turned her and ushered her ahead of their captors and up the final level of stairs. "Doctor..."
His eyes were forward, and he looked to be the calm, collected Time Lord she had known for the better part of five years. But when he spoke, she heard the warlord he had been seeping into his persona with the cold, harsh, unbending tone he used. "I would not allow it to happen again. And I'm sure that my reaction would not do our predicament here any good."
"Doc..."
"I wouldn't allow it to happen again, Tegan."
"I've had worse and have given worse in the last year."
"I wasn't with you in the last year," he responded.
With his final word, they crested the top of the stairs. As she glanced about the open aired building, she hitched a breath. "Oh rabbits and spit..."