Egyptian Tahtib: Side Trip
Jared was getting seriously annoyed. He'd re-entered the pyramid and back through the freeze-frame chamber (checking to be sure it was still disabled first), and had spent fifteen fruitless minutes searching for controls for either the chamber or the portal – or any access to any other part of the pyramid. Nothing. As far as his senses and the sonic could tell him, aside from those two hollow rooms, the entire edifice was a single, solid block of marble. The only answer that suggested itself was that the freeze-frame chamber was to prevent unauthorized use of the portal – but that no-brainer didn't help any of the other questions at all.
"Can you tell where it came from? Or when? Or who made it?" Rose asked – a little incautiously.
"Not with this stupid tool," Jared muttered angrily. He almost threw the sonic across the floor, but managed to put it in his pocket instead. "If I had the TARDIS, I could tell you everything," he continued bitterly.
Rose shot a sympathetic glance at her intended's back, and decided to lead him back out into the sunshine. "Where are we, anyway?"
"I told you, eight thousand years in the past."
"Yeah, but where? This isn't the Sinai!"
"Actually, it is. Climate change. Back then there was no desert in north Africa, it was all savannah, clear across the continent. He nodded towards the distant water. "That's the Red Sea there, and those trees," indicating the nearby grove, "mark the Ayun Musa spring."
Sighing heavily, he sat down on the pyramid's steps, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his face a study in disgust and disappointment. Rose came and sat quietly beside him. "What is it, love?" she asked softly.
"This adventure isn't quite turning out how I'd hoped," he finally admitted. "I have no idea who made this thing or what it's doing here."
"So?" She shook her head, perplexed. "I thought the whole idea of adventures was the discovery. Finding out new things!"
"Yeah, but..."
"But what?"
Finally, he took a deep breath and admitted it. "I'm just worried that you're gonna decide you made the wrong choice."
She scoffed quietly, rolling her eyes in exasperation. "Because you don't know everything? Don't be ridiculous." The light, teasing tone didn't seem to be helping, so she dropped it and turned earnest. "Love, don't you know I'd choose you again? And again? Even if we went back to that same bloody beach and relived the whole thing? I'd still choose you."
He turned and looked at her, searching her eyes for confirmation yet again. "Really?"
"Yes." She poured as much finality and certainty as she could into that quiet syllable. "What do I have to do to prove it to you?" A recent memory skittered through her mind, and her mouth quirked. "Find the Doctor and slap him?"
He blinked, then snorted, and finally chuckled. Then he paused. "Would it reflect terribly badly on me if I admitted I wouldn't mind seeing that?"
She chuckled back at him. Then, taking his arm and snuggling closer, "Well, I can't exactly go find him – and wouldn't want to if I could – but just consider him slapped."
Letting her keep hold of his arm, he reached across with that hand and caressed her other knee, squeezing it in lieu of a hug, then leaned over and kissed her forehead. "OK."
They sat silently for a minute before Jared returned to the matter at hand. "Well," he began. "At least we know how to make Napoleon disappear now. All we have to do is lure him into the pyramid and shove him through the portal."
"Sure," she agreed, then looked quizzically back at him. "How?"
He chewed his lip and grimaced. "Well, I can think of one way, but... you're not gonna like it."
"What's that?"
Taking a deep breath, he glanced sideways at her face, apprehensive. "He always was a womanizer, even all through his marriages. In fact, he had a well-known affair with a subordinate's wife right here during the Egyptian campaign."
Rose's eyebrows shot skyward, anger seeping into her voice. "Are you seriously suggesting... that I seduce him?"
"It was just the first thing that popped into my head!" came his disclaimer.
She was now outraged. "Well you can pop it back where the sun doesn't shine, Jared Blue Wolfe, because if that's what has to happen, then it's not going to happen!"
He looked back into her furious eyes, and then... Jared Blue Wolfe proved he was actually smarter than the Doctor. He shut his mouth with a gulp and didn't say another word.
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, and he affixed a fake little smile on his mouth, lips staying firmly glued shut. Another beat, and then his eyebrows shot up innocently, and that got her. She snorted, laughter tumbling out past her unwilling guard, sweeping away her pique at him. His laughter joined hers a moment later, and he relaxed again, let off the relationship hook.
"OK, we'll think of something else."
"Good idea," she agreed.
"Well," he said a moment later, "may as well head back." Standing, he took her hand and pulled her up, too.
"Through the portal?"
"Nooooo, no, no, no. With no controls on it – that I could find – there's no telling where or when we'd end up." He tapped the time jumper with a finger. "No, we'll use this."
He led her a short distance away, then began programming the jumper to return them to the last reading it had snagged in 1798, adjusting it minutely to put them outside the pyramid on their return. Then, taking her hand again with a smile, Jared pushed Execute.
Rose had enough subjective time during that jump to decide once and for all that no, she really didn't like this method of travel. Hurtling through the timestream without benefit of a vehicle felt as if her skin were being sandpapered off, while "fingernails on the blackboard" didn't do justice to the horrific screeching wind that seemed to bounce through several octaves and back again. She winced at one particularly piercing note –
– and suddenly they hit an unseen barrier, bouncing off something in their path. Rose screamed as she felt Jared's hand ripped away from hers! She tried to turn her head to look for him, but an instant later she slammed face first into a hot, dry, gritty surface, knocking the breath out of her lungs.
Spluttering and gasping for air, she pushed away from the barrier. The world spun around once as gravity reasserted itself, and she realized she was lying on a horizontal surface, pushing herself up. And the surface was sand. The desert, to be precise.
She plopped over onto her rear and sat, wiping sand from her face with one long sleeve and spitting it out of her mouth. Then, when she was sure she wouldn't get sand in her eyes, she opened them again and squinted carefully around. She was apparently back at Ayun Musa. She'd landed among the stunted trees surrounding the spring.
"Jared?" She listened. No reply, not even a cricket chirp.
"Jared? JARED!" Rose scrambled unsteadily to her feet and looked around wildly. No sign of him anywhere.
She drew another breath to call his name again, but just then, a familiar noise burst on her ears. A familiar, happy bark.
Tock came bounding up to her, wagging his tail. She glanced in the direction he'd come from and saw the black pyramid in the middle distance, right where they'd found it.
"So that's who you ran off to, buddy," she chuckled. "Me." Kneeling down to pet the happy pooch, she suffered a few licks to the face. Then, "Tock, find Jared. Where's Jared? Find him!"
Tock looked around, sniffing the air for the scent of his master. Then... he sat back down and gave her a doggy grin, tongue lolling. The message was clear: Jared was nowhere around.
Rose sat down again, hard, blinking against sudden, fearful tears. "Where are you, Jared? Where are you? Where did you land? When?"
Getting a hold of herself, she forced herself to take several deep breaths and then shook her head to clear it. "Well, he's got the time jumper, and he knows where and when we were coming to. He'll get here." A deep breath. "I just have to wait." She raised a sardonic eyebrow, adding to the dog, "Hopefully it won't take five and a half hours this time." He licked his lips in agreement.
She decided to put the time to good use, and stood up again, looking around for their camels. They hadn't wandered very far, and were nibbling leaves off one of the bushes near the spring. Catching their bridles, Rose led them slowly (due to their hobbles) inside the low walls marking the open caravanserai and over to a corner, then cushed them down onto their knees and unloaded their supplies. Gathering brush and (trying not to think about it) old, dried camel dung, she got a pungent fire going with her matches, and set a pot of rice and shaved dried meat to cook in some of the slightly salty-tasting water from the spring, opening a spice packet (also purchased at the market the day before) and sprinkling the contents lightly over the top.
Then she spread out a blanket between the fire and Sandy, who seemed content to stay where she was, long legs folded beneath her. Rose leaned against the camel and pulled out the paperback provided by Jack, deciding to use the time to find out what had happened here in Alpha.
And the book was no help at all. It had precisely six paragraphs – a page and a half – on Napoleon's trip to Suez, and only mentioned in a single terse sentence that he had made (was going to make?) a day trip out to the spring where she now waited. Not even the date was specified.
"Well," Rose commented ruefully. "Thanks, Jack." She kept reading, just to keep her mind occupied.
By the time the rice was cooked, there was still no sign of Jared. She mounded some of the mixture on a brushed-off flat rock for Tock, keeping him away from it until it was cooled enough to eat, then spooned a serving onto a small metal "camp" plate from their packs for herself, leaving a generous portion in the pot for her mate. She ate slowly, looking out over the desert to the sun setting beyond the Red Sea a mile or so to the west. Her hand missed the feeling of his strong one holding it, and she tried to suppress the recurring memory of the moment it was ripped away.
The sun was down, and the temperature dropping rapidly – it was still December, after all. Banking the embers, she wrapped herself up in her coat and the other blanket, then laid down next to Sandy, calling Tock over to her other side to keep them all warm, and slowly, sniffling, willed herself to sleep.
Where was Jared?