It was the longest week of Ace's life. In the Doctor's company she had faced both danger and boredom often enough in the past, but this trip took every ounce of patience she could muster.

Gilgamesh was actually quite well behaved, at least for him. He didn't attempt to either seduce or rape her - the Doctor must have somehow made it clear to the king that Ace was out of bounds - and he seemed to be trying to be charming and thoughtful. Unfortunately he fell far short of both virtues.

His biggest problem, Ace decided, was that he had been brought up to think that he could do no wrong. She had mentioned this to Avram one evening, while the king was hunting for supper. The singer seemed surprised at her comment.

"Lady, he is the king of Uruk. His mother Ninsun is rumoured to be divine.

The people of Uruk believe he is two thirds G.o.d and one third man. How then can he do wrong?"

"Give me a break!" said Ace, disgustedly. "He's got the manners of a pig, an ego the size of a mountain and a libido that just won't stop."

Avram shrugged. "For the last, there are many women who are honoured to have him in bed. I see that you are not one of them, but he is not troubling you now, is he? He is not foolish enough to press his attentions where they are not wanted. There are plenty of arms open to him, should he choose them. As to his manners, he is no worse than the others of his court. Perhaps where you are from, Aya, his manners seem strange. But to him they are normal."

"As to his ego... He paused. "Lady, what do you know about the king?"

"More that I care to."

He laughed easily. "Gilgamesh is a hero, lady. His leadership has kept Uruk safe from attack, and he has strengthened it through the years. The merchants prosper, the people are content, and his n.o.bles find their wealth increasing. He is stronger than four normal men, and he is unsurpa.s.sed when hunting either man or beast. His arrows never miss their mark, nor his axe its target. If he is proud of these deeds - well, ask yourself: does he not have reason to be?"

"Well - OK. But can't he keep his ego to himself? He could pretend to be humble occasionally, couldn't he?"

Avram laughed. "Would you have Gilgamesh add dishonestly and dissembling to the list of defects you see in him? He is a plain man, and it is a great strength in him."

Ace grunted noncommittally. "What are you, his agent?"

"I do not understand you," the musician said.

"Sometimes I don't understand myself, Avram," Ace admitted. "Gilgamesh rubs me up the wrong way, but it's just not that. There's so much, and so much you wouldn't understand."

Avram shrugged. "At least I have a patient ear," he told her. "If you will feel better, speak on. I cannot promise advice, but at least I could sing a song to lift your spirits later."

Unsure herself what she would say, Ace kicked moodily at a stone. "It's not easy for me," she confessed. "I just sometimes wonder what I'm doing with my life. Here I am, like some galactic tourist, following the Doctor all over the place - getting beaten up, shot at, attacked, betrayed, and worse. And having to put up with loonies like Gilgamesh. And none of it makes sense to me."

"Then it can hardly be clear to me," smiled Avram. "But well, you have a choice, don't you? You could take your leave of the Doctor. Follow some other path."

"Yeah, I could." She tried to convince herself of that, and finally she shook her head. "No, I couldn't. I'm stuck with him for now."

He regarded her curiously. "And why is that? Does he have some magical hold over you?"

Laughing, Ace said: "You could call it that. You know what he did to me the other day? He robbed me of all my memories. Every one them. I didn't know who I was, or where, or why. Nothing."

"Was he trying to punish you?" Avram struggled to understand this strange event.

"Nah. he just made a mistake. Luckily he put me back together again.

Otherwise I'd be in a right state. But he does things like that - you know, really stupid things - and doesn't even seem to know he's doing it."

The musician frowned. "It seems to me that you live a very uncertain life."

"You can say that again."

"So then why do you stay with him?" he persisted.

Ace dug down into her self, and was afraid she had come up with no answers. "Well, it's better than things used to be. I come from this place that was - naff and boring. Life might be dangerous now, but it's never dull with the Doctor around. Not like Perivale. You can't imagine how I hated that place. I felt like a prisoner there. As if I was an alien. Didn't belong.

And you know what I hated the most?" Memories flooded back to her.

"People hated each other. People with white skin hated people with dark skin. Poor people hated the rich. Men wouldn't trust women. Women were afraid of men. And there I was a girl, poor, and thick, too, they said. Mixing with the wrong sort. I couldn't bring myself to hate anyone, really. Except the people who hated other people. And that was just about everybody.

What kind of life could I have? But the Doctor well, he's got his faults, but there's not an ounce of prejudice in him. In fact, it's the other way round.

He's ready to take up the flag and fight for anyone's rights." She grinned.

"He even gave some of his own people b.l.o.o.d.y noses when they tried to stop him. He cares about people, but in a funny sort of way. He might seem callous, but it's a sort of skin, I think. To stop getting hurt. I think he really does care for me, but he knows that I'll leave him in the end, so he won't let himself get too attached to me." She sighed. "It must be very hard for him.

He's over a thousand years old, you know."

"He doesn't look it," Avram said, politely.

"Well, when he gets a bit worn out, he sort of... Well, he changes. He told me he's done it six times so far."

Considering the matter, Avram nodded. "Like the snake sheds its skin," he suggested. "To allow for new growth."

Ace stared at him with respect for this insight. "Yeah, I bet that's one reason he regenerates. It must be hard being fresh and decisive for a thousand years without getting tired."

At that moment Gilgamesh arrived back in the camp, the carca.s.s of an antelope slung across his shoulders. He roared. "Who wants the liver? A delicacy for our footsore G.o.ddess?" Yuk! was what Ace thought. But she found herself saying: "Not for me, thanks."

"More for me," he grinned, and Ace smiled back.

"Think, Doctor, think!" Fingers pressed to his temples, the Doctor tried to apply all of the techniques that his old mentor K'Anpo had taught him. Lose the self, free the mind to its potentials. But it was no good. He was too tense, too worried. He uncurled from the lotus position, and instead stretched out flat on the stone floor.

The trouble with his mind, he decided, was that it was too cluttered. Despite the cleaning out of his memories the other day, there was still too much general nonsense left. And much that was important was either buried too deeply or else had been lost over the years - including the reasons he had recorded the warning to himself.

He knew the background to the warning. It had been at the time the Sontarans and their gullible henchmen the Vardans had managed to invade Gallifrey. He had been in his fourth body at the time. He had been forced to enter the Matrix to find out what was going on.

But he'd managed to find out a bit too much, and the Matrix had unravelled his memories. In fact, he remembered none of this directly -the Matrix had very effectively wiped clean those portions of his mind. No, it was all pieced together from other places - K9's memory banks, that last tea he had taken on Gallifrey with his old companion Leela and that silly husband of hers back - how long? Well, no matter.

Maybe the Timewyrm warning was a mistake. The product of his addled brain, freshly scoured by the Matrix. Ishtar was the problem now, and more than enough to be going on with. He'd managed to stave off Ace's doubts and get her out of the firing line for now. She was obstinately loyal, and this plan of his could turn out to be very dangerous. Maybe he was overreacting, but his recent memory scans had brought back to him many painful events: Katarina, killing herself to save a Universe she didn't even comprehend; Sara Kingdom, dying to defeat the Daleks; Adric, perishing in a fireball over prehistoric Earth to stop the Cybermen from destroying the human race.

And on top of that, a chilling image of Ace - her brain being sucked dry by a snakelike creature.

A memory of the future? Or just his overactive imagination? He couldn't take any more chances with Ace. She was in danger from Ishtar; she had to be kept away while he tackled Ishtar himself.

He was abruptly aware that he was no longer alone. Opening his eyes, he stared up at the bemused face of En-Gula. "h.e.l.lo," he smiled, sitting upright.

"I am not disturbing you?" she asked, worried.

"Mmmm? Oh, not at all," he fibbed, getting to his feet. "Just doing a little thinking. I like to keep my mind in shape. Did you want something?"

The young girl seemed very unsure of herself. The Doctor let her take her time, and finally she blurted out: "What is to become of me?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I do not know if you are truly Ea, G.o.d of wisdom," the priestess sighed.

"But you do speak with understanding. Can you tell me what will happen to me?"

"What will be, will be," he replied, then rubbed his chin. "That reminds me of a song, but I can't quite place it. Oh well. Perhaps you could explain a little more clearly what it is you want to know?"

"Doctor, all I ever knew was my calling as a priestess of Ishtar," En-Gula said. "I was happy, and I like to think that I was a good priestess."

"Despite lying down on the job, eh?" he joked. "Do go on."

"But when this false Ishtar came, everything changed for me. I began to hate the temple, and everything connected with it. Now I have cast my lot to fight this demon, but I have betrayed my calling, and I have destroyed my life. What is to become of me?"

The Doctor raised her chin, and stared into her dispirited eyes. "Listen to me," he said, quietly, but with authority. "You have done what you knew was right. You have taken a stand against evil. Whatever you have done, it is with pure motives. I promise you that when Ishtar is defeated, you will be happy once again."

En-Gula swallowed, and nodded. He could see the hope flooding back into her. "Thank you," she said simply, accepting his word implicitly.

And if not happy, he thought, at least you will have been yourself.

"Meanwhile," he said hastily, not wanting to think about the promise he had given, "you may be able to help us further. I need to have a quick peep in Kish to find out what's happening there. Do you know of anyone who might help us, or somewhere we could hide?"

She nodded, eager to be of a.s.sistance. "The princess Ninani also hates and fights against the false G.o.ddess. She will shelter you, and will offer you aid in your fight."

"Capital!" He rubbed his hands together. "Well, let's find Enkidu, and be off, shall we?"

She stared at him, puzzled. "But are you not going to await the return of Aya?"

"No, no, I don't think so," he said. "She's pretty busy, I imagine. Anyway, she'll find her way to me. She always does. I just want a little look into Ishtar's sanctuary without worrying about it getting blown up about my ears." He put an arm about her shoulders, leading her from the room.

"Between you, me and the lamp post, Ace does have a tendency to blow things up first and ask questions later."

"What's a lamp post?"

"Ask me later."

Shading her eyes against the glare of the sun, Ace followed the line of Avram's arm.

"There," he explained. "That's the only pathway into the heart of the mountains of Mashu. It is where the zuqaqip stand their guard. We should be there in the morning."

After the vast expanse of the flat plain, Ace was glad to see something that stood taller than a molehill. But this was a real range of mountains, and they looked high. The dying embers of the sun gleamed off their pinnacles.

Ace automatically felt for the coil of nylon rope in her rucksack. "How far up do we have to climb?"

The singer shrugged. "Who can say? I went only as far as the guardians.

They should allow us to pa.s.s, since you are with us."

"And if they don't," Gilgamesh growled, "then I shall kill them."

"Knock it off," Ace advised him. "We'll get further if we asked questions first and fight later. Or not at all."

The king didn't like this. "Then what is the point of living if we do not fight?"

Ace shook her head in despair. "Don't you think of anything but fighting?"

"Yes," he grinned. "But you won't do that, either."

"Thanks a lot, Professor," she muttered under her breath. "I always wanted to go mountaineering with a psychotic s.e.x maniac." Aloud, she said: "I think we'd better make camp for the night, and press on in the morning. Who's for left-over antelope leg?"

15: GUARDIANS AT THE GATE OF DAWN.

The Doctor patted the side of the TARDIS fondly and stared out across the irrigated fields towards Kish. "They've been busy, haven't they?" he observed.

The copper patterning was all over the stone walls now. They had almost finished the work during the past week. He'd decided to come at precisely the right moment, as usual. Another example of prescience, he wondered, or just plain luck? Well, did it much matter, as long as they were here?

"What is it for?" Enkidu asked. "To waste all of that metal simply to make patterns . . . No. There must be a point to it."

"Quite right," the Doctor approved. For all of his apparent similarity to an ape, Enkidu had a keen brain. "I've always been impressed by the reasoning powers of the Neanderthaler. Met one of your relatives a few thousand years from now who was pretty bright, too: He smiled. "Think of Ishtar as a spider. This metal is her web, within which she will entrap the minds and souls of everyone in Kish."

Enkidu frowned as he considered the idea. "She wants to take over the thoughts of all in the city?" "Oh, I suspect she has grander aims than that,"

the Doctor said, airily. "The world, probably. Maybe even the cosmos.

Depends on the blatant egocentricity of the creature. But Kish will serve her well for an appetizer, I should think."

En-Gula struggled to take in this conversation. "Can we do something to stop her?" she asked.

The Doctor smiled, and tapped the side of his nose with the handle of his ever-present umbrella. "We can always do some thing," he replied. "The question is, will it be enough?" He pulled his cloak tighter about himself, and gestured for the others to do the same. "Right, time to pay her a visit.

Won't you come into my parlour. . ."

The final part of the climb was the hardest. Ace scrambled uphill, stubbornly refusing Gilgamesh's offers of a.s.sistance. Her only consolation was that Avram was having a rougher time of the climb than she was. As a musician he wasn't used to the rigours of mountaineering. Eventually they reached the small pathway that Avram had been guiding them to, and paused for a rest.

Gilgamesh didn't see the need for the break himself, but acquiesced to Ace's growls. "I do not think," he replied darkly, "that you should be taking command of this party. I am, after all, king. And you are just a woman."

"G.o.ddess," glared Ace back. "Remember that big bang I saved your neck with? Well, I could repeat it right here, and take off all that ugly weight you're carrying on your shoulders. It would make the going quieter."

He was clearly unwilling to push her that far. While she could see that he didn't really think she was divine, he obviously did recall her powers and was not going to challenge her authority directly. On the other hand he was not going to give in to her with good grace.