Doctor Who: The Aztecs

The TARDIS has materialised,’ the Doctor announced authoritatively.

‘Where?’ asked Susan, the Doctor’s fifteen-year-old granddaughter.

The Doctor moved around the central control deck of the spacecraft to the digital time/place orientation print-out and pressed the appropriate button. Nothing happened.

‘Well?’ Susan arched her eyebrows.

‘Chesterton, hand me a screwdriver,’ the Doctor said testily.

Ian took one from the tool-kit, and gave it to the Doctor, remarking that with any luck they were on Earth during the 1980s in an aerospace factory where the TARDIS could be thoroughly overhauled. The Doctor was not amused and began furiously unscrewing the front panel of the print-out.

‘We could always stick our heads outside the door and look,’ Barbara Wright suggested.

‘And be devoured by a dinosaur, or dictated to by a Dalek, perhaps?’ Ian added.

‘Let’s check the atmosphere,’ Susan said.

‘Good idea.’ Ian turned to the Doctor. ‘May I?’

The only reply was a grunt which Ian took to mean ‘yea’, so he switched on the atmospheric sensor. A display screen gave a breakdown of the gases onside. Ian studied it for a moment and then said that it appeared they were on Earth, but the air was stale.

‘Stale?’ Susan echoed.

‘Breathable but musty.’

‘Then we can take a peek,’ said Barbara. ‘Coming with me?’ she asked Susan.

When Susan asked the Doctor if she could go, he waved one hand rather vaguely at her and told Ian to help him to remove the panel. When it was off, the Doctor began poking at the electronics with his screwdriver, making the 28-year-old scientist wince with despair.

Cautiously Susan and Barbara opened the door and peered out. Apart from the light inside the TARDIS, they were in total darkness.

‘Where do you think we are?’ Susan whispered. Barbara shook her head, but as the light from the TARDIS diffused and their eyes became accustomed to the gloom, they stepped outside and looked around. They were in a large tomb, and in the centre was a raised stone slab on which lay a superbly cloaked skeleton with a magnificent gold mask covering the skull. On the floor around the slab were earthen bowls and jugs, as well as ornaments, statuettes, bracelets, ear-rings and brooches, all of them made of jade. But it was the cloak, geometrically woven with silver and golden threads, and the superb mask that fascinated Barbara.

‘Look at that, Susan,’ she murmured.

‘I am.’ Susan shuddered with a sense of foreboding, anticipating the evil to come.

‘It’s an Aztec mask of Quetzecoatl, the Sun God, who was driven into exile by Huitzilipochth, the God of Darkness,’ Barbara looked down at the skeleton again. ‘He must have been a High Priest.’ Beside one skeletal hand was an oblong rod of carved jade with six beaded threads of silver, each about six inches long, attached to one end. Barbara picked it up and smiled. ‘Do you know what this was?’

‘His personal fly-swatter’.

Susan giggled. Since the Aztecs were Mexicans, the TARDIS must definitely be on Earth. ‘But what year is it?’ she asked.

‘I can tell you when he died.’ Barbara pointed to the objects strewn on the floor. ‘About 1430. These things all come from the Aztecs’ early period; She picked up a gold bracelet shaped like a coiled snake that lay on the slab above the mask and turned it over in her hands. ‘This indicates that after he died he was revered as a god.’

‘You really know your subject,’ Susan exclaimed. Barbara smiled and admitted that when she was at university she had been particularly interested in the Aztec Indians and their civilisation.

‘What little I know about them doesn’t make me feel very well disposed towards them; Susan replied with a grimace. ‘They used to cut out people’s hearts while they were still alive, didn’t they?’

Barbara picked up the razor-sharp knife hewn from stone which lay at the skeleton’s feet. ‘They did it with this,’ she said. ‘It’s called an obsidian knife. But there was another side to their nature — a highly civilised one.’

‘The Spanish didn’t think so when they came here.’ ‘Fernando Cortez and his conquistadores saw only wealth for themselves and barbarous acts of savagery by the Aztecs,’ Barbara replied.’That was the tragedy of the race; their civilisation was completely destroyed, the good as well as the bad.’ Barbara put down the knife and picked up the bracelet again.

‘The Spanish landed in the early 1500s, didn’t they?’ Susan asked.

‘1519, to be exact.’ Still holding the bracelet Barbara pointed to the wall behind the head of the slab. A coloured fresco depicted an eagle clutching a coiled snake in its claws, surrounded by warriors in loincloths, cloaks, plumed head-dresses and sandals, who held shields, spears and short swords slung from their hips. From their mouths came bubbles filled with hieroglyphs. Barbara studied the fresco and, almost without realising it, slipped the bracelet onto her wrist.

‘Just like cartoon strips,’ Susan remarked. ‘But they’re all the same. What does it mean?’

‘That the warriors will protect the High Priest’s spirit until he rejoins his people.’

‘Did the Aztecs believe in reincarnation, then?’ Susan sounded surprised.

'Definitely'. Barbara moved closer to the wall. ‘This painting has hardly faded at all.’ She touched the mural, then quickly withdrew her hand.

‘What’s the matter?’ Susan asked.

‘It may be my imagination,’ Barbara replied, ‘but I think the wall moved when I touched it.’

‘Let’s both push it and see.’

They put their hands to the wall and began to push. The wall swung slowly outwards and upwards. Light trickled into the tomb and then flooded in as the wall rose higher and higher. Both of them blinked as their eyes adjusted to its intensity.

‘This tomb is part of a temple,’ Barbara whispered. ‘Hadn’t we better go back to the TARDIS?’ Susan asked nervously.

‘No, it’s all right,’ Barbara replied, ‘there’s no one here’

‘t think I’d better fetch grandfather and Ian anyway,’ Susan said and ran back into the tomb.

Barbara left the tomb, walked to the centre of the temple and looked around. The temple itself was not large — about fifty square feet. Three sides were painted in white and blood-red, decorated with sculpted skulls and coiled snakes, and hung with elaborately woven brocade curtains. The fourth side opened onto a terrace, in the centre of which stood the sacrificial altar. Barbara shivered involuntarily as she approached the terrace to see what lay beyond it.

‘Woman!’ the man’s voice was firm and Barbara spun around to face him. He was in his mid fifties with a craggy face and long grey hair. He wore a loincloth, a cloak similar to the one that enveloped the skeleton in the tomb, sandals and a head-dress of multicoloured plumed feathers. In one hand he carried a posy of flowers. ‘How came you here?’ he asked.

Barbara looked towards the entrance to the tomb in the back wall of the temple, but it had swung closed. ‘This temple is sacred to the memory of the High Priestess Yetaxa,’ the man said. ‘You trespass, and you shall be punished for it. Warriors, guardians of Yetaxa s tomb,’ he called out. Four young Aztecs, who Barbara thought bore an uncanny resemblance to those on the mural, emerged from behind one of the curtains. ‘Seize her.’ They advanced towards Barbara who backed away to the closed entrance. It was only when she reached it with her arms outspread that the man saw the coiled-snake bracelet on her wrist.

‘Wait, warriors!’ he cried out with an expression of incredulity on his face. ‘Wait!’

The Doctor and Ian had just finished replacing the front panel when Susan burst into the TARDIS and told them excitedly where they were. The Doctor pressed the digital time-orientation button and the number 1507 lit up.

‘Cortez isn’t due for another twelve years,’ the Doctor observed. ‘But the Aztecs have some rather gruesome habits, and the sooner we collect Barbara and move on, the better.’ The three of them went out into the tomb.

‘The wall’s closed,’ Susan exclaimed.

‘Which wall?’ Ian asked.

‘The one with the mural,’ Susan replied.

‘I can’t see anything,’ the Doctor complained, and went back into the TARDIS to fetch his pencil-torch. When he came out again he switched it on, but the beam of light was too narrow.

‘I still can’t see anything,’ he grumbled.

‘Give me your hand, grandfather,’ Susan said and led him past the raised slab.

‘What’s that?’ the Doctor asked.

‘According to Barbara, he was a High Priest now revered as a god,’ Susan replied.

The Doctor snorted.

‘We push it up,’ Susan explained when they reached the wall, and a few seconds later they were standing in the temple.

‘Barbara’s not here,’ Ian said.

‘She was when I came to fetch you,’ replied Susan defensively.

Ian called out Barbara’s name. ‘There’s no sign of her now,’ he said, ‘unless she’s out on that terrace.’ He walked to the sacrificial altar and glanced down either side of the terrace. ‘She’s not out here'. Then he looked down. ‘Good Lord, Doctor, come and see this,’ he exclaimed.

Both the Doctor and Susan went to Ian’s side. As they passed the altar the Doctor muttered that they had better find Barbara soon as he didn’t fancy being carved up on it by some Aztec High Priest of Sacrifice.

‘Just look at the city,’ said Ian. The temple was on the top of a pyramid and the city lay two hundred and fifty feet below them, patterned like a chessboard, with broad avenues between the squares of houses. There were gardens, irrigation aqueducts, and several markets.

The Aztecs knew how to build as well as kill,’ the Doctor observed drily. ‘We must find Barbara and leave.’ He looked back into the temple and saw the wall sliding back into place. ‘The wall, Chesterton! Quick! The wall!’ he cried, and Ian raced across the temple in a vain attempt to reach the wall before it shut them out. The Doctor and Susan hurried after him.

‘I was too late. There was nothing to grip on to.’ Ian felt ashamed at his failure.

Susan looked perplexed.’But it must open somehow, Ian’

‘It does, child; the Doctor said with a shrug, ‘you push it from the other side. Tombs like these were designed to stop grave-robbers, not help them’

‘But how shall we return to the TARDIS?’

‘That, my dear, is a very good question.’

Ian cleared his throat. ‘Doctor, we’ve company,’ he murmured.

The man whom Barbara had met and the four Aztec warriors were standing by one of the brocade curtains. The man raised in salute a hand which held a posy of flowers.

‘Autloc, High Priest of Knowledge, most humbly greets the servants of Yetaxa; he said, while the four warriors bowed.

The Doctor glanced at Ian. ‘The servants of what?’ he asked.

Ian shook his head and looked at the High Priest. ‘Where is Barbara?’

‘Of whom do you speak?’

‘The young woman who was here a few moments ago.’ The High Priest smiled at them. ‘In due course you will meet Yetaxa again. But first, grant us our courtesies. Be assured that we harbour no evil towards you in our hearts. Indeed, we honour you.’

The Doctor looked at Autloc for a moment. ‘What did you say your name was?’ He sounded suspicious. ‘Autloc.’

‘And you’re the High Priest of Knowledge.’

‘I serve as such.’

‘You know where we Came from?’ the Doctor persisted.

‘Yetaxa’s tomb.’

‘How does one enter it from the temple?’

‘One cannot. It is sealed.’ Autloc gestured towards the four warriors. ‘Go now with these attendants and soon you will see the coiled serpent of Yetaxa again.’

The Doctor scratched his head. ‘I don’t know what he’s talking about,’ he said as they crossed the temple to where a warrior held aside one of the curtains.

‘Barbara, I think,’ Susan hissed, ‘I’ll explain when we’re alone.’

Just before they reached the drawn curtain, the deformed figure of a powerfully built man limped into the temple from the terrace. He was younger than Autloc and far less elaborately dressed. He wore a priest’s loose-fitting robe which at first glance appeared to be caked in mud, but a second look told Susan it was dried blood. The plumes on his head-dress were splattered with it and his long hair was matted. He had a hard, thin, almost lipless mouth. But it was his eyes that commanded attention — they were jet black, piercing and totally fanatical. He stared at the Doctor, at Susan and at Ian, then bowed curtly to them and limped to the back of the temple where Autloc stood.

‘You know who he is, Chesterton,’ the Doctor said as they were escorted from the temple.

‘The local butcher, by the look of him,’ Ian replied. ‘Exactly.’

Autloc waited until they had gone before he spoke. ‘You have seen her, Tlotoxl?’ he asked.

‘A vision is with us, Autloc,’ Tlotoxl replied and, turning away, he limped back to the sacrificial altar. He looked up at the sky. ‘When does it rain?’