Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [57]
‘What? Spiders?’ I said.
‘Horseshoe crabs. It was a game. You got fifteen points every time you found one on its back and turned it the right way up again. Maybe they’re from space.’
‘Nonsense, Peri,’ said the Doctor.
‘They look like they’re from space.’
‘The Cambrian Epoch may have been another world, but it wasn’t another world. They’re no more extraterrestrial than you are.’
‘The ocean is just like outer space.’ She was murmuring now, half-asleep. I was suddenly reminded that she was only around half my age. Just a kid. ‘One day all the weird creatures in there will come and invade us.’
‘There are some people who believe this has already happened,’ said the Doctor.
There was something about this silly conversation that was making the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Maybe it was the image of the Earth as a little beach on the edge of an impossibly huge sea full of monsters. And these two travellers, the sorcerer and his apprentice, floating about on that cold sea in their little ship.
‘You’re like a horseshoe crab, aren’t you?’ said Peri. The Doctor glanced at me. ‘Peri –’
‘I meant, a living fossil,’ she said cheekily
‘Go to sleep, Peri,’ he told her. A few minutes later he said, ‘Hmmph A living fossil indeed. In ten years’ time – in five years’ time the computers that are far beyond Peri’s comprehension will be fossils themselves. People these days chuckle at the tiny brain of ENIAC. Soon they’ll have a new joke every few years. And a new computer to buy. Perhaps future archaeologists will discover a layer of discarded personal computers – all that’s left of your young civilisation.’
‘America’s not doing too badly’ I said. ‘Sometimes you have to stick up for the Yanks. ‘Not if they’re producing technology at a rate like that.’
‘Electronic digital computing is only one way of organising a civilisation,’ said the Doctor. ‘There are many other ways to manage information at high speeds – much better ways. And besides, the human race has managed without any of them for most of its existence. Most human beings are still doing just that.’
I shrugged. ‘I read somewhere that most people on Earth haven’t even made a phone call.’
‘That will remain true for a long time,’ said the Doctor.
‘But computers have a habit of getting in everywhere. Like the vermin that follow human beings as they stride around the Earth.’
‘Computers are rats?’
‘Perhaps a little more useful’
‘I can’t work out whether you like them or not.’
‘As long as they’re useful, I like them perfectly well.
When they start pretending to be people, that’s another thing.’
He paused to consider. ‘On the other hand, I’ve known some quite charming computers’
I had to grin. ‘I’ll bet you have.’
‘Oh, good heavens.’
‘What is it?’
‘That sandwich Peri gave me. I’d forgotten all about it’
The Doctor extracted the cold and sodden melt from his pocket, sniffed at it, and then stuffed it into the glovebox. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he struggled with the contents of his pocket – it seemed to be crammed with toys and coins and bits of junk, all of which needed wiping after their encounter with the sandwich. It was the equivalent of Mondy’s bat-belt, an engineer’s collection of tools and spare parts.
I was nodding to myself. The Doctor was obviously involved in the design of new computers which would make the current crop of high-tech gizmos look like junk – not just faster machines, but machines with a completely different basis.
The Doctor seemed to guess my thoughts. ‘Oh, I think the electronic digital computer has some life left in it yet,’ he said.
‘Electricity is quite a fast way to move information around. Of course, there are faster ways.’
‘Like what?’
‘Light, for example. You can’t get faster than that.’ I suppose he meant fibre-optic cables. ‘Or if you must use physical things, then you keep making the components smaller and smaller – to speed up the movement of information, you see – until at last they are so small that quantum mechanics becomes a consideration.’ He touched the