Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [43]
The consequences were obvious, even to a small child: if his father had never been born, the adventurous youth would never be born. . . so couldn’t go back and murder his grandfather. If his grandfather wasn’t murdered, he was free to have a son. . . and the adventurous youth would be born, and would commit the murder. It went around and around.
Although this was the first time the Doctor had heard it, this was a very old legend. A fairy tale that had been written to frighten young Gallifreyans, to warn them of the dangers that their great powers could bring them.
So what happened to the adventurous youth? Well, no one knew, not even the wise men of the High Council, not even the finest minds stored in the Matrix, not even great Rassilon himself. But there were stories that out there, wherever that was, there existed a shadowy half-man, simultaneously alive and dead, murderer and victim. No one knew what he looked like, except that he had only one arm – and no one could agree which one he had lost, or how it had happened. His name was Grandfather Paradox, and if you were naughty he would find you and use you and destroy you, as part of his labyrinthine schemes against the Time Lords.
The Doctor had taken the story very, very seriously as a child. For months, perhaps even years, afterwards he had worried that Grandfather Paradox was under his bed, or lurking beneath the table in the refectory, or making the noises he could hear outside at night. Gradually, the fear had faded. For the best part of the last thousand years, the Doctor had blithely gone about his travels through time and space, and had been afraid of Grandfather Paradox roughly as often as he’d worried about being mugged by the Easter Bunny.
So it was disconcerting to have Grandfather Paradox leering down at him, wearing the Doctor’s own face. The Grandfather was his future self. He was everyone’s future self. This was what you became if you didn’t mend your ways. Anyone looking him in the eye would see themselves staring back. Consumed not with anything as lurid as evil, but with cynicism masquerading as cleverness. Self-absorption and pettiness, pragmatism and grudges, boredom and sadness. He is the person you vow you’ll never become as an adventurous 92
youth, and he’s always watching you, ready to strike.
Grandfather Paradox’s heavy leather cloak was flapping as a gust of wind passed through the Edifice. He stood framed in an arch made of bone, in a pool of milky light.
‘I am your fate. The game is played out, and I hold all the cards.’
‘Perhaps we could have a whist drive,’ the Doctor suggested disdainfully.
Grandfather Paradox smiled. It wasn’t quite his own face, the Doctor reflected. It was older and more cruel. Greying hair and skin. The same frock coat under the cloak, but faded and cobwebbed. The loss of an arm had changed his centre of balance, subtly altering the way he walked and moved.
The Doctor started talking to himself. Then again, who else was there to talk to here?
‘It seems to me there are three directions this little tournament could move in,’ the Doctor said.
‘Oh really?’ the Doctor replied.
The Doctor nodded. ‘One: I can run. Leave the universe to it. What can I do to save Gallifrey now?
‘Two: Surrender to this third-rate god in the machine here,’ said the Doctor, pointing to Grandfather Paradox. ‘Beg him to change his mind, to spare Gallifrey, to temper his visions for his Paradox hordes overrunning space and time. Perhaps there’s a chance.
‘Or three. . . ’
He tried to think what the third option might be. There was always another way. . .
They had never said how old the adventurous youth’s grandfather was when he met him. When you hear the word ‘grandfather’ you picture wrinkles, false teeth and a white beard. But the whole point of the story was that the grandfather was a young man at the time. What if he was stronger than