Doctor Who_ The Stone Rose - Jacqueline Rayner [50]
But before she had stopped speaking, she heard that crash of thunder again. And then suddenly she was holding a bag – a paper bag, grease already starting to soak through from the fat golden chips inside it. Gingerly, she forked one up and took a bite. It was the perfect chip, not too soggy and not too crisp, just the right temperature, with a delicate sprinkling of salt and vinegar.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Well, if I’m stuck here for ever, at least I won’t starve…’
Stuck here for ever.
No Doctor. No TARDIS?
A sudden thought occurred. ‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘Can’t I just wish my wish undone?’
‘I don’t advise it,’ said the GENIE, sniffing.
‘Why not?’ asked Rose indignantly.
‘It’s perfectly obvious,’ said the GENIE. ‘This “Doctor” never came to Rome, so he was never here, so you never wished for him not to be here, so I never granted that wish, so there’s no wish to undo.’
Rose’s head hurt. She mechanically put a chip into her mouth and chewed. ‘Well, what if I wished – this isn’t a wish, all right, I’m just working things out – for Vanessa to be unstoned,’ she said through a mouthful of potato. ‘That’s not undoing a wish, because that was all about Ursus’s hands, not Vanessa becoming a statue. So it’ll work, yeah?’
‘It’s a technicality,’ sniffed the GENIE. ‘Anyway, I’m in the wish business, not the advice about wishes business.’
‘You’re just having a laugh,’ said Rose. ‘You’re going to let me go ahead and wish it, and even if it works, you’re going to give me the ability to turn stone to flesh with my hands, so every time I touch a rock it becomes a great blubbery lump or something, aren’t you? Or she’ll become a… a living statue, or a dead body, or something awful.’
The GENIE sighed. ‘Well, really, it’s hardly my fault if people choose not to be precise in their utilisation of language. I merely act with regard to the logic circuits with which I was constructed. Can I help it if human beings do not do the same?’
‘We don’t have logic circuits,’ said Rose.
‘That I was inclined to suspect,’ said the GENIE.
‘Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be logical,’ Rose pointed out. ‘Like, I’m thinking about my wish here. If I… no. How about if… no. Or… no.’ She clenched her fists. ‘Ooh, do you know how annoying this is?’
‘Do you wish me to know?’ inquired the GENIE.
‘No, I blinkin’ well do not! OK, I’ve got it. Foolproof.’ She laughed. ‘Look at me, I’m a genius!’
She got out once again the empty glass phial that had held the Doctor’s miracle cure. ‘The stuff that was in this, it turned people back from stone, right? So… I wish it was full of the same stuff again.’
There was the booming sound inside her head that she’d come to expect. And then… ‘Yes!’ The phial was filled right to the top with an emerald‐green liquid.
‘There, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?’ said Rose triumphantly.
‘As a matter of fact, it was extremely complex,’ replied the GENIE. ‘An astonishingly difficult formula. I have never come across anything like it before.’
‘Well, as long as it works,’ said Rose, not really listening.
She pulled out the stopper slowly, carefully, and then tilted the vessel so a single glistening drop fell on the prone Vanessa.
‘Miracle’ was the right word, she thought. The whiteness of the marble suddenly burst into colour, as if a whole palette of paints had been splashed on to it. The colours spread and merged until there was not a speck of stone left and then, with a shiver, a real live girl was lying face down on the ground.
Rose took hold of Vanessa’s arms and helped her to sit up.
‘OK, before anything else – don’t say you wish for anything. You probably want to start with “Where am I?” and “What happened?”’ Rose said.
‘Yes, I think I do,’ said Vanessa warily.
‘Well, one, you’re still in that old shrine place, and two, Ursus turned you into stone but now you’re back.’