Doctor Who_ The Stone Rose - Jacqueline Rayner [57]
So – 1,718,902, that was how many dead people it would take to get Vanessa back to her own time. Nearly twice the population of Rome. Presumably it would take the same sort of amount again to zip Rose herself through time to anywhere. And even if there was that amount of energy, where would she go?
She could wish to return home – to her twenty‐first‐century home. Back to Jackie, back to Bucknall House, back to Mickey Smith and a dead‐end job. But how could she do that? How could she just abandon the Doctor?
But… if the Doctor had never come to Rome in the first place, he wouldn’t have been turned to stone. He’d be out there somewhere. She could just wish herself back in the TARDIS… But what if the Doctor wasn’t there, or what if the stupid wish meant he’d never even met her in the first place?
Hang on a minute. This wasn’t making sense.
If it took a couple of million corpses to travel through time and – as the GENIE had put it – about an eyeball’s worth to magic up a bag of chips, how had the creature managed to warp reality to such a degree on one sculptor and a lamb?
Changing the way the universe worked so the Doctor had never come to Rome.
Regressing a woman back sixty‐odd years in time. Rewriting history so Crispus was emperor instead of Hadrian.
Whisking Rose and Vanessa out of time and space altogether.
These were enormous things.
Suddenly her stomach flipped with excitement.
She’d had a thought; a wonderful, marvellous, oh‐please‐let‐it‐be‐true thought.
She started to speak, but stumbled over her words in her eagerness and forced herself to stop and take some deep breaths. Careless words cost lives – with a GENIE around anyway.
Finally, calm, she spoke to the GENIE. ‘You can travel in time – but that’s just technology. The Doctor said turning people to stone was just technology too. There’s no such thing as magic and you can’t alter reality!’ She was getting excited again, so she stopped for a minute to compose herself before continuing. ‘Let’s take the Doctor first, shall we? You didn’t think that through. Too much for you – or too much of a paradox? Because if the Doctor had really never come to Rome, then he wouldn’t have brought me – we wouldn’t have met Vanessa – and we certainly wouldn’t all have ended up in that abandoned shrine. You wouldn’t have got your blood – and I wouldn’t have been there to make the wish. It would never have been exactly the same situation, just without the Doctor… And I wouldn’t have been able to see outside the wishes. If it were reality, it would be reality for me too. I wouldn’t remember the Doctor coming to Rome. I wouldn’t remember Crispus being just some bloke and not the emperor.’
She thought some more.
‘You can get inside people’s heads. That’s how you worked out the whole Minerva thing for Ursus. How you knew our names. How you get people to see you as a goddess or a monkey.’
As far as Rose could interpret the expressions of a duck‐billed dragon, she thought the GENIE was looking nervous. It didn’t say a word, and she took that as confirmation.
‘I’m right, aren’t I? Which means… it isn’t that the Doctor never came to Rome. That makes no sense. You’ve just altered my perceptions so it seems he never came here. You’ve made it so I can’t see the Doctor, so that everyone’s forgotten him. It’s all one big cheat and you’ve just been making up the rules as you go along!’
She paused for breath.
‘I really, really don’t like people messing with my head. I’m not sure where I am right now or where Vanessa is, or whether it’s an illusion or not, but I’m betting it is. And I want out.’
She clenched her fists tight, ready to risk it all on the throw of a dice, her wish almost a prayer.
‘I wish… that Vanessa and I were back in the ruined shrine. And not backwards or forwards in time either. And… that we could see everything as it really is.’
Rose shut her eyes. The anticipated thunderclap sounded through her head. She wanted to open her eyes, but she wasn’t quite ready to lose all her hopes just yet. Hold on to the illusion just a second more, the illusion that