Doctor Who_ The Stone Rose - Jacqueline Rayner [60]
Vanessa opened her mouth, but the Doctor held up a hand to shush her. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But it was the earliest one they had. And they knew the creature would need a tremendous amount of energy to do what needed to be done and so – they hooked it up to the sun.’
‘They did what?’ said Rose.
But the Doctor didn’t pause in his tale. ‘And so they wished… they wished to return to the day that this GENIE had been created. In May 2375. And with the enormous amount of power at its disposal, the GENIE granted that wish.’
‘So all the later GENIEs would never have existed, just the one that granted the wish?’ said Rose.
The Doctor nodded. ‘Yep. It’s still a bit of a reality cheat, because it’s impossible to change the nature of things unparadoxically, but it was better than the alternatives. But – as they knew would happen, as they’d planned all along – even a GENIE couldn’t cope with absorbing the power of the sun. In forcing the poor little creature to commit genocide on its whole kind, they were making it commit suicide too. Every single atom of that GENIE was burnt to a crisp – and the resultant fire destroyed the Bureau Tygon. The lab where the GENIEs were first created, every scrap of research, all ash and cinders.’
There was a whimper from the box.
‘What day did you leave your home, Vanessa?’ the Doctor asked.
‘It was 17 April 2375,’ she said.
‘And that’s why your GENIE still exists,’ he told her. ‘Because it’s the very first.’
‘But if it takes me back home…’ she said.
The Doctor shrugged. ‘Then the Earth will be destroyed.’
* * *
It took a moment for this to sink in. Rose had been trying to work things out, but there were so many twists and turns it wasn’t proving easy.
‘So this is the only GENIE in existence,’ she said. ‘Because they took their planet back to a time after it was made – they had to, because they needed the GENIE that was built later to grant the wish. But hang on a minute – if they wished themselves back to the beginning, then none of the bad planet‐destroying stuff ever happened. So there’s no guarantee the Earth would be destroyed this time, even if they had a GENIE again.’
‘There’s human nature,’ said the Doctor, and Rose couldn’t argue with that. ‘I know what would happen if this GENIE went back. And it doesn’t happen. So I can’t let the GENIE go back. Time has to stay on the right track this time.’
‘But… if it never happened,’ she said, still getting things straight in her head, ‘if the planet never got overrun with GENIEs and wished to death, how do you know about it?’
He grinned. ‘Time Lord super‐powers.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, more or less. Time is, to put it in its most impressive and some might say poncy‐sounding form, my domain. I can see things that once happened, even if they haven’t happened any more. Well, if I concentrate. The new reality – the real reality – keeps asserting itself, even with me. But the other time line leaves echoes, ripples, if you look hard enough. For example, here’s an interesting thing: guess where the GENIE of the future got its name.’
‘The inventor was a big fan of pantos starring Australian soap stars in harem pants?’
‘Close enough. Arabian Nights fantasies and all that. There was a bit of an Arabic revival going on, everyone had Persian carpets and turbans were the latest fashion, right, Vanessa?’
Vanessa nodded. ‘I’ve never been very fashionable,’ she said.
‘So, what do you think inspired the genies that inspired the GENIEs?’
Rose got it. ‘GENIEs that had time‐travelled their owners back to Arabian Nights days!’
The Doctor tapped her on the nose. ‘Cigar for the lady.’
Vanessa frowned. ‘But none of it ever happened, so the GENIEs never went back in time to become… genies.’
‘True,’ said the Doctor. ‘But the magical East – chock‐full of mystics and wise men and suchlike who could sense things. Echoes and ripples. No one remembered that the genies were real – because they weren’t any more. But they left a trace.’
‘Blimey,’ said Rose. ‘Hey, are all stories based on disappearing time tracks, then?’