Doctor Who_ The Stone Rose - Jacqueline Rayner [64]
‘If I said it, it must have been good. What did I say?’
‘About slaves,’ she said. ‘About how they can buy their freedom – or be freed. And the GENIE – well, in the stories, isn’t he sometimes called the Slave of the Lamp? I know all about Aladdin. Well, I’ve seen the Disney film anyway. Which is brilliant, by the way. Robin Williams, he’s so funny, and – Yeah, right,’ she added quickly after a glance from the Doctor. ‘Anyway, the point is – the GENIE can’t wish for itself. But I can wish for it – like how I got it to turn into a monkey. And Aladdin’s last wish is to free the genie. To make it so it doesn’t have to grant wishes any more. So it isn’t a slave. I could do that.’
The GENIE looked dismayed. ‘But granting wishes is what I was built for! It’s all I’ve ever known!’
Rose shook her head. ‘Don’t you see? You could still grant wishes, if you wanted to. But it’d be your choice. You wouldn’t have to do things that would destroy people, or hurt them, or anything like that.’
‘My… choice?’ said the GENIE.
‘Yeah!’
‘That is… freedom?’
‘That’s freedom.’
‘Then perhaps… I should like it,’ said the GENIE. ‘I should like freedom.’
Rose took a deep breath. ‘Here goes, then.’ She glanced at the Doctor, who nodded approval. ‘I wish… that the GENIE is free. That it doesn’t have to grant wishes unless it wants to. That it’s not a slave anymore.’
A ray of light shot from the console and hit the GENIE, which seemed to suck it in like spaghetti. There was a peal of thunder; a triumphant crash. ‘Has anything changed?’ said Rose.
‘Why not try it and see?’ the Doctor suggested.
‘I wish…’ said Rose, thinking, ‘I wish… that the Doctor’s nose was green.’
‘Hey!’ he said.
Rose opened her eyes wide in horror. ‘Oh, no! Looks like the GENIE isn’t free after all…’
The Doctor ran off to get a mirror, and Rose collapsed with laughter. ‘Freedom OK for you, then?’ she asked the GENIE.
The little creature drew itself up to its full height – which wasn’t that much, but suddenly seemed to convey a dignity that hadn’t been there before. ‘Freedom is indeed… OK,’ it said.
Rose crouched down beside it. ‘You know, you don’t have to grant wishes any more. But if there was anything you wanted granted for yourself, you know – I could help out.’
The GENIE reached out a tiny scaly paw. ‘I should like,’ it said, ‘to go somewhere… nice. A place where there are no people to covet my power. A simple place. A place where I can be… happy.’ A tear slipped from its eye and dripped off the end of its beak.
‘Then I wish that for you,’ said Rose.
Crash!
And the GENIE disappeared.
But Rose thought she heard the words ‘thank you’ echo through the air as it did so.
* * *
‘So,’ said Rose, ‘that really is the end of the adventure this time. And we never have to go back to Rome ag–’ She suddenly gasped and dived at the console. She began hitting buttons at random. ‘We’ve got to go back! We’ve got to go back and undo everything!’
The Doctor opened his eyes wide. ‘We have?’
‘Yes!’ She stared at him, urging him to realise the importance of this. ‘Don’t you see? Ursus never made that statue – the statue in the museum! We’ve got to go back and get him to make it somehow, or when we go back to the twenty‐first century reality will explode!’
‘Well, we wouldn’t want that.’ The Doctor was laughing as he gently removed her hands from the controls.
‘Don’t you be so condescending!’ she said angrily. ‘Laugh all you like, I’m trying to save the world!’
He stopped laughing, but he didn’t seem able to stop grinning. ‘I’m not laughing at you,’ he said. ‘Actually we do need to pop back to Rome, but not for that reason. Come on.’
He took her by the hand and led her out of the control room and into a little side room. There, amid a lot of sculpting paraphernalia, was her statue. The statue from the museum. The statue of Fortuna. New and gleaming.
Rose gaped. ‘But I never posed for this.’
‘No need,’ said the Doctor, patting it on the arm – an arm which still had a hand attached.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean,’ he explained, ‘that you won’t have to pose