The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [59]
Sarah sat silent, trying to digest what he’d been saying.
Was it true that the Brigadier and Jeremy and everything they’d left behind – her own birth for that matter – didn’t exist at this moment except as an abstract complex of possibilities? Then what was she doing there? Where had she come from? And what about…?
‘I read up about time travel after we first went into the past together,’ she said. ‘What about the time paradoxes?
You know, like I go into the past and kill my grandpa as a boy, before he’s even met my grandma?’
‘Ah,’ said the Doctor, holding down the last few hairs with a firm handkerchief, ‘the result of even trying would be 207
a perfect example of the most extreme result of the Blinovitch limitation effect.’
‘Well thank you, Doctor. Now I understand completely.’
‘No need to be sarky, miss,’ said, the Doctor, standing up an putting his mirror away. ‘I’m going to explain.
Funnily enough, people are always asking me to explain Blinovitch. It’s the Blinovitch limitation effect which makes it very nearly impossible to cross your own time line – to go back and meet yourself in the past or re-experience your own history.’
‘And put things right.’
‘Exactly. The effect had been known empirically ever since time travel began, but it took a human philosopher working all by himself in the reading room of the British Museum to construct a plausible theory for it. In 1928, Aaron Blinovitch – are you listening carefully? It s quite a tortuous explanation.’
‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ said Sarah. Then I’ll begin.’
‘Eh?’
‘I can’t wait,’ said Sarah.
‘Well now – the Blinovitch limitation effect, to put it as simply as possible, is –’
208
A sharp knock at the door; the handle turned. ‘Who is it?’ called the Doctor. A voice, urgent in tone: Doctor. My Lord requests your presence in the great hall. At once, if you please.’
The Doctor crossed to the door and unbolted it.
Standing outside was one of the cavalieri, a knight-at‐arms with behind him a soldier in the chain mail of the duty guard, with a drawn sword loosely held, ready for instant action.
The Doctor lifted an eyebrow. ‘Thank you,’ said the officer. ‘If you would be so good…’ He gestured for the Doctor to precede him. He looked past the Doctor at Sarah, lurking uneasily in the background, hoping not to be noticed.
‘You too, boy,’ he said.
After the high-jinks on the gate-tower, the not-yet-besieged garrison settled down to wait. Maggie tried to insist on doing the washing-up, which so offended the rigid code of behaviour encrypted in Umberto’s DNA after centuries of selective breeding, that it took a deal of negotiation, including a lengthy summary of her working class antecedents, before she was allowed even to help him.
The other three were each allotted a tower as a post from which to keep watch, which proved so onerous an 209
assignment that they found it necessary, as each in turn explained to the Brigadier on his rounds, to close their eyes
‘to rest them for a moment’.
The Brigadier returned to his eyrie on the gate tower, ignoring the snores of the resident lookout (Jeremy, doubling as dogsbody), and again inspected the yacht, which by this time was secured to the harbour wall. There seemed to be quite a lot of activity.
He had a closer look, with the aid of Mario’s telescope, which was so old that it painted a rainbow round all the edges. There were more of them than he liked to see; and wasn’t that…? Yes, by George, it was: a gun, hastily hidden, but not soon enough; a nastily modem type of gun at that, capable of being used as a single shot rifle of great accuracy or switching to automatic firing to rival that of the recent fiend.
The thought of the successful repulse of the enemy in the rear comforted the Brigadier somewhat, as he remembered that Max had no idea that he would be able to keep his pet ghost at bay. Indeed, it was to be hoped that he was basing his entire strategy on the use of this secret weapon, for if not…
And the Brigadier at last allowed himself to think the thought that