The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [189]
3What with one thing and another, I was never sent the galley-proofs for Cross Stitch (normally, this is the last chance an author has to check for errors, specify small inclusions, or alter the text in any way). I was therefore shocked and dismayed, upon receiving the printed book, to find that the editor had replaced terms such as skein dhu with “sock knife,” and that someone had—for reasons unknown—massacred the small comic “hedgehog” scene in Chapter 23.
THE GABALDON THEORY OF TIME TRAVEL
t’s all Claire Beauchamp’s fault. If she hadn’t refused to shut up and talk like an eighteenth-century woman, these would have been perfectly straightforward historical novels. As it was, though, being too lazy to wrestle with her natural inclinations through a whole book, I found myself instead obliged first, to allow her to be modern (not that I had much of a choice; she’s remarkably stubborn), secondly, to figure out how she got there, and thirdly, to conclude what happened then.>>
The stone circles helpfully presented themselves in the course of my research into Scottish geography and settings, so I had a mechanism for the time travel. The actual mechanics and implications of the process, though, required a little time to be worked out—whoever erected the stone circles having not thought to chisel instructions on them.
Since Claire herself had no notion how time travel worked—and was unfortunately deprived of Geilie Duncan’s company in Cranesmuir before being able to compare notes—the explication of the process has been slow and halting, developing through the various books, as further bits of information come to light, and as those capable of travel begin to discuss the subject.
A couple of things are obvious: 1) the stone circles mark places of passage, and 2) the ability to pass through time is evidently genetic.
Now, we don’t yet know whether the stone circles are only markers, meant as ancient warnings of a place of mysterious disappearance, or whether the stones themselves play some active role in the “opening” of a door through the layers of time. I incline to the first idea, myself, but it remains an open question.
So far as the ability being genetic, it’s apparent that not everyone can travel through the stones.1 Of those who can, we know that two (Brianna and Roger) are descended directly from two others (Claire and Geillis Duncan). This suggests that the gene for time travel is dominant; i.e., only one parent need have the gene, and only one copy of the gene need be present in a person in order for the trait to be expressed. It’s like the ability to roll one’s tongue into a cylinder; if you don’t have the gene for this trait, you simply can’t do it at all. If you do, it’s perfectly easy and natural.
Genes that control traits of this sort normally occur in alleles, or pairs, one allele being derived from each parent. Each parent, however, will have two alleles—one from each of that parent’s parents. This means that, for instance, if a person (Brianna Fraser, for example) is descended from a traveler and a nontraveler, then she will have only one time travel gene—but that gene is sufficient to allow the trait to be expressed; that is, to allow her to pass through time-gates. However, it also means that she possesses one travel gene, and one nontravel gene. She will pass only one of the alleles on to her offspring, and which one is given to a specific child is purely a matter of random assortment.
If the child’s other parent (Roger MacKenzie, for instance) is also a time traveler who is heterozygous for the traveling gene (that is, has one travel gene and one non-travel gene), then we have the following possibilities:
In other words, on average, if Brianna and Roger have four children, three of them will be time-travelers, and one of them won’t. If they have one child (Jeremiah, for instance), the odds are three out of four that he will be able to travel