Doctor Who BBC N07 - The Stone Rose

by Doctor Who

  The GENIE drew itself up, little scaly monkey paws gripping on to the side of its cardboard box.

  ‘Try me!’

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  ‘All right, I will!’ said Rose defiantly. Then she hesitated. ‘Hang on.

  Do I only get three wishes or something? Because if – if – it’s true, and I’m not saying I believe it is, I don’t want to waste them all.’

  The GENIE sighed. ‘I will continue to grant wishes so long as I have sufficient power to do so. However, limiting wishes is in no way a bad idea. I may have to consider it. Otherwise my resources will be constantly drained. . . ’

  ‘OK,’ said Rose, thinking hard. ‘Something really simple. That can’t be misinterpreted. And that won’t harm anyone. I wish. . . I wish I had a bag of chips. Made from potatoes. Hot. With salt and vinegar.

  And a fork to eat them with. They don’t have forks here – or potatoes

  – so if you manage that. . . ’

  But before she had stopped speaking, she heard that crash of thunder again. And then suddenly she was holding a bag – a paper bag, grease already starting to soak through from the fat golden chips inside it. Gingerly, she forked one up and took a bite. It was the perfect chip, not too soggy and not too crisp, just the right temperature, with a delicate sprinkling of salt and vinegar.

  ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Well, if I’m stuck here for ever, at least I won’t starve. . . ’

  Stuck here for ever.

  No Doctor. No TARDIS?

  A sudden thought occurred. ‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘Can’t I just wish my wish undone?’

  ‘I don’t advise it,’ said the GENIE, sniffing.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Rose indignantly.

  ‘It’s perfectly obvious,’ said the GENIE. ‘This “Doctor” never came to Rome, so he was never here, so you never wished for him not to be here, so I never granted that wish, so there’s no wish to undo.’

  Rose’s head hurt. She mechanically put a chip into her mouth and chewed. ‘Well, what if I wished – this isn’t a wish, all right, I’m just working things out – for Vanessa to be unstoned,’ she said through a mouthful of potato. ‘That’s not undoing a wish, because that was all about Ursus’s hands, not Vanessa becoming a statue. So it’ll work, yeah?’

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  ‘It’s a technicality,’ sniffed the GENIE. ‘Anyway, I’m in the wish business, not the advice about wishes business.’

  ‘You’re just having a laugh,’ said Rose. ‘You’re going to let me go ahead and wish it, and even if it works, you’re going to give me the ability to turn stone to flesh with my hands, so every time I touch a rock it becomes a great blubbery lump or something, aren’t you?

  Or she’ll become a. . . a living statue, or a dead body, or something awful.’

  The GENIE sighed. ‘Well, really, it’s hardly my fault if people choose not to be precise in their utilisation of language. I merely act with regard to the logic circuits with which I was constructed. Can I help it if human beings do not do the same?’

  ‘We don’t have logic circuits,’ said Rose.

  ‘That I was inclined to suspect,’ said the GENIE.

  ‘Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be logical,’ Rose pointed out.

  ‘Like, I’m thinking about my wish here. If I. . . no. How about if. . . no.

  Or. . . no.’ She clenched her fists. ‘Ooh, do you know how annoying this is?’

  ‘Do you wish me to know?’ inquired the GENIE.

  ‘No, I blinkin’ well do not! OK, I’ve got it. Foolproof.’ She laughed.

  ‘Look at me, I’m a genius!’

  She got out once again the empty glass phial that had held the Doctor’s miracle cure. ‘The stuff that was in this, it turned people back from stone, right? So. . . I wish it was full of the same stuff again.’

  There was the booming sound inside her head that she’d come to expect. And then. . . ‘Yes!’ The phial was filled right to the top with an emerald-green liquid.

  ‘There, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?’ said Rose triumphantly.

  ‘As a matter of fact, it was extremely complex,’ replied the GENIE.

  ‘An astonishingly difficult formula. I have never come across anything like it before.’

  ‘Well, as long as it works,’ said Rose, not really listening.

  She pulled out the stopper slowly, carefully, and then tilted the vessel so a single glistening drop fell on the prone Vanessa.

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  ‘Miracle’ was the right word, she thought. The whiteness of the marble suddenly burst into colour, as if a whole palette of paints had been splashed on to it. The colours spread and merged until there was not a speck of stone left and then, with a shiver, a real live girl was lying face down on the ground.

  Rose took hold of Vanessa’s arms and helped her to sit up.

  ‘OK, before anything else – don’t say you wish for anything. You probably want to start with “Where am I?” and “What happened?”’

  Rose said.

  ‘Yes, I think I do,’ said Vanessa warily.

  ‘Well, one, you’re still in that old shrine place, and two, Ursus turned you into stone but now you’re back.’

  Vanessa jumped and darted an anxious glance around the ruined building. ‘Ursus! Where is he?’

  Rose waved a hand at the GENIE. ‘Your scaly friend over there went and ate him.’

  ‘My friend? Ate him?’ Vanessa did a double take. ‘That’s. . . that’s the box. . . ’

  ‘That’s the box that was in your father’s study back in the twenty-fourth century,’ Rose completed for her. ‘And that thing in it is a GENIE, made by your dad, and it granted your wish to come back here. . . ’

  Rose explained everything she’d learned about what had been happening, finishing with the disappearance of the Doctor and her own wishing experiences. To her slight surprise, Vanessa didn’t seem as freaked out by it as she’d expected. Perhaps when you’d spent the last few months living in a time 2,000 years before your own, you took things more in your stride. Although. . . well, actually Vanessa looked

  – happy. Almost verging on overjoyed.

  ‘What?’ said Rose. ‘Did I say something funny? Because I don’t think I did.’

  Vanessa’s eyes were shining. ‘But Rose, don’t you see? All I have to do is wish to go –’

  Rose quickly clamped a hand over Vanessa’s mouth before she could finish. ‘Hang on a minute! Didn’t you hear what I was saying? Be 129

  careful what you wish for!’

  But Vanessa didn’t seem put off. ‘I can get home! Now I know what brought me here, all I have to do is w–’

  Rose’s hand slammed back in place. ‘Whoa whoa whoa! If you w-word to go home, where’s that leave me and the Doctor? How’m I gonna get him back? Anyway, the GENIE says it can’t reverse wishes, so who knows if it can take you home anyway? I mean, if it could do that it’d probably have wished itself back by now.’

  The GENIE, which had been listening with interest, gave a big sigh.

  ‘Regrettably, my creators chose to limit my powers so wishes can only be granted for others. Not myself.’

  Rose frowned. ‘Right. But, look – this is not a wish – would you be able to get Vanessa home – safely – if she, er, expressed a desire for it?’

  The GENIE considered. ‘I may be able to do so,’ it said. ‘Of course, as I explained previously, time travel over such a considerable distance requires a great deal of power.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Rose. ‘But if you managed to do it once. . . ’

  ‘On that occasion I was able to obtain energy from the global electricity supply,’ it informed her. ‘You mean – that’s why all the lights went out?’ said Vanessa, as Rose removed her hand. That was you?’

  ‘Well, quite. What did you expect?’ said the GENIE rhetorically.

  ‘However, there is no such electricity supply in this primitive place. I have been forced to adapt myself to obtain energy in a much more basic form.
’

  Rose felt sick again. ‘“A goddess must eat,”’ she quoted. ‘That’s where you’ve been getting your energy from.’ She turned to Vanessa.

  ‘That’s why it absorbed Ursus’s body.’

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed the GENIE. ‘However, I fear I do not have sufficient fuel to grant any further time-travel wishes.’

  Rose raised an eyebrow: ‘Well, we’re not killing anyone for you!

  Look, how much more do you need? Maybe we can, I dunno, pick up a couple of steaks or something.’

  The GENIE was quiet for a moment, pondering.

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  Finally it said, ‘I have calculated the energy that would be required to get to the year 2375.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Vanessa eagerly.

  ‘Assuming my last energy intake –’

  ‘You mean “dead body”,’ put in Rose.

  ‘– is regarded as an average,’ continued the GENIE, ‘I calculate I would need 1,718,902 times that amount in order to grant such a wish.’

  For once, Rose was speechless.

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  Rose and Vanessa were sitting in silence, trying to work out a plan.

  Rose half-heartedly picked at a cooling chip. ‘It probably took both of Ursus’s legs to magic up a couple of potatoes,’ she said, laying the fork down again.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said the GENIE. ‘That was a very simple wish. Probably no more than an eyeball’s worth.’

  Rose pushed the bag firmly away and stood up. ‘Look, it’s no good sitting about here all day just wishing – I mean, hoping,’ she corrected herself hastily, ‘for something to turn up.’

  ‘Shall we go out and kill a lot of people, then?’ said Vanessa miserably.

  ‘Well, it is Rome,’ said Rose, pretending to think about it. ‘We could set up a fake arena and let Jim the GENIE here disguise itself as a lion.’ She shook her head. ‘No, what we need is an alternative source of energy. You know, like wind farms, or solar panels or something.’

  ‘And how are we going to live in the meantime?’ asked Vanessa.

  ‘Stay here and wish for chips?’

  Rose shrugged. ‘Well, you’ve managed to survive so far,’ she said. ‘I vote we go back to Gracilis’s. The Doctor said he was going to bring 133

  everyone back to life in a couple of days, but if he’s no longer here –’

  she held up the phial – ‘well, we’d better be the heroes of the hour.’

  ‘The Doctor being the guy who came here with you, until you wished he hadn’t?’ said Vanessa.

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Rose.

  Vanessa nodded. ‘But if we go, what about. . . ?’ She indicated the GENIE.

  ‘Well, I’m not leaving it here,’ said Rose decisively. ‘Look, GENIE, you know all that pretending-to-be-Minerva stuff?’

  ‘Merely obeying the desires of my then-controller,’ the GENIE said.

  ‘Yeah, whatever – well, if we take you with us, you’re going to have to look like something else. A dog or something.’ She turned to Vanessa. ‘Do the Romans have dogs?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Vanessa, not sounding sure at all. ‘Well, do you know any pets they definitely have? Preferably ones kept on a lead.’

  Vanessa thought. ‘I’ve seen a couple of people with monkeys,’ she said at last.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Rose. ‘Perfect. GENIE, become a monkey.’

  The GENIE tutted. ‘You have to wish for it. . . ’

  ‘Fine. Right. Whatever. GENIE, I w– Hang on!’ Rose slapped a hand over her own mouth this time. ‘If I’d w-worded you to become a monkey, you’d have become a monkey, wouldn’t you? Little furry monkey, banana fixation’ and no wish-granting ability.’

  ‘Oh, you’re starting to think,’ said the GENIE. ‘Spoil my fun, why don’t you?’

  Rose glared at it, then said very carefully, ‘I wish that you would adopt the appearance of a monkey when there are any Romans around to see you, while retaining all the abilities of a GENIE.’

  Thunder rumbled. ‘Your wish was my command,’ said the GENIE.

  ‘But you still look the same,’ said Vanessa.

  The GENIE sighed condescendingly. ‘There are no Romans around to see me. I have adhered to the very letter of the wish.’

  ‘We’re just gonna have to take it on trust,’ said Rose, picking up the cardboard box.

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  Near to, the GENIE smelled faintly metallic, and its scales shone bronze in a ray of light from outside. She could suddenly believe it was a made thing, a construct, rather than a bizarre alien, and she felt a stab of pity for it. It wasn’t really responsible for this whole awful mess, it was just doing what it had been made for – or perhaps what it thought it had been made for. She’d never really got the hang of the idea of artificial intelligence, wasn’t sure if she totally accepted the whole idea of a computer thinking for itself, having hopes and dreams (even though she’d watched that Spielberg film twice ’cause it had Jude Law in it). . . But perhaps she could accept that the AI thought it thought for itself, even if it didn’t. Or. . . no, she’d leave it at that.

  Rose was a bit worried that they’d never find their way out of the wood, but luckily their journey there had created enough of a path through the undergrowth for them to follow with only a few false turns. To her relief, when they finally came to Ursus’s cart, the donkey was still placidly standing there, totally unconcerned with any dramas of death, time travel or being marooned in a place 2,000 years before you were born that might be going on nearby. Rose dumped the GENIE in the back of the cart with Vanessa and climbed up on the front to attempt to steer the donkey back towards Gracilis’s villa.

  Marcia saw them arrive and hurried out to greet them. ‘Rose, you are all right! Thank the gods! We were so worried about you. Oh, and what a sweet little monkey that is.’

  Rose put aside her hastily conceived tales about children’s toys or animals imported from strange parts and breathed a sigh of relief as she picked up the GENIE’s box. The cutest, cheekiest-faced little chocolate-brown monkey gazed up at her with enormous dark eyes.

  So it had granted her wish.

  ‘Did you have it before?’ Marcia asked, curious. ‘I don’t remember. . . ’

  ‘Er, yes, I did,’ said Rose. After all, their memories had already been messed with once, so a little white lie couldn’t hurt. ‘But it was asleep 135

  a lot.’

  Vanessa climbed out of the cart and stood there silently. Almost as soon as they’d crossed the property’s threshold she’d returned to her shy ways – not that she’d been much of a chatterbox in the meantime.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Marcia, turning to go back inside, ‘I must return – a number of friends have come to visit. We had invited them to view our statue of Optatus – it would not have been polite to withdraw the invitation, despite the circumstances. You must both come inside and join the party.’

  ‘Wow,’ Rose whispered to Vanessa, ‘things must be good. She’s treating you like a human being.’

  Vanessa gave her a quick wry smile. ‘I think she was talking about you and the monkey. . . ’

  Rose handed over the cardboard box. The GENIE was peering over the rim, drinking in its surroundings like a dog with its head out of a car window. ‘Here,’ Rose said. ‘You can be my official monkey carrier.

  They can’t complain about you being at the party then.’

  Vanessa accepted the burden. ‘So. . . you still disappeared, then? If Marcia was worried about you.’

  Rose shrugged, lost for answers. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘But if your friend the Doctor was never here. . . ’

  ‘If the Doctor had never come here, I’d never’ve come here at all,’

  Rose pointed out. ‘Oh, my God! I shouldn’t be here! I shouldn’t be here at all! So. . . it must be one of those paradox things. Maybe time’s trying to heal itself and keeping me here’s part of it.’

  As they followed Marcia inside, Rose muttered again, ‘I shouldn’t be
here. . . ’

  A number of people were in the villa, apparently Marcia’s nearest neighbours. There were several couples, one clearly barely on speaking terms; a young girl who appeared to be the daughter of the warring couple; an ungainly looking middle-aged woman whose bright yellow silk robe did not suit her at all; an elderly lady, dripping with jewels, whose vividly red hair was clearly not her own; a good-looking young man in a green cloak: and three or four nondescript men who 136

  had already had a bit too much wine, judging by their raucous laughter.

  Rose had been expecting it to be standing around with drinks and chatting, like the duller dos from back home, but instead everyone was lying down on couches like at dinner, while a troupe of scantily clad African girls danced around.

  ‘Where’s Gracilis?’ Rose asked, as she gingerly lay down on the couch that Marcia indicated.

  Vanessa stood behind Rose in the manner of the other slaves in the room, still holding the box containing the GENIE.

  ‘Oh, my dear – he has gone to Rome to find you. We were so worried. . . ’

  Rose frowned. She detected the Doctor’s hand in this. ‘Has he gone on his own, then?’

  Marcia looked puzzled for a moment. ‘But. . . but of course. No –no, I think. . . Of course, the slave Vanessa went off to look for you, and when she didn’t return my husband said – well, I don’t remember exactly what he said. . . Oh, yes, I had to send a message if Vanessa returned. I suppose I had better do that. . . ’

  ‘A message to who?’ Rose asked.

  ‘To. . . why, to my husband, of course.’

  Marcia seemed so unsure of herself that Rose felt a bit sorry for her.

  Obviously time hadn’t been healing itself that well. It seemed to have simply stuck a plaster over the wound and hoped for the best. The occasions when the Doctor had been present were now just sort of blurry for everyone – except her. That stupid GENIE and its wishes! If she never heard that ridiculous thunder sound again she wouldn’t be sorry. . .