by Doctor Who
‘No, an actual elephant – the emperor of Golibo’s favourite pet. Can you imagine the bit where they say “You may now kiss the bride”?
Those tusks!’
‘So what happened?’
‘Luckily my fiancee ate the bouquet, invalidating the contract. And I did what is technically known as “a runner”. Now, shall we get on with it?’
But Rose was doubled up with laughter. ‘Had. . . had. . . ’
‘What? Ha ha, the Doctor nearly married an elephant. . . You never nearly married anyone you shouldn’t have? Let’s get on with it.’
‘Had. . . had. . . ’
‘Rose!’
Rose nearly exploded. ‘Had she already packed her trunk for the honeymoon?’ She fell about again.
The Doctor stood, arms crossed, looking at her with a stony face that made her laugh even more.
‘Got that out of your system?’
She nodded, still sniggering.
‘Then can we get on with stopping time and space from ripping apart? We can? Then let’s get on with it.’
Rose composed herself and raised her hands in a ‘what?’ gesture.
‘Right. You’re Fortuna, you hide behind the statue, you don’t, repeat don’t, let me see you; and you wait until Gracilis has picked up the phial and left before you come out again. Oh, and take this – it’ll disguise your voice. OK?’ He handed her a small metal device and hustled her towards the door. ‘Go go go!’
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‘Hang on,’ said Rose, trying to dig in her heels. ‘Can’t I have a rehearsal or something?’
The Doctor glanced at the scanner. ‘No time! I’m going to be here any second! Oh, and Rose –’
She turned back. ‘Mm?’
‘Yeah, I’m afraid she had. Packed her trunk. And said goodbye to the circus.’ He gave her a big grin – and propelled her through the doors.
Rose found herself stumbling out into the shrine, and the TARDIS
doors slammed behind her. The time machine was soon swallowed up in the gloom as she made her way to the statue that the Doctor had indicated. It was a bit of a squeeze to get behind and she could only hope that the gloom would disguise her too; she felt that bits of her were sticking out all over the place.
She had just settled down and adjusted the metal box thing over her mouth, when the door to the shrine opened. She peered through Fortuna’s legs and saw that, yes, it was the Doctor. He saw the statue.
She shrank back as he hurried forward. . . and then he realised that it wasn’t her.
Rose was taken aback. She hadn’t known – how could she know?
– what her disappearance had done to him. This Doctor had a look of such despair in his eyes that her heart almost stopped in pity. She wanted more than anything else in the world to jump up, go to him, tell him that everything was going to be all right.
But, what with possibly ripping time and space apart, that was probably a bad idea.
‘Rose is prettier than you,’ the Doctor suddenly said.
‘Thanks!’ she said, before she could stop herself.
She bit her tongue. Quick, better follow on with the rest of it before he got too suspicious. The box over her mouth made her sound more like Cher than Rose, but she put on her best ‘goddess’ voice anyway and said, ‘This’ll bring Rose back to life – and the others. All praise to me – that is, Fortuna,’, she hastily clarified, ‘and all that.’
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She bent down as low as she could, and carefully – oh, so carefully
– sent the little glass phial on its journey towards the Doctor, and her past.
The Doctor picked it up and started towards her.
She tensed up, suddenly wondering if he would discover her after all – but, just as the Doctor had described, he was interrupted by Gracilis.
Rose couldn’t bear to watch the Doctor’s capture, even though she knew it had a happy ending. She forced herself to look at the moment when he dropped the phial, though. That was important. Now she just had to wait for Gracilis to pick it up. . .
Gracilis wrung his hands in despair. ‘What do I do? What do I do?’
she heard him mutter to himself. ‘I must find someone who can help.’
The old man walked towards the exit. Any moment now. . .
Gracilis passed the phial. Rose waited for him to spot it and stop –but he didn’t.
He opened the doors. He walked outside. . .
Rose felt a swirling, sinking feeling in her stomach, and she didn’t know if it was fear or if history really had just changed and she was about to be erased from existence. If Gracilis had never found the phial. . .
And then she had an idea. Whether it was sensible or not she hadn’t time to decide – probably it wasn’t. But what she said, hoping that the GENIE was close enough to hear her, was, ‘I wish Gracilis would come back now and find the phial.’
There was a crash of thunder inside her head. And Gracilis walked back through the door. He was shaking his head, frowning as if trying to place something. He looked at the ground. Aha! He picked up the phial of life-giving liquid and put it in a pouch at his waist.
Rose heaved a very big sigh of relief.
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‘Thatwouldbetheendoftheadventure,then,’RosesaidtotheDoc-tor, as the TARDIS took off again. ‘Everything’s going to happen when it should. Old you’ll get the phial of liquid and bring everyone back and then give the empty phial to me to get filled again to give to you and it all works.’
‘Thank goodness!’ said Vanessa.
She’d been trying to help the Doctor determine the exact time and place to which she should be returned. She turned to Rose, as if it was already goodbye.
‘Thank you – for everything.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Rose. ‘Just – be careful what you wish for in future, OK?’
Vanessa grinned.
The TARDIS landed and Rose opened the doors. Vanessa hurried out, eager to be home. The Doctor and Rose followed her more slowly.
They’d arrived in a small study. The TARDIS stood on a beautiful Persian-style rug and silk draperies hung across the walls. A screen was showing a documentary. ‘This was the Golden Age of Rome. . . ’
the voiceover was saying.
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‘Power’s back, then,’ said the Doctor.
He glanced over to one side. On a desk a faint square mark could just be made out in the light coating of dust – where a cardboard box may once have stood.
‘Father doesn’t like being disturbed robocleaners,’ Vanessa explained, embarrassed.
‘I don’t blame him,’ said the Doctor. ‘And talking of your father. . .
His research is going to be destroyed and so is his laboratory. But his brain will still work. Whatever you do, you mustn’t let him build another GENIE. Fate of the world, Vanessa. Fate – of – the – world.’
He sketched a wave.
‘Er. . . yeah,’ said Rose, not sure how to follow that. ‘Take care of yourself, OK?’
They went back into the TARDIS, leaving a very worried-looking girl behind them.
The TARDIS doors had shut and they were in flight again.
‘The question now,’ said the Doctor, ‘is what we’re going to do with you.’ He was looking at the GENIE. ‘You’re a bit dangerous, you know?
Even if all the kinks had been ironed out, no offence.’
The creature looked troubled, and Rose’s heart was suddenly touched. Yeah, it had caused some bother – the whole being-turned-to-stone thing for a start. But that hadn’t been the GENIE’s fault – like the Doctor had said before, it was people who were to blame.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ she said.
‘I’m all ears,’ said the Doctor.
Rose dug him in the ribs. ‘Not so much any more!’
‘Your idea, Miss Tyler?’ he said with a mock frown.
‘Right. Well, I was just thinking about what you said ages ago,’ she told him.
‘I
f 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 162
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.
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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.’
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‘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 for it. As Mickey said –’ the Doctor smiled to himself – ‘it was sculpted by someone who knew you pretty well.’
He ran a hand through his hair and looked as though he was expecting applause.
Rose walked round the statue. ‘Is my bum really that –’
‘Yes,’ the Doctor interrupted testily. ‘This statue is accurate in every detail. Burn. Arms. Legs. Nose. Broken fingernail on your right hand.’
Rose looked down. ‘Hey, even I hadn’t noticed that! Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Well, where did it come from?’
He sighed exasperatedly. ‘I made it.’
Rose laughed. ‘No, really.’
‘Yes, really.’
‘What, you’re serious? But, like, how? I didn’t know you sculpted.
You said you didn’t sculpt. You said you weren’t a master sculptor. I heard you.’
‘I learned,’ the Doctor said.
She was puzzled. ‘When?’
‘This is a time machine,’ he said – and told her everything. How he lost her trail. How he went back to the British Museum. How he realised the truth. ‘The earrings gave me the first clue,’ he said. ‘But when Mickey and I turned her over and found my signature on the bottom –’
‘You’d better not have signed my bottom,’ said Rose.
‘– on the base,’ continued the Doctor, ‘well, that was a bit of a hint too.’
‘You mean to say no one had ever noticed that this statue had got
“the Doctor” written on it before?’ asked Rose. ‘’Cause wouldn’t they have wondered why?’
‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. ‘Gallifreyan signature. They’d have no idea what it was. Anyway, then I knew I had to find the real you – and 165
find a sculpture to take your place. I did think for a minute about just nicking that statue and bringing it back here, but well – then it would have been a 4,000-year-old statue, which would not only have confused people but also set up all sorts of paradoxes, and I think we’ve had enough of those for the moment. Better not to risk the whole of causality if you don’t have to. So, anyway, quick flick of the coordinates, back to the Renaissance, took that sculpting course.’ He produced Rose’s mobile. ‘Mickey texted me pictures so I got it just right, and Michelangelo helped with the tricky bits. Like your ears, they were a nightmare to get right. And then, when it was all finished, I came back to Rome a couple of days before I left, and hid outside Gracilis’s place, ready to follow Ursus when he went off with. . . with you. Rescue effected, all’s right with the world.’
Rose was almost speechless for a moment. ‘You went gallivanting off for months and months with Michelangelo while I was left standing there like something a dog might put its leg up against?’
‘You were only stone for a couple of hours!’ said the Doctor indignantly. ‘And it was your idea in the first place. Sort of. A bit. And you wouldn’t believe what a slave-driver Michelangelo is. Everything has to be perfect.’
Rose stood looking at the statue for a bit longer. ‘It is perfect,’ she said at last.
‘I was inspired.’
They smiled at each other. All was right with the world again.
‘Anyway,’ the Doctor continued, ‘you know what? I think you bring me luck. My Fortuna, that’s you.’
‘You mean I’m a sort of mascot,’ said Rose. ‘Like a four-leaf clover.
Or wearing lucky pants when you go for an interview.’
‘That’s it exactly,’ the Doctor told her. ‘You’re my lucky pants.’ Then he said, more seriously, ‘I realised it when you pretended to be Fortuna in that shrine. Knew it was right to portray you like that.’
Rose frowned. ‘But you only went to that shrine because you’d already seen the statue of me as Fortuna.’
‘And there was only that statue of Fortuna because I’d seen what a good Fortuna you’d make.’
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‘Another paradox?’
The Doctor grinned. ‘Only the tiniest of tiny ones. More like cir-cular logic. Like how no one ever actually came up with that very complicated formula to turn people back from stone.’
‘So they didn’t!’ Rose realised. Then she thought of something else.
‘You said that Fortuna’s sometimes got a blindfold on. So she doesn’t know who she favours.’
He nodded.
‘So sometimes she turns her back on people who’ve relied on her.
Sometimes the luck. . . goes away.’
‘And lucky pants are just pants, and four-leaf clovers are just vegetation, and a rabbit’s foot just means you should call the RSPCA. I’ll survive.’
Rose helped the Doctor carry the statue into the control room. It glowed like green jade in the light from the central column.
‘It doesn’t look half bad in here, don’t you think?
Sort of goes with the decor.’
‘I think one Rose per TARDIS is quite enough,’ said the Doctor, who was now bent over the console. ‘Some might say too much.’
She pouted.
‘Anyway, you know it can’t stay here. We’ve got to find it a new home.’
The TARDIS landed and Rose stepped out nervously. But she knew where they were at once. ‘We’re back at the villa!’ she said as the Doctor joined her.
‘Yup,’ he said. ‘Thought you might fancy a Roman holiday.’
She glared at him.
‘Or maybe not. Come on. Job to do.’
A slave spotted them and ran into the villa. Seconds later, Gracilis and Marcia ran out, followed by a boy Rose had never seen before –at least not like this. But she knew who he was.
‘You must be Optatus,’ she said, grinning at him.