Chapter Six
"Ah," was all the Doctor said after Jane disappeared.
Amy blew out a loud breath of air. "That wasn't good."
"I don't think she was supposed to do that," Rory said.
"Bit of a mistake bringing her on the TARDIS, then," Amy said.
The Doctor was pacing to and fro, tugging at his hair like he usually did when he was trying to find the solution to a rather difficult problem.
"Doctor," Amy said.
"Go away, I'm thinking. Hush."
Amy rolled her eyes. "Doctor!"
"Still thinking. Hush!"
"Fine!" Amy said. "If you're not going to talk to her, then I will." She walked briskly across the console room and ran up the stairs.
The Doctor spun around. "Amy!" he called.
"What? We can't just leave her in a great blubbering mess, now can we?"
"Yes, we can," the Doctor said abruptly. "Now stop it before we get into more trouble."
"Trouble?" Amy leaned against the rail. "Trouble like letting Jane bloody Austen see the big, wide scary universe?"
"Yeah, sure," the Doctor said. "Exactly that sort of trouble," He irritably pulled a lever on the console and the open TARDIS doors swung shut.
"Right, well," Rory said as Amy clattered backed down the stairs to the main level, "I'm sure this can't be all that awful—"
Amy passed by him wearing one of her expressions that brought the temperature of the room down to freezing.
"—can't we just say something to her?" Rory finished weakly. "Surely she'd understand."
"It's not that simple, Rory."
"Yeah, things never are with you."
The direct tone to his voice left the Doctor silent for a moment. "Jane's made it very clear that she's going to abuse her presence here to find out her future," the Doctor said, ignoring Rory and pulling a piece of bright blue string out of his pocket.
"And that's bad, is it?" Rory said shortly.
"Rory," the Doctor said, "if you randomly met a time traveller and pestered him with questions about your future, would you want a good answer or a bad answer?"
"I have randomly met a time traveller."
The Doctor flicked his fingers in the air. "No, really – would you want a good answer or a bad answer?"
"I don't think I'm going to answer that."
"What? Why?"
"Because things have a habit of changing when you're the time traveller in question," Rory said bluntly.
"Oh, right… Yeah, they do, don't they." The Doctor was quiet for a moment; he tugged on the blue string in his hands. "Bad example, sorry. But seriously – good answer or bad answer?"
"Knock it off," Amy said. "She'd want the good one, obviously."
"Yes, of course," the Doctor said. "Never can tell with humans, you can be so contradictory sometimes. It's really very confusing." He tossed Rory the string; it didn't fly very far and ended up on the floor. "Now, Jane wants the good answer," the Doctor continued, "anything to make her mad, brilliant writing efforts seem worthy of the paper and the time she's spending on them."
"But we know what's going to happen!" Amy said. "She'll be happy with that answer, won't she? She becomes a successful novelist and everything's good and fine—"
"No."
"No?"
"The big picture, Amy, there's always a bigger picture. And you're not seeing it." He tapped her on the forehead and continued to pace about the console room. "Jane's a lot younger than the last time I saw her. Last time she was all… matronly and professional and very, very quiet, and she had lovely biscuits and a very nice teapot. I underestimated her today. Older Jane is frankly not this frightening."
"Frightening?" Amy snorted. "Frightening how? If anything she was scared stiff of what's outside the TARDIS doors."
"She wants to know stuff."
Amy raised an eyebrow.
"No, I'm serious, Amy. She's very keen in her search for knowledge – just remember the way she identified you and Rory as being married…"
"Yeah, that was a little freaky," Amy admitted. "And is there something wrong with my nails?"
"No," Rory said.
"Yes," the Doctor said at the same time. He rattled on, not seeing the dangerous look Amy shot in his direction. "Yes, Jane Austen is quite – er – freaky these days. Who would have expected? Actually, bad question. All genius are freaky… what is it about art that does that to people?"
He shook his head. "Humans! Tell them one little thing and the next moment they're hungry for more. That's exactly what Jane wants – more. She weaseled it out of me that her books get published. She knows that she'll be a novelist one way, and she will have books – that's in the plural. So perhaps she's thinking now that she know she will be victorious in her pursuit of literary success, she wants to know about the rest of her life and how that will work out for her. That's where it gets dangerous. That's where the trouble is. She'll ask us for every little detail until she knows the whole story, and that – that can't happen. No one should know their personal timeline; it's dangerous and it does funny things to them."
"Then we'll just have to stay quiet," Rory said. "Simple."
"No, no – not simple!" The Doctor sighed, frustrated. "Why do I have to keep saying that? The simple things are the most difficult, the most difficult the most simple. Remember that for next time, Rory, I'm getting tired of repeating myself." He stooped and picked up the blue piece of string from the floor. He thrust it into Rory's hands, continuing to pace. "Jane is smart. She will ask you one thing, and whether you contradict it or agree with her, she'll know if what you're saying is true. She could very well discover everything about herself just by asking us a few easy questions." He sat down on the steps. "People like Jane aren't supposed to see the future."
Amy folded her arms. "Yeah, but we travel with you and there's no problem."
"That's because you're not important."
Amy raised her eyebrows. "Not important?"
The Doctor waved his hands in the air. "No, no, no, don't be offended, it's not like that. I mean, you're not major figures in Earth's history—"
Amy glared at him.
"…I'm doing this very poorly, aren't I?"
"Yep," Rory said. "I'm rather enjoying myself, actually."
"Shut up," the Doctor said. He looked at Amy. "I mean to say that a person like Jane, who has created something so powerful that it lasts billions of years throughout history, should never, ever step outside her timeline or learn anything about her future self. In the future, everyone knows her work, and not just humans. Her novels have touched the lives of many, many people on thousands of worlds. She's influenced great politicians and powerful generals and influential businessmen, and if she finds out one thing about her future beyond 1797, all of that will shift."
"So that's it, then?" Rory said. "That's why we're in trouble? Because if she knows too much, it will have some kind of ripple effect?"
"Exactly. There's a reason why I never take historical figures with me—" The Doctor stopped, laughing. It was a rather hollow laugh, the kind he usually got when he was thinking of something that happened to him a long time ago. "—or at least, why I should never take historical figures with me. They make things very inconvenient for the past if they learn too much at the wrong place in their timeline. Young people are the worst."
"How does that change things so drastically if she knows a little something about her future?" Amy asked.
The Doctor closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead. "Amy, Amy, Amy," he said, "I shouldn't have to explain this to you!" He looked across the console room at her. "Okay. Say, you find out that you are going to die in thirty days time. You know when, you know where, and you know how. What are you going to do?"
"Try not to get killed?"
"Exactly. Survival instinct, good. How do you try not to get killed?"
"I'd probably stay away from the place where I'm supposed to get killed," Amy said.
Rory was looking uncomfortable with this hypothetical situation, but he didn't interrupt.
"Right. So you stay away from the place where you're supposed to get killed, and so you stay alive, and live a long happy life, get a nice home in Leadworth, have a lot of kids, and do whatever it is you humans do." He pressed his hands together. "Do you see my point now?"
"I was supposed to die, but didn't, because I knew my future," Amy said. "So, if Jane knows her future and everything about her books and her life, that would change how she writes them, wouldn't it?"
"And that means that all those politicians and things you mentioned earlier, all throughout time, wouldn't make the same decisions because her novels have changed," Rory added.
"And that's the big picture we're dealing with," the Doctor said. "Jane Austen's novels. What happens here, right now, could possibly wipe them from existence. The Jane here with us isn't the Jane Austen. The Jane with us is a twenty-two year old woman with her whole life ahead of her. She hasn't become a successful novelist yet, and just because she is where you two come from means nothing. She may never be a novelist after today; or she might write completely different books. She's already started a manuscript that never existed before; it's hard to tell where this could go."
"So, Pride and Prejudice and all that don't technically exist right now," Amy said. "It's completely new stuff, yeah?"
"No, no, no, no – it does exist, it just might not." The Doctor raised a hand, his fingers tapping in the air. "Time isn't straight," he said. "It's not a line we can run up and down on. It's more like a giant, multi-layered squiggle. Or a pencil scribble. It's like when you write something that you really want to get rid of and you scrawl all over it because you don't have the sense to use your eraser, but it's still there. But sometimes the eraser gets used, whether you want it to or not, and then something can get erased for good, completely by accident, because you forgot that you didn't want to use your eraser."
There was a long silence before Rory ventured out with his next question.
"… so, if you should take Jane into the future, then where are we?"
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Not all space is in the future, Rory! We're still in 1797, just several million light-years away from Earth, in what's basically the middle of nowhere, except for that star right there. We couldn't stay on Earth, Draghs are very adept at sniffing you out if you stay on the ground for too long – and do you really want to think about what would happen if we lost Jane Austen on an alien planet?"
"Oh, stop it!" Amy snapped. She crossed the console room and punched the Doctor on the shoulder.
"Ow! What was that for?"
"So, basically, you're more concerned about what a bunch of idiots do with Jane Austen's novels millions of years in the future than a terrified girl set loose somewhere on your precious ship?"
The Doctor looked confused. "Amy, I don't—"
"Shut up," she said irritably.
"It's not about that at all—"
"No, it is!" Amy interrupted, her eyes blazing, "You'd rather preserve her works than her!"
"But they're the same thing, don't you see?" the Doctor said.
"What's the point of taking her out here if she can't see it?" Amy said heatedly. "Draghs or no Draghs, I don't care – that's what you always go on about. Seeing it. Well, she's here. She's stumbled into this amazing world, and suddenly those rules don't apply because she's bloody Jane Austen?" She frowned. "I'm a little disappointed in you, Doctor."
She ran up the stairs and out of sight before either Rory or the Doctor could react.
"Ow," the Doctor said, rubbing his shoulder. "That really hurt."