Ganne


Part 31 - A History Lesson.


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"Well, that makes a change anyway," Sarah said.  "Usually, it's the whole
universe that's going to go boom."

"Pardon?"

"Sorry.  I was being flippant.  What exactly do you mean, the world is
going to end?"

"The Ganne Dragon has been summoned into being again," Genella said.

"The Ganne Dragon?  I've heard a lot about that; but I have only the
vaguest idea of what it actually is.  I was told it is a living creature?
Is that right?  Is it really a great golden dragon like everyone says?  I
can't seem to get a straight answer from anyone.  Ooooo you people can be
really annoying about it, you know."

"Well, it is...  And, of course, it isn't," Genella said with a glint of
amusement in her eyes, because she was aware of how that must have
sounded; but there had been no intention to teas.  "It's hard to explain
to those who are not possessed by the Ganne.  It all began a very long
time ago, when the Ancients first discovered the planet.  It was unfit for
human habitation then.  I think I can show you what it was like then, if
you like?"

"Please do.  This Ganne business has been driving me nuts ever since
Marlek tried to explain what it's all about."

Genella closed her eyes; and a Ganne Lantern popped into being before
them.  The light was about two feet across, and resembled a ball of
swirling whitish clouds.  It reminded Sarah of nothing so much as a
photograph of the planet Venus she had once seen.  Fascinated by the
phenomenon, Sarah reached out a hand to the light, then hesitated with her
fingers almost brushing the tiny revolving sphere.  She glanced at
Genella, who had a look of concentration on her face.

Genella nodded at the sphere.  "You can touch it, Sarah.  It will not hurt
you."

Hesitantly, Sarah cupped the thing in her hands.  She gave a little gasp
of surprise.  She could feel it; she could actually feel the madly
swirling clouds.  They were tickling her palms.  "What is it?" she asked
in a whisper.  "It looks...  Feels almost like a planet...." Then Sarah
fell silent, wondering what cupping a planet in your hands ought to feel
like.  "It's almost like it's real," she added.

"It is as real as I am able to make it," Genella said.  "This is how I
remember a picture I saw once in my history classes.  I'm sorry it's not
very detailed; but history was never my favourite subject at the Academy -
even though it was compulsory for all students of Governance.  I could
never see the point in looking so far back into the past, when there was
so much going on in our own times.  This is a representation of what our
world was like when the Ancients found it.  We could not live on it while
it was in this state, so they used their technology to change it to what
you see around you now."

"Terra-forming," Sarah said, recalling the phrase from a great pile of
scientific papers she had once had to plough through researching an
article.

"Yes, that's right," said Genella.  "They used specially engineered living
cells to change the atmosphere; and then they went out into the Kuiper
Belt surrounding the system in their space boats to nudge great lumps of
the primordial ice into new orbits so they fell onto the surface.  It took
a couple of centuries before the Ancients could settle on their new home.
Somehow, during that great bombardment of our world, they awoke something
strange and terrible.  We call it the Ganne.  It is some kind of energy;
it lives; but it is not sentient...  Or at least it wasn't, when we first
awoke the Ganne; and since we came, it's most common manifestation has
been as a great golden dragon."

Genella's explanation produced a strange sense of dislocation in Sarah.
She was from a technological civilisation; but the thought of her own
people attempting such a grad feat of engineering was so far beyond her
experience that it was like a fantastical dream.  Yet this staggering feat
of engineering was being explained to her by a woman from this low-tech,
somewhat backward agrarian society.  Genella spoke so blithely of things
Sarah could barely imagine that it strained her credulity, even with all
she had seen travelling with the Doctor.

Her sense of unreality must have shown on her face because Genella added,
"we are not a primitive people, Sarah.  We might not now be able to
reproduce the technology of the Ancients; but we understand it.  Our
present level of technology has been forced on us by the poverty of the
natural resources of our world."

Genella dismissed the little planet and gazed hard at Sarah, who became
aware of a gentle buzzing sensation inside her head, which she had come to
associate with the Ganne being exercised.  The sensation made her feel
distinctly uncomfortable.  She had long suspected that these powerful
women could exercise some kind of telepathy or mind reading.  There was a
lot of stuff in her head that she was certain the Doctor would not wish
them to know about.

"Oy!" she snapped, "stop that!"

"Stop what?" Genella asked innocently.

"You know very well what I mean.  You're playing around in my mind again."

Genella chose to ignore the accusation.  She asked, "where are you from,
Sarah?  You have the most peculiar set to your mind that I have ever
felt."

"I'm from Earth," Sarah answered, wondering whether she should be
admitting this.

"Old Earth!" Genella exclaimed, suddenly interested.  "Old Earth is so far
away, and so long ago, it's become for some people an almost mythical
Paradise.  Even educated people deep down do not really believe in the
ancestral homeworld as a real place any more.  You really are from Old
Earth?"

"I don't know about Old Earth," Sarah said.  "My Earth is the only one I
know about.  We are just beginning to travel into space.  We reached the
Moon a few years ago; and there are some automatic satellites going out to
the outer planets; but that's about all."

The nagging something which Genella had been unable to pin down about
Sarah and the Doctor suddenly became clear - they were time travellers.
Now she understood an obscure reference she had discovered in an ancient
tome in the Grand Library about the Lords of Time.  She peered closely at
Sarah a long moment.  She nodded her head absently.  Yes, that would
explain the out-of-place strangeness she felt in this otherwise seemingly
ordinary woman.

"You're from the past!" she accused.

In the sudden silence, a cultured woman's voice spoke.


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