Doctor Who_ Return Of The Living Dad Part 29

You didn't need to be an expert to read the utter concentration of Joel's body language.

He was hunched in front of his computer, shoulders bowed, neck pushed forward. His gla.s.ses were a couple of inches from the screen, lit up with the flickering letters he was typing. There was a frown of intense thought on his young face.

She knocked on the open door. He didn't even look up.

'Yeah?' he said. 'Come in.'

The room smelt intensely of old cigarettes and boy. She sat down on the end of his bed, and waited until his brain finally registered her presence. 'Oh, Bernice, hi,' he said, turning around from the computer screen. He was wearing a T-shirt which said 'Kzin Diplomatic Corps - Let's Do Lunch'.

''Scuse me, I was in full technogeek mode.'

'Don't mind me,' said Benny. 'I'm just wandering about.'

'You okay?' he said.

'All this waiting,' said Benny.

'Yeah,' said Joel. 'You know, this much stuff doesn't usually happen at once.'

'What are you doing?' she asked.

'I'm on a BBS,' he said. 'There's a bunch of fanboys arguing about the Doctor.' He tapped the list of E-mail messages on the screen. 'They figure it's a code name, and they're having this big flame war about whether he could ever be a woman. Same old debates.'

'You must really miss the Internet.'

'h.e.l.l, yes,' sighed Joel. He took off his gla.s.ses and bowed his head.

'When were you born?' said Benny.

'Nineteen seventy-three,' said Joel. 'I'm ten.'

'You're old for your age.'

What gave me away?'

'The twentieth century is a kind of hobby of mine,' said Benny. 'You kept dropping references to films and TV which haven't been made yet.'

'Bad fanboy habit,' he sighed. 'I guess I didn't figure any of you would know the difference.'

'Cheer up. The first time I saw Star Trek Star Trek, I thought it was a doc.u.mentary.'

Joel laughed. 'Really? Which ep?'

'The one where Captain Picard meets the alien whose language is made up of metaphors and references.'

' Darmok Darmok,' said Joel. 'A total cla.s.sic. Or it will be, in nineteen ninety-one. You really thought it was a doc.u.mentary? I would have thought Trek Trek would be kind of a big twentieth-century cultural icon.' would be kind of a big twentieth-century cultural icon.'

Benny smiled. 'Ah well,' she said, 'there's a good reason, but I can't tell you without giving something away about the future.'

'Yeah,' said Joel, 'I keep having to do that with TV shows. It's like Marty McFly and the reruns: I've seen everything before.'

'I don't understand why you needed to keep it a secret, though,' said Benny. 'Was it something to do with how you ended up back in nineteen eighty-three, or...'

He was shaking his head. 'Nothing like that.' He took a deep breath. 'It's for the same reason the Admiral won't let you tell him about your mom.'

'Because we might offer to take you home,' said Benny.

And bitterly, 'And that would put him at a strategic disadvantage.'

'He doesn't really understand this,' said Joel, fiddling with a ballpoint pen. 'But I don't want to go home. I was kind of homesick at first. I missed my videos and my computer and my dog.'

'What about your family?' said Benny gently.

'We don't get on too well,' said Joel. 'Me and my dad, anyway. It's like... When I first got here, I was in the States. In New York, same place I was in in nineteen ninety-three. But my parents don't move there until nineteen eighty-seven.

Even if I found them, like, they're really going to believe me that I'm their son from the future.'

'Couldn't you prove it with a DNA test?' she said.

'DNA fingerprinting won't be around for a few years. And besides, how would I convince them to have a test in the first place? Believe me, I thought through all of that stuff. I was all by myself. I was homeless. I thought I would probably be dead inside a year.'

'I know a little of what it must have been like,' said Benny. 'I lived in a forest myself for years. And Dorothee -'

'Yeah, she told me a bit about being stranded on Svartos. I guess I was lucky I was still on Earth.'

'How did Dad find you?'

'I got screaming drunk one night on the last of my money. I just had what was in my pockets, and most of it had dates after eighty-three. I ended up in a homeless shelter, ranting and raving and demanding cigarettes. I told everyone there that I was from the future. A few days later, I'm under some bridge, half frozen to death, and this little blond guy comes up and asks me where I was when the Challenger Challenger blew up.' blew up.'

Joel stuck the pen in his mouth, took it out again. 'He saved my life, Bernice. But it's more than that. He's cool, he cares about us, he cares about everything. He's real serious, but he still has a sense of humour. And he knows how to ask you to do something without making it sound like an order.

And he's so brave brave. I kind of want to be him when I grow up.

It's like... he's my dad now.'

'Well,' said Benny softly, 'I guess that makes you my little brother.'

She reached out and embarra.s.sed him terribly by hugging him.

'Don't cry,' he muttered. 'Hey, don't cry. You know what?

I bet that Mr Summerfield, I mean Jason, is up on that ship.

The Doctor knew he was there and went to rescue him. I'll bet they both turn up safe and sound.'

Benny released the boy. 'I hope...'

'Yeah,' grinned Joel. 'I've read the stories. The Doctor can do anything.'

Jason had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He was leaning over the vast, complex crystal that was lying on the workbench, holding it tightly while the Doctor did things to it.

So what's this bloke Albinex's plan?' he asked.

The Doctor was peering deep into the crystal through a Jeweller's eyepiece. 'Back in the seventies,' he said, 'the nuclear superpowers had a deal whereby a neutral country was given the secret launching codes for their weapons. The idea was that if a launch was imminent, they could make all of the codes public, and force a cooling-off period.'

Jason frowned. 'That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.'

'As much sense as a strategy of killing your opponent's entire civilian population,' said the Doctor, mildly. 'Anyway, back then, the only superpowers were China, the USSR and the USA. So they gave the codes to Britain.'

'But wouldn't terrorists just get hold of them and use them?' said Jason, still trying to work out the point.

'The system was abandoned shortly after exactly that happened. But Albinex wants to know the codes.'

'Oh,' said Jason. 'And you know them.'

The Doctor nodded his head, slowly, as though it was heavy with the knowledge.

'But if the system was chucked, what good are the codes?'

'I presume Albinex's plan is to travel back in time to a period when they were still valid,' said the Doctor. 'He's probably going to do something tedious like hold the world to nuclear ransom.'

'Christ!' said Jason. 'Look, can't you just erase the codes from your mind, or something?'

'I might need them,' said the Doctor simply. Jason felt a chill trickle down his spine. 'Besides, I'd need the TARDIS to do the job properly. But I've buried them deep, deep down.

It'll take a lot more than the basic mind-probe technology Albinex would have to get at them.'

'Christ,' said Jason again. 'You can't let him do it. Benny would never be born. h.e.l.l, I'd never be born.'

'I must have a long chat with Albinex about the web of time,' said the Doctor absently. 'In the meantime, I think that better than presence of mind would be absence of body.'

A set of coloured lines flared inside the stricken crystal.

The Doctor stood back, satisfied. 'Six of one,' he said.

Jason hadn't noticed the tall archway standing against a wall of the engine room. The Doctor started moving it towards the bench. Jason gave him a hand. It was heavier than it looked, made out of some kind of dense red-black plastic, covered in printed circuitry patterns. 'And half a dozen of the other,' said the Doctor.

'What's this, then?' he said.

'Transformation archway,' said the Doctor. 'It's how Albinex appears human.'

Jason jumped back as the thing started to glow. It was as though there was a flat wall of the stuff bubbles were made of, stretched across the archway, softly glowing in rainbow colours.

The crystal engine was glistening with the same slick of colours, like oil on a wet road. 'It's some kind of feedback loop,' he said.

The Doctor was pressing the tips of his fingers against the stuff of the archway. The s.p.a.ce inside glowed blue, silver, green. 'This is a bit difficult to do,' he said, 'given that I don't know where we are, and we're in flight. But -'

The archway gave a final flicker, and turned into the inside of the Pyramid.

'- it's amazing what you can accomplish with a bit of patience.'

Jason blinked. 'Oh great. You've invented television.'

The Doctor took off his hat, smiled his best magician's smile, and stepped through the archway.

Jason gaped at him.

'I'd come through right now if I were you,' said the Time Lord. 'I don't think that loop is going to survive for more than another -'

Jason hurled himself through the archway, colliding with the counter and winding himself.

'- twenty seconds,' said the Doctor.

Jason turned. There was a hole in the air looking back into Albinex's engine room. As he watched, it folded itself up and slammed away into nothing.

'Or less,' added the Doctor.

Alekto