Part 29 (1/2)

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-s.h.i.+rt 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.'