Peter Hamilton - Misspent Youth

Between publication of the U.K. and U.S. editions of Misspent Youth I was asked by my American editor to make a few changes to the text. While doing so I took the opportunity to make some larger revisions, resulting in a manuscript that is noticeably different from the original. However, I would like to assure readers that it is exactly the same story.

I am indebted to Kate, Chris, Graham, Peter, Colin, and Ant, who took the time and trouble to comment on the first version. And to Betsy, who took it one step further.

PETER F. HAMILTON

Rutland, U.K.

April 2008

THERE WAS A PARTICULAR DAY that Timothy Baker always remembered whenever he thought back to his childhood: the air tattoo at RAF Cottesmore when he was six years old. It was one of the rare events his parents attended together, which to his young mind made a perfect, happy family outing.

The EuroAir Defence Force had assigned a good number of both combat and transport aircraft to the open day, always eager to show the bolshie English how worthwhile and relevant the unified European squadrons were. It was also well attended by international aerospace companies, as well as senior air staff from more than thirty foreign air forces. Elaborate company pavilions lined half the taxiway, their tiered seating giving patrons and customers an excellent view of the flying exhibition, while static displays of combat aircraft, transports, tankers, radar cars, and missile batteries stretched along the entire three kilometers of the parking lot.

Over ninety thousand people were expected during the weekend, stretching Rutland’s rural transport infrastructure to the limit. By midmorning on Saturday Timothy was convinced that most of them had turned up already; he’d never seen so many people in one place before. He walked along between his parents, sometimes managing to hold hands with both of them at once as they roamed around the husky, lethal hardware. It was a typical late-August day, the incendiary sun glaring down out of a cloudless turquoise sky. The GM tuber grass was still green, if somewhat dry and wiry, after seven straight weeks without rain.

The Baker family walked the entire length of the lot in the morning, with Timothy and Jeff, his father, stopping to admire most of the aircraft along the way. Sue, his mother, tagged along gamely as her two enthusiastic boys quizzed the smiling, polite aircrews for facts and squadron stickers. Timothy managed to plead and entreat his way into the cockpits of several helicopters.

They reached the end of the hot parking lot and began the long walk back, this time through the circus of commercial stalls and mobile shops that had set up camp behind the aircraft. Timothy had spotted several ice cream vans and doughnut sellers earlier, and was already putting his case for visiting several of them to his tolerant yet unmoved parents.

A middle-aged couple walked past, the squat man glancing at the Bakers longer than was strictly polite.

“Now that,” the man said emphatically, “is a Viagra kid if ever I saw one.” His voice trailed off into a dirty chuckle. His wife gave him a sharp nudge.

Timothy twisted around to look at him, but the couple was already vanishing into the crowd. He wasn’t quite sure what a Viagra kid was, although he’d heard the phrase a few times now. It was always used in a mocking way. And he was fairly sure it was something to do with his parents. When he looked up at them for reassurance, his mother was looking straight ahead with her blank smile beaming bright; his father was frowning faintly. Timothy knew his mother was utterly beautiful. When she was younger, she had appeared on datasphere ads helping to sell perfume and clothes, and her looks hadn’t faded; after all, she wasn’t thirty yet. His father, as he was now uncomfortably aware, was older. Timothy wasn’t sure how old exactly, but he had white hair and skin that was wrinkled despite the genoprotein treatments he took every few months.

Jeff caught his son staring up curiously, and smiled. “Let’s go get you that ice cream.”

“Yes please!”

Timothy was given a cash card for a hundred euros, and shot off to the nearest van.

“What’s that?” Sue asked suspiciously when he returned with a triple cone dripping sticky brown and yellow blobs onto his hand.

“Double chocolate chip with banana,” Timothy said cheerfully. “Only fifteen E’s.” He thrust it upward. “Want some?”

“No thank you, dear.”

Timothy couldn’t see his mother’s eyes behind her wide gold-mirror sunglasses, but he knew from her tone that she was disappointed again. It was always so hard to please her. He licked at the cone, delighted by the weird taste mix.

There was a long row of hangars behind the stalls, modern stealth composite bubbles lurking between huge old concrete and corrugated iron structures. The new dark gray hemispheres were sealed against curious eyes, like lead mushrooms bursting out of the grass. They contained the latest EuropeanAerospaceCorporation automated attack fighters, which operated from Cottesmore. In contrast to the secrecy of the new structures, the tall rusty panel doors on the older buildings were wide open. Large banners outside advertised the service companies that had taken over the hangars for the weekend. The Bakers went into the first hangar. Few people were inside.

Timothy moved along the company stands. None of them captured his interest. It was all test equipment and maintenance tools. Dull stuff compared to what was outside. Not even the vast array of intricate parts from a dismantled high-speed turbine held his attention for more than a few seconds. Then the stand right at the end made him come to a complete halt.

The company was promoting its fuselage vibration analysis software, but it was using an eternal tap as part of its advertising. Three slender nylon fishing lines had been tied to the iron rafters of the hangar’s gloomy roof high overhead, holding a big old brass tap four meters off the floor. From that, a fat column of water splashed continually into a bowl on a table at the end of the stand. Timothy stared at it in perplexity. The bowl never filled, yet the water splashing into it never stopped. And when he squinted up at the tap he couldn’t see any kind of pipe attached. For a moment he thought the tiny nylon lines might be miniature pipes, but there were only three of them, and they were way too small to feed such a big tap. What he was seeing simply wasn’t possible. It was like some special effect from a cable show.

“Dad!”

Jeff Baker looked up from the pieces of high-speed turbine he was inspecting.

“Dad, how do they do this? Dad!”

“Do what?”

“This!” Timothy pointed urgently at the tap and its impossible flow of water. “How, Dad, how?”

“Oh, that.” Jeff managed to sound completely disinterested. “It’s magic, son. That’s all.”

Timothy pulled an annoyed face. “No it’s not! Do they teleport the water, or something?”

“Teleport!” Jeff shook his head in faint exasperation. “You watch far too much cable, don’t you?”

“No!”

“This is an old hangar; the past is still alive in here. There are lots of pockets of magic left over from olden times, scattered all across the country.” He gestured at the tap. “And this is one of them. Right, dear?”

Sue raised an eyebrow. “I think it’s lunchtime now.”

Jeff was nonplussed by the reply. “Guess we’d better eat, then,” he told Timothy. “What are you having, three puddings?”