Misspent Youth Read online

  “I’m not sure I can talk total bullshit for fifteen minutes solid,” Jeff muttered to Sue as they followed the young spin doctor to the conservatory where the camera crew was setting up. “And when did we start all this America-bashing?”

  At eleven o’clock it was the LA Central news stream session, at eleven forty-five they went into the garden for the Nippon Netwide team. In the afternoon he did Warner America, Chicago Mainstream, Washington Tonight, Seattle Hiline, Toronto National News stream. Texas Live wanted a family interview, which Tim was finally coaxed into performing by Lucy Duke, who by the end of that conversation was ready to either slap him or burst into tears.

  On Tuesday it was the turn of South America and several Pacific Rim nations. Wednesday was China and Africa. Jeff had been videoed alone chatting to the interviewer; he and Sue chatting to the interviewer; if the crew was very lucky they got Tim as well. He’d been videoed “working” in his study; there had been everyday domestic scenes in the kitchen, walking around the garden (the Langleys lent them Katie, their ridiculously soppy Great Dane, for a more cozy family image), kicking a ball about with Tim, playing tennis with Sue—his coordination was dreadful. Questions had ranged from the standard “How do you feel” to “What do you think of the situation in Nepal,” and “Has pizza topping improved over the last seventy years,” to “Do you approve of the death penalty.”

  Thursday was back to the European media. By happy coincidence, Rob Lacey paid him a visit on Thursday afternoon, to see how he was progressing. The prime ministerial convoy of five huge limousines clogged up Empingham’s main street, giving local kids a great opportunity to try to dodge the bodyguards to let down the tires. When the PM left, he passed a huge homemade banner along the side of the road saying: FREE ENGLAND NOW! The windows on the limousine darkened even further as it drove by the fluttering fabric.

  That evening Jeff sat on the sofa in the living room and hopped through the news streams, each of which had ad banners running constantly across the foot of the screen. Right from his very first press interview thirty years ago, he’d always hated seeing himself on the telly, but tonight he forced himself. It was the interview with Berlin Newswatch, where he’d been sitting outside on one of the patio’s oak chairs.

  “What did you dream about in the suspension womb?” the interviewer asked. “You did dream, didn’t you?”

  “Oh yes,” the Jeff on the patio said. “Flying was the predominant dream; though it was more like accelerating through the night. It was almost a sense of uncertainty, as if I was racing along beside a cliff. I knew it was there, but couldn’t actually see it.”

  “That’s most interesting. Now that you’re out, how much of your previous life can you remember?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Jeff complained to Sue, who was curled up on the room’s other sofa. “My previous life! I’ve been rejuvenated, not reincarnated. What kind of stupid question is that?”

  Up on the screen, Jeff laughed politely and started giving a sincere description of his childhood memories.

  “Same as all the other stupid questions we’ve had this week,” she said. “Every interviewer is desperately trying to ask something fresh. It’s their job.”

  “Shame they’re so bad at it.”

  “Yes, Jeff.”

  “Oh…to hell with it.” He took a sip of his bottled German beer. It had been good to find he could drink a respectable amount again without suffering a hangover and rushing to pee all night long. “You know I haven’t done a single minute of real work.”

  “I know. Lucy Duke scheduled that for next week.”

  “That—” He glanced at the open door. “—woman. Jesus, what planet do they import people like that from?”

  “Don’t know, dear.” Sue was pressing her lips together to prevent a smile.

  “I could take a good guess,” he muttered sourly. “Click. Give us the English Newsweb stream, please.”

  The Berlin Newswatch vanished, to be replaced by a report on a Customs and Excise raid in Cornwall where the officers had seized a huge load of cannabis, which the excited reporter estimated at a value of over eight million euros. Smugglers had brought it in, avoiding VAT and duty.

  “Who uses that anymore?” Jeff puzzled. “I thought everyone dosed up on synth8 from desktop synthesizers.”

  “There’s still a big medical market,” Sue said. “Quite a few oldies at Mum’s care home use spliffs for their arthritis. Even with eighty percent duty and thirty percent VAT, it’s still a damn sight cheaper than standard painkillers. From a man in the pub, it’s even cheaper.”

  “Suppose so.” He looked at the big cloth bales being loaded onto a government truck. The harborside was swarming with the armed tactical-response team members, excitingly menacing in their black body armor. “Tim goes clubbing. I remember that whole culture.”

  “Don’t go there, Jeff.”

  “Yeah, right,” he muttered unhappily. But she was right; projecting Tim’s behavior based on what he could recall of his own late-teen antics was not a good idea. There were some things a father shouldn’t pry into. Especially when today’s kids seemed so much more sophisticated, and had so many more temptations placed in their way.

  After English Newsweb’s Cornwall report came the European Court of Human Rights, where Rebecca Gillespie was suing both the EU Commission and the Catholic Church for violating a number of conventions against her. It was a case that had been going on for eight years, and was followed avidly by the media. Rebecca had been born a duofemale child, her parents both lesbians who had used the Monash treatment to conceive, the ova of one fertilized by the genetic material of the other thanks to a little biochemical encouragement. The treatment, indeed the whole concept, was condemned by the Vatican as an unholy act; and as sperm-free fertilization came under the broad legal definition of human cloning, which the Brussels Parliament was one of the first to make illegal, Rebecca felt persecuted by both church and state. Her entire adult life had been devoted to fighting judgments that she considered denied her right to exist, handed down even before her semilegal conception in Australia. It was a struggle that had turned her into a minor media celebrity, and produced a great many supporters from across the political spectrum, all of them loud. And once again the court had deferred judgment on yet another technicality.

  Jeff and Sue watched the report in a vaguely embarrassed silence, carefully avoiding looking at each other. But then, Jeff reflected, that was always the way when you’d done something wrong a long time ago. Time always dulled the crime to a kind of if we don’t mention it then it never happened social gaffe.

  Rebecca Gillespie was followed by a feature on the forthcoming NASA sample return mission to Mars, which would act as a pathfinder for the projected manned mission in ten to fifteen years’ time. Sections of the robot probe were being ferried up to the aging American space station by the new Boeing scramjet spaceplanes. It was due to be assembled over the next eighteen months. Normally Jeff would have watched eagerly as the intricate chunks of astronautic hardware were integrated on the station’s satellite assembly platform. But he couldn’t focus on the astronauts in their bulky white suits as they jetted over the structure; his mind was busy with Tim scoring batches of dubious chemicals from some pusher in Stamford’s clubs. He was only eighteen, for God’s sake.

  But I was doing it at that age.

  Cannabis, though, not weird artificial molecules dreamed up in a university lab and misassembled by dodgy synthesizers. Anybody could handle cannabis. He sighed. Okay, one or two tabs, as well. And God alone knew where and how they had been cooked up.

  As a parent he was out of his depth again. Twice in a week. First girls, now drugs. What the hell does everyone else do? How do they cope?

  The image on the screen switched from outer space to a small Spanish town, where most of the buildings seemed to have whitewashed walls and red clay tile roofs. Police crime scene barriers had cordoned off a long street section, with uniformed, armed Eu
ropol officers keeping a few semi-interested members of the public away. At the center of the cordon, the stone pavement was stained with blood. Forensic team personnel in white overalls were crawling methodically along the road, waving small sensors around.

  “There was another so-called Traitor’s Pension attack on a retired Englishman on the Costa del Sol last night,” the announcer said. “First reports from the local police indicate he used to work for the EU Agricultural Directorate. The EIC has already claimed responsibility for the act. This is the fifth in the last three weeks, all of which are believed to have been carried out by the same active EIC cell operating in the area.”

  Knowing he didn’t want the answer, Jeff asked: “What’s a Traitor’s Pension?”

  “They knock you down on the ground, then shoot you up the ass,” Sue explained. “It doesn’t actually kill you, but it ruins your guts. Genoprotein therapy can’t repair that kind of damage. The hospitals are getting quite used to the surgical procedure—they’ve had enough victims to practice on. But you still spend the rest of your life dosed up on painkillers and shitting through a plastic valve.”

  “Fuck me.” For the first time, Jeff was actually grateful for the intrusive presence of the Europol bodyguards. He couldn’t remember the Separatists being so active before he went in for treatment. Or perhaps he’d filtered it all out, grown so used to their atrocities he was numb to them. Now that he thought about it, they’d been a part of European life for long enough; in their various nonviolent forms the nationalist movements predated the signing of the federal constitution. This abrupt reexposure he was undergoing certainly made them seem all the more alarming.

  “The EIC wanted to be different and worse than the IRA and their kneecapping,” Sue said. “I guess they managed it. Most of the Separatist paramilitaries dish out Traitor’s Pensions now.”

  Newsweb went to a studio report covering inflation, with the European Central Bank spokeswoman guaranteeing it was now firmly under control and would fall below fifteen percent before the end of summer.

  “You’re not worried, are you?” Sue asked. “The EIC hasn’t said anything about you. They only target people who worked for the EU.”

  “Not worried, exactly, no. But I’m certainly aware it’s a possibility. Perhaps I’d better have a word with Tim, tell him not to be quite such a pain to the protection teams.” That and a few other topics.

  “Good luck.”

  Jeff smiled ruefully. “I don’t think we’ve had a father-to-son chat before.”

  “Hmm. Well try not to be too shocked when he explains the facts of life to you.”

  LUCY DUKE FINALLY CALLED a halt to the media invasion at the end of the week. It meant Jeff could actually get down to some work, one area where the spin doctor didn’t intrude. His study was the ground floor of a pentagonal turretlike annex at the end of the manor. Curving windows gave him a panoramic view out over the gardens and countryside beyond. His desk sat in the middle, a large and beautiful handmade oak affair with niches for various computer peripherals. He liked to imagine it as the kind of furniture one of the better Bond villains would sit behind as he plotted world domination. The neural hypercube hardware itself was down in the small crypt below the study’s parquet floor, along with a massive rack of memory crystals, which wasn’t even ten percent full.

  He started by requesting a download of all the EU superconductor project files and associated physics papers. Even with his ultra wideband datasphere connection it took over an hour. While that was running he structured some topic filters, in effect designing himself a crash course in modern superconductor theory. As the first sections began to align themselves within his grids he realized it would take months just to bring himself up to date on the general state of the field. Ah well, nobody was demanding instant results.

  In the afternoon, he launched into a round of teleconferences, introducing himself to the project’s senior team leaders and university administrators. It was almost like the media interviews again; they were far more interested in Jeff Baker than they were in his possible contributions. The most they seemed to expect was his association helping with their budget allocation. He could hardly blame them; after all, three quarters of them hadn’t been born when he’d received his physics doctorate.

  At five o’clock the computer told him there was an incoming call from Nicole Marchant. It took a moment for him to remember and place the name as that of James’s granddaughter. “Let it through,” he told the computer.

  Two of the screens sank back into their desk niches, leaving the main display directly ahead of him, a tiny camera peeping at him from the top right corner. Nicole was wearing a smart gray business suit, her hair folded up efficiently; the office background was slightly out of focus.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I hadn’t heard from you.”

  “Not at all.” His traitor mind kept running Sue’s comment. “Sorry I didn’t call. It’s been a bit hectic around here.”

  “I know, I can’t watch a single news stream without you popping up. Incidentally, your tennis needs a lot of work.”

  Jeff laughed. “That wasn’t my idea. We were supposed to be showing the viewers my happy home life. I barely know which end of the racquet to hold.”

  “I could tell.” She pursed her lips. “So have you given any thought to my proposition?”

  “It sounded very sensible,” he said slowly.

  “Would you like to take it further?”

  “A proper review would be good.”

  “Excellent. We should meet to discuss it fully. Are you free for lunch next Wednesday?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll see you at the Wharf Inn at Wansford, twelve o’clock. Our company has a permanent account there. They treat us well.”

  “I’m sure they do.”

  “Until Wednesday then.”

  Jeff smiled cautiously as her image faded. The air in the study was suddenly warm for some reason. I’m an adult, he told himself, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be contemplating this kind of thing. After all, she was young, attractive, and single. Wasn’t she? “Oh bugger.” He couldn’t remember James mentioning if she had a husband or partner. And he wasn’t about to ask now.

  The sound of laughter and shouting made him look up. Tim and his friends were gallivanting about outside again. It was a sunny afternoon, and they’d opened the wide glass doors around the pool building, spilling out onto the grass. Some kind of small strobing ball was being chased. Jeff smiled, glad of the distraction, and it was nice to see the manor being used and enjoyed. He was almost envious of their youth and energy; it would have been nice to rush out there and join in. Then he laughed at himself. “Idiot, you are young.” As Nicole plainly thought. That was when he noticed that half the youngsters on the lawn were girls. Annabelle was there, wearing a navy blue bikini, skin glistening as she bounded about, shrieking wildly as the ball tumbled toward her.

  Jeff didn’t want to think how long it had been since he’d had sex. Not that he could remember exactly. Appallingly, it might even be over a decade. Some now-nameless woman at a science conference who’d been intrigued by who he was; even in his late sixties, notoriety could be alluring. The whole encounter had been pretty wretched. Then after that…well, it was the classic case of diverting his energies into something else, being a good father to his wonderful Timmy.

  Annabelle and one of the other girls struggled to grab the ball. Vital teenage bodies gleamed in the husky red-tinged afternoon sunlight as they wrestled together.

  “Click! Opaque the windows, please.”

  The electrochromic coating on the glass turned smoky brown, blocking the view. Jeff took a moment in the dark, then began to call up the latest theories on organic crystal conductivity.

  TIM WRAPPED A BIG TOWEL around his shoulders and sat on one of the sunloungers at the side of the pool. Even though the pool doors were flung open, it was too early in the year, and the sun too low in the sky, to be lazing arou
nd outside yet. Colin and Simon claimed the loungers next to him, leaving Philip and Martin splashing about in the water with the girls.

  “Did you see the Newton’s Arrow flight last night?” Colin asked.

  Tim cracked open a can of lemonade. He would have liked to make it a beer in front of the boys, but he had a lot of study work to do later. “Yeah. Sir Mitch held it at Mach 15 for eighty seconds.” Like everyone, Tim was fascinated by Sir Mitch Lock-heart’s efforts to win the X-orbit prize. About eight groups around the world were competing to put a reusable passenger-carrying space vehicle into orbit and claim the sixty-million-dollar prize—not that the money would pay a fraction of the development cost for any of the teams. Half of them were operating out of the Caribbean alongside Sir Mitch, where all the commercial semiballistic craft flew, catering to the ultrarich space tourists who paid a hundred thousand dollars to be rocketed up to a hundred miles above the Earth, where they experienced their fifteen minutes of freefall. It was going to be a close-run thing; the Mojave group had already gotten their single-stage Starchaser up to Mach 20. Tim was sure someone would claim the prize before the end of the year.

  “They were interviewing Stephanie again before the flight,” Simon said. “She’s changed her hair. There’s a scarlet streak in it now. God, she looked gorgeous.”

  “Better than Rachel?” Colin asked.

  “Different,” Simon said. “I wouldn’t say no.”

  “Because she’s so much bound to ask you,” Tim scoffed. Stephanie and Sir Mitch were the most amazing power-glamour couple in the world. Every news stream on the datasphere vied to run stories on them. After their marriage, access figures for the Newton’s Arrow test flights more than quadrupled. And they were still rising.

  “I wonder if Sir Mitch and Stephanie will be at the Million Citizen Voices,” Simon mused. “She never transferred to the Euro beach volleyball squad, and everyone knows he’s flying from the Caribbean because of the EuroFederal airworthiness regulations. They’ve got to be anti-EFU.”