Peter F. Hamilton - Misspent youth

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7. MAGIC MEMORIES

There was a particular day which Timothy Baker always remembered

whenever he thought back to his childhood. It was the air

tattoo at RAF Cottesmore when he'd been six years old. One of

the rare events that his parents actually attended together, which

to his young mind had made a perfect happy family outing. To

start with, at least.

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

over thirty foreign air forces. Elaborate company pavilions lined

half of the taxiway, their tiered seating giving patrons and customers

an excellent view of the flying exhibition. While the static

displays of combat aircraft, transports, tankers, radar cars, and

missile batteries stretched along the entire three kilometres of the

parking apron.

Over ninety thousand people were expected during the weekend,

taxing Rutland's rural transport infrastructure to the limit. By

mid-morning on the 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 powerful, lethal hardware. It was a typical late-August

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 apron in the

morning; Timothy and Jeff, his father, stopped 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 concrete apron and began the

long walk back, this time through the circus of commercial stalls

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and mobile shops which 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 when they were

several metres away. His wife gave him a sharp nudge.

Timothy twisted round to look at him, but the couple were

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, her blank

smile beaming bright; his father was frowning faintly. Timothy

knew his mother was utterly beautiful. When she'd been younger,

she had appeared on datasphere adverts, 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

and get you that ice cream.'

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 Euros.' He thrust it upwards. 'Want some?'

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'No, thank you, dear.'

Timothy couldn't see his mother's eyes behind her wide goldmirror

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. Two distinct

types, providing a contrast which neatly illustrated the base's

history: modern stealth composite bubbles lurking between huge

1950s concrete and corrugated iron structures. The new dark grey

hemispheres, looking like lead mushrooms bursting out of the

grass, were sealed against curious eyes. They contained the latest

EuropeanAerospaceCorporation automated attack fighters, which

operated from Cottesmore. In contrast to the secrecy of the hemispheres,

the tall rusty panel doors on the older buildings were wide

open. Large banners outside advertised the service companies

which 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 actually promoting -its fuselage-vibrationanalysis

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 metres off the floor. From that, a fat column

of water splashed continually into a bowl on a table at the end of

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,'

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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.' eff managed to sound completely uninterested. '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?'

'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 countw.' He gestured at the tap. 'And this is one of

them. Right, dear?'

Sue raised an eyebrow. 'I think it's lunchtime now.'

left was nonplussed by the reply. 'Guess we'd better eat, then,'

he told Timothy. 'What are you having, three puddings?'

'Yeah'

'No!' Sue said quicMy. 'Honestly, you're worse than he is.'

]eff pulled a face behind her back. Timothy giggled. He couldn't

resist one last look at the magic tap as they walked back out into

the scorching sunlight.

The Bakers headed for one of the biggest pavilions lining the

taxiway. They weren't on the admission list, but leff was insistent

with the uniformed steward on the gate. Timothy waited

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impatiently while a senior company otlacial was summoned from

the pavilion; aircraft were taking off from the runway, and the

pavilion blocked his view. When he arrived, the official was effusive

in his greeting. The company would be greatly honoured to have

the Bakers lunch with them, he said, his smile widening eagerly.

Timothy wound up eating with two members of the board in a

glassed-off enclosure at the end of the pavilion. Their table gave

him a grand view out across the airfield, and if he did miss any

of the exciting aircraft flashing past a private TV feed to a pair of

three-metre screens allowed him to see the planes twisting and

diving at all times. It was great; his mother even let him have more

ice cream for pudding, with strawberries.

A lot of visitors stopped by their table, corporate executives

from across Europe, all of whom were eagerly introduced to Jeff

Baker by the polite ever-smiling board members. Timothy didn't

pay much attention to the adults, he was captivated by the sleek

flying cruciforms which were the newly declassified AiF-080 USAF

pilotless interceptors. The machines were less than half the size of

the old Hurricanes flown by the European Silver Sky display team,

and a lot more nimble.

Timothy asked to be excused while his parents were enjoying

coffee and liqueurs. It was very boring in the dining room,

although in truth he couldn't stop thinking about that strange

tap. The aircraft were only temporary distractions. He was overwhelmed

by the idea that magic could still exist. Such a revelation

meant that anything was possible. Anything!

His mother checked that he was wearing his tracker bracelet

and let him down from the table. 'You're not to go more than two

hundred metres,' she warned as he sped away.

As soon as he was outside, Timothy headed straight for the

hangar - it was only a little more than two hundred metres away,

after all. Well ... sort of.

The tap Was still there. He stood in front of it, his head cocked

to one side as his stare followed the stream of falling water, his

brow all furrowed up in puzzlement. It couldn't be real. Yet here

it was, happening right in front of him.

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t mways lOOKS gOO¢l, aoesn t

Timothy glanced round. One of the saleswomen behind the

stall was smiling at him. 'Yes,' he said. Then, suddenly bold, he

asked: 'How did you know the magic was here?'

'Magic?' Her smile widened. 'I would have thought a clever boy

like you could have worked this out by now.'

'How? I don't know any spells.'

The woman laughed. 'Spells? Well, I don't know about that.

We just put a little fountain pump below the bowl, and squirt a

jet into the tap. Takes an age to set it up just right.'

Timothy stared resentfully at the treacherous fountain. He

couldn't even look at the woman - she must think him the

stupidest boy on the planet. Embarrassment gave way to anger and

sadness as he slunk away. His father had lied to him. Lied! There

wasn't any magic in the world.

There never had been.

2. BEYOND AVARICE

It's difficult for any child growing up to understand that their

father is famous. For a start, he is just your father, nothing else,

nothing exceptional. Tim was almost ten before he finally grasped

that his dad was a little different from everyone else's dad; that

people were interested in the old man - what he was doing, what

he said, and, most importantly, what he was thinking about. And

not just the villagers in Empingham where they lived, but people

on a lot of sites in the datasphere. In fact, when Tim, aged nine,

loaded 'Jeff Baker' in a findbot, he was rather surprised when it

listed two hundred and thirty-eight thousand primary references.

According to the first eight entries (all university libraries) Jeff

Baker had designed the molecular structure of solid-state crystal

memories, the ultimate electronic storage mechanism. It was the

single most important component around which the entire datasphere

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now revolved. All human information was stored in the

one specific type of lattice that his dad had worked out. His dad.

The man who wouldn't let him have a puppy, and who was

hopeless at playing football with him. His dad! The datasphere had

got to be kidding - like magic, Tim told himself sourly.

But the datasphere didn't lie. His dad was truly famous. Not

that fame was of much practical use in this case. Fame usually

came hand in hand with fabulous wealth. The Bakers were certainly

very comfortably off: they lived in a sprawling manor on the

edge of the village, with acres and acres of grounds, Tim went to

grandma was well taken care of in her nursing home. But it wasn't

an own-your-private-Caribbean-island style of wealth.

It could have been, Tim read with growing dismay. That was

the bigger part of Jeff Baker's fame. He could have had a fortune

that rivalled Bill Gates or Eleanor Pickard. Memory crystals were

universal: without them the entire world would crash to a halt;

there would be no information economy, no economy at all,

in fhct. The tiniest percentage royalty would have given him an

income of billions of Euros a year from the uncountable numbers

of crystals that were grown to feed the voracious global electronics

industry.

Instead, in an act of benevolence and philanthropy which was

essentially without parallel, Jeff Baker had refused to patent the

crystal structure. Instead, he published it on a Rutnet website, and

told anyone who was interested to go right ahead and make it.

The Rutnet server crashed for ten days straight due to the millions

of attempted hits from across the planet.

Jeff Baker, Tim realized as he read his own family history,

didn't have fame so much as respect. A billion datahead nerds

regarded his dad as more important than God. Very nice - but

what actual use was it? Tim would have much preferred him to be

a cable star. At least that way they would have got a constant

stream of invitations to glamorous showbiz parties, and he could

have mixed with celebrities. That would have done wonders for

his kudos at school.

'Is it true?' Tim asked that suppertime. 'Did you invent the

datasphere?'

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'Not really,' Jeff said, smiling gently. 'But my crystal idea

certainly helped it to grow up from being the Internet.'

'Why didn't you make money from it?'

'I did. I've got a whole load of non-executive directorships. And

my consultancy work pays for your schooling, as well as for your

mother's clothes. Just.'

Sue Baker narrowed her eyes to give him a cautionary look

over the table.

"It sal(1 n me spnere mat you could nave been me richest man

in the world,' Tim said.

'Trust me on this, Tim, being the richest man in the world isn't

necessarily a good thing.'

'But... you didn't get anything out of it. I don't understand.'

'I got peace of mind. And I got you.' His smile became one of

admiration. 'You're more important than money.'

'Thanks. I just don't think it's fair, that's all,' Tim protested.

'The whole world depends on your idea. You should be rewarded.'

Which was what happened. But not until eight years later.

3. PARTY ON DO WN

As teenage parties went, it was a standard parents' nightmare.

Miranda and David Langley had gone away for the weekend,

leaving their six-bedroom house in the hands of their eighteen

year-old son, Simon, and his elder brother, Peter, who was back

from university for a few days. As soon as the senior Langleys had

left, their sons sent an avtxt to all their friends. Those friends

avtxted their friends.

Half of Empingham's teenagers descended on the quaint stone

house for the evening, their numbers bolstered by contingents

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from surrounding villages and senior boarders from Oakham

School like Zai Reynolds who had managed to get a leave-out

from their housemaster.

Tim had been going steady with Zai for four weeks, starting

a week after his eighteenth birthday party. He was hopeful that

tonight, with all the drink available and the hot, exuberant party

atmosphere, they might be able to move along from groping and

heavy snogging to real actual sex. Simon's house had enough

bedrooms - there were bound to be some unused. So he thought

before he arrived.

Even his imagination hadn't projected quite such a scene. There

were people in every room, crammed in so tight that nobody

could sit and dancing was near-impossible. Three sound systems

were blaring out three different tracks in three different rooms, all

of them merging together in the hall and on the landing to make

n incoherent wall of sound. Hardly any of the lights were on,

leaving the house seriously shadowy. The terracotta-tiled kitchen

floor was awash with fluid that was already turning tacky, and it

was only half past seven.

Tim and Zai both plunged in. Simon saw them and gave Tim a

big hug. He was already drunk. The kiss he gave Zai was overeager;

she moved her head aside with an annoyed grimace.

'Your parents will kill you,' Tim shouted above the din.

'No way,' Simon shouted. 'We put anything breakable in the

barn this afternoon. The worst they'll find is a couple of strange

stains. Pete knows what he's doing. You should hear about the

kind of parties he has at uni.'

'Sounds good.' Tim held up the bag full of bottles and cans

that he'd brought. 'For your collection.'

'In there.' Simon pointed to the kitchen. His grin widened as

his girlfriend pushed her way towards them through the crowd,

drinks held high in both hands.

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Tim hoped he wasn't staring again. Not that he'd ever been

able to help it as far as Annabelle Goddard was concerned. He was

used to the savvy upper-middle-class girls who attended Oakham

School. Given that most of them were attractive, possessed of the

kind of impeccable style and extraordinary self-confidence that

only their family money could bestow, he was as accustomed to

hanging with delectable girls as best as any eighteen-year-old boy

could be. But Annabelle was something else again. Her face was

enchantingly beautiful, fine-boned, with a clear complexion and a

few clusters of freckles. To make matters worse she also had an

amazing figure, which was the subject of heavy discussion among

Tim and his same-gender friends. For the last six weeks, they had

all become seriously envious of Simon for managing to date her.

Add to that Simon's constant boasts of how much sex the two of

them kept having, and his social status was rapidly approaching

divinity.

'Hi, Tim,' Annabelle yelled cheerfully. She handed Simon a

drink and gave him a forceful kiss.

Tim was sure there were tongues involved. 'Hi,' he said weakly.

tlllltlD¢lle was wearing a shimmering purple miniskirt ana a

skimpy white T-shirt, thin enough to reveal the outline of her bra

underneath.

'Great party, huh?'

'Yeah.' Tim grinned oafishly, hotly aware of the way Zai was

looking at him. 'Let's get started,' he said to her.

Zai nodded curtly. 'Yes, let's.'

Tim shoved his way into the kitchen. He knew he'd messed

up in front of Zai again. Strange how she was so different to

Annabelle: petite and intense, always managing to find fault with

him. Whereas Annabelle was so upfront and good-hearted he

could never imagine her being angry with anybody. So how was it

possible for him to be attracted to complete opposites at the same

time?

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file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Peter%20F.%20Hamilton%20-%20Misspent%20yo\uth.txt7.MAGICMEMORIESTherewasaparticulardaywhichTimothyBakeralwaysrememberedwheneverhethoughtbacktohischildhood.ItwastheairtattooatRAFCottesmorewhenhe'dbeensixyearsold.Oneoftherareeventsthathisparentsactuallyattendedtogether,w...

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Peter F. Hamilton - Misspent youth

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