Misspent Youth

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Of all the mutants rooting down in Europe, elephant keck, as it had been nicknamed, was the most prolific and obvious. Ordinary keck that had picked up a growth gene intended to increase cereal crop size, it plagued every hedgerow and verge across the continent, with stems burgeoning to between two and three meters high, then sprouting an umbrella of grubby white flowers on spindly stalks. Coarse floppy leaves protruded underneath these canopies, a dusky green stained with cabbage purple along the stalks. They cost councils and farmers a fortune to chop them down along the roads. Elsewhere, they went unchallenged.

  That included the Exton estate, a couple of miles down the road from Empingham. It was a huge domain of arable land, crossed with public and private paths that had been tarmaced for the tractors and other farm machinery. The total absence of traffic made it a long-term favorite for hikers, dog walkers, and fitness fanatics.

  The exercise regimen that the Brussels University Medical Centre had given Jeff assumed a modest climb back up the performance graph to full fitness. Looking at the outline, he wasn’t entirely sure what kind of level they envisioned raising him to. Olympic qualification standard, apparently. He hadn’t followed any of it with blind devotion, although he’d stuck to their basic requirements. That meant a twice weekly jog, accompanied by four Europol team members, who had no trouble at all keeping up with him (including the female officers).

  This morning he’d suggested that Tim join him. After some coaxing the recalcitrant boy gave in and agreed. Jeff was thankful for that: it was a way of spending time with his son, without the two of them sitting together at the table in the kitchen and trying to fill the awkward silence with labored conversation. Tim hadn’t taken Sue’s departure well, dealing with it the only way he knew how, by retreating back into his sulky shell.

  There wasn’t anything to see on the jog; as soon as they cleared the meadowland around Exton itself, the ubiquitous elephant keck rose up on either side of the tarmac, then drooped overhead. It didn’t quite form a tunnel, leaving a ragged strip of bright turquoise sky directly above.

  “How are you coping?” Jeff asked after ten minutes. His wrist strap monitor showed a heart rate of 141, and he was barely sweating. Not bad for a seventy-eight-year-old.

  “Okay,” Tim wheezed. He was red-faced, breathing heavily.

  “Good.” Jeff slowed the pace. “How’s school going?”

  “Dad!”

  “All right. Shit. Sorry.” He stopped running, and put an arm around Tim’s shoulder. There was a moment when he thought the boy would shrug him off. It passed. “I know this isn’t fair. It never is.”

  “I can’t believe she just left like that.”

  “It’s not her fault, Tim. You know that. It was me.”

  “But…”

  “Say what you think, son, I’m not going to object. I know every father says this, but I’d like to think we can talk about anything.”

  Tim’s gaze wandered across the umbrella sprays that were emerging from the top of the elephant keck, thumb-size flower buds just losing their dark green hue as they prepared to open. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes it does, to me at least. You were going to say Mum’s been visiting London for years. Am I right?”

  “No, Dad, I was going to say Mum’s slept with more people than you have. I watched them come and go before I even knew what was really happening. It was the day I finally found out what they were when I needed this talk. Okay? And that was about ten years ago.”

  “Oh, shit. We all need to go and see shrinks, really, don’t we? I knew you knew, son, I simply didn’t realize how much it bothered you. You never said.”

  “What? That my parents had a sham marriage, that it was all a front? Thanks, Dad. Are you going to tell me it was for my benefit?”

  Jeff took his arm away from Tim’s shoulder, and looked un-flinchingly into his son’s hostile face. “Okay, look, this is the way it is. Hundred percent truth. I was old and rich, your mother was young and pretty. It never was a marriage, not in any definition. But we had you because we both wanted to. And that means taking on a lot of responsibility, however politically incorrect that might sound today. So we made the best home life we could for you. Kids get badly hurt if their parents are shouting at each other all day long. We accepted the situation for what it was, and made rational choices. Don’t believe me if that’s what you want, or simply tell me to fuck off and die; but we wanted the best for you. And the way we played it was the only way we could give you that. I’m sorry that you saw through us so early, and that I didn’t help you then, but can you honestly put your hand on your heart and swear we didn’t care? Until you’ve done it, you’ll never know how special having a child is. You were our world, Tim, and you still are. Just because Sue’s left doesn’t mean she’s gone and rejected you or anything like that. The one thing that upset her the most was what you’d think about her. Well, I’m asking you not to, don’t think anything bad. This split was my fault. Nothing has changed between your mother and me except for physical distance.”

  Tim shook his head as if he was getting rid of a persistent wasp. “You two were getting on. I know you were. You were together. I saw that. I thought, I dunno, things were going to be different.”

  “If we bumped up your expectations, then I apologize again. We both agreed that was stupid of us.”

  “You didn’t give it much of a chance, did you?” Tim said broodily. “Less than a week.”

  “No, I didn’t, did I?” Jeff turned away, and started walking. “I really don’t know how to explain that one to you. I don’t think there is anything to say.”

  Tim caught up with him. The anger had faded a little; now there was just confusion and a fair degree of pain. “I just don’t get it, Dad. She was the first girl you laid eyes on. What did you see in her?”

  “I didn’t see anything in her. It was just one night.”

  “But look at what it did, what happened because of it!”

  “I know, Tim! All right? I know. It brought everything to a head, far too quickly. If I was thinking with my brain instead of my dick then maybe your mum and I would have stretched this out until after you went to university.”

  “Oh, so that’s what matters, just putting on a front till I’m conveniently out of the way.”

  “Anything that would have made this easier for you should have been our priority. We were selfish. But after what I did we didn’t have any choices. Look, I know this hurts, but we were never going to stay together.”

  “Maybe, I sort of knew that, I suppose. But…now there’s these others, too,” Tim said lamely. “It’s like you’re rubbing my face in it.” The first girl had been three days ago, a scant two days after his mother left. He’d come down to breakfast to find her in the kitchen with his father, almost in a replay of that time he’d found his parents canoodling. She was dressed at least, if you counted her clubbing clothes, a short skirt and lace-up top. One look and he had her branded forever in his mind as a total bimbo; late twenties with a hairstyle and makeup that harked back too many years, as if they alone could fool people into seeing her as she had been back then.

  Each morning since it had been a different girl. All of them picked up the previous night. All of them spending the night.

  “Come on, Tim, you know that’s the last thing I’d do,” Jeff told him gently.

  There were a lot of things Tim wanted to say. Like: It’s so embarrassing. Couldn’t you be discreet like Mum was? Or even: How do you do it, pull like that every night? Because I never can. All that came out was: “It’s not like you.”

  “Not like me,” Jeff repeated in a murmur. Finally they’d come to the end of the wall of elephant keck, stepping out where they had a decent view around. The road dipped away ahead of them to run between a couple of small lakes. They’d both been dug out centuries ago, when the lord of the manor had used them as fish breeding ponds to supply his own table. Since then, an elaborate stone boathouse called Fort Henry had been built on the
upper lake, like a miniature castle. As follies went, it was quite splendid. “Come on,” Jeff said. He steered Tim to the side of the road, and they sat on the grassy bank facing the lower lake. The Europol bodyguards huddled together on the road, politely out of earshot.

  “I’m not like me,” Jeff said eventually. “Look at me, Tim; physically I’m your sort of age. You have to know what that means.”

  “Yes,” Tim said cautiously.

  “Girls, Tim. They’re important. In fact, they’re a necessity.”

  As always, Tim’s body betrayed him. He was blushing hot again. “Um, yeah, suppose so.”

  “I know it’s been a bit much to absorb all in one week. But when they rejuvenated me they made me very mortal. Weaknesses of the flesh, and all that.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I do understand. It’s just…I don’t even remember the names of the first two.”

  “Me neither.” Jeff chuckled. It died away as Tim’s expression remained blank. “Ah, now I think I get it. Too many too quickly, is that right?”

  “They’re your girlfriends; if that’s how you want to treat them, then fine.”

  Jeff couldn’t help it, he laughed openly at that. “Girlfriends! Tim, they’re one-night stands, okay? We’re not talking about replacement wives and mothers here. Don’t confuse love with sex, they’re very different.”

  “I know. It’s just that this is all very different for me. I suppose I’ll get used to it.” He made it sound as though that would be the hardest thing in the world he could ever do.

  “Oh, Tim, you haven’t gone and put me on a pedestal, have you? Not me?”

  “You’re my dad. We always got on before.”

  “We still do, son, and we always will. No matter how awkward it is between us, you can always rely on me, I promise. But please don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m some kind of saint. I’m not. Really, I’m batting for the other fella. It’s a lot more fun.”

  Tim’s answering smile was sly. “No, you’re not. You’re Jeff Baker, you gave the world memory crystals.”

  “Ho-oo shit.” Jeff laid back on the grass. Two swans on the lower lake slid about briskly, leaving almost no wake behind them. A row of cygnets hurried after them, playing among themselves with kittenish delight. Beyond the lake the landscape of low, crumpled valleys rolled away into misty distance, fields fresh with the new green of summer crops. The English countryside as legend told it, as it should be. A vista that made him feel, finally, as if he had come home. With Sue gone, the last of what went before had ended. It was time to start clean. That meant Tim, too, treat the boy as an equal. “All right, Tim, last shock of the week. If you’re up to it. And I’m not joking.”

  “How bad?” Tim couldn’t tell if he was serious or not.

  “Bad. The final skeleton in the closet. You might want to follow your mother and leave after this.”

  “It’s not…You didn’t kill anyone, did you?” Tim gave the Europol team a quick guilty glance over his shoulder.

  “Oh no. Worse than that. I’m a fraud.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Okay, you judge then.”

  “Go on.”

  “You know I was married once before?”

  “Yeah. You never talked about her; neither did Mum. But I caught it when I accessed some of your biographies in the datasphere. They never say much about her. She was called Tracy, wasn’t she?”

  “She certainly was, dear old Flaky Tracy.”

  Tim sniggered. “Flaky Tracy. What, did she have dandruff?”

  “Yeah.” Jeff gave him a conspirator’s grim. “On the inside of her skull.”

  Tim laughed.

  “Honestly, Tim, I’m not kidding, she was an absolute angel to look at. Small, blonde, utterly adorable, good figure. Maybe not quite as beautiful as your mother, but men looked around when she walked into a room. Know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, guess so.”

  “Right. But the thing is, you can never believe that anyone who looks so lovely can be anything other than lovely. Especially when it comes to women. I mean, that knowledge is hardwired into a man’s genes. Pretty equals nice. Jesus wept, did I ever learn the hard way. I’m not joking, Tim, Flaky Tracy turned out to be the ultimate bitch demon from hell. The only reason she was sent to roam the earth was because the devil got nervous when she was around down below. And that’s not me being bitter over the divorce, either. Believe me, thirty-seven years has managed to calm me down quite a lot as far as that one’s concerned.”

  “She can’t have been that bad, surely?”

  “Like I said, judge for yourself. We were getting divorced around the time I worked out the molecular structure of the memory crystal. You know what would have happened if I’d patented it, don’t you? I, we, you, would have been so bloody rich we could have afforded to go for the X-orbit prize just like Sir Mitch. But she would have got half, probably more if that bastard of a lawyer she hired—and slept with—had his say.” Jeff looked at his mildly scandalized son, and smiled broadly. “So I gave it away. That’s it, Tim. I didn’t do it as some noble gesture. I wasn’t pure in heart. I didn’t do it for the betterment of all mankind. I did it because I hated that cunt so much you couldn’t put it into words. And when she realized what I’d done, that she wasn’t going to have more money than an African nation’s debt, that lawyer of hers had to hold her down in her chair to stop her attacking me. I can still remember her screaming. Lord, but it was a beautiful sound.” He drew down a long, cleansing breath. “So you see, I’m not Jeff Baker. I never have been. It was all complete bullshit from start to finish.”

  Tim’s jaw had opened as he stared at his father. “But…they chose you for rejuvenation because you gave away the memory crystal.”

  Jeff quirked his eyebrows. “Yeah.”

  “It cost trillions of euros.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you didn’t tell them?” Tim tried to laugh, but it came out as a short bark, wavering between outrage and admiration.

  “They didn’t ask.”

  “Oh my God. Dad!”

  “Cheer up, Brian, remember, always look on the bright side of life.” He whistled a few bars of the Monty Python song, smiling contentedly.

  Tim started laughing. He couldn’t stop, not even when it began to hurt. Jeff put his arms round him and hugged him tight. Tim returned the embrace, bursting with joy to finally know who his father really was, and loving it.

  THE FINALS FOR PSE (progressive secondary education) courses had started. More than seventy-five percent of England’s eighteen-year-olds were currently fretting their way through them. You couldn’t fail if you got a low mark on the finals—that would be tremendously unfair after spending two years performing the course work—but the exam did make up twenty percent of the overall course mark, which decided a pupil’s grading and therefore which university they went to.

  All told, Annabelle had eight exams to work her way through (Tim had fifteen). It meant she was going to have her PCglasses glued to her head for hours at a time during the two weeks of the finals, reviewing and running through previous exam questions. She didn’t plan on spending much time with her friends in that period; they were too likely to distract her (she hadn’t decided about Derek; admittedly it would be a good way of letting off steam). But she couldn’t study the whole time; there had to be periods when she could chill out. That wasn’t going to happen at home. Which made the manor just about perfect, and Tim was ever eager to make amends for the après-Jet Ski party.

  The afternoon she went up there they splashed around in the swimming pool for half an hour before dragging a couple of sunloungers out onto the patio. It was a hot afternoon, with no clouds and no wind; the forecasters were predicting the high would last at least three weeks. Annabelle toweled herself off, then sprayed on factor forty sunblock. She was wearing her navy blue bikini, a copy from the one in Stephanie’s range. It was a shame becaus
e she would have preferred an all-over tan, but going topless in front of Tim right now would give him the wrong idea. As far as she was concerned he was still on probation.

  So they lay side by side, with only a small table between the sunloungers. Tim lay with his head resting on the cushions so he could look at her the whole time. The talk was almost as relaxed as it had been a week ago. Tim was starting to accept his father going out with other girls, though Annabelle wrinkled her nose with distaste when she learned about him going out and crawling around the clubs each night. But it was nice to see Tim returning to some sort of equilibrium. She told him how devastated she’d been when her own mother left.

  When it came to the finals, he was cool about them, which sparked not a little envy in her. He apologized, and said he understood about her wanting to get to university and away from her home. They daydreamed together about what it would be like if she went to Oxford or Cambridge with him. He still hadn’t decided which one he’d choose.

  The radio they had on in the background, tuned to an eighties music station, began a news report about Rob Lacey’s campaign. He was in Spain, speaking at rallies there and trying to make alliances with regional politicians, eager for their endorsement.

  “He’ll do well out there,” Tim said.

  “How come?”

  “Spain’s always been a good ally to us in Brussels. They usually vote with us to block the central and northern countries.”

  “He’ll never win.”

  “Yes he will. The Med countries don’t have their own candidate. Nobody in France will vote for him, same way as we’d never vote for a Frog. All he has to do is swing the Germans behind him.”