Misspent Youth

by Peter F. Hamilton

  JEFF RECALLED THE BLITHE COMMENT about personal safety he’d made to Sue as soon as he arrived in London. With all private cars banned from passing through the security cordon around the summit, he had to take the train down to Kings Cross. As soon as they stepped off the train car they were greeted with a raucous barrage of sound. Protestors were thronging the end of the platform, letting off horns and pressure whistles. More protestors arriving on the train greeted the welcome with cheers and began chanting obscenities at the line of uniformed riot police, who were struggling to keep the station concourse open for ordinary passengers.

  Lieutenant Krober took one look at the situation and hurried Jeff and Annabelle out a side exit onto York Way. He called ahead for their car on his secure encrypted link. The big black sedan drew up beside them as they emerged from the gloomy Victorian brick edifice and into the bright sunlight. There were dozens of shops along the other side of the road from the station, groovy franchises that Jeff had never heard of, all boarded up and closed to avoid looting by the protestors. A dozen police vans were parked along the curb. Apart from the pigeons, nothing moved along the length of the canyonlike street. Lucy Duke glanced down toward the front of the station, where the protestors were contained behind a high wire mesh. “I didn’t realize there would be so many of them,” she muttered nervously.

  The summit was being held in a massive ten-year-old convention complex, the Marshall Centre, that had been built on the site of the old London City Airport. It occupied the entire wharf between the Albert and King George docks, a collection of auditoriums, conference theaters, restaurants, cafés, bars, and hotels enclosed by a single structure, with a fifty-story octagonal tower soaring up out of the center. Protestors had swamped the University of East London, whose modern eco-sympathy buildings ran along the northern side of the Albert Dock in the broad sweeping curves of concrete that belonged to the kind of future that the 1930s believed in. The university campus ran parallel to the conference complex, allowing the protestors to gaze across the grubby waters of the ancient dock at the sheer façade of black carbon girders and gold mirror glass.

  At the west end of the dock, the police had kept the Connaught Bridge open to officially sanctioned traffic. As they drove over, it was clear to Jeff that the police were only just managing to hold the protestors off the road. He wondered if they were all wearing Rob Lacey masks again, but he was too far away to see clearly. Somehow he doubted it; stones, bottles, and chunks of wood were being thrown over the police lines to litter the tarmac on the slip roads at the big raised traffic circle. The chanting and taunts carried a strong current of menace. There was nothing good natured about this crowd, they were committed and serious.

  The Euro Socio-Industrial summit was intended to provide a forum between academics and corporate researchers and the legislators. As with most government-organized summits the intention was a noble one. With so much new technology emerging so rapidly, especially in cybernetics and semiorganics, the effect and upheaval on people’s lives was becoming progressively larger. If, however, the Brussels Parliament and the European commissioners knew what was going to be released into the market, they could predict the effect it might have on employment and social patterns. That way, once trends could be anticipated, then legislation could be drawn up to smooth the introduction. Of course, the reverse was also true: Desirable trends could possibly be induced by new innovations and developments, of which a high-temperature superconductor was the prime example. Legislative and financial incentives could therefore be formulated to encourage and facilitate such desirable advancement. Every scientific discipline was involved and invited, from microbiological waste processing to optronic computing, genoprotein therapy to reusable packaging.

  To a broad spectrum of Europe’s political activists, and even some of the smaller mainstream political parties, it was a monstrous technocrat attempt at social engineering. Who decided what was a desirable trait and trend? Where was the slightest hint of democratic input? Where, every Separatist movement demanded to know, was consideration for national integrity and sovereign culture?

  The summit had managed to attract a phenomenal amount of antagonism over the preceding months. The coalition of protest groups formed to counter it talked of mobilizing a Million Citizen Voices to have their say. By the time the delegates were arriving to register, police put the numbers massing outside the center at close to twenty thousand. Thousands more were assembling at every mainline railway station across London with the intention of marching on the Marshall Centre. They’d arrived from right across Europe, most of them earnest but peaceable.

  It was Europol’s Internal Security division that had overall responsibility for maintaining public order at official pan-European events. And as the anti-federal movement became more vocal over the years, so the commissioners had responded by giving Europol an extraordinarily wide common-security brief to observe and interdict the Separatist terrorists. The last six months had seen Europol’s electronic intelligence division monitoring encrypted data traffic between the coalition’s more extreme elements. It had issued warnings to the Internal Security Commissioner’s Bureau and the English Home Office concerning the strong possibility of riots and civil disturbances being orchestrated by known radicals and Separatists. The officials took it under advisement.

  As with any major event, the protest had snowballed far beyond the original concept of its instigators. When the first groups started to announce their intention to picket the venue, and an equally strident Commission declared it would not be intimidated by such noninclusive, violence-oriented parties, the media had quickly realized this was going to be one of the biggest civil demonstrations in years. Naturally, the publicity helped attract even more people.

  It was a strange atmosphere crackling through the Marshall Centre when Jeff registered at the main desk and collected his bulging summit information pack. People were scurrying about with a slightly defiant air, greeting friends and colleagues a little too effusively. The determination to carry on as normal in the face of adversity was reminiscent of a wartime mentality. It wasn’t far from the truth. The huge arboretum/reception area faced the Albert Dock. Delegates could look out directly at their adversaries milling around the sealed-off university campus buildings and see the laser-lit banners shining at them—most formatted with obscene slogans and caricatures. Hundreds of national flags were being waved; Jeff hadn’t seen so many Union Jacks clustered together since the last Last Night of the Proms the year the BBC went bankrupt. Nothing was audible—the thick glass shielded those inside from the sound; but despite that the collective voice of hatred directed toward them could still be sensed. The officials from Brussels were wearily familiar with the odium directed toward them, and managed to ignore it, while the science complement was altogether more jittery.

  Jeff kept a strong hold on Annabelle, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since they got off the train. “Let’s go find our hotel room,” he said once he was clutching his pack.

  They had to take several consecutive pedwalks along the central concourse before they reached the foot of the octagonal tower, which housed the hotel. Their room was on the thirty-third floor, facing northwest, which gave them a superb view out over the city. Annabelle pressed herself to the window, looking down on the Albert Dock and the protestors on the other side. “There’s so many of them,” she said mournfully.

  Jeff came over to stand cautiously behind her; he’d never been particularly comfortable with heights. The long drop down to the muddy water below seemed to be weakening his calf muscles. When he looked over her shoulder he could see the protestors had also taken over Beckton Park behind the university campus. Its grass had been churned away by several thousand campers.

  “Couldn’t we just go home?” Annabelle asked. “There’s going to be a riot, I know there will. It’ll be like the Bonn Finance summit again. Lots of people are going to get hurt.”

  “If we give in and go home, then that means they’v
e won. We’ll be quite safe in the Centre. Those police boys down there know what they’re doing; they’ve had a lot of experience dealing with crowds like this.”

  “I thought you didn’t approve of the European Parliament and the Commission.”

  “Of course I don’t. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare that needs total reform, or abolishing altogether. The protestors are quite right, it’s completely antidemocratic. But that doesn’t give them the right to intimidate people into adopting their agenda.”

  Annabelle gave the protestors a sad moue. “This is the only way people have left to object today. The Commission doesn’t allow any democratic opposition. We’ll never be given a referendum to ask us if we want to withdraw from the Union.”

  “Are you a Separatist?” he asked in surprise.

  “Isn’t everyone?”

  “I don’t know. Are they?”

  “Everyone at school is. Europe is so oppressive. We haven’t got any of the freedoms your generation had.”

  “Oh.” Jeff had always viewed the Separatist movement with very ambivalent feelings. For anyone like him who’d grown up in the seventies and eighties, when the IRA mainland bombing campaign was at its worst, Separatist methods had too many resonances to make him entirely comfortable with their goals. Besides, he considered their views simplistic. National economies and industries had become heavily integrated; any kind of political and financial breakup would trigger continentwide problems. But then, what cost freedom?

  Youth, with its high idealism quotient, considered almost any price worth paying. From his unique viewpoint looking out over Europe from two distinct generations he could see both the arguments, how valid they were to their practitioners. He just wished he knew who was right.

  His hands began a gentle massage on her shoulders. “Don’t worry, something has to give way eventually. Europe can’t carry on like this; it’s a schizophrenic continent.”

  A big movement of people down below caught his attention. The front rank of protestors at the head of the traffic circle’s southern slip road was surging forward, pressuring the police barricades. Smoke bombs were hurled over the heads of the officers. Thick plumes of scarlet smoke gushed out across the tarmac. Then long strands of green smoke began to wind through the protestors. The crowd’s cohesion broke, turning them back into individuals, all desperately running away from the barricades, pushing and shoving their way back down the slip road.

  Tear gas, Jeff realized. And the summit hadn’t even started yet. “I’m going to stay here,” Annabelle said. “I don’t want to try to travel through that.”

  “Good.” Jeff put his arms around her to offer some comfort, and steered her away from the window. “The agencies can wait for another day or so. We can stay on in London after the summit so you can see them then.”

  Annabelle had received thousands of txt and avtxt messages as Lucy Duke’s carefully orchestrated publicity campaign built up. Some wished her well, some congratulated her and Jeff, a great many asked for money, still more asked her to join their sect/religion/commune/political party/charity; an unpleasant percentage contained some kind of threat (which Krober forwarded to Europol’s Domestic Analysis Division for cross-referencing and tracking); some were funny, and some were from cranks; teenage (and older) boys wanted high-resolution pictures of her, preferably in a bikini or less; proposals of marriage were common. In among the deluge were several genuine offers of work and contracts from modeling agencies, keen to exploit her looks and public profile. She had trouble believing the kind of money they were promising.

  Jeff had turned to Sue for advice on which ones to consider. “Talk about life going in cycles,” she’d said snidely. But once she’d stopped laughing at him she told him which of the agencies had reasonable reputations. They’d arranged for a couple of interviews and a studio test session, which Annabelle intended to do while he was busy at the summit.

  The pack Jeff had been given at the reception desk contained several dozen invitations to parties sponsored by various companies, universities, and government bureaus. Then there were extra forums supported by news streams. The brochure was over a hundred pages thick. “And totally pointless,” he grunted as he thumbed through it; glossy pictures of industrial machinery and smiling community groups made it resemble some kind of share flotation prospectus. The loose sheaf of party invitations fluttered down across the bed. “You could spend the entire time eating and drinking here without ever getting to a session.”

  “How many are we going to?” she asked.

  “Why, want to start showing off some of those new clothes?”

  “Don’t start that again. I don’t want to let you down at these functions, that’s all. I had to have something decent to wear.”

  “Nobody’s even going to notice me when you start wearing those so-called dresses.”

  She struck a pose. “Jealous?”

  His PCglasses pinged and began emitting a red laser flash; he stuck his tongue out at her as he picked the unit off the bed. The call was from Alison. “Click, accept,” he told the glasses.

  “Are you two all right?” Alison asked hurriedly.

  “Sure. We just got to the hotel. Why?”

  “Graham just called me. He was at Euston station when it was evacuated.”

  “Evacuated?”

  “Access a news stream, Jeff. There was a clash between the police and the protest marchers. The ticket office is on fire. Graham said he saw the police shooting some kind of tear gas rounds inside the station. Some of the younger marchers had to carry him out.”

  “What the hell is Graham doing there in the first place? He’s in his eighties.”

  “Age doesn’t stop you from taking part in the democratic process, not if it’s important enough.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “I think so. That modern tear gas is nasty stuff. It’s got chemical marker dye mixed in, God knows what that does to your lungs. But he said he was going to get cleaned up, then join the main protest outside the Marshall Centre.”

  Jeff clamped a hand over his forehead; he couldn’t believe what she was saying. “Listen, Alison, if you’ve got any influence over him at all, get him to go home. Please. I can see them from our window. It’s really not pretty down here.”

  “I’ll tell him, but I don’t suppose it’ll do much good. You know what he’s like.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jeff gave his PCglasses a long look. “I’m going to call Tim,” he said.

  TIM WAS SURPRISED by the reception at Kings Cross. As soon as he and Vanessa got off the train the police marshaled them along the platform, a busy line of people all treading on one another’s heels. It was the start of the pushing that he’d have to endure most of the day.

  “Are you with this lot?” a policeman shouted at him as they got to the end of the platform. The man’s voice was muffled by his helmet filters; he was jabbing a gauntlet toward the yelling, chanting protestors packed into the concourse.

  Vanessa pulled herself tighter against Tim, her face anxious as she took in the huge mass of bodies.

  “No,” Tim yelled back. “We’re here to visit some friends.”

  “Wrong day,” the policeman said. “Get out over there. This lot are all going to Docklands. You don’t want any part of that.”

  The two closest protestors screamed obscene abuse at him. Tim shoved his way through the throng toward the side exit the policeman had indicated, keeping a close hold on Vanessa. They finally made it outside to the deserted taxi rank. Tim took a deep breath. Vanessa was shaking.

  “I didn’t think it was going to be like that,” she said in a small voice. There was no traffic on the Euston Road; the crowds outside Kings Cross and St. Pancras had spilled over the tarmac as they waited for their march to Docklands to begin. Stewards had long since given up trying to shepherd them along their designated route. Every arriving train seemed to bring hundreds more.

  Tim put his PCglasses on and called Colin.

  �
��Where the hell are you?” Colin asked.

  “Just got in. Where are you?”

  “Halfway to Docklands, I think. Simon and Rachel are here. We’re in the middle of a march. Nobody knows what’s happening. There aren’t any stewards. We’re just following along.”

  “Can you get out? We should meet up.”

  “Yeah, right. Hang on, my GPS says we’re on Whitechapel. We’ll try and get across to Bethnal Green tube station. Can you get there?”

  “I think so.” Tim’s PCglasses showed him a London street map. “We’ll walk up to Angel and catch a tube. It might take a while.”

  He was right. They had to take a long detour to Upper Street, where the tube station was. Traffic had backed up into a solid gridlock to make way for the various marches. Everywhere they went, tempers were fragile.

  The tube trains were crammed with unhappy passengers. As always, the only air below ground was hot and stale. They had to switch lines twice, waiting a long time for each connection on platforms that became dangerously crowded. This part of the network was nothing like the efficient, modern central zone that Tim normally used when he came down to the city.

  An hour and a half after arriving at Kings Cross they finally met up with their friends outside Bethnal Green station. Tim was relieved to see them. Somehow he found comfort in numbers.

  “What now?” Colin asked.

  “I guess we walk,” Simon said.

  Tim and Vanessa exchanged a look. “You still want to do this?” Tim asked.

  “Sure.” Simon gestured around. The road they were on seemed normal enough, with open shops, pedestrians, and plenty of bus traffic. “This is history, you know. There’s never been a protest this big before. We have to be part of it.”

  “I’m not going with any more marchers,” Rachel said firmly. “Half of them were looking for trouble.”

  “No problem,” Simon said. His PCglasses were throwing up a map. “We’ll just head east, then cut south when we’re above the summit.”