Читать онлайн «Misspent Youth»
Автор Питер Гамильтон
Peter F. Hamilton
MISSPENT YOUTH
Acknowledgments
Between publication of the U. K. and U. S. editions of
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
1. MAGIC MEMORIES
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.
