Free Stormchild by Bernard Cornwell

he said. “I rather suspect I’ve encouraged you to waste a good deal of your money and time. There’s absolutely no sign of von Rellsteb, and I’m told it would be very typical of him to agree to attend but then not turn up.”
    “It won’t be your fault if that happens,” I said. “Any parent would snatch at the smallest chance of finding his child, wouldn’t he?”
    “Yes, of course,” Matthew agreed, though he still sounded dubious. We had wandered close to the hotel’s front door, outside of which a number of demonstrators angrily harangued arriving delegates. The anger was directed at anyone who arrived in a car, and thereby contributed exhaust fumes to global warming. “They’re from WASH.” Matthew gestured at the angry demonstrators.
    “WASH?” I assumed it was a town I had never heard of, or else a contraction of Washington.
    “It’s an acronym,” Matthew explained. “W.A.S.H., or the World Alliance to Save Humanity.” He grimaced. “For a time their British branch picketed my office.”
    “Your office?” I said in astonishment. “What were they accusing you of?”
    “They thought my organization should support their call for the abolition of private cars.” Matthew sighed. “The green movement is riddled with a holier-than-thou attitude, which means that the extremists are always trying to show how much purer they are than the mainstream groups. It’s all rather counterproductive, of course. If we cooperated and agreed on some specific goals then we could make real progress. We could certainly outlaw drift netting in the Pacific. We could prob-ably end the use of CFCs in refrigerators and aerosols, we could seriously reduce carbon monoxide emissions, and we might even save what’s left of the rain forests. But what we can’t do is ban all cars from the road, and we don’t help our cause by saying that we can. Ordinary people don’t want to lose their cars, just as they don’t want to go cold in winter merely because they’re told that oil and coal power stations pollute the air, and nuclear power is unsafe. I know, because I’m an ordinary person and I don’t want to stop using a car, and I don’t want my children to be cold in winter. The problem with our movement, Mr. Blackburn, is that we’re always trying to ban things, but we don’t offer alternatives. And I mean genuine alternatives that will heat peoples’ homes and apply deodorants to their armpits and propel their automobiles. People will listen to us if we offer them hope, and they’ll even pay a few pennies more if they think the extra cost will help the planet, but if we offer them only doom, they’ll accept the doom and decide they might as well be comfortable as they endure it. It’s the primrose path syndrome; why be uncomfortable if you’re going to hell?”
    I smiled. “You sound as if you ought to be giving the keynote speech.”
    “I’ve been asked to do just that, but only if von Rellsteb doesn’t turn up on Wednesday night. Of course my speech won’t be as popular, because common sense never is as interesting as fanaticism. If von Rellsteb comes and rants about paying back pollution with violence, then he’ll make every newspaper in the free world, while my realism won’t even make two inches in the local paper.”
    There was certainly a great deal of press and television interest in the conference. The numerous reporters were not required to wear the delegates’ Day-Glo green name badges, but instead had official-looking red press tags that, under their names, announced what newspaper or magazine they worked for. As Matthew and I stood by the entrance one such reporter arrived to run the gauntlet of WASH hatred. She was a pale and flustered-looking girl with something so disorganized in her looks and so fearful in her expression that I instinctively felt protective toward her. She was wearing a long yellow skirt which gave her a fresh, springlike appearance. She must have arrived by car or