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light again.
    â€œLet’s pause a moment, think on that. More facts. The whole of modern civilization is derived from just one thing: the exploitation of fossil fuels . I don’t just mean industry. I mean our culture, our political system, the fact that we can feed our ­people and get food to those who need it. Everything that makes our lives worthwhile.
    â€œNow, I don’t yet have children of my own. But I want to, I want to very much. And I have to ask myself: what kind of world will there be waiting for them? A world like ours—­or a world effectively dying, moribund, in which all the benefits of civilization, of a decent, orderly, educated life, are gone? Is that the world I want for them?”
    He paused. The joking was all done with now. He paused until his audience began to stir and shuffle in vague discomfort; until the translators had not only caught up with him but were drumming their fingers, waiting for the next line.
    â€œNow,” he said at last. “That’s a bleak picture, don’t you agree? Very bleak.
    â€œBut you know why I’m here, and who I represent, and I guess that some of you already know I don’t intend to leave it there. You are ­people who look to the future, who believe there’s going to be a future. And so am I. A good, prosperous future, for us, and our children, and our children’s children. So obviously—­that’s not the full story.
    â€œFossil fuels are running out. All those I mentioned—­coal, oil, natural gas. But what if there was something else—­another fossil fuel, almost untapped, and, what’s more, renewable? Renewable within our lifetimes? What then?
    â€œYou see, there’s a notion, and it’s an old notion, that the Universe takes care of its own.
    â€œLet me tell you, ladies and gentlemen. It’s true.”
    He stood there with his arms out, palms towards us. An open posture that was also, in its way, faintly religious. The saint beholds the Christ. The soul opens to God. A little subtext running through it all. Subliminal, perhaps. Deliberate, most certainly.
    â€œThere exists a source of energy which has been here for centuries, gradually building power, growing without depletion. A very human source of energy. That is what I came to talk about. Not doom and gloom, not fear and misery. But hope. Prosperity. Not problems but solutions. And so, ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll allow it—­” A knowing, self-­ironic look now, a brow raised to the camera. “Can we talk?”
    T here’s a certain type works for the Registry. You don’t much notice them at first, not if you’re front line. You’re talent-­spotted, head-­hunted, drafted in. You’ve got a gift, or at least somebody hopes you have, and you’re busy at the nuts-­and-­bolts end of the thing, planning how to do your next job and maybe spin it out into a ­couple extra days paid holiday before you go back home; and if you’re anything like me, you don’t think much of what you’ll probably be doing next year or in ten years’ time. It’s a failing, I suppose, this lack of forethought, and may even be a mind-­set necessary for the job, since most field ops I know are just like that. They moan, they bitch about the work, but they’re field ops nonetheless. That’s what they do, that’s what they’ll stay, too, in the main. It’s only when their lives go seriously wrong that they stop and think a while, and wonder if there might be something else that they could do, some other trade or business with a slightly lower chance of being killed, maimed, or so mightily fucked over that they’ll never get a good night’s sleep again.
    That’s what I went through after my last time in Budapest.
    I had taken stock. Decided that I liked being alive; decided when I looked into the mirror, I wanted to know who was looking