Diamond Age

"They believe it," the Constable said, "because they have been indoctrinated to believe it."

"Yes. Some of them never challenge it— they grow up to be smallminded people, who can tell you what they believe but not why they believe it. Others become disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the society and rebel— as did Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw."

"Which path do you intend to take, Nell?" said the Constable, sounding very interested. "Conformity or rebellion?"

"Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded— they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity."

"Ah! Excellent!" the Constable exclaimed. As punctuation, he slapped the ground with his free hand, sending up a shower of sparks and transmitting a powerful shock through the ground to Nell's feet.

"I suspect that Lord Finkle-McGraw, being an intelligent man, sees through all of the hypocrisy in his society, but upholds its principles anyway, because that is what is best in the long run. And I suspect that he has been worrying about how best to inculcate this stance in young people who cannot understand, as he does, its historical antecedents— which might explain why he has taken an interest in me. The Primer may have been Finkle-McGraw's idea to begin with-a first attempt to go about this systematically."

"The Duke plays his cards close," Constable Moore said, "and so I cannot say whether your suppositions are correct. But I will admit it hangs together nicely."

"Thank you."

"What do you intend to do with yourself, now that you have pieced all of this together? A few more years' education and polishing will place you in a position to take the Oath."

"I am, of course, aware that I have favorable prospects in the Atlantan phyle," Nell said, "but I do not think that it would be fitting for me to take the straight and narrow path. I am going to China now to seek my fortune."

"Well," Constable Moore said, "look out for the Fists." His gaze wandered over his battered and filthy armor and came to rest on the floating helmet. "They are coming now."

The best explorers, like Burton, made every effort to blend in. In this spirit, Nell stopped at a public M.C., doffed her long dress, and compiled a new set of clothes— a navy blue skin-tight coverall emblazoned with SHIT HAPPENS in pulsating orange letters. She swapped her old clothes for a pair of powered skates on the waterfront, and then headed straight for the Causeway. It rose gently into the air for a few miles, and then the Pudong Economic Zone came into view at her feet, and Shanghai beyond that, and she suddenly began to pick up speed and had to cut the skates' power assist. She'd passed over the watershed now. Nell was alone in China.

The Hackworths have a family reunion;

Hackworth strikes out on his quest;

an unexpected companion.

Atlantis/Seattle was designed small and to the point; the narrow, convoluted straits of Puget Sound, already so full of natural islands, did not leave much room for artificial ones. So they had made it rather long and slender, parallel to the currents and the shipping lanes, and been rather stingy when it came to the parks, meadows, heaths, gentleman farms, and country estates. Much of the Seattle area was still sufficiently rich, civilized, and polite that New Atlantans did not object to living there, and little Victorian mini-claves were scattered about the place, particularly east of the lake, around the misty forest domains of the software khans. Gwen and Fiona had taken a townhouse in one of these areas.

These tiny bits of New Atlantis stood out from the surrounding forest in the same way that a vicar in morning coat and wing collar would have in the cave of the Drummers. The prevailing architecture here, among those who had not adopted neo-Victorian precepts, was distinctly subterranean; as if these people were somehow ashamed of their own humanity and could not bear to fell even a handful of the immense Douglas firs that marched monotonously up the tumbling slopes toward the frozen, sodden ridge of the Cascades. Even when it was half buried, a house wasn't even a proper house; it was an association of modules, scattered about here and there and connected by breezeways or tunnels. Stuck together properly and built on a rise, these modules might have added up to a house of substance, even grandeur; but to Hackworth, riding through the territory on his way to visit his family, it was all depressing and confusing. Ten years among the Drummers had not affected his Victorian aesthetics. He could not tell where one house left off and the next one began, the houses were all intertangled with one another like neurons in the brain.

His mind's eye again seemed to seize control of his visual cortex; he could not see the firs anymore, just axons and dendrites hanging in black three-dimensional space, packets of rod logic maneuvering among them like space probes, meeting and copulating among the nerve fibers.

It was a bit too aggressive to be a reverie and too abstract to be a hallucination. It didn't really clear away until a gust of cold mist hit him in his face, he opened his eyes, and realized that Kidnapper had stopped after emerging from the trees at the crest of a mossy ridgeline. Below him was a rocky bowl with a few cobblestone streets sketched out in a grid, a green park lined with red geraniums, a church with a white steeple, whitewashed four-story Georgian buildings surrounded by black wrought-iron fences. The security grid was tenuous and feeble; the software khans were at least as good at that kind of thing as Her Majesty's specialists, and so a New Atlantis clave in this area could rely on the neighbors to shoulder much of that burden.

Kidnapper picked its way carefully down the steep declivity as Hackworth looked out over the tiny clave, musing at how familiar it seemed. Since leaving the Drummers, he hadn't gone more than ten minutes without being seized by a feeling of d

A bell clanged once or twice, and teenaged girls, dressed in plaid uniform skirts, began to emerge from a domed school. Hackworth knew that it was Fiona's school, and that she was not entirely happy there. After the crush of girls had gone out of the place, he rode Kidnapper into the school yard and sauntered once around the building, gazing in the windows. Without much trouble he saw his daughter, sitting at a table in the library, hunched over a book, evidently as part of some disciplinary action.

He wanted so badly to go in and put his arms around her, because he knew that she had spent many hours suffering like punishments, and that she was a lonely girl. But he was in New Atlantis, and there were proprieties to be observed. First things first. Gwendolyn's townhouse was only a few blocks away. Hackworth rang the bell, determined to observe all of the formalities now that he was a stranger in the house.

"May I ask what your visit is regarding?" asked the parlourmaid, as Hackworth spun his card onto the salver. Hackworth didn't like this woman, who was named Amelia, because Fiona didn't like her, and Fiona didn't like her because Gwen had given her some disciplinary authority in the household, and Amelia was the sort who relished having it. He tried not to confuse himself by wondering how he could possibly know all of these things.

"Business," Hackworth said pleasantly. "Family business."

Amelia was halfiway up the stairs when her eyes finally focused on Hackworth's card. She nearly dropped the salver and had to clutch at the banister with one hand in order to keep her balance. She froze there for a few moments, trying to resist the temptation to turn around, and finally surrendered to it. The expression on her face was one of perfect loathing mixed with fascination.

"Please carry out your duties," Hackworth said, "and dispense with the vulgar theatrics."

Amelia, looking crestfallen, stormed up the stairs with the tainted card. There followed a good deal of muffled commotion upstairs. After a few minutes, Amelia ventured as far down as the landing and encouraged Hackworth to make himself comfortable in the parlor. He did so, noting that in his absence, Gwendolyn had been able to consummate all of the long-term furniture-buying strategies she had spent so much time plotting during the early years of their marriage. Wives and widows of secret agents in Protocol Enforcement could rely on being well cared for, and Gwen had not allowed his salary to sit around collecting dust.

His ex-wife descended the stairway cautiously, stood outside the beveled-glass parlor doors for a minute peering at him through the gauze curtains, and finally slipped into the room without meeting his gaze and took a seat rather far away from him. "Hello, Mr. Hackworth," she said.

"Mrs. Hackworth. Or is it back to Miss Lloyd?"

"It is."

"Ah, that's hard." When Hackworth heard the name Miss Lloyd, he thought of their courtship.

They sat there for a minute or so, not saying anything, just listening to the ponderous ratcheting of the grandfather clock.

"All right," Hackworth said, "I won't trouble you talking about extenuating circumstances, as I don't ask for your forgiveness, and in all honesty I'm not sure that I deserve it."

"Thank you for that consideration."

"I would like you to know, Miss Lloyd, that I am sympathetic to the step you have taken in securing a divorce and harbour no bitterness on that account."

"That is reassuring to know."

"You should also know that whatever behaviour I engaged in, as inexcusable as it was, was not motivated by rejection of you or of our marriage. It was not, in fact, a reflection upon you at all, but rather a reflection upon myself."

"Thank you for clarifying that point."

"I realize that any hope I might harbour in my breast of rekindling our former relationship, sincere as it might be, is futile, and so I will not trouble you after today."

"I cannot tell you how relieved I am to hear that you understand the situation so completely."

"However, I would like to be of service to you and Fiona in helping to resolve any loose ends."

"You are very kind. I shall give you my lawyer's card."

"And, of course, I look forward to reestablishing some sort of contact with my daughter."

The conversation, which had been running as smoothly as a machine to this point, now veered off track and crashed. Gwendolyn reddened and stiffened.

"You— you bastard."

The front door opened. Fiona stepped into the foyer carrying her schoolbooks. Amelia was there immediately, maneuvering around with her back to the foyer doors, blocking Fiona's view, talking to her in low angry tones.

Hackworth heard his daughter's voice. It was a lovely voice, a husky alto, and he would have recognized it anywhere. "Don't lie to me, I recognised his chevaline!" she said, and finally shouldered Amelia out of the way, burst into the parlor, all lanky and awkward and beautiful, an incarnation of joy. She took two steps across the oriental rug and then launched herself full-length across the settee into her father's arms, where she lay for some minutes alternately weeping and laughing.

Gwen had to be escorted from the room by Amelia, who came back immediately and stationed herself nearby, hands clasped behind back like a military sentry, observing Hackworth's every move. Hackworth couldn't imagine what they suspected he might be capable of-incest in the parlor? But there was no point in spoiling the moment by thinking of galling things, and so he shut Amelia out of his mind.

Father and daughter were allowed to converse for a quarter of an hour, really just queuing up subjects for future conversation. By that time, Gwen had recovered her composure enough to reenter the room, and she and Amelia stood shoulder-to-shoulder, quivering in sympathetic resonance, until Gwen interrupted.

"Fiona, your-father—and I were in the midst of a very serious discussion when you burst in on us. Please leave us alone for a few minutes."

Fiona did, reluctantly. Gwen resumed her former position, and Amelia backed out of the room. Hackworth noticed that Gwen had fetched some documents, bound up in red tape.

"These are papers setting out the terms of our divorce, including all conditions relating to Fiona," she said. "You are already in violation, I'm afraid. Of course, this can be forgiven, as your lack of a forwarding address as such made it impossible for us to acquaint you with this information. Needless to say, it is imperative for you to familiarise yourself with these documents before darkening my door again."

"Naturally," Hackworth said. "Thank you for retaining them for me."

"If you will be so good as to withdraw from these premises-"

"Of course. Good day," Hackworth said, took the roll of papers from Gwen's trembling hand, and let himself out briskly. He was a bit surprised when he heard Amelia calling to him from the doorway.

"Mr. Hackworth. Miss Lloyd wishes to know whether you have established a new residence, so that your personal effects may be forwarded."

"None as yet," Hackworth said. "I'm in transit."

Amelia brightened. "In transit to where?"

"Oh, I don't really know," Hackworth said. A movement caught his eye and he saw Fiona framed in a second-story window. She was undoing the latches, raising the sash. "I'm on a quest of sorts."

"A quest for what, Mr. Hackworth?"

"Can't say precisely. You know, top secret and all that. Something to do with an alchemist. Who knows, maybe there'll be faeries and hobgoblins too, before it's all over. I'll be happy to fill you in when I return. Until then, please ask Miss Lloyd if she would be so understanding as to retain those personal effects for just a bit longer. It can't possibly take more than another ten years or so." And with that, Hackworth prodded Kidnapper forward, moving at an extremely deliberate pace.

Fiona was on a velocipede with smart wheels that made short work of the cobblestone road. She caught up with her father just short of the security grid. Mother and Amelia had just materialized a block behind them in a half-lane car, and the sudden sensation of danger inspired Fiona to make an impetuous dive from the saddle of her velocipede onto Kidnapper's hindquarters, like a cowboy in a movie switching horses in midgallop. Her skirts, poorly adapted to cowboy maneuvers, got all fouled up around her legs, and she ended up slung over Kidnapper's back like a sack of beans, one hand clutching the vestigial knob where its tail would have been if it were a horse, and the other arm thrown round her father's waist.

"I love you, Mother!" she shouted, as they rode through the grid and out of the jurisdiction of New Atlantis family law. "Can't say the same for you, Amelia! But I'll be back soon, don't worry about me! Goodbye!" And then the ferns and mist closed behind them, and they were alone in the deep forest.

Carl Hollywood takes the Oath;

stroll along the Thames;

an encounter with Lord Finkle-McGraw.

Carl took the Oath at Westminster Abbey on a surprisingly balmy day in April and afterward went for a stride down the river, heading not too directly toward a reception that had been arranged in his honor at the Hopkins Theatre near Leicester Square. Even without a pedomotive, he walked as fast as many people jogged.

Ever since his first visit to London as a malnourished theatre student, he had preferred walking to any other way of getting around the place. Walking, especially along the Embankment where fellow-pedestrians were relatively few, also gave him freedom to smoke big old authentic cigars or the occasional briar pipe. Just because he was a Victorian didn't mean he had to give up his peculiarities; quite the opposite, in fact. Cruising along past old shrapnel-pocked Cleopatra's Needle in a comet-like corona of his own roiling, viscous smoke, he thought that he might get to like this.

A gentleman in a top hat was standing on the railing, gazing stolidly across the water, and as Carl drew closer, he could see that it was Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw, who, a day or two earlier, had stated during a cinephone conversation that he should like to meet him face-to-face in the near future for a chat.

Carl Hollywood, remembering his new tribal affiliation, went so far as to doff his hat and bow. Finkle-McGraw acknowledged the greeting somewhat distractedly. "Please accept my sincere congratulations, Mr. Hollywood. Welcome to the phyle."

"Thank you."

"I regret that I have not been able to attend any of your productions at the Hopkins— my friends who have could hardly have been more complimentary."

"Your friends are too kind," said Carl Hollywood. He was still a little unsure of the etiquette. To accept the compliment at face value would have been boastful; to imply that His Grace's friends were incompetent judges of theatre was not much of an improvement; he settled for the less dangerous accusation that these friends had a superfluity of goodness.

Finkle-McGraw detached himself from the railing and began to walk along the river, keeping a brisk pace for a man of his age.

"I daresay that you shall make a prized addition to our phyle, which, as brilliantly as it shines in the fields of commerce and science, wants more artists."

Not wanting to join in criticism of the tribe he'd just sworn a solemn Oath to uphold, Carl pursed his lips and mulled over some possible responses.

Finkle-McGraw continued, "Do you suppose that we fail to encourage our own children to pursue the arts, or fail to attract enough men such as yourself, or perhaps both?"

"With all due respect, Your Grace, I do not necessarily agree with your premise. New Atlantis has many fine artists."

"Oh, come now. Why do all of them come from outside the tribe, as you did? Really, Mr. Hollywood, would you have taken the Oath at all if your prominence as a theatrical producer had not made it advantageous for you to do so?"

"I think I will choose to interpret your question as part of a Socratic dialogue for my edification," Carl Hollywood said carefully, "and not as an allegation of insincerity on my part. As a matter of fact, just before I encountered you, I was enjoying my cigar, and looking about at London, and thinking about just how well it all suits me."

"It suits you well because you are of a certain age now. You are a successful and established artist. The ragged bohemian life holds no charm for you anymore. But would you have reached your current position if you had not lived that life when you were younger?"

"Now that you put it that way," Carl said, "I agree that we might try to make some provision, in the future, for young bohemians-"

"It wouldn't work," Finkle-McGraw said. "I've been thinking about this for years. I had the same idea: Set up a sort of young artistic bohemian theme park, sprinkled around in all the major cities, where young New Atlantans who were so inclined could congregate and be subversive when they were in the mood. The whole idea was self-contradictory. Mr. Hollywood, I have devoted much effort, during the last decade or so, to the systematic encouragement of subversiveness."

"You have? Are you not concerned that our young subversives will migrate to other phyles?"

If Carl Hollywood could have kicked himself in the arse, he would have done so as soon as finishing that sentence. He had forgotten about Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw's recent and highly publicized defection to CryptNet. But the Duke took it serenely.

"Some of them will, as the case of my granddaughter demonstrates. But what does it really mean when such a young person moves to another phyle? It means that they have outgrown youthful credulity and no longer wish to belong to a tribe simply because it is the path of least resistance-they have developed principles, they are concerned with their personal integrity. It means, in short, that they are ripe to become members in good standing of New Atlantis-as soon as they develop the wisdom to see that it is, in the end, the best of all possible tribes."

"Your strategy was much too subtle for me to follow. I thank you for explaining it. You encourage subversiveness because you think that it will have an effect opposite to what one might naively suppose."

"Yes. And that's the whole point of being an Equity Lord, you know-to look after the interests of the society as a whole instead of flogging one's own company, or whatever. At any rate, this brings us to the subject of the advertisement I placed in the ractives section of the Times and our consequent cinephone conversation."

"Yes," Carl Hollywood said, "you are looking for ractors who performed in a project called the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer."

"The Primer was my idea. I commissioned it. I paid the racting fees. Of course, owing to the way the media system is organised, I had no way to determine the identity of the ractors to whom I was sending the fees— hence the need for a public advertisement."

"Your Grace, I should tell you immediately-and would have told you on the cinephone, had you not insisted that we defer all substantive discussion to a face-to-face-that I myself did not ract in the Primer. A friend of mine did. When I saw the advertisement, I undertook to respond on her behalf."

"I understand that ractors are frequently pursued by overly appreciative members of their audience," said Finkle-McGraw, "and so I suppose I understand why you have chosen to act as intermediary in this case. Let me assure you that my motives are perfectly benign."

Carl adopted a wounded look "Your Grace! I would never have supposed otherwise. I am arrogating this role to myself, not to protect the young lady in question from any supposed malignity on your part, but simply because her current circumstances make establishing contact with her a somewhat troublesome business."

"Then pray tell me what you know about the young woman." Carl gave the Equity Lord a brief description of Miranda's relationship with the Primer.

Finkle-McGraw was keenly interested in how much time Miranda had spent in the Primer each week. "If your estimates are even approximately accurate, this young woman must have singlehandedly done at least nine-tenths of the racting associated with that copy of the Primer."

"That copy? Do you mean to say there were others?"

Finkle-McGraw walked on silently for a few moments, then resumed in a quieter voice. "There were three copies in all. The first one went to my granddaughter-as you will appreciate, I tell you this in confidence. A second went to Fiona, the daughter of the artifex who created it. The third fell into the hands of Nell, a little thete girl.

"To make a long story short, the three girls have turned out very differently. Elizabeth is rebellious and high-spirited and lost interest in the Primer several years ago. Fiona is bright but depressed, a classic manic-depressive artist. Nell, on the other hand, is a most promising young lady.

"I prepared an analysis of the girls' usage habits, which were largely obscured by the inherent secrecy of the media system, but which can be inferred from the bills we paid to hire the ractors. It became clear that, in the case of Elizabeth, the racting was done by hundreds of different performers. In Fiona's case, the bills were strikingly lower because much of the racting was done by someone who did not charge money for his or her services-probably her father. But that's a different story. In Nell's case, virtually all of the racting was done by the same person."

"It sounds," Carl said, "as if my friend established a relationship with Nell's copy-"

"And by extension, with Nell," said Lord Finkle-McGraw.

Carl said, "May I inquire as to why you wish to contact the ractor?"

"Because she is a central part of what is going on here," said Lord Finkle-McGraw, "which I did not expect. It was not a part of the original plan that the ractor would be important."

"She did it," Carl Hollywood said, "by sacrificing her career and much of her life. It is important for you to understand, Your Grace, that she was not merely Nell's tutor. She became Nell's mother."

These words seemed to strike Lord Finkle-McGraw quite forcefully. His stride faltered, and he ambled along the riverbank for some time, lost in thought.

"You gave me to believe, several minutes ago, that establishing contact with the ractor in question would not be a trivial process," he said finally, in quieter voice. "Is she no longer associated with your troupe?"

"She took a leave of absence several years ago in order to concentrate on Nell and the Primer."

"I see," said the Equity Lord, leaning into the words a little bit and turning it into an exclamation. He was getting excited. "Mr. Hollywood, I hope you will not be offended by my indelicacy in inquiring as to whether this has been a paid leave of absence."

"Had it been necessary, I would have underwritten it. Instead there is another backer."

"Another backer," repeated Finkle-McGraw. He was obviously fascinated, and slightly alarmed, by the use of financial jargon in this context.

"The transaction was fairly simple, as I suppose all transactions are au fond," said Carl Hollywood. "Miranda wanted to locate Nell. Conventional thinking dictates that this is impossible. There are, however, some unconventional thinkers who would maintain that it can be done through unconscious, nonrational processes. There is a tribe called the Drummers who normally live underwater-"

"I am familiar with them," said Lord Finkle-McGraw.

"Miranda joined the Drummers four years ago," Carl said. "She had entered into a partnership. The two other partners were a gentleman of my acquaintance, also in the theatrical business, and a financial backer."

"What did the backer hope to gain from it?"

"A leased line to the collective unconscious," said Carl Hollywood. "He thought it would be to the entertainment industry what the philosopher's stone was to alchemy."

"And the results?"

"We have all been waiting to hear from Miranda."

"You have heard nothing at all?"

"Only in my dreams," Carl Hollywood said.

Nell's passage through Pudong;

she happens upon the offices of Madame Ping;

interview with the same.

Shanghai proper could be glimpsed only through vertical apertures between the high buildings of the Pudong Economic Zone as Nell skated westward. Downtown Pudong erupted from the flat paddy-land on the east bank of the Huang Pu. Almost all of the skyscrapers made use of mediatronic building materials. Some bore the streamlined characters of the Japanese writing system, rendered in sophisticated color schemes, but most of them were written in the denser high-resolution characters used by the Chinese, and these tended to be stroked out in fiery red, or in black on a background of that color.

The Anglo-Americans had their Manhattan, the Japanese had Tokyo. Hong Kong was a nice piece of work, but it was essentially Western. When the Overseas Chinese came back to the homeland to build their monument to enterprise, they had done it here, and they had done it bigger and brighter, and unquestionably redder, than any of those other cities. The nanotechnological trick of making sturdy structures that were lighter than air had come along just at the right time, as all of the last paddies were being replaced by immense concrete foundations, and a canopy of new construction had bloomed above the first-generation undergrowth of seventy— and eighty-story buildings. This new architecture was naturally large and ellipsoidal, typically consisting of a huge neonrimmed ball impaled on a spike, so Pudong was bigger and denser a thousand feet above the ground than it was at street level.

Seen from the apex of the big arch in the Causeway through several miles of bad air, the view was curiously flattened and faded, as if the whole scene had been woven into a fabulously complex brocade that had been allowed to gather dust for several decades and then been hung in front of Nell, about ten feet away. The sun had gone down not long before and the sky was still a dim orange fading up into purple, divided into irregular segments by half a dozen pillars of smoke spurting straight up out of the horizon and toward the dark polluted vault of the heavens, many miles off to the west, somewhere out in the silk and tea districts between Shanghai and Suzhou.

As she power-skated down the western slope of the arch and crossed the coastline of China, the thunderhead of neon reached above her head, spread out to embrace her, developed into three dimensions— and she was still several miles away from it. The coastal neighborhoods consisted of block after block of reinforced-concrete apartment buildings, four to five stories high, looking older than the Great Wall though their real age could not have exceeded a few decades, and decorated on the ends facing the street with large cartoonish billboards, some mediatronic, most just painted on. For the first kilometer or so, most of these were targeted at businessmen just coming in from New Chusan, and in particular from the New Atlantis Clave. Glancing at these billboards as she went by them,

Nell concluded that visitors from New Atlantis played an important role in supporting casinos and bordellos, both the old-fashioned variety and the newer scripted-fantasy emporia, where you could be the star in a little play you wrote yourself. Nell slowed down to examine several of these, memorizing the addresses of ones with especially new or well-executed signs.