Diamond Age

"Well, a week or two later, Doc wants to know where is the package, and we told him this story. When he heard about that book, he flipped and told us that the book and the package were one and the same.. By that time, you were already playing with that book all night and all day, Nell, and I couldn't bear to take it away from you, so I lied. I told him I threw the book down on the sidewalk when I saw it was junk, and if it wasn't still there, then someone else must have come along and picked it up. Doc was pissed, but he fell for it.

"That's why I never brought my buds to the flat. If anyone finds out you still have that book, Doc'll kill me."

"What should we do?"

Harv got a look on his face like he'd rather not talk about it. "For starters, let's get some free stuff."

They took a sneaky and indirect route to the waterfront, staying as far as possible from the clusters of drunks winding through the constellation of incandescent bordellos like cold dark clumps of rock wending their way through a bright nebula of young stars.

They made their way to a public M.C. on a streetcorner and picked out items from the free menu: boxes of water and nutri-broth, envelopes of sushi made from nanosurimi and rice, candy bars, and packages about the size of Harv's hand, festooned with implausible block letter promises ("REFLECTS 99% OF INFRARED!") that folded out into huge crinkly metallized blankets. Nell had been noticing a lot of rough shapes strewn around on the beach like giant chrome-plated larva. Must be fellow transients wrapped up in these selfsame. As soon as they had scored the goodies, they ran down to the beach and picked out their own spot. Nell wanted one closer to the surf, but Harv made some very well-considered observations about the inadvisability of sleeping below high tide. They trudged along the seawall for a good mile or so before finding a relatively abandoned bit of beach and wrapped themselves up in their blankets there. Harv insisted that one of them had to stay awake at all times to act as a sentry. Nell had learned all about this kind of thing from her virtual adventures in the Primer, and so she volunteered to stay up first.

Harv went to sleep pretty soon, and Nell opened up her book. At times like this, the paper glowed softly and the letters stood out crisp and black, like tree branches silhouetted against a full moon.

Miranda's reactions to the evening's events;

solace from an unexpected quarter;

from the Primer, the demise of a hero, flight to the Land Beyond, and the lands of King Magpie.

The Theatre Parnasse had a rather nice bar, nothing spectacular, just a sort of living room off the main floor, with the bar itself recessed into one wall. The old furniture and pictures had been looted by the Red Guards and later replaced with post-Mao stuff that was not as fine. The management kept the booze locked up when the ractors were working, not sharing any romantic notions about substance-abusing creative geniuses. Miranda stumbled down from her box, fixed herself a club soda, and settled into a plastic chair. She put her shaking hands together like the covers of a book and then buried her face in them. After a few deep breaths she got tears to come, though they came silently, a temporary letting-off-steam cry, not the catharsis she was hoping for. She hadn't earned the catharsis yet, she knew, because what had happened was just the first act. Just the initial incident, or whatever they called it in the books.

"Rough session?" said a voice. Miranda recognized it, but just barely: It was Carl Hollywood, the dramaturge, in effect her boss. But he didn't sound like a gruff son of a bitch tonight, which was a switch.

Carl was in his forties, six and a half feet tall, massively built and given to wearing long black coats that almost swept the floor. He had long wavy blond hair drawn back from his forehead and affected a sort of King Tut beard. Either he was celibate, or else he believed that the particulars of his sexual orientation and needs were infinitely too complex to be shared with those he worked with. Everyone was scared shitless of him, and he liked it that way; he couldn't do his job if he was buddies with all of the ractors.

She heard his cowboy boots approaching across the bare, stained Chinese rug. He confiscated her club soda. "Don't want to drink this fizzy stuff when you're having a cry. It'll come out your nose. You need something like tomato juice-replace those lost electrolytes. I tell you what," he said, rattling his tremendous keychain, "I'll break the rules and fix you an honest-to-god bloody mary. Usually I make 'em with tabasco, which is how we do it where I'm from. But since your mucus membranes are already irritated enough, I'll just make a boring one."

By the time he was finished with this oration, Miranda had gotten her hands away from her face at least. She turned away from him.

"Kind of fu

"Isolating? Sort of," Miranda said. "I could use a little more isolation tonight."

"You telling me to leave you alone, or-"

"No!" Miranda said, sounding desperate to herself. She brought her voice to heel before continuing. "No, that's not how I meant it. It's just that you never know what role you're going to play. And some of the roles can cut pretty deep. If someone handed me a script for what I just did and asked me if I were interested in the part, I'd refuse it."

"Was it a porn thing?" Carl Hollywood said. His voice sounded a bit strangled. He was angry all of a sudden. He had stopped in the middle of the room, clenching her bloody mary as if he might pop the glass in his fist.

"No. It wasn't like that," Miranda said. "At least, it wasn't porn in the sense you're talking about," Miranda said, "though you never know what turns people on."

"Was the payer looking to get turned on?"

"No. Absolutely not," Miranda said. Then, after a long time, she said, "It was a kid. A little girl."

Carl gave her a searching look, then remembered his ma

"So the next question is," Miranda said after she'd steadied herself with a few gulps of the drink, "why I should get so upset over a kiddie ractive."

Carl shook his head. "I wasn't going to ask it."

"But you're wondering."

"What I'm wondering about is my problem," Carl said. "Let's concentrate on your problems for now." He frowned, sat down across from her and ran his hand back through his hair absent-mindedly. "Is this that big account?" He had access to her spreadsheets; he knew how she'd been spending her time.

"Yeah."

"I've sat in on a few of those sessions."

"I know you have."

"Seems different from normal kiddie stuff. The education is there, but it's darker. Lots of unreconstructed Grimm Brothers content. Powerful."

"Yeah."

"It's amazing to me that one kid can spend that much time-"

"Me too." Miranda took another swallow, then bit off the end of the celery stick and chewed awhile, stalling. "What it comes down to," she said, "is that I'm raising someone's kid for them."

Carl looked her straight in the eye for the first time in a while. "And some heavy shit just went down," he said.

"Some very heavy shit, yes."

Carl nodded.

"It's so heavy," Miranda said, "that I don't even know if this girl is alive or dead."

Carl glanced up at the fancy old clock on the wall, its face yellowed from a century and a half's accumulation of tar and nicotine. "If she's alive," he said, "then she probably needs you."

"Right," Miranda said. She stood up and headed for the exit. Then, before Carl could react, she spun on the ball of her foot, bent down, and kissed him on the cheek.

"Aw, stop it," he said.

"See you later, Carl. Thanks." She ran up the narrow staircase heading for her box.

Baron Burt lay dead upon the floor of the Dark Castle. Princess Nell was terrified of the blood that gushed from his wound, but she approached him bravely and plucked the keychain with the twelve keys from his belt. Then she gathered up her Night Friends, tucking them into a little knapsack, and hurriedly packed a picnic lunch while Harv gathered up blankets and ropes and tools for their journey.

They were walking across the courtyard of the Dark Castle, heading for the great gate with its twelve locks, when suddenly the evil Queen appeared before them, as tall as a giant, wreathed in lightning and thunder-clouds! Tears gushed from her eyes and turned to blood as they rolled down her cheeks. "You have taken him away from me!" she cried. And Nell understood that this was a terrible thing for her wicked stepmother, because she was weak and helpless without a man. "For this," the Queen continued, "I shall curse you to remain locked up in this Dark Castle forever!" And she reached down with one hand like talons and snatched the keychain from Princess Nell's hand. Then she turned into a great vulture and flew away across the ocean toward the Land Beyond.

"We are lost!" Harv cried. "Now we shall never escape from this place!" But Princess Nell did not lose hope. Not long after the Queen had vanished over the horizon, another bird came flying toward them. It was the Raven, their friend from the Land Beyond, who frequently came to visit them and to entertain them with stories of far-off countries and famous heroes. "Now is your chance to escape," said the Raven. "The evil Queen is engaged in a great battle of sorcery with the Faery Kings and Queens who rule the Land Beyond. Throw a rope out of yon arrow-slit, and climb down to freedom."

Princess Nell and Harv climbed the stairway into one of the bastions flanking the Dark Castle's main gate. These had narrow windows where in olden times soldiers should shoot arrows down at invaders. Harv tied one end of a rope to a hook in the wall and threw it out one of these slits. Princess Nell threw her Night Friends out, knowing that they would land harmlessly below. Then she climbed out through the slit and down the rope to freedom.

"Follow me, Harv!" she cried. "All is well down here, and it is a much brighter place than you can possibly imagine!"