Diamond Age

The leaders of the rebellion emerged from their hiding places, proclaimed the Coastal Republic, and called for Protocol Enforcement troops to come in and protect them. Colonel Arthur Hornsby Moore, a veteran of the fighting in Eastern Europe, was brought in to command. He had been born in Hong Kong, left as a small child when the Chinese took it over, spent much of his youth wandering around Asia with his parents, and eventually settled in the British Isles. He was picked for the job because he was fluent in Cantonese and not half bad in Mandarin. Looking at the old cine clips in the Encyclopædia, Nell could see a younger Constable Moore, the same man with more hair and fewer doubts.

The Chinese Civil War began in earnest three years later, when the Northerns, who didn't have access to nanotech, started lobbing nukes. Not long afterward, the Muslim nations had finally gotten their act together and overrun much of Xinjiang Province, killing some of the Han Chinese population and driving the rest eastward into the maw of the civil war. Colonel Moore suffered an extremely dire infestation of primitive nanosites and was removed from the action and put on extended convalescent leave. By that time, the truce line between the Celestial Kingdom and the Coastal Republic had been established.

Since then, as Nell knew from her studies at the Academy, Lau Ge had succeeded Zhang as the northern leader-the leader of the Celestial Kingdom. After a decent interval had passed, he had thoroughly purged all remaining traces of Communist ideology, denouncing it as a Western imperialist plot, and proclaimed himself Chamberlain to the Throneless King. The Throneless King was Confucius, and Lau Ge was now the highest-ranking of all the mandarins.

The Encyclopædia did not say much more about Colonel Arthur Hornsby Moore, except that he'd resurfaced as an adviser a few years later during some outbreaks of nanotech terrorism in Germany, and later retired and became a security consultant. In this latter capacity he had helped to promulgate the concept of defense in depth, around which all modern cities, including Atlantis/Shanghai, were built.

Nell cooked the Constable an especially nice di

"I have been angry at my Primer ever since that night," Nell said.

"Why?" said the Constable, looking surprised, though he was hardly more surprised than Nell herself. Nell had said a remarkable number of things this evening without having ever, to her memory, thought them first; or at least she didn't believe she had ever thought them before.

"I ca

". . . the rest of your life happened," the Constable said. "Girl, you must admit that your life with Burt dead has been an improvement on your life with Burt alive."

"Yes."

"So the Primer was correct on that point. Now, as to the fact that killing people is a more complicated business in practice than in theory, I will certainly concede your point. But I think it is not likely to be the only instance in which real life turns out to be more complicated than what you have seen in the book. This is the Lesson of the Screwdriver, and you would do well to remember it. All it amounts to is that you must be ready to learn from sources other than your magic book."

"But of what use is the book then?"

"I suspect it is very useful. You want only the knack of translating its lessons into the real world. For example," the Constable said, plucking his napkin from his lap and crushing it into the tabletop, "let us take something very concrete, such as beating the bejesus out of people." He stood up and tromped out into the garden. Nell ran after him. "I have seen you doing your martial-arts exercises," he said, switching to a peremptory outdoor voice, an addressing-the-troops voice. "Martial arts means beating the bejesus out of people. Now, let us see you try your luck with me." Negotiations ensued as Nell endeavored to establish whether the Constable was serious. This being accomplished, she sat down on the flagstones and began getting her shoes off. The Constable watched her with raised eyebrows.

"Oh, that's very formidable," he said. "All evildoers had best be on the lookout for little Nell-unless she happens to be wearing her bloody shoes."

Nell did a couple of stretching exercises, ignoring more derisive commentary from the Constable. She bowed to him, and he waved his hand at her dismissively. She got set into the stance that Dojo had taught her. In response, the Constable moved his feet about an inch farther apart than they had been, and pooched his belly out, which was apparently the chosen stance of some mysterious Scottish fighting technique.

Nothing happened for a long time except for a lot of dancing around. Nell danced, that is, and the Constable blundered around desultorily. "What's this?" he said. "All you know is defense?"

"Mostly, sir," Nell said. "I do not suppose it was the Primer's intention to teach me how to assault people."

"Oh, what good is that?" the Constable sneered, and suddenly he reached out and grabbed Nell by the hair— not hard enough to hurt. He held her for a few moments, and then let her go. "Thus endeth the first lesson," he said.

"You think that I should cut my hair off?"

The Constable looked terribly disappointed. "Oh, no," he said,

"never, ever, ever cut your hair off. If I grabbed you by your wrist"— and he did— "would you cut your arm off?"

"No, sir."

"Did the Primer teach you that people would pull your hair?"

"No, sir."

"Did it teach you that your mother's boyfriends would beat you up, and your mother not protect you?"

"No, sir, except insofar as it told me stories about people who did evil."

"People doing evil is a good lesson. What you saw in there a few weeks ago"-and by this Nell knew he was referring to the headless soldier on the mediatron-"is one application of that lesson, but it's too obvious to be of any good. Ah, but your mother not protecting you from boyfriends-that has some subtlety, doesn't it?

"Nell," the Constable continued, indicating through his tone of voice that the lesson was concluding, "the difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people-and this is true whether or not they are well-educated-is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations-in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.

"In your Primer you have a resource that will make you highly educated, but it will never make you intelligent. That comes from life. Your life up to this point has given you all of the experience you need to be intelligent, but you have to think about those experiences. If you don't think about them, you'll be psychologically unwell. If you do think about them, you will become not merely educated but intelligent, and then, a few years down the road, you will probably give me cause to wish I were several decades younger."

The Constable turned and walked back into his house, leaving Nell alone in the garden, pondering the meaning of that last statement. She supposed it was the sort of thing she might understand later, when she had become intelligent.

Carl Hollywood returns from abroad;

he and Miranda discuss the status and future of her racting career.

Carl Hollywood came back from a month-long trip to London, where he'd been visiting old friends, catching some live theatre, and making face-to-face contacts with some of the big ractive developers, hoping to swing some contracts in their direction. When he got back, the whole company threw a party for him in the theatre's little bar. Miranda thought she handled it pretty well.

But the next day he cornered her backstage. "What's up?" he said. "And I don't mean that in the usual offhanded way. I want to know what's going on with you. Why have you switched to the evening shift during my absence? And why were you acting so weird at the party?"

"Well, Nell and I have had an interesting few months."

Carl looked startled, stepped back half a pace, then sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Of course, her altercation with Burt was traumatic, but she seems to have dealt with it well."

"Who's Burt?"

"I have no idea. Someone who was physically abusing her. Apparently she managed to find some kind of new living situation in short order, probably with the assistance of her brother Harv, who has, however, not stayed with her-he's stuck in the same old bad situation, while Nell has moved on to something better."

"She has? That's good news," said Carl, only half sarcastically.

Miranda smiled at him. "See? That's exactly the kind of feedback I need. I don't talk about this stuff to anyone because I'm afraid they'll think I'm mad. Thank you. Keep it up."

"What is Nell's new situation?" Carl Hollywood asked contritely.

"I think she's in school somewhere. She appears to be learning new material that isn't explicitly covered in the Primer, and she's developing more sophisticated forms of social interaction, suggesting that she's spending more time around a higher class of people."