Diamond Age

Hackworth did not like riding on the shoulder of highways, and so he directed Kidnapper to find a less direct route to Suzhou, one that used smaller roads. This was flat Yangtze Delta territory only inches above the waterline, where canals, for transport, irrigation, and drainage, were more numerous than roads. The canals ramified through the black, stinky ground like blood vessels branching into the tissues of the brain. The plain was interrupted frequently by small tumuli containing the coffins of someone's ancestors, just high enough to stay above the most routine floods. Farther to the west, steep hills rose from the paddies, black with vegetation. The Coastal Republic checkpoints at the intersections of the roads were gray and fuzzy, like house-size clots of bread mold, so dense was the fractal defense grid, and staring through the cloud of macro— and microscopic aerostats, Hackworth could barely make out the hoplites in the center, heat waves rising from the radiators on their backs and stirring the airborne soup. They let him pass through without incident. Hackworth expected to see more checkpoints as he continued toward Fist territory, but the first one was the last; the Coastal Republic did not have the strength for defense in depth and could muster only a one-dimensional picket line.

A mile past the checkpoint, at another small intersection, Hackworth found a pair of very makeshift crucifixes fashioned from freshly cut mulberry trees, green leaves still fluttering from their twigs. Two young white men had been bound to the crucifixes with gray plastic ties, burned in many places and incrementally disemboweled. From the looks of their haircuts and the somber black neckties that had been ironically left around their necks, Hackworth guessed they were Mormons. A long skein of intestine trailed from one of their bellies down into the dirt, where a gaunt pig was tugging on it stubbornly.

He did not see much more death, but he smelled it everywhere in the hot wet air. He thought that he might be seeing a network of nanotech defense barriers until he realized that it was a natural phenomenon: Each waterway supported a linear black nimbus of fat, drowsy flies. From this he knew that if he tugged a bit on this or that rein and guided Kidnapper to the bank of the canal, he would find it filled with ballooning corpses.

Ten minutes after passing the Coastal Republic checkpoint, he rode through the center of a Fist encampment. As he looked neither right nor left, he could not really estimate its size; they had taken over a village of low brick-and-stucco buildings. A long straight smudge ru

Most of the Fists were shirtless, wearing indigo trousers, scarlet girdles knotted at the waist, sometimes scarlet ribbons tied round necks, foreheads, or upper arms. The ones who weren't sleeping or smoking were practicing martial arts. Hackworth rode slowly through their midst, and they pretended not to notice him, except for one man who came ru

"Sha! Sha!" and had to be tackled by three comrades.

As he rode the forty miles to Suzhou, nothing changed about the landscape except that creeks became rivers and ponds became lakes. The Fist encampments became somewhat larger and closer together. When the thick air infrequently roused itself to a breeze, he could smell the clammy metallic reek of stagnant water and knew he was close to the great lake of Tai Wu, or Taifu as the Shanghainese pronounced it. A grayscale dome rose from the paddies some miles away, casting a film of shadow before a cluster of tall buildings, and Hackworth knew it must be Suzhou, now a stronghold of the Celestial Kingdom, veiled in its airborne shield like a courtesan behind a translucent sheen of Suzhou silk.

Nearing the shore of the great lake he found his way onto an important road that ran south toward Hangzhou. He set Kidnapper ambling northward. Suzhou had thrown out tendrils of development along its major roads, and so as he drew closer he saw strip malls and franchises, now destroyed, deserted, or colonized by refugees.

Most of these places catered to truck drivers: lots of motels, casinos, teahouses, and fast-food places. But no trucks ran on the highway now, and Hackworth rode down the center of a lane, sweating uncontrollably in his dark clothes and drinking frequently from a refrigerated bottle in Kidnapper's glove compartment.

A McDonald's sign lay toppled across the highway like a giant turnpike; something had burned through the single pillar that thrust it into the air. A couple of young men were standing in front of it smoking cigarettes and, as Hackworth realized, waiting for him. As Hackworth drew closer, they ground out their cigarettes, stepped forward, and bowed. Hackworth tipped his bowler. One of them took Kidnapper's reins, which was a purely ceremonial gesture in the case of a robot horse, and the other invited Hackworth to dismount. Both of the men were wearing heavy but flexible coveralls with cables and tubes ru

Hackworth walked across the parking lot toward the McDonald's, followed at a respectful distance by one of the soldiers. Another soldier opened the door for him, and Hackworth sighed with delight as cold dry air flowed over his face and began to chase the muggy stuff through the weave of his clothing. The place had been lightly sacked. He could smell a cold, almost clinical greasy smell wafting from behind the counter, where containers of fat had spilled onto the floor and congealed like snow. Much of this had been scooped up by looters; Hackworth could see the parallel tracks of women's fingers. The place was decorated in a Silk Road motif, transpicuous mediatronic panels portraying wondrous sights between here and the route's ancient terminus in Cadiz.

Dr. X was seated in the corner booth, his face radiant in the cool, UV-filtered sunlight. He was wearing a Mandarin cap with dragons embroidered in gold thread and a magnificent brocade robe. The robe was loose at the neck and had short sleeves so that Hackworth could see the i

Dr. X was at war, and had emerged from the safe perimeter of Suzhou, and needed to be prepared for an attack. He was sipping green tea from a jumbo McDonald's cup, made in the local style, great clouds of big green leaves swirling around in a tumbler of hot water. Hackworth doffed his hat and bowed in the Victorian style, which was proper under the circumstances. Dr. X returned the bow, and as his head tilted forward, Hackworth could see the button on the top of his cap. It was red, the color of the highest ranks, but it was made of coral, marking him as second rank. A ruby button would have put him at the very highest level. In Western terms this made Dr. X roughly equivalent to a lesser cabinet minister or three-star general. Hackworth supposed that this was the highest rank of Mandarin permitted to converse with barbarians.

Hackworth sat down across the table from Dr. X. A young woman padded out of the kitchen on silk slippers and gave Hackworth his own tumbler full of green tea. Watching her mince away, Hackworth was only mildly shocked to see that her feet were no more than four inches long. There must be better ways to do it now, maybe by regulating the growth of the tarsal bones during adolescence. It probably didn't even hurt.

Realizing this, Hackworth also realized, for the first time, that he had done the right thing ten years ago.

Dr. X was watching him and might as well have been reading his mind. This seemed to put him in a pensive mood. He said nothing for a while, just gazed out the window and occasionally sipped his tea. This was fine with Hackworth, who had had a long ride.

"Have you learned anything from your ten-year sentence?" Dr. X finally said.

"It would seem so. But I have trouble pulling it up," Hackworth said.

This was a bit too idiomatic for Dr. X. By way of explanation, Hackworth flipped out a ten-year-old card bearing Dr. X's dynamic chop. As the old fisherman hauled the dragon out of the water, Dr. X suddenly got it, and gri

"Have you found the Alchemist?" Dr. X said.

"Yes," Hackworth said. "I am the Alchemist."

"When did you know this?"

"Only very recently," Hackworth said. "Then I understood it all in an instant— pulled it up," he said, pantomiming the act of reeling in a fish. "The Celestial Kingdom was far behind Nippon and Atlantis in nanotech. The Fists could always have burned the barbarians' Feed lines, but this would only have plunged the peasants into poverty and made the people long for foreign goods. The decision was made to leapfrog the barbarian tribes by developing Seed technology. At first you pursued the project in cooperation with second-tier phyles like Israel, Armenia, and Greater Serbia, but they proved unreliable. Again and again your carefully cultivated networks were scattered by Protocol Enforcement.

"But through these failures you made contact for the first time with CryptNet, whom you doubtless view as just another triad-a contemptible band of conspirators. However, CryptNet was tied in with something much deeper and more interesting-the society of the Drummers. With their flaky and shallow Western perspective, CryptNet didn't grasp the full power of the Drummers' collective mind. But you got it right away.

"All you required to initiate the Seed project was the rational, analytical mind of a nanotechnological engineer. I fit the bill perfectly. You dropped me into the society of the Drummers like a seed into fertile soil, and my knowledge spread through them and permeated their collective mind-as their thoughts spread into my own unconscious. They became like an extension of my own brain. For years I laboured on the problem, twenty-four hours a day.