The Diamond Age

by Neal Stephenson

  In one of the cine feeds, a man was lying on the ground, his dusty uniform almost the same color as the dirt. Suddenly this image moved; the feed had not been frozen like the others. Someone was walking past the camera: a Chinese man in indigo pajamas, decorated with scarlet ribbons tied round his head and his waist, though these had gone brown with grime. When he had passed out of the frame, Nell focused on the other man, the one who was lying in the dust, and she realized for the first time that he did not have a head.

  Constable Moore must have heard Nell's screaming over the sound of his bagpipes, for he was in the room within a few moments, shouting commands to the mediatrons, which all went black and became mere walls and a floor. The only image remaining in the room now was the big painting of Guan Di, the god of war, who glowered down upon them as always. Constable Moore was extremely ill at ease whenever Nell showed any kind of emotion, but he seemed more comfortable with hysteria than he was with, say, an invitation to play house or an attack of the giggles. He picked Nell up, carried her across the room at arm's length, and set her down in a deep leather chair. He left the room for a moment and came back with a large glass of water, then carefully molded her hands around it. “You must breathe deeply and drink water,” he was saying, almost sotto voce; he seemed to have been saying it for a long time.

  She was a little surprised to find that she did not cry forever, though a few aftershocks came along and had to be managed in the same way. She kept trying to say, “I can't stop crying,” stabbing the syllables one at a time.

  The tenth or eleventh time she said this, Constable Moore said, “You can't stop crying because you're all fucked up psychologically.” He said it in a kind of bored professional tone that might have sounded cruel; but to Nell it was, for some reason, most reassuring.

  “What do you mean?” she said finally, when she could speak without her throat going all funny.

  “I mean you're a veteran, girl, just like me, and you've got scars”—he suddenly ripped his shirt open, buttons flying and bouncing all over the room, to reveal his particolored torso—“like I do. The difference is, I know I'm a veteran. You persist in thinking you're just a little girl, like those bloody Vickys you go to school with.”

  From time to time, perhaps once a year, he would turn down the offer of dinner, put that uniform on, climb onto a horse, and ride off in the direction of the New Atlantis Clave. The horse would bring him back in the wee hours of the morning, so drunk he could barely remain in the saddle. Sometimes Nell would help get him into bed, and after he had lapsed into unconsciousness, she could examine his pins and medals and ribbons by candlelight. The ribbons in particular used a fairly elaborate color-coding system. But the Primer had some pages in the back that were called the Encyclopædia, and by consulting these, Nell was able to establish that Constable Moore was, or at least had used to be, a brigadier general in the Second Brigade of the Third Division of the First Protocol Enforcement Expeditionary Force. One ribbon implied that he had spent some time as an exchange officer in a Nipponese division, but his home division was apparently the Third. According to the Encyclopædia, the Third was often known as the Junkyard Dogs or, simply, the Mongrels, because it tended to draw its members from the White Diaspora: Uitlanders, Ulster Loyalists, whites from Hong Kong, and rootless sorts from all of the Anglo-American parts of the world.

  One of the pins on the Constable's uniform said that he had graduate-level training in nanotechnological engineering. This was consistent with his belonging to the Second Brigade, which specialized in nanotech warfare. The Encyclopædia said that it had been formed some thirty years ago to tackle some nasty fighting in Eastern Europe where primitive nanotech weapons were being employed.

  A couple of years later, the division had been sent off to South China in a panic. Trouble had been brewing there since Zhang Han Hua had gone on his Long Ride and forced the merchants to kowtow. Zhang had personally liberated several lao gai camps, where slave laborers were hard at work making trinkets for export to the West, smashing computer display screens with the massive dragon's-head grip of his cane, beating the overseers into bloody heaps on the ground. Zhang's “investigations” of various thriving businesses, mostly in the south, had thrown millions of people out of work. They had gone into the streets and raised hell and been joined by sympathetic units of the People's Liberation Army. The rebellion was eventually put down by PLA units from the north, but the leaders had vanished into the “concrete countryside” of the Pearl Delta, and so Zhang had been forced to set up a permanent garrison state in the south. The northern troops had kept order crudely but effectively for a few years, until, one night, an entire division of them, some 15,000 men, was wiped out by an infestation of nanosites.

  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 dinner one Saturday, and when they were finished with dessert, she began to tell him about Harv and Tequila, and Harv's tales of the incomparable Bud, their dear departed father. Suddenly it was about three hours later, and Nell was still telling the Constable stories about Mom's boyfriends, and the Constable was continuing to listen, reaching up occasionally to fiddle with his white beard but otherwise displaying an extremely grave and thoughtful countenance. Finally she got to the part about Burt, and how Nell had tried to kill him with the screwdriver, and how he had chased them down the stairs and apparently met his demise at the hands of the mysterious round-headed Chinese gentleman. The Constable found this extremely interesting and asked many questions, first about the detailed tactical development of the screwdriver assault and then about the style of dancing used by the Chinese gentleman, and what he was wearing.

  “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 cannot help but feel tha
t it misled me. It made me suppose that killing Burt would be a simple matter, and that it would improve my life; but when I tried to put these ideas into practice …” She could not think of what to say next.

  “. . . 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.”

  “Excellent.”

  “She's not as concerned with immediate issues of physical self-defense, so I gather that she's in a safe living situation. However, her new guardian must be an emotionally distant sort, because she frequently seeks solace under the wings of Duck.”

  Carl looked funny. “Duck?”

  “One of four personages who accompanies and advises Princess Nell. Duck embodies domestic, maternal virtues. Actually, Peter and Dinosaur are now gone—both male figures who embodied survival skills.”

  “Who's the fourth one?”

  “Purple. I think she'll become a lot more relevant to Nell's life around puberty.”

  “Puberty? You said Nell was between five and seven.”

  “So?”

  “You think you'll still be doing this—” Carl's voice wound down to a stop as he worked out the implications.

  “—for at least six or eight years. Oh yes, I should certainly think so. It's a very serious commitment, raising a child.”

  “Oh, god!” Carl Hollywood said, and collapsed into a big, tatty, overstuffed chair they kept backstage for such purposes.

  “Tha
t's why I've switched to the evening shift. Ever since Nell started going to school, she's started using the Primer exclusively in the evening. Apparently she's in a time zone within one or two hours of this one.”

  “Good,” Carl muttered, “that narrows it down to about half of the world's population.”

  “What's the problem here?” Miranda said. “It's not like I'm not getting paid for this.”

  Carl gave her a good, dispassionate, searching look. “Yes. It brings in adequate revenue.”

  Three girls go exploring; a conversation between

  Lord Finkle-McGraw and Mrs. Hackworth;

  afternoon at the estate.

  Three girls moved across the billiard-table lawn of a great manor house, circling and swarming about a common center of gravity like gamboling sparrows. Sometimes they would stop, turn inward to face one another, and engage in animated discussion. Then they would suddenly take off running, seemingly free from the constraints of inertia, like petals struck by a gust of spring wind. They wore long heavy wool coats over their dresses to protect them from the cool damp air of New Chusan's high central plateau. They seemed to be making their way toward an expanse of broken ground some half-mile distant, separated from the great house's formal gardens by a gray stone wall splashed with bits of lime green and lavender where moss and lichen had taken hold. The terrain beyond the wall was a muted hazel color, like a bolt of Harris tweed that has tumbled from the back of a wagon and come undone, though the incipient blooming of the heather had flung a pale violet mist across it, nearly transparent but startlingly vivid in those places where the observer's line of sight grazed the natural slope of the terrain—if the word natural could properly be applied to any feature of this island. Otherwise as light and free as birds, the girls were each weighed down by a small burden that seemed incongruous in the present setting, for the efforts of the adults to persuade them to leave their books behind had, as ever, been unavailing.