more reassurance on the matter of the book, he would no doubt curl up on the sofa and fall asleep. 'Still, I should mention the book in my official report– which will be shared with New Atlantis authorities, as the victim in this case belonged to that phyle.'
'Don't,' said Hackworth, finally turning to look Chang in the eye for the first time. 'Don't mention it.'
'Ah, I cannot imagine your motive for saying this,' Chang said, 'but I have little leeway in the matter. We are closely monitored by our supervisors.'
'Perhaps you could simply explain my feelings to your supervisor.'
Lieutenant Chang received this suggestion with a look of wild surmise. 'Mr. Hackworth, you are a very clever fellow– as I already gathered from your demanding and very responsible position– but I am ashamed to tell you that your excellently devious plan may not work. My supervisor is a cruel taskmaster with no regard for human feelings. To be quite frank– and I tell you this in all confidence– he is not entirely without ethical blemishes.'
'Ah,' Hackworth said, 'so if I am following you-'
'Oh, no, Mr. Hackworth, it is I who am following you.'
'-the appeal to sympathy won't work, and we will have to sway him using another strategy, perhaps related to this ethical blind spot.'
'That is an approach that had not occurred to me.'
'Perhaps you should do some thinking, or even some research, as to what level and type of inducement might be required,' Hackworth said, suddenly walking toward the exit. Lieutenant Chang followed him. Hackworth hauled his front door open and allowed Chang to retrieve his own hat and umbrella from the rack. 'Then simply get back to me and spell it out as plainly and simply as you can manage. Good night, Lieutenant Chang.'
As he rode his bicycle toward the gate on his way back to the Leased Territories, Chang was exultant over the success of tonight's research. Of course, neither he nor Judge Fang was interested in extracting bribes from this Hackworth; but Hackworth's willingness to pay served as proof that the book did, in fact, embody stolen intellectual property. But then he bridled his emotions, remembering the words of the philosopher Tsang to Yang Fu upon the latter's appointment to chief criminal judge: 'The rulers have failed in their duties, and the people consequently have been disorganized for a long time. When you have found out the truth of any accusation, be grieved for and pity them, and do not feel joy at your own ability.'
Not that Chang's abilities had even been tested this evening; nothing could be easier than getting the New Atlantans to believe that Chinese police were corrupt.
Miranda takes an interest in an anonymous client.
Miranda scanned her balance sheet at the end of one month and discovered that her leading source of income was no longer
It had started small: a story, just a few minutes long, involving a dark castle, a wicked stepmother, and a gate with twelve locks. It would have been forgettable, except for two things: It paid much better than most kid work, because they were specifically looking for highly rated actresses, and it was rather dark and weird by the standards of contemporary children's literature. Not many people were into that whole Grimm Brothers scene anymore.
She collected a few ucus for her trouble and forgot about it. But the next day, the same contract number came up on her mediatron again. She accepted the job and found herself reading the same story, except that it was longer and more involved, and it kept backtracking and focusing in on tiny little bits of itself, which then expanded into stories in their own right.
Because of the way that the ractive was hooked up, she didn't get direct feedback from her counterpart on the other end. She assumed it was a little girl. But she couldn't hear the girl's voice. Miranda was presented with screens of text to be read, and she read them. But she could tell that this process of probing and focusing was being directed by the girl. She had seen this during her governess days. She knew that on the other end of this connection was a little girl insatiably asking why. So she put a little gush of enthusiasm into her voice at the beginning of each line, as if she were delighted that the question had been asked.
When the session was over, the usual screen came up telling her how much she'd made, the contract number, and so on. Before she signed off on it, she checked the little box labelled MARK HERE IF YOU WOULD LIKE A CONTINUING RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS CONTRACT. The relationship box, they called it, and it only came up with higher quality ractives, where continuity was important. The disping process worked so well that any ractor, male or female, bass or soprano, would sound the same to the end user. But discriminating customers could of course tell ractors apart anyway because of subtle differences in style, and once they had a relationship with one performer, they liked to keep it. Once Miranda checked the box and signed off, she'd get first crack at any more Princess Nell jobs.
Within a week she was teaching this girl how to read. They'd work on letters for a while and then wander off into more stories about Princess Nell, stop in the middle for a quick practical demonstration of basic math, return to the story, and then get sidetracked with an endless chain of 'why this?' and 'why that?' Miranda had spent a lot of time with kiddie ractives, both as a child and as a governess, and the superiority of this thing was palpable– like hefting an antique silver fork when you'd been eating with plastic utensils for twenty years, or slithering into a tailor-made evening gown when you were used to jeans.
These and other associations came into Miranda's mind on any of the rare moments when she came into contact with something of Quality, and if she didn't make a conscious effort to stop the process, she would end up remembering just about everything that had happened to her during the first years of her life– the Mercedes taking her to private school, the crystal chandelier that would ring like fairy bells when she climbed up on the huge mahogany dinner table to tickle it, her paneled bedroom with the four-poster bed with the silk-and-goosedown duvet. For reasons still unspecified, Mother had moved them far away from all of that, into what passed for poverty these days. Miranda only remembered that, when she had been physically close to Father, Mother had watched them with more vigilance than seemed warranted.
A month or two into the relationship, Miranda groggily signed off from a long Princess Nell session and was astounded to notice that she'd been going for eight hours without a break. Her throat was raw, and she hadn't been to the loo in hours. She had made a lot of money. And the time in New York was something like six in the morning, which made it seem unlikely that the little girl lived there.
She must be in a time zone not many hours different from Miranda's, and she must sit there playing with that ractive storybook all day long instead of going to school like a little rich girl should. It was slim evidence to go on, but Miranda never needed much evidence to confirm her belief that rich parents were just as capable of fucking with their children's minds as anyone.
Further experiences with the Primer;
Princess Nell and Harv in the Dark Castle.
Harv was a clever boy who knew about trolls, and so as soon as he knew that they had been locked up inside the Dark Castle by their wicked stepmother, he told Nell that they must go out and gather all the firewood they could find.
Rummaging in the Great Hall of the castle, he found a suit of armor holding a battle-axe. 'I will chop down some trees with this,' he said, 'and you must go out and gather kindling.'
'What's kindling?' Nell asked.
An illustration of the castle appeared. In the center was a tall building with many towers that rose up into the clouds. Around it was an open space where trees and plants grew, and around that was the high wall that held them prisoner.
The illustration zoomed in on an open grassy area and became very detailed. Harv and Nell were trying to build a fire. There was a pile of wet logs Harv had chopped up. Harv also had a rock, which he was striking against the butt of a knife. Sparks flew out and were swallowed up by the wet logs.
'You start the fire, Nell,' Harv said, and left her alone.
Then the picture stopped moving, and Nell realized, after a few minutes, that it was fully ractive now. She picked up the rock and the knife and began to whack them together (actually she was just moving her empty hands in space, but in the illustration Princess Nell's hands did the same thing). Sparks flew, but there was no fire.
She kept at it for a while, getting more and more frustrated, until tears came to her eyes. But then one of the sparks went awry and landed in some dry grass. A little curl of smoke rose up and died out.
She experimented a bit and learned that dry yellow grass worked better than green grass. Still, the fire never
