Diamond Age or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

'So when I was on my own, my 'sites just talked to themselves,' Hackworth said, 'but when I came into close proximity with other people who had these things in their brains-'

'It didn't matter which brain a 'site was in. They all talked to one another indiscriminately, forming a network. Get some Drummers together in a dark room, and they become a gestalt society.'

'But the interface between these nanosites and the brain itself-'

'Yes, I admit that a few million of these things piggybacking on randomly chosen neurons is only a feeble interface to something as complicated as the human brain,' Napier said. 'We're not claiming that you shared one brain with these people.'

'So what did I share with them exactly?' Hackworth said.

'Food. Air. Companionship. Body fluids. Perhaps emotions or general emotional states. Probably more.'

'That's all I did for ten years?'

'You did a lot of things,' Napier said, 'but you did them in a sort of unconscious, dreamlike state. You were sleepwalking. When we figured that out-after doing the biopsy on your fellow-troglodyte– we realised that in some sense you were no longer acting of your own free will, and we engineered a hunter-killer that would seek out and destroy the nanosites in your brain. We introduced it, in a dormant mode, into this female Drummer's system, then reintroduced her to your colony. When you had sex with her-well, you can work out the rest for yourself.'

'You have given me information, Colonel Napier, and I am grateful, but it has only made me more confused. What do you suppose the Celestial Kingdom wanted with me?'

'Did Dr. X ask anything of you?'

'To seek the Alchemist.'

Colonel Napier looked startled. 'He asked that of you ten years ago?'

'Yes. In as many words.'

'That is very singular,' Napier said, after a prolonged interlude of mustache-twiddling. 'We have only been aware of this shadowy figure for some five years and know virtually nothing about him– other than that he is a wizardly artifex who is conspiring with Dr. X.'

'Is there any other information-'

'Nothing that I can reveal,' Napier said brusquely, perhaps having revealed too much already. 'Do let us know if you find him, though. Er, Hackworth, there is no tactful way to broach this subject. Are you aware that your wife has divorced you?'

'Oh, yes,' Hackworth said quietly. 'I suppose I did know that.' But he hadn't been conscious of it until now.

'She was remarkably understanding about your long absence,' Napier said, 'but at some point it became evident that, like all the Drummers, you had become sexually promiscuous in the extreme.'

'How did she know?'

'We warned her.'

'Pardon me?'

'I mentioned earlier that we found things in your blood. These hжmocules were designed specifically to be spread through exchange of bodily fluids.'

'How do you know that?'

Napier seemed impatient for the first time. 'For god's sake, man, we know what we are doing. These particles had two functions: spread through exchange of bodily fluids, and interact with each other. Once we saw that, we had no ethical choice but to inform your wife.'

'Of course. That's only right. As a matter of fact, I thank you for it,' Hackworth said. 'And it's not hard to understand Gwen's feelings about sharing bodily fluids with thousands of Drummers.'

'You shouldn't beat yourself up,' Napier said. 'We've sent explorers down there.'

'Really?'

'Yes. The Drummers don't mind. The explorers relate that the Drummers behave much the way people do in dreams. 'Poorly defined ego boundaries' was the phrase, as I recall. In any event, your behaviour down there wasn't necessarily a moral transgression as such-your mind wasn't your own.'

'You said that these particles interact with each other?'

'Each one is a container for some rod logic and some memory,' Napier said. 'When one particle encounters another either in vivo or in vitro, they dock and seem to exchange data for a few moments. Most of the time they disengage and drift apart. Sometimes they stay docked for a while, and computation takes place-we can tell because the rod logic throws off heat. Then they disconnect. Sometimes both particles go their separate ways, sometimes one of them goes dead. But one of them always keeps going.'

The implications of that last sentence were not lost on Hackworth. 'Do the Drummers only have sex with one another, or-'

'That was our first question too,' Napier said. 'The answer is no. They have a very good deal of sex with many, many other people. They actually run bordellos in Vancouver. They cater especially to the Aerodrome-and-tube- station crowd. A few years ago they came into conflict with the established bordellos because they were hardly charging any money at all for their services. They raised their prices just to be diplomatic. But they don't want the money– what on earth would they do with it?'

From the Primer, a visit to Castle Turing; a final chat with Miss Matheson; speculation as to Nell's destiny; farewell; conversation with a grizzled hoplite; Nell goes forth to seek her fortune.

The new territory into which Princess Nell had crossed was by far the largest and most complex of all the Faery Kingdoms in the Primer. Paging back to the first panoramic illustration, she counted seven major castles perched on the mountaintops, and she knew perfectly well that she would have to visit all of them, and do something difficult in each one, in order to retrieve the eleven keys that had been stolen from her and the one key that remained.

She made herself some tea and sandwiches and carried them in a basket to a meadow, where she liked to sit among the wildflowers and read. Constable Moore's house was a melancholy place without the Constable in it, and it had been several weeks since she had seen him. During the last two years he had been called away on business with increasing frequency, vanishing (as she supposed) into the interior of China for days, then weeks at a time, coming back depressed and exhausted to find solace in whiskey, which he consumed in surprisingly moderate quantities but with fierce concentration, and in midnight bagpipe recitals that woke up everyone in Dovetail and a few sensitive sleepers in the New Atlantis Clave.

During her trip from the campsite of the Mouse Army to the first of the castles, Nell had to use all the wilderness skills she had learned in years of traveling around the Land Beyond: She fought with a mountain lion, avoided a bear, forded streams, lit fires, built shelters. By the time Nell had maneuvered Princess Nell to the ancient moss-covered gates of the first castle, the sun was shining horizontally across the meadow and the air was becoming a bit chilly. Nell wrapped herself up in a thermogenic shawl and set the thermostat for something a little on the cool side of comfortable; she had found that her wits became dull if she got too cozy. The basket had a thermos of hot tea with milk, and the sandwiches would hold out for a while.

The highest of the castle's many towers was surmounted by a great four-sailed windmill that turned steadily, even though only a mild breeze could be noticed at Princess Nell's altitude, hundreds of feet below.

Set into the main gate was a judas gate, and set into the judas was a small hatch. Below the hatch was a great bronze knocker made in the shape of a letter T, though its shape had become indistinct from an encrustation of moss and lichens. Princess Nell operated the knocker only with some effort and, given its decrepit state, did not expect a response; but hardly had the first knock sounded than the hatch opened up, and she was confronted by a helmet: For the gatekeeper on the other side was dressed from head to toe in a rusty and moss-covered suit of battle armor. But the gatekeeper said nothing, simply stared at Princess Nell; or so she assumed, as she could not see his face through the helmet's narrow vision-slits.

'Good afternoon,' said Princess Nell. 'I beg your pardon, but I am a traveler in these parts, and I wonder if you would be so good as to give me a place to stay for the night.'