Diamond Age or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

sophisticated. The woman was Chinese, but she played the role with the mid-Atlantic accent currently in vogue among neo-Victorians: 'Mrs. Braithwaite will see you now.'

The client stepped into an adjoining drawing room, where two women awaited him: a heavy Anglo in late middle age and a very attractive Eurasian woman, about thirty. Introductions were performed: The old woman was Mrs. Braithwaite, and the younger woman was her daughter. Mrs. was somewhat addled, and Miss was obviously running the show.

This section of the script never changed, and Nell had been over it a hundred times trying to troubleshoot it. The client went through a little speech in which he informed Mrs. Braithwaite that her son Richard had been killed in action, displaying great heroism in the process, and that he was recommending him for a posthumous Victoria Cross.

Nell had already done the obvious, going back through the Times archives to see whether this was a reconstruction of an actual event in the client's life. As far as she could determine, it was more like a composite of many similar events, perhaps with a dollop of fantasy thrown in.

At this point, the old lady got a case of the vapors and had to be helped from the room by the parlormaid and other servants, leaving the client alone with Miss Braithwaite, who was taking the whole thing quite stoically. 'Your composure is admirable, Miss Braithwaite,' said the client, 'but please be assured that no one will blame you for giving vent to your emotions at such a time.' When the client spoke this line, there was an audible tremor of excitement in his voice.

'Very well, then,' said Miss Braithwaite. She withdrew a small black box from her reticule and pressed a button. The client grunted and arched his back so violently that he fell out of his chair onto the rug, where he lay paralyzed.

'Mites– you have infected my body with some insidious nanosite,' he gasped. 'in the tea.'

'But that is impossible– most mites highly susceptible to thermal damage– boiling water would destroy them.'

'You underestimate the capabilities of CryptNet, Colonel Napier. Our technology is advanced far beyond your knowledge– as you will discover during the next few days!'

'Whatever your plan is– be assured that it will fail!'

'Oh, I have no plan in particular,' Miss Braithwaite said. 'This is not a CryptNet operation. This is personal. You are responsible for the death of my brother Richard– and I will have you show the proper contrition.'

'I assure you that I was as deeply saddened-'

She zapped him again. 'I do not want your sadness,' she said. 'I want you to admit the truth: that you are responsible for his death!'

She pressed another button, which caused Colonel Napier's body to go limp. She and a maid wrestled him into a dumbwaiter and moved him down to a lower floor, where, after descending via the stairway, they tied him to a rack.

This was where the problem came in. By the time they had finished tying him up, he was sound asleep.

'He did it again,' said the woman playing the role of Miss Braithwaite, addressing herself to Nell and anyone else who might be monitoring. 'Six weeks in a row now.'

When Madame Ping had explained this problem to Nell, Nell wondered what the problem was. Let the man sleep, as long as he kept coming and paid his bill. But Madame Ping knew her clients and feared that Colonel Napier was losing interest and might shift his business to some other establishment unless they put some variety into the scenario.

'The fighting has been very bad,' the actress said. 'He's probably exhausted.'

'I don't think it's that,' Nell said. She had now opened a private voice channel direct to the woman's eardrum. 'I think it is a personal change.'

'They never change, sweetheart,' said the actress. 'Once they get the taste, they have it forever.'

'Yes, but different situations may trigger those feelings at different times of life,' Nell said. 'In the past it has been guilt over the deaths of his soldiers. Now he has made his peace. He has accepted his guilt, and so he accepts the punishment. There is no longer a contest of wills, because he has become submissive.'

'So what do we do?'

'We must create a genuine contest of wills. We must force him to do something he really doesn't want to do,' Nell said, thinking aloud. What would fit that bill?

'Wake him up,' Nell said. 'Tell him you were lying when you said this wasn't a CryptNet operation. Tell him you want real information. You want military secrets.'

Miss Braithwaite sent the maid out for a bucket of cold water and heaved it over Colonel Napier's body. Then she played the role as Nell had suggested, and did it well; Madame Ping hired people who were good at improvisation, and since most of them never actually had to have sex with clients, she had no trouble finding good ones.

Colonel Napier seemed surprised, not unpleasantly so, at the script change. 'If you suppose that I will divulge information that might lead to the deaths of more of my soldiers, you are sadly mistaken,' he said. But his voice sounded a little bored and disappointed, and the bio readouts coming in from the nanosites in his body did not show the full flush of sexual excitement that, presumably, he was paying for. They still were not meeting their client's needs.

On the private channel to Miss Braithwaite, Nell said, 'He still doesn't get it. This isn't a fantasy scenario anymore. This is real. Madame Ping's is actually a CryptNet operation. We've been drawing him in for the last several years. Now he belongs to us, and he's going to give us information, and he's going to keep giving it to us, because he's our slave.'

Miss Braithwaite acted the scene as suggested, making up more florid dialogue as she went along. Watching the bio readouts, Nell could see that Colonel Napier was just as scared and excited, now, as he had been on his very first visit to Madame Ping's several years ago (they kept records). They were making him feel young again, and fully alive.

'Are you connected with Dr. X?' Colonel Napier said.

'We'll ask the questions,' Nell said.

'I shall do the asking. Lotus, give him twenty for that!' said Miss Braithwajte, and the maid went to work on Colonel Napier with a cane.

The rest of the session almost ran itself, which was good for Nell, because she had been startled by Napier's reference to Dr. X and had gone into a reverie, remembering comments that Harv had made about the same person many years ago.

Miss Braithwaite knew her job and understood Nell's strategy instantly: the scenario did not excite the client unless there was a genuine contest of wills, and the only way for them to create that contest was to force Napier to reveal real classified information.

Reveal it he did, bit by bit, under the encouragement of Lotus's bamboo and Miss Braithwaite's voice. Most of it had to do with troop movements and other minutiae that he probably thought was terribly interesting. Nell didn't.

'Get more about Dr. X,' she said. 'Why did he assume a connection between CryptNet and Dr. X?' After a few more minutes of whacking and verbal domination, Colonel Napier was ready to spill. 'Big operation of ours for many years now-Dr. X is working in collusion with a high-level CryptNet figure, the Alchemist. Working on something they mustn't be allowed to have.'

'Don't you dare hold back on me,' Miss Braithwaite said.

But before she could extract more information about the Alchemist, the building was jolted by a tremendous force that sent thin cracks racing through the old concrete. In the silence that followed, Nell could hear women screaming all over the building, and a crackling, hissing sound as dust and sand sifted out of a fissure in the ceiling. Then her ears began to resolve another sound: men shouting, 'Sha! Sha!'

'I suggest that someone has just breached the wall of your building with an explosive charge,' Colonel Napier said, perfectly calm. 'If you would be so good as to terminate the scenario now and release me, I shall try to make myself useful in whatever is to follow.'

Whatever is to follow. The shouting meant simply, 'Kill! Kill!' and was the battle cry of the Fists of Righteous Harmony.

Perhaps they wanted Colonel Napier. But it was more likely that they had decided to attack this place for its