simply to get out of his way and let his own strength defeat him, so that's what Nell did with Kevin: stepped aside at the last minute, made one foot into a hook, and tripped him.
Kevin smashed tremendously into a swingset, gathered himself up, and charged a second time. Nell dodged him and tripped him again.
'Okay,' Kevin said, 'you win.' He approached Nell holding out his right hand to shake. But Nell had seen this one too, and she knew it was a trick. She reached out with her right hand as if she were going to shake. But as Kevin was groping at this bait, every muscle in his arm tense, Nell turned her palm toward the floor and drew her hand down, then back across the middle of her body. She was watching Kevin as she did this and saw that his eyes were tracking her hand, mesmerized. She continued to move her hand around in a long ellipse, turning her palm upward, thrusting it forward, poking her fingers into Kevin's staring eyes.
He put his hands to his face. She kicked him between the legs as hard as she could, taking her time and striking the target precisely. As he bent over, she grabbed his hair and kneed him in the face, then shoved him down on his butt and left him there, too surprised, for the moment, to start bawling.
Hackworth lunches in distinguished company;
a disquisition on hypocrisy;
Hackworth's situation develops new complications.
Hackworth arrived at the pub first. He got a pint of porter at the bar, cask-conditioned stuff from the nearby Dovetail community, and strolled around the place for a few minutes while he waited. He had been fidgeting at his desk all morning and enjoyed the opportunity to stretch his legs. The place was done up like an ancient London publican house circa World War II, complete with fake bomb damage to one corner of the structure and taped X's over each windowpane-which only made Hackworth think of Dr. X. Autographed photos of British and American airmen were stuck up on the walls here and there, along with other miscellany recalling the heyday of Anglo-American cooperation:
SEND
a gun
TO DEFEND
A BRITISH HOME
British civilians, faced with threat of invasion, desperately
need arms for the defense of their homes.
YOU CAN AID
American Committee for Defense of British Homes
Bowler hats hung in clusters from poles and wall hooks all over the room, like great bunches of black grapes. A lot of engineers and artifexes seemed to come to this place. They hunched over pints of beer at the bar and delved into steak-and-kidney pies at the little tables, chatting and chuckling. There was nothing prepossessing about the place or its patrons, but Hackworth knew that the odds and ends of nanotechnological lore collected in the heads of these middle-class artisans was what ultimately kept New Atlantis wealthy and secure. He had to ask himself why he hadn't been satisfied with simply being one of them. John Percival Hackworth projected his thoughts into matter and did it better than anyone else in this place. But he had felt the need to go beyond that-he had wanted to reach beyond mere matter and into someone's soul. Now, whether he wanted to or not, he was going to reach hundreds of thousands of souls.
The men at the tables watched him curiously, then nodded politely and looked away when he caught their eye. Hackworth had noticed a full-lane Rolls-Royce parked in front of the place on his way in. Someone important was here, evidently in a back room. Hackworth and everyone else in the place knew it, and they were all in a heightened state of alertness, wondering what was up.
Major Napier rode up on a standard-issue cavalry chevaline and came in at noon on the dot, pulling off his officer's hat and exchanging a hilarious greeting with the barkeep. Hackworth recognized him because he was a hero, and Napier recognized Hackworth for reasons left provocatively unspecified.
Hackworth translated his pint to the left and exchanged a vigorous handshake with Major Napier in front of the bar. They strolled toward the back of the place, exchanging some hearty, forgettable, balderdashladen banter. Napier stepped nimbly in front of him and pulled open a small door in the back wall. Three steps led down into a little snuggery with mullioned windows on three sides and a single copper-covered table in the middle. A man was sitting by himself at the table, and as Hackworth descended the steps, he realized, that it was Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw, who stood up, returned his bow, and greeted him with a warm and hearty handshake, taking such evident measures to put Hackworth at ease that, in some respects, the opposite result was achieved.
More banter, a bit more restrained. A waiter came in; Hackworth ordered a steak sandwich, today's special, and Napier simply nodded to the waiter to indicate his complete agreement, which Hackworth took as a friendly gesture. Finkle-McGraw declined to eat anything.
Hackworth was not really hungry anymore. It was clear that Royal Joint Forces Command had figured out at least some of what had happened, and that Finkle-McGraw knew about it too. They had decided to approach him privately instead of simply lowering the boom on him and drumming him out of the phyle. This should have filled him with boundless relief, but it didn't. Things had seemed so simple after his prosecution in the Celestial Kingdom. Now he suspected they were about to get infinitely more complicated.
'Mr. Hackworth,' Finkle-McGraw said after the pleasantries had petered out, speaking in a new tone of voice, a the-meeting-will— come-to-order sort of voice, 'please favour me with your opinion of hypocrisy.
'Excuse me. Hypocrisy, Your Grace?'
'Yes. You know.'
'It's a vice, I suppose.'
'A little one or a big one? Think carefully-much hinges upon the answer.'
'I suppose that depends upon the particular circumstances.'
'That will never fail to be a safe answer, Mr. Hackworth,' the Equity Lord said reproachfully. Major Napier laughed, somewhat artificially, not knowing what to make of this line of inquiry.
'Recent events in my life have renewed my appreciation for the virtues of doing things safely,' Hackworth said. Both of the others chuckled knowingly.
'You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices,' Finkle-McGraw said. 'It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticise others-after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism?'
