Diamond Age

Finkle-McGraw paused, knowing that he had the full attention of his audience, and began to withdraw a calabash pipe and various related supplies and implements from his pockets. As he continued, he charged the calabash with a blend of leather-brown tobacco so redolent that it made Hackworth's mouth water. He was tempted to spoon some of it into his mouth.

'Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticise others' shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticise another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behaviour-you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy.

'You wouldn't believe the things they said about the original Victorians. Calling someone a Victorian in those days was almost like calling them a fascist or a Nazi.'

Both Hackworth and Major Napier were dumbfounded. 'Your Grace!' Napier exdaimed. 'I was naturally aware that their moral stance was radically different from ours— but I am astonished to be informed that they actually condemned the first Victorians.'

'Of course they did,' Finkle-McGraw said.

'Because the first Victorians were hypocrites,' Hackworth said, getting it.

Finkle-McGraw beamed upon Hackworth like a master upon his favored pupil. 'As you can see, Major Napier, my estimate of Mr. Hackworth's mental acuity was not ill-founded.'

'While I would never have supposed otherwise, Your Grace,' Major Napier said, 'it is nonetheless gratifying to have seen a demonstration.' Napier raised his glass in Hackworth's direction.

'Because they were hypocrites,' Finkle-McGraw said, after igniting his calabash and shooting a few tremendous fountains of smoke into the air, 'the Victorians were despised in the late twentieth century. Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefandous conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves-they took no moral stances and lived by none.'

'So they were morally superior to the Victorians-' Major Napier said, still a bit snowed under. '-even though-in fact, because-they had no morals at all.' There was a moment of silent, bewildered head-shaking around the copper table.

'We take a somewhat different view of hypocrisy,' Finkle-McGraw continued. 'In the late-twentieth- century Weltanschauung, a hypocrite was someone who espoused high moral views as part of a planned campaign of deception-he never held these beliefs sincerely and routinely violated them in privacy. Of course, most hypocrites are not like that. Most of the time it's a spirit-is-willing, flesh-is-weak sort of thing.'

'That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code,' Major Napier said, working it through, 'does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.'

'Of course not,' Finkle-McGraw said. 'It's perfectly obvious, really. No one ever said that it was easy to hew to a strict code of conduct. Really, the difficulties involved-the missteps we make along the way-are what make it interesting. The internal, and eternal, struggle, between our base impulses and the rigorous demands of our own moral system is quintessentially human. It is how we conduct ourselves in that struggle that determines how we may in time be judged by a higher power.' All three men were quiet for a few moments, chewing mouthfuls of beer or smoke, pondering the matter.

'I cannot help but infer,' Hackworth finally said, 'that the present lesson in comparative ethics-which I thought was nicely articulated and for which I am grateful-must be thought to pertain, in some way, to my situation.'

The other men raised their eyebrows in a not very convincing display of mild astonishment. The Equity Lord turned toward Major Napier, who took the floor briskly and cheerfully.

'We do not know all the particulars of your situation-as you know, Atlantan subjects are entitled to polite treatment from all branches of H.M.'s Joint Forces unless they violate the tribal norms, and that means, in part, that we don't go round putting people under high-res surveillance just because we are curious about their, er, avocations. In an era when everything can be surveiled, all we have left is politeness. However, we do quite naturally monitor comings and goings through the border. And not long ago, our curiosity was piqued by the arrival of one Lieutenant Chang of the District Magistrate's Office. He was also clutching a plastic bag containing a rather battered top hat. Lieutenant Chang proceeded directly to your flat, spent half an hour there, and departed, minus the hat.'

The steak sandwiches arrived at the beginning of this bit of exposition. Hackworth began messing about with condiments, as if he could belittle the importance of this conversation by paying equal attention to having just the right goodies on his sandwich. He fussed with his pickle for a while, then began examining the bottles of obscure sauces arrayed in the center of the table, like a sommelier appraising a wine cellar.

'I had been mugged in the Leased Territories,' Hackworth said absently, 'and Lieutenant Chang recovered my hat, somewhat later, from a ruffian.' He had fixed his gaze, for no special reason, on a tall bottle with a paper label printed in an ancient crabbed typeface.

'MCWHORTER'S ORIGINAL CONDIMENT' was written large, and everything else was too small to read. The neck of the bottle was also festooned with black-and-white reproductions of ancient medals awarded by pre- Enlightenment European monarchs at exhibitions in places like Riga. Just a bit of violent shaking and thwacking ejected a few spurts of the ochre slurry from the pore-size orifice at the top of the bottle, which was guarded by a quarter-inch encrustation. Most of it hit his plate, and some impacted on his sandwich.

'Yes,' Major Napier said, reaching into his breast pocket and taking out a folded sheet of smart foolscap. He told it to uncrease itself on the table and prodded it with the nib of a silver fountain pen the size of an artillery shell. 'Gatehouse records indicate that you do not venture into the L.T. often, Mr. Hackworth, which is certainly understandable and speaks well of your judgment. There have been two forays in recent months. On the first of these, you left in midafternoon and returned late at night bleeding from lacerations that seemed to have been recently incurred, according to the'— Major Napier could not repress a tiny smile-'evocative description logged by the border patrol officer on duty that night. On the second occasion, you again left in the afternoon and returned late, this time with a single deep laceration across the buttocks-not visible, of course, but picked up by surveillance.'

Hackworth took a bite of his sandwich, correctly anticipating that the meat would be gristly and that he would have plenty of time to think about his situation while his molars subdued it. He did have plenty of time, as it turned out; but as frequently happened to him in these situations, he could not bring his mind to bear on the subject at hand. All he could think about was the taste of the sauce. If the manifest of ingredients on the bottle had been legible, it would have read something like this: Water, blackstrap molasses, imported habanero peppers, salt, garlic, ginger, tomato puree, axle grease, real hickory smoke, snuff, butts of clove cigarettes, Guinness Stout fermentation dregs, uranium mill tailings, muffler cores, monosodium glutamate, nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes, powdered pork nose hairs, dynamite, activated charcoal, match-heads, used pipe cleaners, tar, nicotine, singlemalt whiskey, smoked beef lymph nodes, autumn leaves, red fuming nitric acid, bituminous coal, fallout, printer's ink, laundry starch, drain deaner, blue chrysotile asbestos, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, and natural flavorings.

He could not help smiling at his own complete haplessness, both now and on the night in question. 'I will concede that my recent trips to the Leased Territories have not left me disposed to make any more.' This comment produced just the right sort of clubby, knowing smiles from his interlocutors. Hackworth continued, 'I saw no reason to report the mugging to Atlantan authorities-'

'There was no reason,' Major Napier said. 'Shanghai Police might have been interested, though.'

'Ah. Well, I did not report it to them either, simply because of their reputation.'

This bit of routine wog-bashing would have elicited naughty laughter from most. Hackworth was struck by the fact that neither Finkle-McGraw nor Napier rose to the bait.

'And yet,' Napier said, 'Lieutenant Chang belied that reputation, did he not, when he went to the trouble of bringing your hat-now worthless-to you in person, when he was off-duty, rather than simply mailing it or for that matter throwing it away.'