Diamond Age

poking it in the coals and turning it round and round to make the point very sharp. 'He's asleep!' she whispered.

Miranda, sitting in her stage at the Parnasse, felt an overwhelming sense of relief as her next line appeared on the prompter. She took a deep breath before she delivered it, closed her eyes, settled her mind, tried to put herself there in the Dark Castle. She looked deep into Princess Nell's eyes and sold the line with every scrap of talent and technique she had.

'Good!' said Dinosaur. 'Then the time has come for you and Harv to flee from the Dark Castle! You must be as stealthy as you can. I will come out later and join you.'

Please get out of there. Please run away. Get out of that chamber of horrors where you've been living, Nell, and get to an orphanage or a police station or something, and I will find you. No matter where you are, I'll find you.

Miranda had it worked out already: she could compile an extra mattress, put Nell on the floor of her bedroom and Harv in the living room of her flat. If only she could figure out who the hell they were.

Princess Nell hadn't responded. She was thinking, which was the wrong thing to do right now. Get out. Get out.

'Why are you putting that stick in the fire?'

'It is my duty to see that the evil Baron never troubles you again,' Miranda said, reading from the prompter.

'But what are you going to do with that stick?'

Please don't do this. It's not the time to ask why. 'You must make haste!' Miranda read, trying once again to sell the line as best she could. But Princess Nell had been playing with the Primer for a couple of years now and had gotten in the habit of asking endless questions.

'Why are you making the stick sharper?'

'This is how Odysseus and I took care of the Cyclops,' Dinosaur said.

Shit. It's going all wrong.

'What's Cyclops?' Nell said.

A new illustration grew on the next page, facing the illustration of Dinosaur by the fire. It was a picture of a one-eyed giant herding some sheep.

Dinosaur told the story of how Odysseus killed the Cyclops with a pointed stick, just as he was about to do to Baron Burt. Nell insisted on hearing what happened after that. One story led to another. Miranda tried to tell the stories as fast as she could, tried to put a tone of boredom and impatience into her voice, which wasn't easy because she was actually on the verge of panic. She had to get Nell out of that apartment before Burt woke up from his drunk.

The eastern sky was beginning to glow . . .

Shit. Get out of there, Nell!

. . .

Dinosaur was just in the middle of telling Princess Nell about a witch who turned men into swine when suddenly, poof, he turned back into a stuffed animal. The sun had come up.

Nell was a bit startled by this turn of events, and closed the Primer for a while, and sat in the dark listening to Harv wheeze and Burt snore in the next room. She'd been looking forward to the moment when Dinosaur would kill Baron Burt, just as Odysseus had done to the Cyclops. But now it wasn't going to happen. Baron Burt would wake up, realize he'd been tricked, and hurt them worse.

They'd be stuck in the Dark Castle forever.

Nell was tired of being in the Dark Castle. She knew it was time to get out. She opened the Primer.

'Princess Nell knew what she had to do,' Nell said. Then she closed the Primer and left it on her pillow.

Even if she hadn't learned how to read pretty well, she would have had no trouble finding what she wanted just by using the M.C.'s mediaglyphics. It was a thing she'd seen people use in the old passives, a thing she'd seen when Mom's old boyfriend Brad had taken her to visit the horse barn in Dovetail. It was called a screwdriver, and you could have the M.C. make them in all different shapes: long, short, fat, skinny.

She had it make one that was very long and very skinny. When it was finished, it made the hissing sound that it always made, and she thought she heard Burt stirring on the sofa.

She peeked into the living room. He was still lying there, his eyes closed, but his arms were moving around. His head turned from side to side once, and she could see a glimmer between his half-opened eyelids.

He was about to wake up and hurt her some more.

She held the screwdriver out in front of her like a lance and ran straight toward him.

At the last instant she faltered. The tool went astray and skidded across his forehead, leaving a trail of red stitches. Nell was so horrified that she dropped it and jumped back Burt was shaking his head violently back and forth.

He opened his eyes and looked right at Nell. Then he put his hand to his forehead and brought it back all bloody. He sat up on the sofa, still uncomprehending. The screwdriver rolled off and bounced on the floor. He picked it up and found the tip bloody, then fixed his eyes on Nell, who had shrunk into the corner of the room. Nell knew that she had done the wrong thing. Dinosaur had told her to run away, and she had pestered him with questions instead.

'Harv!' she said. But her voice came out all dry and squeaky, like a mouse's. 'We must fly!'

'Yeah, you're gonna fly all right,' Burt said swinging his feet around to the floor. 'Right out the fucking window you're gonna fly.'

Harv came out. He was carrying his nunchuks under his injured arm and the Primer in his good hand. The book hung open to an illustration of Princess Nell and Harv running away from the Dark Castle with Baron Burt in pursuit. 'Nell, your book talked to me,' he said. 'It said we should run away.' Then he saw Burt rising from the sofa with the bloody screwdriver in his hand.

Harv didn't bother with the nunchuks. He bolted across the room and dropped the Primer, freeing his good hand to fling the front door open. Nell, who had been frozen in a nearby corner for some time, shot toward the door like a bolt finally loosed from a crossbow, snatching up the Primer as she ran past it. They ran into the hallway with Burt only a few paces behind.

The lobby with the elevators was some distance away from them. On impulse, Nell stopped and dropped to a crouch in Burt's path. Harv turned toward her, terrified. 'Nell!' he cried. Burt's pumping legs struck Nell in the side. He spun forward and landed hard on the hallway floor, skidding for a short distance.

This brought him to the feet of Harv, who had turned to face him and deployed his nunchuks. Harv went upside Burt's head a few times, but he was panicked and didn't do a very good job of it. Burt groped with one hand and managed to catch the chain that joined the halves of the weapon. Nell had gotten to her feet by this point and ran up Burt's back; she lunged forward and sank her teeth into the fleshy base of Burt's thumb. Something fast and confusing happened, Nell was rolling on the floor, Harv was dragging her back to her feet, she reached back to snatch up the Primer, which she had dropped again. They made it into the emergency stairs and began to skitter down the tunnel of urine, graffiti, and refuse, jumping over the odd slumbering body. Burt entered the stairwell in pursuit, a couple of flights behind them. He tried to make a shortcut by vaulting over the banister as he had seen and done in ractives, but his drunk body didn't do it as well as a media hero, and he tumbled down one flight, cursing and screaming, now rabid with pain and anger. Nell and Harv kept running.

Burt's pratfall gave them enough of a lead to make it to the ground floor. They ran straight across the lobby and into the street. It was the wee hours of the morning, and there was almost no one out here, which was