endowed precincts had been acquired by the Hong Kong Mutual Benevolent Society or the Nipponese, and the Confucians owned the tallest office building in the downtown area. East of town in the fertile delta of the Fraser River, the Slays and the Germans were both supposed to have large patches of
The Atlantis clave climbed out of the water half a mile west of the university, to which it was joined by a causeway. Imperial Tectonics had made it look like just another island, as if it had been sitting there for a million years. As Hackworth's rented velocipede took him over the causeway, cool salt air flowing through his stubble, he began to relax, finding himself once again on home territory. On an emerald green playing field above the breakwater, young boys in short pants were knotted into a scrum, playing at fieldball.
On the opposite side of the road was the girls' school, which had its own playing field of equal size, except that this one was surrounded by a dense twelve-foot hedge so that the girls could run around in very little or skin- tight clothing without giving rise to etiquette problems. He hadn't slept well in his microberth and wouldn't have minded checking into the guest hostel and taking a nap, but it was only eleven in the morning and he couldn't see wasting the day. So he rode his velocipede to the center of town, stopped in at the first pub he saw, and had lunch. The bartender gave him directions to the Royal Post Office, which was just a few blocks away.
The post office was a big one, sporting a variety of matter compilers, including a ten-cubic-meter model directly adjacent to the loading dock. Hackworth shoved Dr. X's chit into its reader and held his breath. But nothing dramatic happened; the display on the control panel said that this job was going to take a couple of hours.
Hackworth killed most of the time wandering around the clave. The middle of town was smallish and quickly gave way to leafy neighborhoods filled with magnificent Georgian, Victorian, and Romanesque homes, with the occasional rugged Tudor perched on a rise or nestled into a verdant hollow. Beyond the homes was a belt of gentrified farms mingled with golf courses and parks. He sat down on a bench in one flowery public garden and unfolded the sheet of mediatronic paper that was keeping track of the movements of the original copy of the
Hackworth took out his fountain pen and wrote a short letter addressed to Lord Finkle-McGraw.
Your Grace,
Since accepting the trust you have reposed in me, I have endeavoured to be perfectly frank, serving as an open conduit for all information pertaining to the task at hand. In that spirit, I must inform you that two years ago, in my desperate search for the lost copy of the Primer, I initiated a search of the Leased Territories . . . (&c., &c.)
Please find enclosed a map and other data regarding the recent movements of this book, whose whereabouts were unknown to me until yesterday. I have no way of knowing who possesses it, but given the book's programming, I suspect it to be a young thete girl, probably between the ages of five and seven. The book must have remained indoors for the last two years, or else my systems would have detected it. If these suppositions are correct, and if my invention has not fallen desperately short of intentions, then it is safe to assume that the book has become an important part of the girl's life . . .
He went on to write that the book should not be taken from the girl if this were the case; but thinking about it a bit more carefully, he scribbled out that part of the letter and it vanished from the page. It was not Hackworth's role to tell Finkle-McGraw how to manage affairs. He signed the letter and dispatched it.
Half an hour letter, his pen chimed again and he checked his mail.
Hackworth,
Message received. Better late than never. Can't wait to meet the girl.
Yours &c.
Finkle-McGraw
When Hackworth got back to the post office and looked through the window of the big matter compiler, he saw a large machine taking shape in the dim red light. Its body had already been finished and was now rising slowly as its four legs were compiled underneath. Dr. X had provided Hackworth with a chevaline.
Hackworth noted, not without approval, that this one's engineers had put a high priority on the virtues of simplicity and strength and a low priority on comfort and style. Very Chinese. No effort was made to disguise it as a real animal. Much of the mechanical business in the legs was exposed so that you could see how the joints and pushrods worked, a little like staring at the wheels of an old steam locomotive. The body looked gaunt and skeletal. It was made of star-shaped connectors where five or six cigarette-size rods would come together, the rods and connectors forming into an irregular web that wrapped around into a geodesic space frame. The rods could change their length. Hackworth knew from seeing the same construction elsewhere that the web could change its size and shape to an amazing degree while providing whatever combination of stiffness and flexibility the controlling system needed at the moment. Inside the space frame Hackworth could see aluminum-plated spheres and ellipsoids, no doubt vacuum-filled, containing the mount's machinephase guts: basically some rod logic and an energy source.
The legs compiled quickly, the complicated feet took a little longer. When it was finished, Hackworth released the vacuum and opened the door. 'Fold,' he said. The chevaline's legs buckled, and it lay down on the floor of the M.C. Its space frame contracted as much as it could, and its neck shortened. Hackworth bent down, laced his fingers through the space frame, and lifted the chevaline with one hand. He carried it through the lobby of the post office, past bemused customers, and out the door onto the street.
'Mount,' he said. The chevaline rose into a crouch. Hackworth threw one leg over its saddle, which was padded with some kind of elastomeric stuff, and immediately felt it shoving him into the air.
His feet left the ground and flailed around until they found the stirrups. A lumbar support pressed thoughtfully on his kidneys, and then the chevaline trotted into the street and began heading back toward the causeway.
It wasn't supposed to do that. Hackworth was about to tell it to stop. Then he figured out why he'd gotten the chit at the last minute:
Dr. X's engineers had been programming something into this mount's brain, telling it where to take him.
'Name?' Hackworth said.
'Unnamed,' the chevaline said.
'Rename Kidnapper,' Hackworth said.
'Name Kidnapper,' said Kidnapper; and sensing that it was reaching the edge of the business district, it started to canter. Within a few minutes they were blasting across the causeway at a tantivy. Hackworth turned back toward Atlantis and looked for pursuing aerostats; but if Napier was tracking him, he was doing so with some subtlety.
A morning stroll through the Leased Territories;
Dovetail;
a congenial Constable.
High up the mountain before them, they could see St. Mark's Cathedral and hear its bells ringing changes, mostly just tuneless sequences of notes, but sometimes a pretty melody would tumble out, like an unexpected gem from the permutations of the
The Diamond Palace of Source Victoria glittered peach and amber as it caught the sunrise, which was still hidden behind the mountain. Nell and Harv had slept surprisingly well under the silver blanket, but they had not by any means slept late. The martial reveille from the Sendero Clave had woken them, and by the time they hit the streets again, Sendero's burly Korean and Incan evangelists were already pouring out of their gate into the common byways of the Leased Territories, humping their folding mediatrons and heavy crates of little red books. 'We could go in there, Nell,' Harv said, and Nell thought he must be joking. 'Always plenty to eat and a warm cot in Sendero.'
