Diamond Age

'Who's Burt?'

'I have no idea. Someone who was physically abusing her. Apparently she managed to find some kind of new living situation in short order, probably with the assistance of her brother Harv, who has, however, not stayed with her-he's stuck in the same old bad situation, while Nell has moved on to something better.'

'She has? That's good news,' said Carl, only half sarcastically.

Miranda smiled at him. 'See? That's exactly the kind of feedback I need. I don't talk about this stuff to anyone because I'm afraid they'll think I'm mad. Thank you. Keep it up.'

'What is Nell's new situation?' Carl Hollywood asked contritely.

'I think she's in school somewhere. She appears to be learning new material that isn't explicitly covered in the Primer, and she's developing more sophisticated forms of social interaction, suggesting that she's spending more time around a higher class of people.'

'Excellent.'

'She's not as concerned with immediate issues of physical self-defense, so I gather that she's in a safe living situation. However, her new guardian must be an emotionally distant sort, because she frequently seeks solace under the wings of Duck.'

Carl looked funny. 'Duck?'

'One of four personages who accompanies and advises Princess Nell. Duck embodies domestic, maternal virtues. Actually, Peter and Dinosaur are now gone— both male figures who embodied survival skills.'

'Who's the fourth one?'

'Purple. I think she'll become a lot more relevant to Nell's life around puberty.'

'Puberty? You said Nell was between five and seven.'

'So?'

'You think you'll still be doing this-' Carl's voice wound down to a stop as he worked out the implications.

'-for at least six or eight years. Oh yes, I should certainly think so. It's a very serious commitment, raising a child.'

'Oh, god!' Carl Hollywood said, and collapsed into a big, tatty, overstuffed chair they kept backstage for such purposes.

'That's why I've switched to the evening shift. Ever since Nell started going to school, she's started using the Primer exclusively in the evening. Apparently she's in a time zone within one or two hours of this one.'

'Good,' Carl muttered, 'that narrows it down to about half of the world's population.'

'What's the problem here?' Miranda said. 'It's not like I'm not getting paid for this.'

Carl gave her a good, dispassionate, searching look. 'Yes. It brings in adequate revenue.'

Three girls go exploring; a conversation between Lord Finkle-McGraw and Mrs. Hackworth; afternoon at the estate.

Three girls moved across the billiard-table lawn of a great manor house, circling and swarming about a common center of gravity like gamboling sparrows. Sometimes they would stop, turn inward to face one another, and engage in animated discussion. Then they would suddenly take off running, seemingly free from the constraints of inertia, like petals struck by a gust of spring wind.

They wore long heavy wool coats over their dresses to protect them from the cool damp air of New Chusan's high central plateau. They seemed to be making their way toward an expanse of broken ground some half-mile distant, separated from the great house's formal gardens by a gray stone wall splashed with bits of lime green and lavender where moss and lichen had taken hold. The terrain beyond the wall was a muted hazel color, like a bolt of Harris tweed that has tumbled from the back of a wagon and come undone, though the incipient blooming of the heather had flung a pale violet mist across it, nearly transparent but startlingly vivid in those places where the observer's line of sight grazed the natural slope of the terrain-if the word natural could properly be applied to any feature of this island.

Otherwise as light and free as birds, the girls were each weighed down by a small burden that seemed incongruous in the present setting, for the efforts of the adults to persuade them to leave their books behind had, as ever, been unavailing.

One of the observers had eyes only for the little girl with long flamecolored hair. Her connexion to that child was suggested by her auburn hair and eyebrows. She was dressed in a hand-sewn frock of woven cotton, whose crispness betrayed its recent provenance in a milliner's atelier in Dovetail. If the gathering had included more veterans of that elongated state of low-intensity warfare known as Society, this observation would have been keenly made by those soi-disant sentries who stood upon the battlements, keeping vigil against bounders who would struggle their way up the vast glacis separating wage slaves from Equity Participants. It would have been duly noted and set forth in the oral tradition that Gwendolyn Hackworth, though attractive, hard-waisted, and poised, lacked the confidence to visit Lord Finkle-McGraw's house in anything other than a new dress made for the occasion.

The gray light suffusing the drawing room through its high windows was as gentle as mist. As Mrs. Hackworth stood enveloped in that light, sipping beige tea from a cup of translucent bone china, her face let down its guard and betrayed some evidence of her true state of mind. Her host, Lord Finkle-McGraw, thought that she looked drawn and troubled, though her vivacious comportment during the first hour of their interview had led him to suppose otherwise.

Sensing that his gaze had lingered on her face for longer than was strictly proper, he looked to the three little girls ambling across the garden. One of the girls had raven hair that betrayed her partly Korean heritage; but having established her whereabouts as a sort of reference point, he shifted his attention to the third girl, whose hair was about halfway through a natural and gradual transition from blond to brown. This girl was the tallest of the three, though all were of about the same age; and though she participated freely in all of their lighthearted games, she rarely initiated them and, when left to her own devices, tended toward a grave mien that made her seem years older than her playmates. As the Equity Lord watched the trio's progress, he sensed that even the style of her movement was different from the others'; she was lithe and carefully balanced, while they bounded unpredictably like rubber balls on rough-hewn stone.

The difference was (as he realized, watching them more keenly) that Nell always knew where she was going. Elizabeth and Fiona never did. This was a question not of native intelligence (Miss Matheson's tests and observations proved that much) but of emotional stance. Something in the girl's past had taught her, most forcefully, the importance of thinking things through.

'I ask you for a prediction, Mrs. Hackworth. Which one shall reach the moor first?'

At the sound of his voice, Mrs. Hackworth recomposed her face. 'This sounds like a letter to the etiquette columnist of the Times. If I try to flatter you by guessing that it will be your granddaughter, am I implicitly accusing her of impulsiveness?'

The Equity Lord smiled tolerantly. 'Let us set aside etiquette— a social convention not relevant to this enquiry-and be scientific.'

'Ah. If only my John were here.'

He is here, Lord Finkle-McGraw thought, in each one of thosebooks. But he didn't say it. 'Very well, I will expose myself to the risk of humiliation by predicting that Elizabeth reaches the wall first; that Nell finds the secret way through; but that your daughter is the first one to venture through it.'

'I'm sure you could never be humiliated in my presence, Your Grace,' Mrs. Hackworth said. It was something she had to say, and he did not really hear it.

They turned back to the windows. When the girls had reached to within a stone's throw of the wall, they began to move toward it more purposefully. Elizabeth broke free from the group, ran forward, and was the first to