Diamond Age or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer Read online

  He never earned a degree, not because of poor performance but because of the political climate; like many universities at the time, ISU insisted that its students study a broad range of subjects, including arts and humanities. Finkle-McGraw chose instead to read books, listen to music, and attend plays in his spare time. One summer, as he was living in Ames and working as a research assistant in a solid-state physics lab, the city was actually turned into an island for a couple of days by an immense flood.

  Along with many other Midwesterners, Finkle-McGraw put in a few weeks building levees out of sandbags and plastic sheeting. Once again he was struck by the national media coverage– reporters from the coasts kept showing up and announcing, with some bewilderment, that there had been no looting. The lesson learned during the Sioux City plane crash was reinforced. The Los Angeles riots of the previous year provided a vivid counterexample. Finkle-McGraw began to develop an opinion that was to shape his political views in later years, namely, that while people were not genetically different, they were culturally as different as they could possibly be, and that some cultures were simply better than others. This was not a subjective value judgment, merely an observation that some cultures thrived and expanded while others failed. It was a view implicitly shared by nearly everyone but, in those days, never voiced.

  Finkle-McGraw left the university without a diploma and went back to the farm, which he managed for a few years while his parents were preoccupied with his mother’s breast cancer. After her death, he moved to Minneapolis and took a job with a company founded by one of his former professors, making scanning tunneling microscopes, which at that time were newish devices capable of seeing and manipulating individual atoms. The field was an obscure one then, the clients tended to be large research institutions, and practical applications seemed far away. But it was perfect for a man who wanted to study nanotechnology, and McGraw began doing so, working late at night on his own time. Given his diligence, his self-confidence, his intelligence (“adaptable, relentless, but not really brilliant”), and the basic grasp of business he’d picked up on the farm, it was inevitable that he would become one of the few hundred pioneers of nanotechnological revolution; that his own company, which he founded five years after he moved to Minneapolis, would survive long enough to be absorbed into Apthorp; and that he would navigate Apthorp’s political and economic currents well enough to develop a decent equity position.

  He still owned the family farm in northwestern Iowa, along with a few hundred thousand acres of adjoining land, which he was turning back into a tall-grass prairie, complete with herds of bison and real Indians who had discovered that riding around on horses hunting wild game was a better deal than pissing yourself in gutters in Minneapolis or Seattle. But for the most part he stayed on New Chusan, which was for all practical purposes his ducal estate.

  …

  “Public relations?” said Finkle-McGraw.

  “Sir?” Modern etiquette was streamlined; no “Your Grace” or other honorifics were necessary in such an informal setting.

  “Your department, sir.”

  Hackworth had given him his social card, which was appropriate under these circumstances but revealed nothing else.

  “Engineering. Bespoke.”

  “Oh, really. I’d thought anyone who could recognise Wordsworth must be one of those artsy sorts in P.R.”

  “Not in this case, sir. I’m an engineer. Just promoted to Bespoke recently. Did some work on this project, as it happens.”

  “What sort of work?”

  “Oh, P.I. stuff mostly,” Hackworth said. Supposedly Finkle-McGraw still kept up with things and would recognize the abbreviation for pseudo-intelligence, and perhaps even appreciate that Hackworth had made this assumption.

  Finkle-McGraw brightened a bit. “You know, when I was a lad they called it A.I. Artificial intelligence.”

  Hackworth allowed himself a tight, narrow, and brief smile. “Well, there’s something to be said for cheekiness, I suppose.”

  “In what way was pseudo-intelligence used here?”

  “Strictly on MPS’s side of the project, sir.” Imperial Tectonics had done the island, buildings, and vegetation. MachinePhase Systems-Hackworth’s employer-did anything that moved. “Stereotyped behaviors were fine for the birds, dinosaurs, and so on, but for the centaurs and fauns we wanted more interactivity, something that would provide an illusion of sentience.”

  “Yes, well done, well done, Mr. Hackworth.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now, I know perfectly well that only the very finest engineers make it to Bespoke. Suppose you tell me how an aficionado of Romantic poets made it into such a position.”

  Hackworth was taken aback by this and tried to respond without seeming to put on airs. “Surely a man in your position does not see any contradiction-”

  “But a man in my position was not responsible for promoting you to Bespoke. A man in an entirely different position was. And I am very much afraid that such men do tend to see a contradiction.”

  “Yes, I see. Well, sir, I studied English literature in college.”

  “Ah! So you are not one of those who followed the straight and narrow path to engineering.”

  “I suppose not, sir.”

  “And your colleagues at Bespoke?”

  “Well, if I understand your question, sir, I would say that, as compared with other departments, a relatively large proportion of Bespoke engineers have had– well, for lack of a better way of describing it, interesting lives.”

  “And what makes one man’s life more interesting than another’s?”

  “In general, I should say that we find unpredictable or novel things more interesting.”

  “That is nearly a tautology.” But while Lord Finkle-McGraw was not the sort to express feelings promiscuously, he gave the appearance of being nearly satisfied with the way the conversation was going. He turned back toward the view again and watched the children for a minute or so, twisting the point of his walking-stick into the ground as if he were still skeptical of the island’s integrity. Then he swept the stick around in an arc that encompassed half the island. “How many of those children do you suppose are destined to lead interesting lives?”

  “Well, at least two, sir-Princess Charlotte, and your granddaughter.”

  “You’re quick, Hackworth, and I suspect capable of being devious if not for your staunch moral character,” Finkle-McGraw said, not without a certain archness. “Tell me, were your parents subjects, or did you take the Oath?”

  “As soon as I turned twenty-one, sir. Her Majesty– at that time, actually, she was still Her Royal Highness– was touring North America, prior to her enrollment at Stanford, and I took the Oath at Trinity Church in Boston.”

  “Why? You’re a clever fellow, not blind to culture like so many engineers. You could have joined the First Distributed Republic or any of a hundred synthetic phyles on the West Coast. You would have had decent prospects and been free from all this” – Finkle-McGraw jabbed his cane at the two big airships – “behavioural discipline that we impose upon ourselves. Why did you impose it on yourself, Mr. Hackworth?”

  “Without straying into matters that are strictly personal in nature,” Hackworth said carefully, “I knew two kinds of discipline as a child: none at all, and too much. The former leads to degenerate behaviour. When I speak of degeneracy, I am not being priggish, sir– I am alluding to things well known to me, as they made my own childhood less than idyllic.”

  Finkle-McGraw, perhaps realizing that he had stepped out of bounds, nodded vigorously. “This is a familiar argument, of course.”

  “Of course, sir. I would not presume to imply that I was the only young person illused by what became of my native culture.”

  “And I do not see such an implication. But many who feel as you do found their way into phyles wherein a much harsher regime prevails and which view us as degenerates.”

  “My life was not without periods of excessive
, unreasoning discipline, usually imposed capriciously by those responsible for laxity in the first place. That combined with my historical studies led me, as many others, to the conclusion that there was little in the previous century worthy of emulation, and that we must look to the nineteenth century instead for stable social models.”

  “Well done, Hackworth! But you must know that the model to which you allude did not long survive the first Victoria.”

  “We have outgrown much of the ignorance and resolved many of the internal contradictions that characterised that era.”

  “Have we, then? How reassuring. And have we resolved them in a way that will ensure that all of those children down there live interesting lives?”

  “I must confess that I am too slow to follow you.”

  “You yourself said that the engineers in the Bespoke department– the very best– had led interesting lives, rather than coming from the straight and narrow. Which implies a correlation, does it not?”

  “Clearly.”

  “This implies, does it not, that in order to raise a generation of children who can reach their full potential, we must find a way to make their lives interesting. And the question I have for you, Mr. Hackworth, is this: Do you think that our schools accomplish that? Or are they like the schools that Wordsworth complained of?”

  “My daughter is too young to attend school– but I should fear that the latter situation prevails.”

  “I assure you that it does, Mr. Hackworth. My three children were raised in those schools, and I know them well. I am determined that Elizabeth shall be raised differently.”

  Hackworth felt his face flushing. “Sir, may I remind you that we have just met-I do not feel worthy of the confidences you are reposing in me.”

  “I’m telling you these things not as a friend, Mr. Hackworth, but as a professional.”

  “Then I must remind you that I am an engineer, not a child psychologist.”

  “This I have not forgotten, Mr. Hackworth. You are indeed an engineer, and a very fine one, in a company that I still think of as mine– though as an Equity Lord, I no longer have a formal connection. And now that you have brought your part of this project to a successful conclusion, I intend to put you in charge of a new project for which I have reason to believe you are perfectly suited.”

  Bud embarks on a life of crime;

  an insult to a tribe & its consequences.

  Bud rolled his first victim almost by accident. He’d taken a wrong turn into a cul-de-sac and inadvertently trapped a black man and woman and a couple of little kids who’d blundered in there before him. They had a scared look about them, like a lot of the new arrivals did, and Bud noticed the way the man’s gaze lingered on his Sights, wondering whether those crosshairs, invisible to him, were centered on him, his lady, or his kid.

  Bud didn’t get out of their way. He was packing, they weren’t, it was up to them to get out of his way. But instead they just froze up. “You got a problem?” Bud said.

  “What do you want?” the man said.

  It had been a while since anyone had manifested such sincere concern for Bud’s desires, and he kind of liked it. He realized that these people were under the impression that they were being mugged. “Oh, same as anyone else. Money and shit,” Bud said, and just like that, the man took some hard ucus out of his pocket and handed them over-and then actually thanked him as he backed away.

  Bud enjoyed getting that kind of respect from black people– it reminded him of his noble heritage in the trailer parks of North Florida– and he didn’t mind the money either. After that day he began looking for black people with that same scared uncertain look about them. These people bought and sold off the record, and so they carried hard money. He did pretty well for himself for a couple of months. Every so often he would stop by the flat where his bitch Tequila lived, give her some lingerie, and maybe give Harv some chocolate.

  Harv was presumed by both Bud and Tequila to be Bud’s son. He was five, which meant that he had been conceived in a much earlier cycle of Bud and Tequila’s break-up-and-make-up relationship. Now the bitch was pregnant again, which meant that Bud would have to bring even more gifts to her place when he came around. The pressures of fatherhood!

  One day Bud targeted a particularly well-dressed family because of their fancy clothes. The man was wearing a business suit and the woman a nice clean dress, and they were carrying a baby all dressed up in a white lacy thing, and they had hired a porter to help them haul their luggage away from the Aerodrome. The porter was a white guy who vaguely reminded Bud of himself, and he was incensed to see him acting as a pack animal for blacks. So as soon as these people got away from the bustle of the Aerodrome and into a more secluded neighborhood, Bud approached them, swaggering in the way he’d practiced in the mirror, occasionally pushing his Sights up on his nose with one index finger.

  The guy in the suit was different from most of them. He didn’t try to act like he hadn’t seen Bud, didn’t try to skulk away, didn’t cringe or slouch, just stood his ground, feet planted squarely, and very pleasantly said, “Yes, sir, can I be of assistance?” He didn’t talk like an American black, had almost a British accent, but crisper.

  Now that Bud had come closer, he saw that the man had a strip of colored cloth thrown around his neck and over his lapels, dangling down like a scarf. He looked well-housed and well-fed for the most part, except for a little scar high up on one cheekbone.

  Bud kept walking until he was a little too close to the guy. He kept his head tilted back until the last minute, like he was kicking back listening to some loud tunes (which he was), and then suddenly snapped his head forward so he was staring the guy right in the face. It was another way to emphasize the fact that he was packing, and it usually did the trick. But this guy did not respond with the little flinch that Bud had come to expect and enjoy. Maybe he was from some booga-booga country where they didn’t know about skull guns.

  “Sir,” the man said, “my family and I are on the way to our hotel. We have had a long journey, and we are tired; my daughter has an ear infection. If you would state your business as expeditiously as possible, I would be obliged.”

  “You talk like a fucking Vicky,” Bud said.

  “Sir, I am not what you refer to as a Vicky, or I should have gone directly there. I would be obliged if you could be so kind as to moderate your language in the presence of my wife and child.”

  It took Bud a while to untangle this sentence, and a while longer to believe that the man really cared about a few dirty words spoken within earshot of his family, and longer yet to believe that he had been so insolent to Bud, a heavily muscled guy who was obviously packing a skull gun.

  “I’m gonna fucking say whatever I fucking want to your bitch and your flicking brat,” Bud said, very loud. Then he could not keep himself from grinning. Score a few points for Bud!

  The man looked impatient rather than scared and heaved a deep sigh. “Is this an armed robbery or something? Are you sure you know what you are getting into?”

  Bud answered by whispering “hut” under his breath and firing a Crippler into the man’s right bicep. It went off deep in the muscle, like an M-80, blowing a dark hole in the sleeve of the man’s jacket and leaving his arm stretched out nice and straight– the trike now pulling without anything to oppose it. The man clenched his teeth, his eyes bulged, and for a few moments he made strangled grunting noises from way down in his chest, making an effort not to cry out.

  Bud stared at the wound in fascination. It was just like shooting people in a ractive. Except that the bitch didn’t scream and beg for mercy. She just turned her back, using her body to shield the baby, and looked over her shoulder, calmly, at Bud. Bud noticed she had a little scar on her cheek too.

  “Next I take your eye,” Bud said, “then I go to work on the bitch.”

  The man held up his good hand palm out, indicating surrender. He emptied his pocket of hard Universal Currency Units and handed them over. And then Bud ma
de himself scarce, because the monitors– almond-size aerostats with eyes, ears, and radios– had probably picked up the sound of the explosion and begun converging on the area. He saw one hiss by him as he rounded the corner, trailing a short whip antenna that caught the light like a hairline crack in the atmosphere.

  Three days later, Bud was hanging around the Aerodrome, looking for easy pickings, when a big ship came in from Singapore. Immersed in a stream of thousand arrivals was a tight group of some two dozen solidly built, very dark-skinned black men dressed in business suits, with Strips of colored cloth draped around their necks and little scars on their cheekbone.

  It was later that night that Bud, for the first time in his life, heard the word Ashanti. “Another twenty-five Ashanti just came in from L.A.!” said a man in a bar. “The Ashanti had a big meeting in the conference room at the Sheraton!” said a woman on the street. Waiting in a queue for one of the free matter compilers, a bum said, “One of them Ashanti gave me five yuks. They’re fine folks.” When Bud ran into a guy he knew, a former comrade in the decoy trade, he said, “Hey, the place is crawling with them Ashanti, ain’t it?”

  “Yup,” said the guy, who had seemed unaccountably shocked to see Bud’s face on the Street, and who was annoyingly distracted all of a sudden, swiveling his head to look all ways.

  “They must be having a convention or something,” Bud theorized. “I rolled one of ‘em the other night.”

  “Yeah, I know,” his friend said.

  “Huh? How’d you know that?”

  “They ain’t having a convention, Bud. All of those Ashanti– except the first one-came to town hunting for you.”

  Paralysis struck Bud’s vocal cords, and he felt lightheaded, unable to concentrate.

  “I gotta go,” his friend said, and removed himself from Bud’s vicinity.

  For the next few hours Bud felt as though everyone on the street was looking at him. Bud was certainly looking at them, looking for those suits, those colored strips of cloth. But he caught sight of a man in shorts and a T-shirt– a black man with very high cheeks, one of which was marked with a tiny scar, and almost Asian-looking eyes in a very high state of alertness. So he couldn’t rely on the Ashanti wearing stereotyped clothing.