"I shall bend all my efforts toward your disenchantment," Princess Nell said, and a tremendous, earsplitting scream of grat.i.tude rose from the tiny throats of the Mouse Army.

Finding the required book did not take long. The Mouse Army split itself up into small detachments, each of which wrestled a different book from the shelf, opened it up on the floor, and scampered through it one page at a time, looking for relevant spells. Within the hour, Princess Nell noted that a broad open corridor had developed in the Mouse Army, and that a book was making its way toward her, seeming to float an inch above the floor.

She lifted the book carefully from the backs of the mice who were bearing it and flipped through it until she found a spell for the disenchantment of mice. "Very well then," she said, and began to read the spell; but suddenly, excited squeaking filled the air and all the mice were running away in a panic. The Generalissima climbed up onto the page, jumping up and down in a state of extreme agitation and waving her forelegs back and forth over her head.

"Ah, I understand," Princess Nell said. She picked up the book and walked out of the library, taking care not to step on any of her subjects, and followed them out to the vast empty s.p.a.ce beyond.

Once again the Mouse Army put on a dazzling display of close-order drill, drawing itself up across the empty, colorless plain by platoons, companies, battalions, regiments, and brigades; but this time the parade took up a much larger s.p.a.ce, because this time the mice took care to s.p.a.ce themselves as far apart as the length of a human arm. Some of the platoons had to march what was, for them, a distance of many leagues in order to reach the edges of the formation. Princess Nell took advantage of the time to wander about and inspect the ranks, and to rehea.r.s.e the spell.

Finally the Generalissima approached, bowed deeply, and gave her the thumbs-up, though Princess Nell had to pick the tiny leader up and squint to see this gesture.

She went to the place that had been left for her at the head of the formation, opened up the book, and spoke the magic spell.

There was a violent thunderclap, and a rush of wind that knocked Princess Nell flat on her back. She looked up, dazed, to see that she was surrounded by a vast army of some hundreds of thousands of girls, only a few years younger than she was. A wild cheer rose up, and all of the girls fell to their knees as one and, in a scene of riotous jubilation, proclaimed their fealty to Queen Nell.

Hackworth in China; depredations of the Fists; a meeting with Dr. X; an unusual procession.

They said that the Chinese had great respect for madmen, and that during the days of the Boxer Rebellion, certain Western missionaries, probably unstable characters to begin with, who had been trapped behind walls of rubble for weeks, scurrying through the sniper fire of the encircling Boxers and Imperial troops and listening to the cries of their flock being burned and tortured in the streets of Beijing, had become deranged and had walked unharmed into the ranks of their besiegers and been given food and treated with deference.

Now John Percival Hackworth, having checked into a suite on the top floor of the Shangri-La in Pudong (or Shong-a-lee-lah as the taxi-drivers sang it), put on a fresh s.h.i.+rt; his best waistcoat, girded with the gold chain, adangle with his chop, snuffboxes, fob, and watchphone; a long coat with a swallowtail for riding; boots, the black leather and bra.s.s spurs hand-s.h.i.+ned in the lobby of the Shong-a-lee-lah by a coolie who was so servile that he was insolent, and Hackworth suspected him of being a Fist; new kid gloves; and his bowler, de-mossed and otherwise spruced up a bit, but obviously a veteran of many travels in rough territory.

As he crossed the western bank of the Huang Pu, the usual crowd of starving peasants and professional amputees washed around him like a wave running up a flat beach because, though riding here was dangerous, it was not crazy, and they did not know him for a madman. He kept his gray eyes fixed upon the picket of burning Feed lines that demarcated the shrinking border of the Coastal Republic, and let their hands tug at his coattails, but he took no notice of them. At different times, three very rural young men, identifiable as much by their deep tans as their ignorance of modern security technology, made the mistake of reaching for his watch chain and received warning shocks for their trouble. One of them refused to let go until the smell of burned flesh rose from his palm, and then he peeled his hand away slowly and calmly, staring up at Hackworth to show that he didn't mind a little pain, and said something clearly and loudly that caused a t.i.tter to run through the crowd.

The ride down Nanjing Road took him through the heart of Shanghai's shopping district, now an endless gauntlet of tanned beggars squatting on their heels gripping the brightly colored plastic bags that served as their suitcases, carefully pa.s.sing the b.u.t.ts of cigarettes back and forth. In the shop windows above their heads, animated mannikins strutted and posed in the latest Coastal Republic styles. Hackworth noticed that these were much more conservative than they had been ten years ago, during his last trip down Nanjing Road. The female mannikins weren't wearing slit skirts anymore. Many weren't wearing skirts at all, but silk pants instead, or long robes that were even less revealing. One display was centered upon a patriarchal figure who reclined on a dais, wearing a round cap with a blue b.u.t.ton on the top: a mandarin. A young scholar was bowing to him. Around the dais, four groups of mannikins were demonstrating the other four filial relations.h.i.+ps.

So it was chic to be Confucian now, or at least it was politic. This was one of the few shop windows that didn't have red Fist posters pasted all over it.

Hackworth rode past marble villas built by Iraqi Jews in previous centuries, past the hotel where Nixon had once stayed, past the high-rise enclaves that Western businessmen had used as the beachheads of the post-Communist development that had led to the squalid affluence of the Coastal Republic. He rode past nightclubs the size of stadiums; jai-alai pits where stunned refugees gaped at the jostling of the bettors; side streets filled with boutiques, one street for fine goods made from alligators, another for furs, another for leathers; a nanotech district consisting of tiny businesses that did bespoke engineering; fruit and vegetable stands; a cul-de-sac where peddlers sold antiques from little carts, one specializing in cinnabar boxes, another in Maoist kitsch. Each time the density began to wane and he thought he must be reaching the edge of the city, he would come to another edge city of miniature three-story strip malls and it would begin again.

But as the day went on, he truly did approach the limit of the city and kept riding anyway toward the west, and it became evident then that he was a madman and the people in the streets looked at him with awe and got out of his way. Bicycles and pedestrians became less common, replaced by heavier and faster military traffic. Hackworth did not like riding on the shoulder of highways, and so he directed Kidnapper to find a less direct route to Suzhou, one that used smaller roads. This was flat Yangtze Delta territory only inches above the waterline, where ca.n.a.ls, for transport, irrigation, and drainage, were more numerous than roads. The ca.n.a.ls ramified through the black, stinky ground like blood vessels branching into the tissues of the brain. The plain was interrupted frequently by small tumuli containing the coffins of someone's ancestors, just high enough to stay above the most routine floods. Farther to the west, steep hills rose from the paddies, black with vegetation. The Coastal Republic checkpoints at the intersections of the roads were gray and fuzzy, like house-size clots of bread mold, so dense was the fractal defense grid, and staring through the cloud of macro- and microscopic aerostats, Hackworth could barely make out the hoplites in the center, heat waves rising from the radiators on their backs and stirring the airborne soup. They let him pa.s.s through without incident. Hackworth expected to see more checkpoints as he continued toward Fist territory, but the first one was the last; the Coastal Republic did not have the strength for defense in depth and could muster only a one-dimensional picket line.

A mile past the checkpoint, at another small intersection, Hackworth found a pair of very makes.h.i.+ft crucifixes fas.h.i.+oned from freshly cut mulberry trees, green leaves still fluttering from their twigs. Two young white men had been bound to the crucifixes with gray plastic ties, burned in many places and incrementally disembowled. From the looks of their haircuts and the somber black neckties that had been ironically left around their necks, Hackworth guessed they were Mormons. A long skein of intestine trailed from one of their bellies down into the dirt, where a gaunt pig was tugging on it stubbornly.

He did not see much more death, but he smelled it everywhere in the hot wet air. He thought that he might be seeing a network of nanotech defense barriers until he realized that it was a natural phenomenon: Each waterway supported a linear black nimbus of fat, drowsy flies. From this he knew that if he tugged a bit on this or that rein and guided Kidnapper to the bank of the ca.n.a.l, he would find it filled with ballooning corpses.

Ten minutes after pa.s.sing the Coastal Republic checkpoint, he rode through the center of a Fist encampment. As he looked neither right nor left, he could not really estimate its size; they had taken over a village of low brick-and-stucco buildings. A long straight smudge running across the earth marked the location of a burned Feed line, and as he crossed it, Hackworth fantasized that it was a meridian engraved on the living globe by an astral cartographer. Most of the Fists were s.h.i.+rtless, wearing indigo trousers, scarlet girdles knotted at the waist, sometimes scarlet ribbons tied round necks, foreheads, or upper arms. The ones who weren't sleeping or smoking were practicing martial arts. Hackworth rode slowly through their midst, and they pretended not to notice him, except for one man who came running out of a house with a knife, shouting "Sha! Sha!" "Sha! Sha!" and had to be tackled by three comrades. and had to be tackled by three comrades.

As he rode the forty miles to Suzhou, nothing changed about the landscape except that creeks became rivers and ponds became lakes. The Fist encampments became somewhat larger and closer together. When the thick air infrequently roused itself to a breeze, he could smell the clammy metallic reek of stagnant water and knew he was close to the great lake of Tai Wu, or Taifu as the Shanghainese p.r.o.nounced it. A grayscale dome rose from the paddies some miles away, casting a film of shadow before a cl.u.s.ter of tall buildings, and Hackworth knew it must be Suzhou, now a stronghold of the Celestial Kingdom, veiled in its airborne s.h.i.+eld like a courtesan behind a translucent sheen of Suzhou silk.

Nearing the sh.o.r.e of the great lake he found his way onto an important road that ran south toward Hangzhou. He set Kidnapper ambling northward. Suzhou had thrown out tendrils of development along its major roads, and so as he drew closer he saw strip malls and franchises, now destroyed, deserted, or colonized by refugees. Most of these places catered to truck drivers: lots of motels, casinos, teahouses, and fast-food places. But no trucks ran on the highway now, and Hackworth rode down the center of a lane, sweating uncontrollably in his dark clothes and drinking frequently from a refrigerated bottle in Kidnapper's glove compartment.

A McDonald's sign lay toppled across the highway like a giant turnpike; something had burned through the single pillar that thrust it into the air. A couple of young men were standing in front of it smoking cigarettes and, as Hackworth realized, waiting for him. As Hackworth drew closer, they ground out their cigarettes, stepped forward, and bowed. Hackworth tipped his bowler. One of them took Kidnapper's reins, which was a purely ceremonial gesture in the case of a robot horse, and the other invited Hackworth to dismount. Both of the men were wearing heavy but flexible coveralls with cables and tubes running through the fabric: the inner layer of armor suits. They could turn themselves into battle-ready hoplites by slapping on the harder and heavier outer bits, which were presumably stashed somewhere handy. Their scarlet headbands identified them as Fists. Hackworth was one of the few members of the Outer Tribes ever to find himself in the presence of a Fist who was not running toward him with a weapon screaming "Kill! Kill!" and found it interesting to see them in a more indulgent mood. They were dignified, formal, and controlled, like military men, with none of the leering and snickering that were fas.h.i.+onable among Coastal Republic boys of the same age.

Hackworth walked across the parking lot toward the McDonald's, followed at a respectful distance by one of the soldiers. Another soldier opened the door for him, and Hackworth sighed with delight as cold dry air flowed over his face and began to chase the muggy stuff through the weave of his clothing. The place had been lightly sacked. He could smell a cold, almost clinical greasy smell wafting from behind the counter, where containers of fat had spilled onto the floor and congealed like snow. Much of this had been scooped up by looters; Hackworth could see the parallel tracks of women's fingers. The place was decorated in a Silk Road Silk Road motif, transpicuous mediatronic panels portraying wondrous sights between here and the route's ancient terminus in Cadiz. motif, transpicuous mediatronic panels portraying wondrous sights between here and the route's ancient terminus in Cadiz.

Dr. X was seated in the corner booth, his face radiant in the cool, UV-filtered sunlight. He was wearing a mandarin cap with dragons embroidered in gold thread and a magnificent brocade robe. The robe was loose at the neck and had short sleeves so that Hackworth could see the inner garment of a hoplite suit underneath. Dr. X was at war, and had emerged from the safe perimeter of Suzhou, and needed to be prepared for an attack. He was sipping green tea from a jumbo McDonald's cup, made in the local style, great clouds of big green leaves swirling around in a tumbler of hot water. Hackworth doffed his hat and bowed in the Victorian style, which was proper under the circ.u.mstances. Dr. X returned the bow, and as his head tilted forward, Hackworth could see the b.u.t.ton on the top of his cap. It was red, the color of the highest ranks, but it was made of coral, marking him as second rank. A ruby b.u.t.ton would have put him at the very highest level. In Western terms this made Dr. X roughly equivalent to a lesser cabinet minister or three-star general. Hackworth supposed that this was the highest rank of mandarin permitted to converse with barbarians.

Hackworth sat down across the table from Dr. X. A young woman padded out of the kitchen on silk slippers and gave Hackworth his own tumbler full of green tea. Watching her mince away, Hackworth was only mildly shocked to see that her feet were no more than four inches long. There must be better ways to do it now, maybe by regulating the growth of the tarsal bones during adolescence. It probably didn't even hurt.

Realizing this, Hackworth also realized, for the first time, that he had done the right thing ten years ago.

Dr. X was watching him and might as well have been reading his mind. This seemed to put him in a pensive mood. He said nothing for a while, just gazed out the window and occasionally sipped his tea. This was fine with Hackworth, who had had a long ride.

"Have you learned anything from your ten-year sentence?" Dr. X finally said.

"It would seem so. But I have trouble pulling it up," Hackworth said.

This was a bit too idiomatic for Dr. X. By way of explanation, Hackworth flipped out a ten-year-old card bearing Dr. X's dynamic chop. As the old fisherman hauled the dragon out of the water, Dr. X suddenly got it, and grinned appreciatively. This was showing a lot of emotion-a.s.suming it was genuine-but age and war had made him reckless.

"Have you found the Alchemist?" Dr. X said.

"Yes," Hackworth said. "I am the Alchemist."

"When did you know this?"

"Only very recently," Hackworth said. "Then I understood it all in an instant-I pulled it up," he said, pantomiming the act of reeling in a fish. "The Celestial Kingdom was far behind Nippon and Atlantis in nanotech. The Fists could always have burned the barbarians' Feed lines, but this would only have plunged the peasants into poverty and made the people long for foreign goods. The decision was made to leapfrog the barbarian tribes by developing Seed technology. At first you pursued the project in cooperation with second-tier phyles like Israel, Armenia, and Greater Serbia, but they proved unreliable. Again and again your carefully cultivated networks were scattered by Protocol Enforcement.

"But through these failures you made contact for the first time with CryptNet, whom you doubtless view as just another triad-a contemptible band of conspirators. However, CryptNet was tied in with something much deeper and more interesting-the society of the Drummers. With their flaky and shallow Western perspective, CryptNet didn't grasp the full power of the Drummers' collective mind. But you got it right away.

"All you required to initiate the Seed project was the rational, a.n.a.lytical mind of a nanotechnological engineer. I fit the bill perfectly. You dropped me into the society of the Drummers like a seed into fertile soil, and my knowledge spread through them and permeated their collective mind-as their thoughts spread into my own unconscious. They became like an extension of my own brain. For years I laboured on the problem, twenty-four hours a day.

"Then, before I was able to finish the job, I was pulled out by my superiors at Protocol Enforcement. I was close to being finished. But not finished yet."

"Your superiors had uncovered our plan?"

"Either they are completely ignorant, or else they know everything and are pretending ignorance," Hackworth said.

"But surely you have told them everything now," Dr. X said almost inaudibly.

"If I were to answer that question, you would have no reason not to kill me," Hackworth said.

Dr. X nodded, not so much to concede the point as to express sympathy with Hackworth's admirably cynical train of thought-as though Hackworth, after a series of seemingly inconclusive moves, had suddenly flipped over a large territory of stones on a go board.

"There are those who would advocate that course, because of what has happened with the girls," Dr. X said.

Hackworth was so startled to hear this that he became somewhat lightheaded for a moment and too self-conscious to speak. "Have the Primers proved useful?" he finally said, trying not to sound giddy.

Dr. X grinned broadly for a moment. Then the emotion dropped beneath the surface again, like a breaching whale. "They must have been useful to someone," he said. "My opinion is that we made a mistake in saving the girls."

"How can this act of humanity possibly have been a mistake?"

Dr. X considered it. "It would be more correct to say that, although it was virtuous to save them, it was mistaken to believe that they could be raised properly. We lacked the resources to raise them individually, and so we raised them with books. But the only proper way to raise a child is within a family. The Master could have told us as much, had we listened to his words."

"Some of those girls will one day choose to follow in the ways of the Master," Hackworth said, "and then the wisdom of your decisions will be demonstrated."

This seemed to be a genuinely new thought to Dr. X. His gaze returned to the window. Hackworth sensed that the matter of the girls and the Primers had been concluded.

"I will be open and frank," said Dr. X after some ruminative tea-slurping, "and you will not believe that I am being so, because it is in the heads of those from the Outer Tribes to think that we never speak directly. But perhaps in time you will see the truth of my words.

"The Seed is almost finished. When you left, the building of it slowed down very much-more than we expected. We thought that the Drummers, after ten years, had absorbed your knowledge and could continue the work without you. But there is something in your mind that you have gained through your years of scholarly studies that the Drummers, if they ever had it, have given up and cannot get back unless they come out of the darkness and live their lives in the light again.

"The war against the Coastal Republic reaches a critical moment. We ask you to help us now."

"I must say that it is nearly inconceivable for me to help you at this point," Hackworth said, "unless it would be in the interest of my tribe, which does not strike me as a likely prospect."

"We need you to help us finish building the Seed," Dr. X said doggedly.

Only decades of training in emotional repression kept Hackworth from laughing out loud. "Sir. You are a worldly man and a scholar. Certainly you are aware of the position of Her Majesty's government, and indeed of the Common Economic Protocol itself, on the subject of Seed technologies."

Dr. X raised one hand a few inches from the tabletop, palm down, and pawed once at the air. Hackworth recognized it as the gesture that well-to-do Chinese used to dismiss beggars, or even to call bulls.h.i.+t on people during meetings. "They are wrong," he said. "They do not understand. They think of the Seed from a Western perspective. Your cultures-and that of the Coastal Republic-are poorly organized. There is no respect for order, no reverence for authority. Order must be enforced from above lest anarchy break out. You are afraid to give the Seed to your people because they can use it to make weapons, viruses, drugs of their own design, and destroy order. You enforce order through control of the Feed. But in the Celestial Kingdom, we are disciplined, we revere authority, we have order within our own minds, and hence the family is orderly, the village is orderly, the state is orderly. In our hands the Seed would be harmless."

"Why do you need it?" Hackworth said.

"We must have technology to live," Dr. X said, "but we must have it with our own ti. ti."

Hackworth thought for a moment that Dr. X was referring to the beverage. But the Doctor began to trace characters on the tabletop, his hand moving deftly and gracefully, the brocade sleeve rasping across the plastic surface. "Yong is the outer manifestation of something. is the outer manifestation of something. Ti Ti is the underlying essence. Technology is a is the underlying essence. Technology is a yong yong a.s.sociated with a particular a.s.sociated with a particular ti ti that is"-the Doctor stumbled here and, through a noticeable effort, refrained from using pejorative terms like that is"-the Doctor stumbled here and, through a noticeable effort, refrained from using pejorative terms like barbarian barbarian or or gwailo- gwailo- "that is Western, and completely alien to us. For centuries, since the time of the Opium Wars, we have struggled to absorb the "that is Western, and completely alien to us. For centuries, since the time of the Opium Wars, we have struggled to absorb the yong yong of technology without importing the Western of technology without importing the Western ti. ti. But it has been impossible. Just as our ancestors could not open our ports to the West without accepting the poison of opium, we could not open our lives to Western technology without taking in the Western ideas, which have been as a plague on our society. The result has been centuries of chaos. We ask you to end that by giving us the Seed." But it has been impossible. Just as our ancestors could not open our ports to the West without accepting the poison of opium, we could not open our lives to Western technology without taking in the Western ideas, which have been as a plague on our society. The result has been centuries of chaos. We ask you to end that by giving us the Seed."

"I do not understand why the Seed will help you."

"The Seed is technology rooted in the Chinese ti. ti. We have lived by the Seed for five thousand years," Dr. X said. He waved his hand toward the window. "These were rice paddies before they were parking lots. Rice was the basis for our society. Peasants planted the seeds and had highest status in the Confucian hierarchy. As the Master said, "Let the producers be many and the consumers few.' When the Feed came in from Atlantis, from Nippon, we no longer had to plant, because the rice now came from the matter compiler. It was the destruction of our society. When our society was based upon planting, it could truly be said, as the Master did, "Virtue is the root; wealth is the result.' But under the Western We have lived by the Seed for five thousand years," Dr. X said. He waved his hand toward the window. "These were rice paddies before they were parking lots. Rice was the basis for our society. Peasants planted the seeds and had highest status in the Confucian hierarchy. As the Master said, "Let the producers be many and the consumers few.' When the Feed came in from Atlantis, from Nippon, we no longer had to plant, because the rice now came from the matter compiler. It was the destruction of our society. When our society was based upon planting, it could truly be said, as the Master did, "Virtue is the root; wealth is the result.' But under the Western ti, ti, wealth comes not from virtue but from cleverness. So the filial relations.h.i.+ps became deranged. Chaos," Dr. X said regretfully, then looked up from his tea and nodded out the window. "Parking lots and chaos." wealth comes not from virtue but from cleverness. So the filial relations.h.i.+ps became deranged. Chaos," Dr. X said regretfully, then looked up from his tea and nodded out the window. "Parking lots and chaos."

Hackworth remained silent for a full minute. Images had come into his mind again, not a fleeting hallucination this time, but a full-fledged vision of a China freed from the yoke of the foreign Feed. It was something he'd seen before, perhaps something he'd even helped create. It showed something no gwailo gwailo would ever get to see: the Celestial Kingdom during the coming Age of the Seed. Peasants tended their fields and paddies, and even in times of drought and flood, the earth brought forth a rich harvest: food, of course, but many unfamiliar plants too, fruits that could be made into medicines, bamboo a thousand times stronger than the natural varieties, trees that produced synthetic rubber and pellets of clean safe fuel. In an orderly procession the suntanned farmers brought their proceeds to great markets in clean cities free of cholera and strife, where all of the young people were respectful and dutiful scholars and all of the elders were honored and cared for. This was a ractive simulation as big as all of China, and Hackworth could have lost himself in it, and perhaps did for he knew not how long. But finally he closed his eyes, blinked it away, sipped some tea to bring his rational mind back into control. would ever get to see: the Celestial Kingdom during the coming Age of the Seed. Peasants tended their fields and paddies, and even in times of drought and flood, the earth brought forth a rich harvest: food, of course, but many unfamiliar plants too, fruits that could be made into medicines, bamboo a thousand times stronger than the natural varieties, trees that produced synthetic rubber and pellets of clean safe fuel. In an orderly procession the suntanned farmers brought their proceeds to great markets in clean cities free of cholera and strife, where all of the young people were respectful and dutiful scholars and all of the elders were honored and cared for. This was a ractive simulation as big as all of China, and Hackworth could have lost himself in it, and perhaps did for he knew not how long. But finally he closed his eyes, blinked it away, sipped some tea to bring his rational mind back into control.

"Your arguments are not without merit," Hackworth said. "Thank you for helping me to see the matter in a different light. I will ponder these questions on my return to Shanghai."

Dr. X escorted him to the parking lot of the McDonald's. The heat felt pleasant at first, like a relaxing bath, though Hackworth knew that soon he would feel as if he were drowning in it. Kidnapper ambled over and folded its legs, allowing Hackworth to mount it easily.

"You have helped us willingly for ten years," Dr. X said. "It is your destiny to make the Seed."

"Nonsense," Hackworth said, "I did not know the nature of the project."

Dr. X smiled. "You knew it perfectly well." He freed one hand from the long sleeves of his robe and shook his finger at Hackworth, like an indulgent teacher pretending to scold a clever but mischievous pupil. "You do these things not to serve your Queen but to serve your own nature, John Hackworth, and I understand your nature. For you cleverness is its own end, and once you have seen a clever way to do a thing, you must do it, as water finding a crack in a dike must pa.s.s through it and cover the land on the other side."

"Farewell, Dr. X," Hackworth said. "You will understand that although I hold you in the highest personal esteem, I cannot earnestly wish you good fortune in your current endeavour." He doffed his hat and bowed low to one side, forcing Kidnapper to adjust its stance a bit. Dr. X returned the bow, giving Hackworth another look at that coral b.u.t.ton on his cap. Hackworth spurred Kidnapper on to Shanghai.

He followed a more northerly route now, along one of the many radial highways that converged on the metropolis. After he had been riding for some time, he became consciously aware of a sound that had been brus.h.i.+ng against the outer fringes of perceptibility for some time: a heavy, distant, and rapid drumbeat, perhaps twice as fast as the beat of his own heart. His first thought, of course, was of the Drummers, and he was tempted to explore one of the nearby ca.n.a.ls to see whether their colony had spread its tendrils this far inland. But then he looked northward across the flat land for a couple of miles and saw a long procession making its way down another highway, a dark column of pedestrians marching on Shanghai.

He saw that his path was converging with theirs, so he spurred Kidnapper forward at a hand-gallop, hoping to reach the intersection of the roads before it was clogged by this column of refugees. Kidnapper outdistanced them easily, but to no avail; when he reached the intersection, he found it had been seized by the column's vanguard, which had established a roadblock there and would not let him pa.s.s.

The contingent now controlling the intersection consisted entirely of girls, some eleven or twelve years old. There were several dozen of them, and they had apparently taken the objective by force from a smaller group of Fists, who could now be seen lying in the shade of some mulberry trees, hogtied with plastic rope. Probably three-quarters of the girls were on guard duty, mostly armed with sharpened bamboo stakes, though a few guns and blades were in evidence. The remaining quarter were on break, hunkered down in a circle near the intersection, sipping freshly boiled water and concentrating intently on books. Hackworth recognized the books; they were all identical, and they all had marbled jade covers, though all of them had been personalized with stickers, graffiti, and other decorations over the years.

Hackworth realized that several more girls, organized in groups of four, had been following him down the road on bicycles; these outriders pa.s.sed by him now and rejoined their group.

He had no choice but to wait until the column had pa.s.sed. The drumbeat grew and grew in volume until the pavement shook with each blow, and the shock absorption gear built into Kidnapper's legs went into play, flinching minutely at each beat. Another vanguard pa.s.sed through: Hackworth easily calculated its size at two hundred and fifty-six. A battalion was four platoons, each of which was four companies of four troops of four girls each. The vanguard consisted of one such battalion, moving at a very brisk double-time, probably going ahead of the main group to fall upon the next major intersection.

Then, finally, the main column pa.s.sed through, organized in battalions, each foot hitting the ground in unison with all the others. Each battalion carried a few sedan chairs, which were pa.s.sed from one four-girl troop to another every few minutes to spread out the work. They were not luxurious palanquins but were improvised from bamboo and plastic rope and upholstered with materials stripped from old plastic cafeteria furniture. Riding in these chairs were girls who did not seem all that different from the others, except that they might have been a year or two older. They did not seem to be officers; they were not giving orders and wore no special insignia. Hackworth did not understand why they were riding in sedan chairs until he got a look at one of them, who had crossed one ankle up on her knee and taken her slipper off. Her foot was defective; it was several inches too short.

But all of the other sedan chair girls were deeply absorbed in their Primers. Hackworth unclipped a small optical device from his watch chain, a nanotech telescope/microscope that frequently came in handy, and used it to look over one girl's shoulder. She was looking at a diagram of a small nanotechnological device, working her way through a tutorial that Hackworth had written several years ago.

The column went past much faster than Hackworth had feared; they moved down the highway like a piston. Each battalion carried a banner, a very modest thing improvised from a painted bedsheet. Each banner bore the number of the battalion and a crest that Hackworth knew well, as it played an important role in the Primer. In all, he counted two hundred and fifty-six battalions. Sixty-five thousand girls ran past him, h.e.l.l-bent on Shanghai.

From the Primer, Princess Nell's return to the Dark Castle; the death of Harv; The Books of the Book and of the Seed; Princess Nell's quest to find her mother. Destruction of the Causeway; Nell falls into the hands of Fists; she escapes into a greater peril; deliverance.

Princess Nell could have used all of the powers she had acquired during her great quest to dig Harv's grave or caused the work to be done for her by the Disenchanted Army, but it did not seem fitting, and so instead she found an old rusty shovel hung up in one of the Dark Castle's outbuildings. The ground was dry and stony and veined with the roots of thornbushes, and more than once the shovel struck ancient bones. Princess Nell dug throughout the long day, softening the hard earth with her tears, but did not slacken until the ground was level with her own head. Then she went into the little room in the Dark Castle where Harv had died of a consumption, carefully wrapped his withered body in fine white silk, and bore it out to the grave. She had found lilies growing wild in the overgrown flower-garden by the little fisherman's cottage, so she put a spray of these in the grave with him, along with a little children's storybook that Harv had given her for a present many years ago. Harv could not read, and many nights as they had sat round the fire in the courtyard of the Dark Castle, Nell had read to him from this book, and she supposed that he might like to have it wherever he was going now.

Filling in the grave went quickly; the loose dirt more than filled the hole. Nell left more lilies atop the long low mound of earth that marked Harv's resting place. Then she turned her back and walked into the Dark Castle. The stain-colored granite walls had picked up some salmon highlights from the western sky, and she suspected that she could see a beautiful sunset from the room in the high tower where she had established her library.

It was a long climb up a dank and mildewy staircase that wound up the inside of the Dark Castle's highest tower. In the circular room at the top, which was built with mullioned windows looking out in all directions, Nell had placed all of the books she had gathered during her quest: books given her as presents by Purple, books from the library of King Magpie, the first Faery King that she had vanquished, and more from the palace of the djinn, and Castle Turing, and many other hidden libraries and treasuries that she had discovered or pillaged on her way. And, of course, there was the entire library of King Coyote, which contained so many books that she had not even had time to look at them yet.

There was so much work to be done. Copies of all of these books had to be made for all of the girls in the Disenchanted Army. The Land Beyond had vanished, and Princess Nell wanted to make it anew. She wanted to write down her own story in a great book that young girls could read. And she had one remaining quest that had been pressing on her mind of late, during her long voyage across the empty sea back to the island of the Dark Castle: she wanted to solve the mystery of her own origins. She wanted to find her mother. Even after the destruction of the Land Beyond, she had sensed the presence of another in the world, one who had always been there. King Coyote himself had confirmed it. Long ago, her stepfather, the kindly fisherman, had received her from mermaids; whence had the mermaids gotten her?

She suspected that the answer could not be found without the wisdom contained in her library. She began by causing a catalog to be made, starting with the first books she had gotten on her early adventures with her Night Friends. At the same time she established a Scriptorium in the great hall of the castle, where thousands of girls sat at long tables making exact copies of all of the books.

Most of King Coyote's books had to do with the secrets of atoms and how to put them together to make machines. Naturally, all of them were magic books; the pictures moved, and you could ask them questions and get answers. Some of them were primers and workbooks for novices, and Princess Nell spent a few days studying this art, putting atoms together to make simple machines and then watching them run.

Next came a very large set of matched volumes containing reference materials: One contained designs for thousands of sleeve bearings, another for computers made of rods, still another for energy storage devices, and all of them were ractive so that she could use them to design such things to her own specifications. Then there were more books on the general principles of putting such things together into systems.

Finally, King Coyote's library included some books inscribed in the King's own hand, containing designs for his greatest masterpieces. Of these, the two very finest were the Book of the Book and the Book of the Seed. They were magnificent folio-size volumes, as thick as Princess Nell's hand was broad, bound in rich leather illuminated with hair-thin gilt lines in an elaborate interlace pattern, and closed with heavy bra.s.s hasps and locks.

The lock on the Book of the Book yielded to the same key that Princess Nell had taken from King Coyote. She had discovered this very early in her exploration of the library but was unable to comprehend the contents of this volume until she had studied the others and learnt the secrets of these machines. The Book of the Book contained a complete set of plans for a magical book that would tell stories to a young person, tailoring them for the child's needs and interests-even teaching them how to read if need be. It was a fearsomely complicated work, and Princess Nell only skimmed it at first, recognizing that to understand the particulars might take years of study.

The lock on the Book of the Seed would not yield to King Coyote's key or to any other key in Princess Nell's possession, and because this book had been built atom by atom, it was stronger than any mortal substance and could not possibly be broken open. Princess Nell did not know what this book was about; but the cover bore an inlaid ill.u.s.tration of a striped seed, like the apple-sized seed that she had seen used in King Coyote's city to build a crystal pavilion, and this foreshadowed the book's purpose clearly enough.

Nell opened her eyes and propped herself up on one elbow. The Primer fell shut and slid off her belly onto the mattress. She had fallen asleep reading it.

The girls on their bunkbeds lay all around her, breathing quietly and smelling of soap. It made her want to lie back down and sleep too. But for some reason she was up on one elbow. Some instinct had told her she had to be up.

She sat up and drew her knees up to her chest, freeing the hem of her nightgown from between the sheets, then spun around and dropped to the floor soundlessly. Her bare feet took her silently between the rows of bunks and into the little lounge in the corner of the floor where the girls sat together, had tea, brushed their hair, watched old pa.s.sives. It was empty now, the lights were off, the corner windows exposing a vast panorama: to the northeast, the lights of New Chusan and of the Nipponese and Hindustani concessions standing a few kilometers offsh.o.r.e, and the outlying parts of Pudong. Downtown Pudong was all around, its floating, mediatronic skysc.r.a.pers like biblical pillars of fire. To the northwest lay the Huang Pu River, Shanghai, its suburbs, and the ravaged silk and tea districts beyond. No fires burned there now; the Feed lines had been burned all the way to the edge of the city, and the Fists had stopped at the outskirts and hunkered down as they sought a way to penetrate the tattered remains of the security grid.

Nell's eye was drawn toward the water. Downtown Pudong offered the most spectacular urban nightscape ever devised, but she always found herself looking past it, staring instead at the Huang Pu, or the Yangzte to the north, or to the curvature of the Pacific beyond New Chusan.

She'd been having a dream, she realized. She had awakened not because of any external disturbance but because of what had happened in that dream. She had to remember it; but, of course, she couldn't.

Just a few s.n.a.t.c.hes: a woman's face, a beautiful young woman, perhaps wearing a crown, but seen muddily, as through turbulent water. And something that glittered in her hands.

No, dangling beneath her hands. A piece of jewelry on a golden chain.

Could it have been a key? Nell could not bring the image back, but an instinct told her that it was.

Another detail too: a gleaming swath of something that pa.s.sed in front of her face once, twice, three times. Something yellow, with a repeating pattern woven into it: a crest consisting of a book, a seed, and crossed keys.

Cloth of gold. Long ago the mermaids had brought her to her stepfather, and she had been wrapped in cloth of gold, and from this she had always known that she was a Princess.