Diamond Age or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

"Yes. But Trish had a knack for finding all of these little, scruffy, out-of-the-way theatres that I never would have found in a million years– they weren't marked, and they didn't really advertise, as far as I could tell. We saw some radical stuff– really radical."

"I don't imagine you are using that adjective in a political sense," Hackworth said.

"No, I mean how they were staged. In one of them, we walked into this bombed-out old building in Whitechapel, full of people milling around, and all this weird stuff started happening, and after a while I realized that some of the people were actors and some were audience and that all of us were both, in a way. It was cool– I suppose you can get stuff like that on the net anytime, in a ractive, but it was so much better to be there with real, warm bodies around. I felt happy. Anyway, this guy was going to the bar for a pint, and he offered to get me one. We started talking. One thing led to another. He was really intelligent, really sexy. An African guy who knew a lot about the theatre. This place had back rooms. Some of them had beds."

"After you were finished," Hackworth said, "did you experience any unusual sensations?"

Maggie threw back her head and laughed, thinking that this was a bit of wry humor on Hackworth's part. But he was serious.

"After we were finished?" she said.

"Yes. Let us say, several minutes afterward."

Suddenly Maggie became disconcerted. "Yeah, actually," she said. "I got hot. Really hot. We had to leave, 'cause I thought I had a flu or something. We went back to the hotel, and I took my clothes off and stood out on the balcony. My temperature was a hundred and four. But the next morning I felt fine. And I've felt fine ever since."

"Thank you, Maggie," Hackworth said, rising to his feet and pocketing the sheet of paper. Fiona rose too, following her father's cue. "Prior to your London visit, had your social life been an active one?"

Maggie got a little pinker. "Relatively active for a few years, yes."

"What sort of crowd? CryptNet types? People who spent a lot of time near the water?"

Maggie shook her head. "The water? I don't understand."

"Ask yourself why you have been so inactive, Maggie, since your liaison with Mr.-"

"Beck. Mr. Beck."

"With Mr. Beck. Could it be that you found the experience just a bit alarming? Exchange of bodily fluids followed by a violent rise in core temperature?"

Maggie was poker-faced.

"I recommend that you look into the subject of spontaneous combustion," Hackworth said. And without further ceremony, he reclaimed his bowler and umbrella from the entryway and led Fiona back out into the forest.

Hackworth said, "Maggie did not tell you everything about CryptNet. To begin with, it is believed to have numerous unsavoury connexions and is a perennial focus of Protocol Enforcement's investigations. And"– Hackworth laughed ruefully– "it is patently untrue that ten is the highest level."

"What is the goal of this organisation?" Fiona asked.

"It represents itself as a simple, moderately successful data-processing collective. But its actual goals can only be known by those privileged to be included within the trust boundary of the thirty-third level," Hackworth said, his voice slowing down as he tried to remember why he knew all of these things. "It is rumoured that, within that select circle, any member can kill any other simply by thinking of the deed."

Fiona leaned forward and wrapped her arms snugly around her father's body, nestled her head between his shoulder blades, and held tight. She thought that the subject of CryptNet was closed; but a quarter of an hour later, as Kidnapper carried them swiftly through the trees down toward Seattle, her father spoke again, picking up the sentence where he had left it, as if he had merely paused for breath.

His voice was slow and distant and almost trancelike, the memories percolating outward from deep storage with little participation from his conscious mind. "CryptNet's true desire is the Seed– a technology that, in their diabolical scheme, will one day supplant the Feed, upon which our society and many others are founded. Protocol, to us, has brought prosperity and peace– to CryptNet, however, it is a contemptible system of oppression. They believe that information has an almost mystical power of free flow and self-replication, as water seeks its own level or sparks fly upward– and lacking any moral code, they confuse inevitability with Right. It is their view that one day, instead of Feeds terminating in matter compilers, we will have Seeds that, sown on the earth, will sprout up into houses, hamburgers, spaceships, and books– that the Seed will develop inevitably from the Feed, and that upon it will be founded a more highly evolved society."