Diamond Age or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

She was looking down the empty street past the building where she had lived her whole life. At the end of the street was a big mediatronic advertising display currently running a big Coca-Cola ad, in the ancient and traditional red used by that company. Silhouetted against it were two men: Burt and the big round-headed Chinese man.

They were dancing together.

No, the Chinese man was dancing. Burt was just staggering around like a drunk.

No, the Chinese man was not dancing, but doing some of the exercises that Dojo had taught Nell about. He moved slowly and beautifully except for some moments when every muscle in his body would join into one explosive movement. Usually these explosions were directed toward Burt.

Burt fell down, then struggled up to his knees.

The Chinese man gathered himself together into a black seed, rose into the air, spun around, and unfolded like a blooming flower. One of his feet struck Burt on the point of his chin and seemed to accelerate all the way through Burt's head. Burt's body fell back to the pavement like a few gallons of water sloshed out of a bucket.

The Chinese man became very still, settled his breathing, adjusted his skullcap and the sash on his robe. Then he turned his back to Nell and Harv and walked away down the middle of the street.

Nell opened her Primer. It was showing a picture of Dinosaur, seen in silhouette through a window in the Dark Castle, standing over the corpse of Baron Burt with a smoking stake in his claws. Nell said, "The little boy and the little girl were running away to the Land Beyond."

Hackworth departs from Shanghai; his speculations as to the possible motives of Dr. X.

Would-be passengers skidded to a halt on the saliva-slickened floor of the Shanghai Aerodrome as the announcer brayed the names of great and ancient Chinese cities into his microphone. They set bags down, shushed children, furrowed brows, cupped hands around ears, and pursed lips in utter bewilderment. None of this was made any easier by the extended family of some two dozen just-arrived Boers, women in bonnets and boys in heavy coarse farmer's pants, who had convened by one of the gates and begun to sing a hymn of thanksgiving in thick hoarse voices.

When the announcer called out Hackworth's flight (San Diego with stops in Seoul, Vladivostok, Magadan, Anchorage, Juneau, Prince Rupert, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles), he apparently decided that it was beneath his dignity, above his abilities, or both to speak Korean, Russian, English, French, Coast Salish, and Spanish in the same sentence, and so he just hummed into the microphone for a while as if, far from being a professional announcer, he were a shy, indifferent vocalist hidden within in a vast choir.

Hackworth knew perfectly well that hours would pass before he actually found himself on an airship, and that having achieved that milestone, he might have to wait hours more for its actual departure. Nonetheless, he had to say good-bye to his family at some point, and this seemed no worse a time than any other.

Holding Fiona (so big and solid now!) in the crook of one arm, and holding hands with Gwen, he pushed insistently across a rip tide of travelers, beggars, pickpockets, and entrepreneurs trading in everything from bolts of real silk to stolen intellectual property.

Finally they reached a corner where a languid eddy had separated itself from the flow of people, and where Fiona could safely be set down.

He turned first to Gwen. She still looked as stunned and vacant as she had, more or less consistently, since he told her that he had received a new assignment "whose nature I am not at liberty to disclose, save to say that it concerns the future, not merely of my department, nor of John Zaibatsu, but of that phyle into which you had the good fortune to have been born and to which I have sworn undying loyalty," and that he was making a trip "of indefinite duration" to North America. It had been increasingly clear of late that Gwen simply didn't get it. At first, Hackworth had been annoyed by this, viewing it as a symptom of hitherto unevidenced intellectual shortcomings. More recently, he had come to understand that it had more to do with emotional stance. Hackworth was embarking on a quest of sorts here, real Boy's Own Paper stuff, highly romantic. Gwen hadn't been raised on the proper diet of specious adventure yarns and simply found the whole concept unfathomable. She did a bit of rote sniffling and tear-wiping, gave him a quick kiss and a hug, and stepped back, having completed her role in the ceremony with nothing close to enough histrionics. Hackworth, feeling somewhat disgruntled, squatted down to face Fiona.