The Diamond Age (2 page)

  At no particular point in the monologue, the banker cut Bud off simply by looking up at him brightly. "You wish to secure a line ofcredit," he said, as if he were pleasantly surprised, which was not terribly likely.

  "I guess you could say that," Bud allowed, wishing he'd known to put it in such fine-sounding terminology.

  The banker reached inside his jacket and withdrew a piece of paper, folded in thirds, from his breast pocket. "You may wish to peruse this brochure," he said to Bud, and to the brochure itself he rattled off something in an unfamiliar tongue. As Bud took it from the banker's hand, the blank page generated a nice animated color logo and music. The logo developed into a peacock. Beneath it, a video presentation commenced, hosted by a similar-looking gent- sort of Indian looking but sort of Arab too. "'The Parsis welcome you to Peacock Bank,'" he said.

  "What's a Parsi?" Bud said to the banker, who merely lowered his eyelids one click and jutted his goatee at the piece of paper, which had picked up on his question and already branched into an explanation. Bud ended up regretting having asked, because the answer turned out to be a great deal of general hoo-ha about these Parsis, who evidently wanted to make very sure no one mistook them for dotheads or Pakis or Arabs- not that they had any problem with those very fine ethnic groups, mind you. As hard as he tried not to pay attention, Bud absorbed more than he wanted to know about the Parsis, their oddball religion, their tendency to wander around, even their fucking cuisine, which looked weird but made. his mouth water anyway. Then the brochure got back to the business at hand, which was lines of credit.

  Bud had seen this all before. The Peacock Bank was running the same racket as all the others: If they accepted you, they'd shoot the credit card right into you, then and there, on the spot. These guys implanted it in the iliac crest of the pelvis, some opted for the mastoid bone in the skull-anywhere a big bone was close to the surface. A bone mount was needed because the card had to talk on the radio, which meant it needed an antenna long enough to hear radio waves. Then you could go around and buy stuff just by asking for it; Peacock Bank and the merchant you were buying from and the card in your pelvis handled all the details.

  Banks varied in their philosophy of interest rates, minimum monthly payments, and so on. None of that mattered to Bud. What mattered was what they would do to him if he got into arrears, and so after he had allowed a decent interval to pass pretending to listen very carefully to all this crap about interest rates, he inquired, in an offhanded way, like it was an afterthought, about their collection policy. The banker glanced out the window like he hadn't noticed.

  The soundtrack segued into some kind of a cool jazz number and a scene of a multicultural crew of ladies and gentlemen, not looking much like degraded credit abusers at all, sitting around a table assembling chunky pieces of ethnic jewelry by hand. They were having a good time too, sipping tea and exchanging lively banter. Sipping too much tea, to Bud's suspicious eye, so opaque to so many things yet so keen to the tactics of media manipulation. They were making rather a big deal out of the tea.

  He noted with approval that they were wearing normal clothes, not uniforms, and that men and women were allowed to mingle. "Peacock Bank supports a global network of clean, safe, and commodious workhouses, so if unforeseen circumstances should befall you during our relationship, or if you should inadvertently anticipate your means, you can rely on being housed close to home while you and the bank resolve any difficulties. Inmates in Peacock Bank workhouses enjoy private beds and in some cases private rooms. Naturally your children can remain with you for the duration of your visit. Working conditions are among the best in the industry, and the high added-value content of our folk jewelry operation means that, no matter the extent of your difficulties, your situation will be happily resolved in practically no time."

  "What's the, uh, strategy for making sure people actually, you know, show up when they're supposed to show up?" Bud said. At this point the banker lost interest in the proceedings, straightened up, strolled around his desk, and sat down, staring out the window across the water toward Pudong and Shanghai. "That detail is not covered in the brochure," he said, "as most of our prospective customers do not share your diligent attention to detail insofar as that aspect of the arrangement is concerned."

  He exhaled through his nose, like a man eager not to smell something, and adjusted his goatee one time. "The enforcement regime consists of three phases. We have pleasant names for them, of course, but you might think of them, respectively, as: one, a polite reminder; two, well in excess of your pain threshold; three, spectacularly fatal."

  Bud thought about showing this Parsi the meaning of fatal right then and there, but as a bank, the guy probably had pretty good security. Besides, it was pretty standard policy, and Bud was actually kind of glad the guy'd given it to him straight. "Okay, well, I'll get back to you," he said. "Mind if I keep the brochure?"

  The Parsi waved him and the brochure away. Bud took to the streets again in search of cash on easier terms.

A visit from royalty;  the Hackworths take an airship holiday;  Princess Charlotte's birthday party;  Hackworth encounters a member of the peerage.

 
Three geodesic seeds skated over the roofs and gardens of Atlantis/Shanghai on a Friday afternoon, like the germs of some moon-size calabash. A pair of mooring masts sprouted and grew from cricket ovals at Source Victoria Park. The smallest of the airships was decorated with the royal ensign; she kept station overhead as the two large ones settled toward their berths. Their envelopes, filled with nothing, were predominantly transparent. Instead of blocking the sunlight, they yellowed and puckered it, projecting vast abstract patterns of brighter and not-as-bright that the children in their best crinolines and natty short-pants suits tried to catch in their arms. A brass band played. A tiny figure in a white dress stood at the rail of the airship
Atlanti
s, waving at the children below. They all knew that this must be the birthday girl herself, Princess Charlotte, and they cheered and waved back.

  Fiona Hackworth had been wandering through the Royal Ecological Conservatory bracketed by her parents, who hoped that in this way they could keep mud and vegetable debris off her skirts. The strategy had not been completely successful, but with a quick brush, John and Gwendolyn were able to transfer most of the dirt onto their white gloves. From there it went straight into the air. Most gentlemen's and ladies' gloves nowadays were constructed of infinitesimal fabricules that knew how to eject dirt; you could thrust your gloved hand into mud, and it would be white a few seconds later.

  The hierarchy of staterooms on
Æther
matched the status of its passengers perfectly, as these parts of the ship could be decompiled and remade between voyages. For Lord Finkle-McGraw, his three children and their  spouses, and Elizabeth (his first and only grandchild so far), the airship lowered a private escalator thatcarried them up into the suite at the very prow, with its nearly 180-degree forward view.

  Aft of the Finkle-McGraws were a dozen or so other Equity Lords, merely earl- or baron-level, mostly ushering grandchildren rather than children into the class B suites. Then it was executives, whose gold watch chains, adangle with tiny email-boxes, phones, torches, snuffboxes, and other fetishes, curved round the dark waistcoats they wore to deemphasize their bellies. Most of their children had reached the age when they were no longer naturally endearing to anyone save their own parents; the size when their energy was more a menace than a wonder; and the level of intelligence when what would have been called innocence in a smaller child was infuriating rudeness. A honeybee cruising for nectar is pretty despite its implicit threat, but the same behavior in a hornet three times larger makes one glance about for some handy swatting material. So on the broad escalators leading to the first-class staterooms, one could see many upper arms being violently grabbed by hissing fathers with their top hats askew and teeth clenched and eyes swiveling for witnesses.

  John Percival Hackworth was an engineer. Most engineers were assigned to tiny rooms with fold-down beds, but Hackworth bore the loftier title of Artifex and had been a team leader on this very project, so he rated a second-class stateroom with one double bed and a fold-out for Fiona. The porter brought their overnight bags around just as
Æther
was clearing her mooring mast- a twenty-meter diamondoid truss that had already dissolved back into the billiard-table surface of the oval by the time the ship had turned itself to the south. Lying as close as it did to Source Victoria, the park was riddled with catachthonic Feed lines, and anything could be grown there on short notice.

  The Hackworths' stateroom was to starboard, and so as they accelerated away from New Chusan, they got to watch the sun set on Shanghai, shining redly through the city's eternal cloak of coal-smoke. Gwendolyn read Fiona stories in bed for an hour while John perused the evening edition of the
Time
s, then spread out some papers on the room's tiny desk. Later, they both changed into their evening clothes, primping quietly in twilight so as not to wake Fiona. At nine o'clock they stepped into the passageway, locked the door, and followed the sound of the big band to
Æthe
r's grand ballroom, where the dancing was just getting underway. The floor of the ballroom was a slab of transpicuous diamond. The lights werelow. They seemed to float above the glittering moonlit surface of the Pacific as they did the waltz, minuet, Lindy, and electric slide into the night.
. . .

 
Sunrise found the three airships hovering over the South China Sea, no land visible. The ocean was relatively shallow here, but only Hackworth and a few other engineers knew that. The Hackworths had a passable view from their stateroom window, but John woke up early and staked out a place on the diamond floor of the ballroom, ordered an espresso and a
Times
from a waiter, and passed the time pleasantly while Gwen and Fiona got themselves ready for the day. All around them he could hear children speculating on what was about to happen.

  Gwen and Fiona arrived just late enough to make it interesting for John, who took his mechanical pocket watch out at least a dozen times as he waited, and finally ended up clutching it in one hand, nervously popping the lid open and shut. Gwen folded her long legs and spread her skirts out prettily on the transparent floor, drawing vituperative looks from several women who remained standing. But John was relieved to see that most of these women were relatively low-ranking engineers or their wives; none of the higher-ups needed to come to the ballroom.

  Fiona collapsed to her hands and knees and practically shoved her face against the diamond, her fundament aloft. Hackworth gripped the creases of his trousers, hitched them up just a bit, and sank to one knee.

  The smart coral burst out of the depths with violence that shocked Hackworth, even though he'd been in on the design, seen the trial runs. Viewed through the dark surface of the Pacific, it was like watching an explosion through a pane of shattered glass. It reminded him of pouring a jet of heavy cream into coffee,  watching it rebound from the bottom of the cup in a turbulent fractal bloom that solidified just as it dashed against the surface. The speed of this process was a carefully planned sleight-of-hand; the smart coral had actually been growing down on the bottom of the ocean for the last three months, drawing its energy from a supercon that they'd grown across the seafloor for the occasion, extracting the necessary atoms directly from the seawater and the gases dissolved therein. The process happening below looked chaotic, and in a way it was; but each lithocule knew exactly where it was supposed to go and what it was supposed to do. They were tetrahedral building blocks of calcium and carbon, the size of poppyseeds, each equipped with a power source, a brain, and a navigational system. They rose from the bottom of the sea at a signal given by Princess Charlotte; she had awakened to find a small present under her pillow, unwrapped it to find a golden whistle on a chain, stood out on her balcony, and blown the whistle.

  The coral was converging on the site of the island from all directions, some of the lithocules traveling several kilometers to reach their assigned positions. They displaced a volume of water equal to the island itself, several cubic kilometers in all. The result was furious turbulence, an upswelling in the surface of the ocean that made some of the children scream, thinking it might rise up and snatch the airship out of the sky; and indeed a few drops pelted the ship's diamond belly, prompting the pilot to give her a little more altitude. The curt maneuver forced hearty laughter from all of the fathers in the ballroom, who were delighted by the illusion of danger and the impotence of Nature.

  The foam and mist cleared away at some length to reveal a new island, salmon-colored in the light of dawn. Applause and cheers diminished to a professional murmur. The chattering of the astonished children was too loud and high to hear.

  It would be a couple of hours yet. Hackworth snapped his fingers for a waiter and ordered fresh fruit, juice, Belgian waffles, more coffee. They might as well enjoy
Æthe
r's famous cuisine while the island sprouted castles, fauns, centaurs, and enchanted forests.

  Princess Charlotte was the first human to set foot on the enchanted isle, tripping down the gangway of
Atlantis
with a couple of her little friends in tow, all of them looking like tiny wildflowers in their ribboned sun-bonnets, all carrying little baskets for souvenirs, though before long these were handed over to governesses. The Princess faced
Æther
and
Chinook
, moored a couple of hundred meters away, and spoke to them in a normal tone of voice that was, however, heard clearly by all; a nanophone was hidden somewhere in the lace collar of her pinafore, tied into phased-audio-array systems grown into the top layers of the island itself.