The Diamond Age (31 page)

The Theatre Parnasse had a rather nice bar, nothing spectacular, just a sort of living room off the main floor, with the bar itself recessed into one wall. The old furniture and pictures had been looted by the Red Guards and later replaced with post-Mao stuff that was not as fine. The management kept the booze locked up when the ractors were working, not sharing any romantic notions about substance-abusing creative geniuses. Miranda stumbled down from her box, fixed herself a club soda, and settled into a plastic chair. She put her shaking hands together like the covers of a book and then buried her face in them. After a few deep breaths she got tears to come, though they came silently, a temporary letting-off-steam cry, not the catharsis she was hoping for. She hadn't earned the catharsis yet, she knew, because what had happened was just the first act. Just the initial incident, or whatever they called it in the books.

  "Rough session?" said a voice. Miranda recognized it, but just barely: It was Carl Hollywood, the dramaturge, in effect her boss. But he didn't sound like a gruff son of a bitch tonight, which was a switch.

  Carl was in his forties, six and a half feet tall, massively built and given to wearing long black coats that almost swept the floor. He had long wavy blond hair drawn back from his forehead and affected a sort of King Tut beard. Either he was celibate, or else he believed that the particulars of his sexual orientation and needs were infinitely too complex to be shared with those he worked with. Everyone was scared shitless of him, and he liked it that way; he couldn't do his job if he was buddies with all of the ractors.

  She heard his cowboy boots approaching across the bare, stained Chinese rug. He confiscated her club soda. "Don't want to drink this fizzy stuff when you're having a cry. It'll come out your nose. You need something like tomato juice-replace those lost electrolytes. I tell you what," he said, rattling his tremendous keychain, "I'll break the rules and fix you an honest-to-god bloody mary. Usually I make 'em with tabasco, which is how we do it where I'm from. But since your mucus membranes are already irritated enough, I'll just make a boring one."

  By the time he was finished with this oration, Miranda had gotten her hands away from her face at least. She turned away from him.

  "Kind of funny racting in that little box, ain't it," Carl said, "kind of isolating. Theatre didn't used to be that way."

  "Isolating? Sort of," Miranda said. "I could use a little more isolation tonight."

  "You telling me to leave you alone, or-"

  "No!" Miranda said, sounding desperate to herself. She brought her voice to heel before continuing. "No, that's not how I meant it. It's just that you never know what role you're going to play. And some of the roles can cut pretty deep. If someone handed me a script for what I just did and asked me if I were interested in the part, I'd refuse it."

  "Was it a porn thing?" Carl Hollywood said. His voice sounded a bit strangled. He was angry all of a sudden. He had stopped in the middle of the room, clenching her bloody mary as if he might pop the glass in his fist.

  "No. It wasn't like that," Miranda said. "At least, it wasn't porn in the sense you're talking about," Miranda said, "though you never know what turns people on."

  "Was the payer looking to get turned on?"

  "No. Absolutely not," Miranda said. Then, after a long time, she said, "It was a kid. A little girl."

  Carl gave her a searching look, then remembered his manners and glanced away, pretending to appraise the carving on the front of the bar.

  "So the next question is," Miranda said after she'd steadied herself with a few gulps of the drink, "why I should get so upset over a kiddie ractive."

  Carl shook his head. "I wasn't going to ask it."

  "But you're wondering."

  "What I'm wondering about is my problem," Carl said. "Let's concentrate on your problems for now." He frowned, sat down across from her and ran his hand back through his hair absent-mindedly. "Is this that big account?" He had access to her spreadsheets; he knew how she'd been spending her time.

  "Yeah."

  "I've sat in on a few of those sessions."

  "I know you have."

  "Seems different from normal kiddie stuff. The education is there, but it's darker. Lots of unreconstructed Grimm Brothers content. Powerful."

  "Yeah."

  "It's amazing to me that one kid can spend that much time-"

  "Me too." Miranda took another swallow, then bit off the end of the celery stick and chewed awhile, stalling. "What it comes down to," she said, "is that I'm raising someone's kid for them."

  Carl looked her straight in the eye for the first time in a while. "And some heavy shit just went down," he said.

  "Some very heavy shit, yes."

  Carl nodded.

  "It's so heavy," Miranda said, "that I don't even know if this girl is alive or dead."

  Carl glanced up at the fancy old clock on the wall, its face yellowed from a century and a half's accumulation of tar and nicotine. "If she's alive," he said, "then she probably needs you."

  "Right," Miranda said. She stood up and headed for the exit. Then, before Carl could react, she spun on the ball of her foot, bent down, and kissed him on the cheek.

  "Aw, stop it," he said.

  "See you later, Carl. Thanks."  She ran up the narrow staircase heading for her box.

  Baron Burt lay dead upon the floor of the Dark Castle. Princess Nell was terrified of the blood that gushed from his wound, but she approached him bravely and plucked the keychain with the twelve keys from his belt. Then she gathered up her Night Friends, tucking them into a little knapsack, and hurriedly packed a picnic lunch while Harv gathered up blankets and ropes and tools for their journey.

  They were walking across the courtyard of the Dark Castle, heading for the great gate with its twelve locks, when suddenly the evil Queen appeared before them, as tall as a giant, wreathed in lightning and thunder-clouds! Tears gushed from her eyes and turned to blood as they rolled down her cheeks. "You have taken him away from me!" she cried. And Nell understood that this was a terrible thing for her wicked stepmother, because she was weak and helpless without a man. "For this," the Queen continued, "I shall curse you to remain locked up in this Dark Castle forever!" And she reached down with one hand like talons and snatched the keychain from Princess Nell's hand. Then she turned into a great vulture and flew away across the ocean toward the Land Beyond.

  "We are lost!" Harv cried. "Now we shall never escape from this place!" But Princess Nell did not lose hope. Not long after the Queen had vanished over the horizon, another bird came flying toward them. It was the Raven, their friend from the Land Beyond, who frequently came to visit them and to entertain them with stories of far-off countries and famous heroes. "Now is your chance to escape," said the Raven. "The evil Queen is engaged in a great battle of sorcery with the Faery Kings and Queens who rule the Land Beyond. Throw a rope out of yon arrow-slit, and climb down to freedom."

  Princess Nell and Harv climbed the stairway into one of the bastions flanking the Dark Castle's main gate. These had narrow windows where in olden times soldiers should shoot arrows down at invaders. Harv tied one end of a rope to a hook in the wall and threw it out one of these slits. Princess Nell threw her Night Friends out, knowing that they would land harmlessly below. Then she climbed out through the slit and down the rope to freedom.

  "Follow me, Harv!" she cried. "All is well down here, and it is a much brighter place than you can possibly imagine!"

  "I cannot," he said. "I am too big to pass through the slit." And he began to throw out the loaves of bread, pieces of cheese, wineskins, and pickles that they had packed for their lunch.

  "Then I will come back up the rope and stay with you," Princess Nell said generously.

  "No!" Harv said, and reeled in the rope, trapping Nell on the outside.

  "But I will be lost without you!" Princess Nell cried.

  "That's your stepmother talking," Harv said. "You are a strong, smart, and brave girl and can do fine without me."

  "Harv is right," said the Raven, flying overhead. "Your destiny is in the Land Beyond. Hurry, lest your stepmother return and trap you here."

  "Then I will go to the Land Beyond with my Night Friends," said Princess Nell, "and I will find the twelve keys, and I will come back here one day and free you from this Dark Castle."

  "I'm not holding my breath," Harv said, "but thanks anyway."

  Down on the shore was a little boat that Nell's father had once used to row around the island. Nell climbed in with her Night Friends and began to row.

  Nell rowed for many hours until her back and shoulders ached. The sun set in the west, the sky became dark, and it became harder to make out the Raven against the darkling sky. Then, much to her relief, her Night Friends came alive as they always did. There was plenty of room in the boat for Princess Nell, Purple, Peter, and Duck, but Dinosaur was so big that he nearly swamped it; he had to sit in the bow and row while the others sat in the stern trying to balance his weight.

  They moved much faster with Dinosaur's strong rowing; but early in the morning a storm blew up, and soon the waves were above their heads, above even Dinosaur's head, and rain was coming down so fast that Purple and Princess Nell had to bail using Dinosaur's shiny helmet as a bucket. Dinosaur threw out all of his armor to lighten the load, but it soon became evident that this was not enough.

  "Then I shall do my duty as a warrior," Dinosaur said. "My usefulness to you is finished, Princess Nell; from now, you must listen to the wisdom of your other Night Friends and use what you have learned from me only when nothing else will work." And he dove into the water and disappeared beneath the waves. The boat bobbed up like a cork. An hour later, the storm began to diminish, and as dawn approached, the ocean was smooth as glass, and filling the western horizon was a green country vaster than anything Princess Nell had ever imagined: the Land Beyond.

  Princess Nell wept bitterly for lost Dinosaur and wanted to wait on the shore in case he had clung to a piece of flotsam or jetsam and drifted to safety.

  "We must not dawdle here," Purple said, "lest we be seen by one of King Magpie's sentries."

  "King Magpie?" said Princess Nell.

  "One of the twelve Faery Kings and Queens. This shore is part of his domain," Purple said. "He has a flock of starlings who watch his borders."

  "Too late!" cried sharp-eyed Peter. "We are discovered!" At that moment, the sun rose, and the Night Friends turned back into stuffed animals.

  A solitary bird was diving toward them out of the morning sky. When it drew closer, Princess Nell saw that it was not one of King Magpie's starlings after all; it was their friend the Raven. He landed on a branch above her head and cried,

  "Good news! Bad news! Where shall I start?"

  "With the good news," Princess Nell said.

  "The wicked Queen lost the battle. Her power has been broken by the other twelve."

  "What is the bad news?" "Each of them took one of the twelve keys as spoil and locked it up in his or her royal treasury. You will never be able to collect all twelve."

  "But I am sworn to get them," said Princess Nell, "and Dinosaur showed me last night that a warrior must hold to her duty even if it leads her into destruction. Show me the way to the castle of King Magpie; we will get his key first."

  She plunged into the forest and, before long, found a dirt road that the Raven said would lead her toward King Magpie's castle. After a break for lunch she started down this road, keeping one sharp eye on the sky.

  There followed a funny little chapter in which Nell encountered the footprints of another traveler on the road, who was soon joined by another traveler, and another. This continued until nightfall, when Purple examined the footprints and informed Princess Nell that she had been walking in circles all day.

  "But I have followed the road carefully," Nell said.

  "The road is one of King Magpie's tricks," Purple said. "It is a circular road. In order to find his castle, we must put on our thinking-caps and use our own brains, for everything in this country is a trick of one kind or another."

  "But how can we find his castle if all of the roads are made to deceive us?" Peter Rabbit said.

  "Nell, do you have your sewing-needle?" Purple said. "Yes," said Nell, reaching into her pocket and taking out her mending kit.

  "Peter, do you have your magic stone?" Purple continued.

  "Yes," Peter said, taking it out of his pocket. It did not look magic, being just a gray lump, but it had the magic property of attracting small bits of metal.

  "And Duck, can you spare a cork from one of the lemonade bottles?"

  "This one's almost empty," Duck said.

  "Very well. I will also need a bowl of water," Purple said, and collected the three items from her three friends.

  Nell read on into the Primer, learning about how Purple made a compass by magnetizing the needle, thrusting it through the cork, and floating it in the bowl of water. She read about their three-day journey through the land of King Magpie, and of all the tricks it contained-animals that stole their food, quicksand, sudden rainstorms, appetizing but poisonous berries, snares, and pitfalls set to catch uninvited guests. Nell knew that if she wanted, she could go back and ask questions about these things later and spend many hours reading about this part of the adventure. But the important part seemed to be the discussions with Peter that ended each day's journey.

  Peter Rabbit was their guide through all of these perils. His eyes were sharp from eating carrots, and his giant ears could hear trouble coming from miles away. His quivering nose sniffed out danger, and his mind was too sharp for most of King Magpie's tricks. Before long they had reached the outskirts of King Magpie's city, which did not even have a wall around it, so confident was King Magpie that no invader could possibly pass through all of the traps and pitfalls in the forest.