took one of the chopsticks as her magic wand. She also had a silvery plastic balloon that Harv had made her in the M.C. All the air had gone out of it. She reckoned it would make a nice shield like she had once seen on the arm of a knight in one of Harv's ractives. She sat in the corner of the room on her mattress with Dinosaur and Purple in front of her, and Duck and Peter behind her, and waited, clutching her magic wand and her shield.
But Mark didn't come home. Tequila came home and wondered where Mark was, but didn't seem to mind that he wasn't there. Finally Harv came back, late that night, after Nell had gone to bed, and hid something under his mattress. The next day Nell looked: It was a pair of heavy sticks, each about a foot long, joined in the middle by a short chain, and the whole thing was smeared with reddish-brown stuff that had gone sticky and crusty.
The next time Nell saw Harv, he told her that Mark was never coming back, that he was one of the pirates he'd warned her about, and that if anyone else ever tried to do such things to her, she should run away and scream and tell Harv and his friends right away. Nell was astonished; she had not understood just how tricky pirates were until this moment.
Hackworth crosses the Causeway into Shanghai; ruminations.
The Causeway joining New Chusan and the Pudong Economic Zone was Atlantis/Shanghai's whole reason for existence, being in fact a titanic Feed restrained by mountainous thrust bearings at each end.
From the standpoint of mass & cash flow, the physical territory of New Chusan itself, a lung of smart coral respiring in the ocean, was nothing more or less than the fountainhead of China's consumer economy, its only function to spew megatons of nanostuff into the Middle Kingdom's ever amplifying Feed network, reaching millions of new peasants every month.
For most of its length the Causeway skimmed the high tide level, but the middle kilometer arched to let ships through; not that anyone really needed ships anymore, but a few recalcitrant swabbies and some creative tour operators were still plying the Yangtze estuary in junks, which looked precious underneath the catenary arch of the big Feed, strumming the ancient-meets-modern chord for adherents of the National Geographic worldview. As Hackworth reached the apogee, he could see similar Causeways to port and starboard, linking the outskirts of Shanghai with other artificial islands. Nippon Nano looked Fujiesque, a belt of office buildings around the waterline, houses above that, the higher the better, then a belt of golf courses, the whole top third reserved for gardens, bamboo groves, and other forms of micromanaged Nature. In the other direction was a little bit of Hindustan. The geotecture of their island owed less to the Mogul period than to the Soviet, no effort being made to shroud its industrial heart in fractal artifice. It squatted out there some ten kilometers from New Chusan, sabotaging many expensive views and serving as the butt of snotty wog jokes. Hackworth never joined in these jokes because he was better informed than most and knew that the Hindustanis stood an excellent chance of stomping all over the Victorians and the Nipponese in the competition for China. They were just as smart, there were more of them, and they understood the peasant thing.
From the high point of the arch, Hackworth could look across the flat territory of outer Pudong and into the high-rise district of metropolis. He was struck, as ever, by the sheer clunkiness of old cities, the acreage sacrificed, over the centuries, to various stabs at the problem of Moving Stuff Around. Highways, bridges, railways, and their attendant smoky, glinting yards, power lines, pipelines, port facilities ranging from sampan-and-junk to stevedore-and-cargo-net to containership, airports. Hackworth had enjoyed San Francisco and was hardly immune to its charm, but Atlantis/Shanghai had imbued him with, the sense that all
But Mark didn't come home. Tequila came home and wondered where Mark was, but didn't seem to mind that he wasn't there. Finally Harv came back, late that night, after Nell had gone to bed, and hid something under his mattress. The next day Nell looked: It was a pair of heavy sticks, each about a foot long, joined in the middle by a short chain, and the whole thing was smeared with reddish-brown stuff that had gone sticky and crusty.
The next time Nell saw Harv, he told her that Mark was never coming back, that he was one of the pirates he'd warned her about, and that if anyone else ever tried to do such things to her, she should run away and scream and tell Harv and his friends right away. Nell was astonished; she had not understood just how tricky pirates were until this moment.
Hackworth crosses the Causeway into Shanghai; ruminations.
The Causeway joining New Chusan and the Pudong Economic Zone was Atlantis/Shanghai's whole reason for existence, being in fact a titanic Feed restrained by mountainous thrust bearings at each end.
From the standpoint of mass & cash flow, the physical territory of New Chusan itself, a lung of smart coral respiring in the ocean, was nothing more or less than the fountainhead of China's consumer economy, its only function to spew megatons of nanostuff into the Middle Kingdom's ever amplifying Feed network, reaching millions of new peasants every month.
For most of its length the Causeway skimmed the high tide level, but the middle kilometer arched to let ships through; not that anyone really needed ships anymore, but a few recalcitrant swabbies and some creative tour operators were still plying the Yangtze estuary in junks, which looked precious underneath the catenary arch of the big Feed, strumming the ancient-meets-modern chord for adherents of the National Geographic worldview. As Hackworth reached the apogee, he could see similar Causeways to port and starboard, linking the outskirts of Shanghai with other artificial islands. Nippon Nano looked Fujiesque, a belt of office buildings around the waterline, houses above that, the higher the better, then a belt of golf courses, the whole top third reserved for gardens, bamboo groves, and other forms of micromanaged Nature. In the other direction was a little bit of Hindustan. The geotecture of their island owed less to the Mogul period than to the Soviet, no effort being made to shroud its industrial heart in fractal artifice. It squatted out there some ten kilometers from New Chusan, sabotaging many expensive views and serving as the butt of snotty wog jokes. Hackworth never joined in these jokes because he was better informed than most and knew that the Hindustanis stood an excellent chance of stomping all over the Victorians and the Nipponese in the competition for China. They were just as smart, there were more of them, and they understood the peasant thing.
From the high point of the arch, Hackworth could look across the flat territory of outer Pudong and into the high-rise district of metropolis. He was struck, as ever, by the sheer clunkiness of old cities, the acreage sacrificed, over the centuries, to various stabs at the problem of Moving Stuff Around. Highways, bridges, railways, and their attendant smoky, glinting yards, power lines, pipelines, port facilities ranging from sampan-and-junk to stevedore-and-cargo-net to containership, airports. Hackworth had enjoyed San Francisco and was hardly immune to its charm, but Atlantis/Shanghai had imbued him with, the sense that all
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