A couple of years later, the division had been sent off to South China in a panic. Trouble had been brewing there since Zhang Han Hua had gone on his Long Ride and forced the merchants to kowtow. Zhang had personally liberated several lao gai damps, where slave laborers were hard at work making trinkets for export to the West, smashing computer display screens with the massive dragon's-head grip of his cane, beating the overseers into bloody heaps on the ground. Zhang's "investigations" of various thriving businesses, mostly in the south, had thrown millions of people out of work. They had gone into the streets and raised hell and been joined by sympathetic units of the People's Liberation Army. The rebellion was eventually put down by PLA units from the north, but the leaders had vanished into the "concrete countryside" of the Pearl Delta, and so Zhang had been forced to set up a permanent garrison state in the south. The northern troops had kept order crudely but effectively for a few years, until, one night, an entire division of them, some 15,000 men, was wiped out by an infestation of nanosites.

The leaders of the rebellion emerged from their hiding places, proclaimed the Coastal Republic, and called for Protocol Enforcement troops to come in and protect them. Colonel Arthur Hornsby Moore, a veteran of the fighting in Eastern Europe, was brought in to command. He had been born in Hong Kong, left as a small child when the Chinese took it over, spent much of his youth wandering around Asia with his parents, and eventually settled in the British Isles. He was picked for the job because he was fluent in Cantonese and not half bad in Mandarin. Looking at the old cine clips in the Encyclopædia, Nell could see a younger Constable Moore, the same man with more hair and fewer doubts.

The Chinese Civil War began in earnest three years later, when the Northerns, who didn't have access to nanotech, started lobbing nukes. Not long afterward, the Muslim nations had finally gotten their act together and overrun much of Xinjiang Province, killing some of the Han Chinese population and driving the rest eastward into the maw of the civil war. Colonel Moore suffered an extremely dire infestation of primitive nanosites and was removed from the action and put on extended convalescent leave. By that time, the truce line between the Celestial Kingdom and the Coastal Republic had been established.

Since then, as Nell knew from her studies at the Academy, Lau Ge had succeeded Zhang as the northern leader-the leader of the Celestial Kingdom. After a decent interval had passed, he had thoroughly purged all remaining traces of Communist ideology, denouncing it as a Western imperialist plot, and proclaimed himself Chamberlain to the Throneless King. The Throneless King was Confucius, and Lau Ge was now the highest-ranking of all the mandarins.

The Encyclopædia did not say much more about Colonel Arthur Hornsby Moore, except that he'd resurfaced as an adviser a few years later during some outbreaks of nanotech terrorism in Germany, and later retired and became a security consultant. In this latter capacity he had helped to promulgate the concept of defense in depth, around which all modern cities, including Atlantis/Shanghai, were built.

Nell cooked the Constable an especially nice dinner one Saturday, and when they were finished with dessert, she began to tell him about Harv and Tequila, and Harv's tales of the incomparable Bud, their dear departed father. Suddenly it was about three hours later, and Nell was still telling the Constable stories about Mom's boyfriends, and the Constable was continuing to listen, reaching up occasionally to fiddle with his white beard but otherwise displaying an extremely grave and thoughtful countenance. Finally she got to the part about Burt, and how Nell had tried to kill him with the screwdriver, and how he had chased them down the stairs and apparently met his demise at the hands of the mysterious round-headed Chinese gentleman. The Constable found this extremely interesting and asked many questions, first about the detailed tactical development of the screwdriver assault and then about the style of dancing used by the Chinese gentleman, and what he was wearing.

"I have been angry at my Primer ever since that night," Nell said.

"Why?" said the Constable, looking surprised, though he was hardly more surprised than Nell herself. Nell had said a remarkable number of things this evening without having ever, to her memory, thought them first; or at least she didn't believe she had ever thought them before.

"I cannot help but feel that it misled me. It made me suppose that killing Burt would be a simple matter, and that it would improve my life; but when I tried to put these ideas into practice . . ." She could not think of what to say next.

". . . the rest of your life happened," the Constable said. "Girl, you must admit that your life with Burt dead has been an improvement on your life with Burt alive."

"Yes."

"So the Primer was correct on that point. Now, as to the fact that killing people is a more complicated business in practice than in theory, I will certainly concede your point. But I think it is not likely to be the only instance in which real life turns out to be more complicated than what you have seen in the book. This is the Lesson of the Screwdriver, and you would do well to remember it. All it amounts to is that you must be ready to learn from sources other than your magic book."

"But of what use is the book then?"

"I suspect it is very useful. You want only the knack of translating its lessons into the real world. For example," the Constable said, plucking his napkin from his lap and crushing it into the tabletop, "let us take something very concrete, such as beating the bejesus out of people." He stood up and tromped out into the garden. Nell ran after him. "I have seen you doing your martial-arts exercises," he said, switching to a peremptory outdoor voice, an addressing-the-troops voice. "Martial arts means beating the bejesus out of people. Now, let us see you try your luck with me." Negotiations ensued as Nell endeavored to establish whether the Constable was serious. This being accomplished, she sat down on the flagstones and began getting her shoes off. The Constable watched her with raised eyebrows.

"Oh, that's very formidable," he said. "All evildoers had best be on the lookout for little Nell-unless she happens to be wearing her bloody shoes."

Nell did a couple of stretching exercises, ignoring more derisive commentary from the Constable. She bowed to him, and he waved his hand at her dismissively. She got set into the stance that Dojo had taught her. In response, the Constable moved his feet about an inch farther apart than they had been, and pooched his belly out, which was apparently the chosen stance of some mysterious Scottish fighting technique.

Nothing happened for a long time except for a lot of dancing around. Nell danced, that is, and the Constable blundered around desultorily. "What's this?" he said. "All you know is defense?"

"Mostly, sir," Nell said. "I do not suppose it was the Primer's intention to teach me how to assault people."

"Oh, what good is that?" the Constable sneered, and suddenly he reached out and grabbed Nell by the hair– not hard enough to hurt. He held her for a few moments, and then let her go. "Thus endeth the first lesson," he said.

"You think that I should cut my hair off?"

The Constable looked terribly disappointed. "Oh, no," he said,

"never, ever, ever cut your hair off. If I grabbed you by your wrist"– and he did– "would you cut your arm off?"

"No, sir."

"Did the Primer teach you that people would pull your hair?"

"No, sir."

"Did it teach you that your mother's boyfriends would beat you up, and your mother not protect you?"