L ike much that was done with nanotechnology, Feed lines were 
assembled primarily from a few species of small and uncomplicated atoms in the 
upper right-hand corner of Mendeleev's grid: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, 
phosphorus, sulfur, and chlorine. The Fists of Righteous Harmony had 
discovered, to their enduring delight, that objects made of these atoms burned 
rather nicely once you got them going. The flat, low Yangtze Delta country east 
of Shanghai was a silk district well stocked with mulberry
trees, which when felled, stacked, and burned beneath the Feed lines would 
eventually ignite them like road flares.