ys. "Watch the lasers."
     Down below, Sushi K pirouettes spastically as a beer  bottle caroms off
his  forehead.  A bundle  of lasers  sweeps  across  the embankment, clearly
visible in the fine dust being drawn out of it by the wind.
     "This guy - this bug - was using lasers. As soon as he came up here - "
     "They betrayed his position," Squeaky says.
     "And then Raven came after him."
     "Well, we're not saying it's him," Squeaky says. "But I need to know if
this  character" - he  nods at the  corpse -  "might have done anything that
would have made Raven feel threatened."
     "What is this, group therapy? Who cares if Raven felt threatened?"
     "I do," Squeaky says with great finality.
     "Lagos was  just a gargoyle. A big  hoover  for intel. I don't think he
did wet operations - and if he did, he wouldn't do it in that get-up."
     "So why do you think Raven was feeling so jumpy?"
     "I guess he doesn't like being under surveillance," Hiro says.
     "Yeah." Squeaky says. "You should remember that."
     Then Squeaky  puts one hand over his ear, the better to  hear voices on
his headset radio.
     "Did Y.T. see this happen?" Hiro says.
     "No," Squeaky mumbles,  a few seconds later. "But she saw  him  leaving
the scene. She's following him."
     "Why would she want to do that!?"
     "I guess you told her to, or something."
     "I didn't think she'd take off after him."
     "Well,  she  doesn't know that he killed the guy,"  Squeaky says.  "She
just  phoned  in a sighting - he's riding his Harley into Chinatown." And he
begins  running up the embankment. A couple of Enforcers' cars are parked on
the shoulder of the highway up there, waiting.
     Hiro tags along. His legs are in incredible shape  from sword fighting,
and he manages to  catch up  to Squeaky by the time he reaches his car. When
the driver undoes the electric door locks, Hiro scoots into the back seat as
Squeaky is going into the front. Squeaky turns around and  gives him a tired
look.
     "I'll behave," Hiro says.
     "Just one thing - "
     "I know. Don't fuck around with Raven."
     "That's right."
     Squeaky holds  his  glare for  another second  and  then turns  around,
motions the driver to drive. He impatiently  rips ten  feet of hard copy out
of the dashboard printer and begins sifting through it.
     On this long strip of paper, Hiro  glimpses multiple  renditions of the
important Crip, the guy with the goatee whom Raven was dealing with earlier.
On the printout, he is labeled as "T-Bone Murphy."
     There's also a picture of Raven. It's an action shot, not  a mug  shot.
It  is  terrible   output.  It  has  been   caught  through  some   kind  of
light-amplifying  optics  that  wash  out  the  color  and  make  everything
incredibly grainy and low contrast. It looks like some image processing  has
been done to make it sharper; this also makes it grainier. The license plate
is  just an  oblate blur,  overwhelmed by  the glow of the  taillight. It is
heeled over sharply,  the sidecar  wheel several inches off the ground.  But
the  rider  doesn't have  any visible  neck; his head,  or  rather  the dark
splotch  that is there,  just keeps getting wider until  it merges into  his
shoulders. Definitely Raven.
     "How come you have pictures of T-bone Murphy in there?" Hiro says.
     "He's chasing him," Squeaky says.
     "Who's chasing whom?"
     "Well, your friend Y.T. ain't no Edward R. Murrow. But as far as we can
tell from her reports, they've been sighted in the same area, trying to kill
each other,"  Squeaky says. He's  speaking  with  the slow, distant tones of
someone who is getting live updates over his headphones.
     "They were doing some kind of a deal earlier," Hiro says.
     "Then I ain't hardly surprised they're trying to kill each other now."

     Once they get to a certain part of town, following the T-Bone and Raven
show  becomes  a matter of connect-the-ambulances. Every  couple  of  blocks
there is a cluster  of cops and  medics, lights sparkling, radios  coughing.
All they have to do is go from one to the next.
     At the  first one,  there  is  a dead Crip lying  on  the  pavement.  A
six-foot-wide blood slick runs from  his body, diagonally down the street to
a storm  drain.  The ambulance  people  are  standing  around,  smoking  and
drinking  coffee from go cups,  waiting for  The Enforcers to  get  finished
measuring and photographing so that they can haul the corpse to the  morgue.
There are no  IV lines set up,  no bits  of medical  trash strewn around the
area, no open doc boxes; they didn't even try.
     They  proceed around a  couple of comers  to the  next constellation of
flashing lights. Here, the ambulance drivers are inflating a cast around the
leg of a MetaCop.
     "Run over by the  motorcycle," Squeaky says, shaking his head  with the
traditional Enforcer's  disdain  for  their pathetic  junior relations,  the
MetaCops.
     Finally,  he patches  the radio feed into the dashboard so they can all
hear it.
     The  motorcyclist's trail is now  cold and it  sounds  like most of the
local  cops  are  dealing with aftermath problems. But  a citizen  has  just
called in to complain that a man on a motorcycle, and several other persons,
are trashing a field of hops on her block.
     "Three blocks from here," Squeaky says to the driver.
     "Hops?" Hiro says.
     "I know the place. Local microbrewery," Squeaky says.  "They grow their
own hops. Contract it  out to some urban  gardeners. Chinese peasants who do
the grunt work for 'em."

     When  they arrive,  the first  authority  figures on the  scene, it  is
obvious  why Raven decided to let himself get chased into a hop field: It is
great cover.  The  hops are heavy,  flowering vines  that  grow on trellises
lashed together out of long bamboo poles. The trellises are eight feet high;
you can't see a thing.
     They all get out of the car.
     "T-Bone?" Squeaky hollers.
     They  hear someone yelling  in English from  the  middle of  the of the
field. "Over here!" But he isn't responding to Squeaky.
     They walk into the hop field. Carefully. There  is an enveloping smell,
a  resiny odor not  unlike  marijuana,  the sharp  smell that  comes off  an
expensive beer. Squeaky motions for Hiro to stay behind him.
     In  other circumstances, Hiro would  do so.  He is  half  Japanese, and
under certain circumstances, totally respectful of authority.
     This is not  one  of those  circumstances. If Raven comes anywhere near
Hiro, Hiro is going to be talking to him with his katana. And if it comes to
that,  Hiro doesn't want Squeaky anywhere  near him, because he could lose a
limb on the backswing.
     "Yo, T-Bone!" Squeaky yells. "It's The Enforcers, and we're pissed! Get
the fuck out of there, man. Let's go home!"
     T-Bone, or Hiro assumes it  is  T-Bone, responds only by firing a short
burst from a machine pistol. The muzzle flash lights up the hop vines like a
strobe light. Hiro aims one shoulder at the  ground, buries himself  in soft
earth and foliage for a few seconds.
     "Fuck!" T-Bone says. It is a disappointed fuck, but a fuck with a heavy
undertone of overwhelming frustration and not a little fear.
     Hiro  gets up into a conservative squat, looks  around. Squeaky and the
other Enforcer are nowhere to be seen.
     Hiro forces his way through one of the trellises and into a row that is
closer to the action.
     The other Enforcer - the driver - is in  the same row, about ten meters
away, his  back  turned  to  Hiro. He glances  over  his shoulder  in Hiro's
direction, then looks in the  other  direction and sees someone else -  Hiro
can't quite see who, because The Enforcer is in the way.
     "What the fuck," The Enforcer says.
     Then  he jumps a little,  as though startled, and  something happens to
the back of his jacket.
     "Who is it?" Hiro says.
     The Enforcer  doesn't say anything. He is  trying to turn back  around,
but something prevents it. Something is shaking the vines around him.
     The Enforcer shudders, careens  sideways from foot to foot. "Got to get
loose," he  says,  speaking loudly to no one in particular. He breaks into a
trot, running away  from  Hiro. The other person who was in the  row is gone
now. The  Enforcer is running in a strange stiff  upright gait with his arms
down to his sides. His bright green windbreaker isn't hanging correctly.
     Hiro runs  after  him. The  Enforcer is  trotting toward the end of the
row, where the lights of the street are visible.
     The Enforcer  exits the  field a couple  of seconds ahead of  him, and,
when Hiro gets to the curb, is in the middle of the road, illuminated mostly
by flashing  blue  light  from a giant overhead  video screen. He is turning
around and around with  strange little  stomping  footsteps, not keeping his
balance very well.  He  is saying, "Aaah,  aaah" in a  low, calm voice  that
gurgles as though he badly needs to clear his throat.
     As The Enforcer revolves, Hiro perceives that he has been impaled on an
eight-foot-long bamboo spear. Half sticks  out the front, half out the back.
The  back half is dark with blood and black fecal  clumps, the front half is
greenish-yellow and clean. The Enforcer can only see the front half and  his
hands are playing up and down it, trying to verify what his eyes are seeing.
Then the back  half whacks into a parked car, spraying a  narrow fan of head
cheese across the waxed  and polished trunk  lid. The car's  alarm goes off.
The Enforcer hears the sound and turns around to see what it is.
     When Hiro last sees him, he is running down the center of the pulsating
neon street toward the center of  Chinatown, wailing a terrible, random song
that  clashes with the  bleating of the car alarm. Hiro  feels even at  this
moment  that  something has  been  torn  open in  the  world and  that he is
dangling above the gap, staring into a  place where he does  not want to be.
Lost in the biomass.
     Hiro draws his katana.
     "Squeaky!" Hiro hollers. "He's throwing spears! He's pretty good at it!
Your driver is hit!"
     "Got it!" Squeaky hollers.
     Hiro goes back into the closest  row. He hears a sound off to the right
and uses the katana to cut his way through into that row. This is not a nice
place to be at the moment, but it is safer than standing in the street under
the plutonic light of the video screen.
     Down the row is a man. Hiro  recognizes him by the strange shape of his
head,  which just gets wider until it reaches his shoulders. He is holding a
freshly cut bamboo pole in one hand, torn from the trellis.
     Raven strokes one end of it with his other hand, and a chunk falls off.
Something flickers  in that  hand, the  blade of a knife apparently.  He has
just cut off the end of the pole at an acute angle to make it into a spear.
     He  throws it fluidly.  The  motion is calm  and  beautiful. The  spear
disappears because it is coming straight at Hiro.
     Hiro does not  have time  to adopt the proper stance, but  this is fine
since he  has already adopted  it. Whenever he has a  katana in his hands he
adopts it automatically, otherwise he fears that he may lose his balance and
carelessly  lop  off  one  of his  extremities.  Feet  parallel and  pointed
straight  ahead, right foot in  front of the left foot,  katana held down at
groin level like an extension  of the phallus. Hiro raises the tip and slaps
at  the spear with the side of  the blade, diverting it just enough; it goes
into a slow sideways spin, the point missing Hiro just barely and entangling
itself in a vine on Hiro's right. The butt end swings around and  gets  hung
up on the left,  tearing  out a number of vines as it comes to a stop. It is
heavy, and traveling very fast.
     Raven is gone.
     Mental note: Whether or not Raven intended to  take on a bunch of Crips
and Enforcers singlehandedly tonight, he didn't even bother to pack a gun.
     Another burst of gunfire sounds from several rows over.
     Hiro has been standing here for rather a long time, thinking about what
just  happened.  He cuts through  the next row  of  vines  and heads  in the
direction of the muzzle flash,  running his  mouth:  "Don't shoot  this way,
T-Bone, I'm on your side, man."
     "Motherfucker threw a stick into my chest, man!" T-Bone complains.
     When you're wearing armor, getting hit by a spear just isn't such a big
deal anymore.
     "Maybe  you should just forget it," Hiro  says. He is having to cut his
way through a lot of  rows to  reach T-Bone,  but as  long  as T-Bone  keeps
talking, Hiro can find him.
     "I'm a Crip. We don't forget nothing." T-Bone says. "Is that you?"
     "No," Hiro says. "I'm not there yet."
     A very  brief  burst of gunfire,  rapidly cut off. Suddenly, no  one is
talking. Hiro cuts his way  into  the  next row and almost steps on T-Bone's
hand, which has been amputated at the wrist.  Its finger is still tangled in
the trigger guard of a MAC-11.
     The  remainder of  T-Bone is  two rows  away.  Hiro stops  and  watches
through the vines.
     Raven is one of the largest men Hiro has seen outside of a professional
sporting event. T-Bone is backing away from  him down the row. Raven, moving
with long confident strides, catches up with  T-Bone and swings one hand  up
into T-Bone's body; Hiro doesn't have to see the knife to know it is there.
     It  looks  as though T-Bone  is going  to get out of this with  nothing
worse  than  a sewn-on  hand  and some rehab work, because you can't stab  a
person to death that way, not if he is wearing armor.
     T-Bone screams.
     He is  bouncing up and down on Raven's hand. The knife has gone all the
way through the bulletproof fabric and now Raven is trying to gut T-Bone the
same way  he did Lagos. But his knife - whatever the hell it is  - won't cut
through the fabric that way.  It is sharp enough to penetrate - which should
be impossible - but not sharp enough to slash.
     Raven pulls it out, drops to one knee, and swings his knife hand around
in  a long ellipse  between  T-Bone's thighs. Then he  jumps  over  T-Bone's
collapsing body and runs.
     Hiro gets the sense that T-Bone is a dead man, so he follows Raven. His
intention is not to hunt the man down,  but rather to  maintain a very clear
picture of where he is.
     He  has to cut  through  a number  of rows. He rapidly  loses Raven. He
considers running as fast as he can in the opposite direction.
     Then he hears the  deep, lung-stretching rumble of a motorcycle engine.
Hiro runs for the nearest street exit, just hoping to catch a glimpse.
     He does, though it is a quick one, not a hell of a  lot better than the
graphic in  the cop car. Raven turns to look  at Hiro, just as he is blowing
out of there. He's right under  a streetlight, so Hiro gets  a clear look at
his face  for  the first  time.  He is Asian.  He has a wispy  mustache that
trails down past his chin.
     Another  Crip  comes running  out into the  street  half a second after
Hiro, as  Raven is pulling away. He slows for a moment to  take stock of the
situation, then charges the motorcycle, like a  linebacker. He is crying out
as he does so, a war cry.
     Squeaky emerges about the same time as the Crip, starts chasing both of
them down the street.
     Raven seems to  be  unaware  of  the Crip  running  behind him,  but in
hindsight it  seems apparent that he  has been  watching his approach in the
rearview mirror  of the motorcycle. As the Crip comes in range, Raven's hand
lets go of the throttle for a moment, snaps back as if he is throwing away a
piece  of  litter.  His fist strikes  the middle of  the Crip's face  like a
frozen ham  shot out of a  cannon. The Crip's head snaps back, his  feet are
lifted off the ground, he does most of a backflip, and strikes the pavement,
hitting  first  with the nape  of his neck, both arms slamming  out straight
onto the road as he does so. It looks  a  lot like a controlled fall, though
if so, it has to be more reflex than anything.
     Squeaky decelerates,  turns,  and  kneels down next to the fallen Crip,
ignoring Raven.
     Hiro  watches the large, radioactive,  spear-throwing  killer drug lord
ride his motorcycle into  Chinatown. Which  is the same  as  riding it  into
China, as far as chasing him down is concerned.
     He  runs up to the Crip, who is  lying crucified in the center  of  the
street. The  lower  half of the Crip's face is  pretty hard to make out. His
eyes are half  open, and he looks quite  relaxed. He speaks quietly. "He's a
fucking Indian or something."
     Interesting idea. But Hiro still thinks he's Asian.
     "What the fuck did you think you were doing, asshole?" Squeaky says. He
sounds so pissed that Hiro steps away from him.
     "That  fucker  ripped us off  -  the suitcase burned," the Crip mumbles
through a mashed jaw.
     "So why didn't you just write it off? Are you crazy, fucking with Raven
like that?"
     "He ripped us off. Nobody does that and lives."
     "Well, Raven  just  did,"  Squeaky says. Finally, he's calming  down  a
little. He rocks back on his heels, looks up at Hiro.
     "T-Bone and  your driver are  not likely to be alive," Hiro says. "This
guy better not move - he could have a neck fracture."
     "He's lucky I don't fracture his fucking neck," Squeaky says.
     The  ambulance  people  get there  fast  enough to slap  an  inflatable
cervical  collar around the Crip's neck before he gets ambitious  enough. to
stand up. They haul him away within a few minutes.
     Hiro goes back into the hops and finds T-Bone. T-Bone is  dead, slumped
in  a  kneeling  position  against  a trellis. The  stab wound  through  his
bulletproof  vest probably would have been fatal, but Raven wasn't satisfied
with that. He went down low  and slashed up and down the insides of T-Bone's
thighs, which are now laid open all the way to the bone. In doing so, he put
great  lengthwise  rents  into  both of  T-Bone's femoral arteries,  and his
entire  blood supply  dropped  out  of him. Like slicing  the bottom  off  a
styrofoam cup.

        20

     The Enforcers turn the entire block into a mobile cop headquarters with
cars  and  paddy wagons and  satellite links on flatbed  trucks.  Dudes with
white  coats are walking  up  and  down through  the  hop field  with Geiger
counters.  Squeaky is wandering around with his headset, staring into space,
carrying on conversations with  people  who aren't there. A tow truck  shows
up, towing T-Bone's black BMW behind it.
     "Yo, pod." Hiro turns  around and  looks. It's Y.T. She's just come out
of  a Hunan place across the street. She hands Hiro a little white box and a
pair of chopsticks. "Spicy  chicken with black  bean sauce, no MSG. You know
how to use chopsticks?"
     Hiro shrugs off this insult.
     "I got  a double  order,"  Y.T. continues, "cause I figure  we got some
good intel tonight."
     "Are you aware of what happened here?"
     "No. I mean, some people obviously got hurt."
     "But you weren't an eyewitness."
     "No, I couldn't keep up with them."
     "That's good," Hiro says.
     "What did happen?"
     Hiro just shakes his head. The spicy chicken is glistening darkly under
the  lights; he has never been less hungry  in his life. "If I had  known, I
wouldn't have  gotten you involved. I  just  thought  it was a  surveillance
job."
     "What happened?"
     "I don't want to get into it. Look. Stay away from Raven, okay?"
     "Sure," she says. She says it in the chirpy tone of voice that she uses
when she's lying and she wants to make sure you know it.
     Squeaky hauls open the back door  of  the BMW and looks  into  the back
seat. Hiro steps a little  closer,  gets a nasty whiff of cold smoke. It  is
the smell of burnt plastic.
     The aluminum briefcase that  Raven earlier gave to T-Bone is sitting in
the middle of the seat. It looks like it has been thrown into a fire; it has
black smoke  stains splaying out around the locks, and its plastic handle is
partially melted. The buttery  leather that covers the BMW's  seats has burn
marks on it. No wonder T-Bone was pissed.
     Squeaky  pulls on a pair of latex gloves. He hauls  the  briefcase out,
sets it on the trunk lid, and rips the latches open with a small prybar.
     Whatever it is, it is complicated and highly designed. The  top half of
the case has several rows of the small red-capped tubes that Hiro saw at the
U-Stor-It. There are five rows with maybe twenty tubes in each row.
     The bottom half of  the  case appears to be some  kind of miniaturized,
old-fashioned  computer terminal  . Most of it is  occupied by  a  keyboard.
There  is a small liquid-crystal  display screen  that can  probably  handle
about five lines  of  text at a time. There is  a penlike object attached to
the case by a cable,  maybe three feet long uncoiled. It looks like it might
be a light pen or a bar-code scanner. Above  the keyboard  is a lens, set at
an angle so that it is aimed at whoever is typing on the keyboard. There are
other features whose purpose is  not  so obvious: a slot,  which might  be a
place  to insert a credit or ID card, and a cylindrical socket that is about
the size of one of those little tubes.
     This is Hiro's reconstruction of how the thing looked at one time. When
Hiro sees it, it is melted together. Judging from the pattern of smoke marks
on the outside  of the case - which appear  to be  jetting outward  from the
crack between the top and bottom - the source of the flame  was  inside, not
outside.
     Squeaky reaches down  and  unsnaps  one  of the tubes from the bracket,
holds  it  up  in  front  of the bright  lights  of  Chinatown. It had  been
transparent  but  was now  smirched by heat and  smoke. From a  distance, it
looks like a simple vial, but  stepping up to  look at it more closely  Hiro
can see at least half a dozen tiny individual compartments inside the thing,
all connected to each other by capillary tubes. It has a red plastic  cap on
one  end  of  it. The cap  has a black  rectangular window, and  as  Squeaky
rotates it, Hiro can  see the  dark  red  glint  of  an inactive LED display
inside, like  looking at the display on  a turned-off calculator. Underneath
this is a small perforation. It isn't just a simple drilled hole. It is wide
at the surface,  rapidly narrowing to  a nearly  invisible pinpoint opening,
like the bell of a trumpet.
     The compartments inside the vial are all partially filled with liquids.
Some  of them are  transparent and some  are blackish  brown. The brown ones
have to be organics of some kind, now reduced by the heat into chicken soup.
The transparent ones could be anything.
     "He  got out to go into a bar and have a drink," Squeaky mumbles. "What
an asshole."
     "Who did?"
     "T-Bone. See, T-Bone was, like, the registered  owner of this unit. The
suitcase. And as  soon  as he got more  than about ten feet away  from  it -
foosh - it self-destructed."
     "Why?"
     Squeaky looks at Hiro like he's stupid. "Well, it's not like I work for
Central Intelligence or  anything. But I would guess that whoever makes this
drug - they call  it Countdown, or Redcap, or Snow  Crash - has a real thing
about trade secrets. So if the pusher abandons the suitcase, or loses it, or
tries to transfer ownership to someone else - foosh."
     "You think the Crips are going to catch up with Raven?"
     "Not in  Chinatown.  Shit,"  Squeaky  says,  getting  pissed  again  in
retrospect, "I can't believe that guy. I could have killed him.''
     "Raven?"
     "No. That Crip. Chasing  Raven. He's lucky Raven got to him  first, not
me."
     "You were chasing the Crip?"
     "Yeah,  I was chasing the Crip.  What,  did you think I  was  trying to
catch Raven?"
     "Sort of, yeah. I mean, he's the bad guy, right?"
     "Definitely. So I'd be  chasing Raven if I  was a cop and it was my job
to catch bad guys. But I'm an Enforcer, and it's my job to enforce order. So
I'm doing everything  I can  - and  so is  every other Enforcer in town - to
protect Raven.  And if you have any ideas  about trying to go and find Raven
yourself and get revenge for that  colleague of yours that he offed, you can
forget it."
     "Offed? What colleague?" Y.T. breaks in. She didn't  see  what happened
with Lagos.
     Hiro is  mortified by this idea. "Is that why everyone  was  telling me
not to fuck with Raven? They were afraid I was going to attack him?"
     Squeaky eyes the swords. "You got the means."
     "Why should anyone protect Raven?"
     Squeaky smiles, as though we  have  just  crossed the  border into  the
realm of kidding around. "He's a Sovereign."
     "So declare war on him."
     "It's not a good idea to declare war on a nuclear power."
     "Huh?"
     "Christ," Squeaky says, shaking his head, "if I had any idea how little
you knew about this shit, I never would have let you into my car.  I thought
you we're some kind of a serious CIC wet-operations guy. Are you telling  me
you really didn't know about Raven?"
     "Yes, that's what I'm telling you."
     "Okay. I'm gonna tell you this so you don't go out  and  cause any more
trouble.  Raven's packing a  torpedo warhead that  he  boosted  from  an old
Soviet  nuke sub. It was a torpedo  that was designed to take out  a carrier
battle group with one shot. A nuclear torpedo. You know  that  funny-looking
sidecar that Raven has on his Harley? Well, it's a hydrogen bomb, man. Armed
and ready. The trigger's hooked up  to EEG trodes  embedded in his skull. If
Raven  dies,  the bomb  goes  off.  So  when Raven comes  into town,  we  do
everything in our power to make the man feel welcome."
     Hiro's  just gaping.  Y.T. has  to step in  on  his behalf. "Okay," she
says. "Speaking for my partner and myself, we'll stay away from him."

        21

     Y.T. reckons she is going to spend all afternoon being a ramp turd. The
surf is always  up on the Harbor Freeway, which gets  her from Downtown into
Compton, but  the  off-ramps into that neighborhood are so rarely  used that
three-foot tumbleweeds  grow in  their potholes. And  she's  definitely  not
going to  travel into  Compton  under  her  own  power. She  wants  to  poon
something big and fast.
     She can't use the standard trick of ordering a pizza to her destination
and then  pooning the delivery boy  as he  roars past,  because none of  the
pizza chains  deliver  to this neighborhood. So she'll  have to  stop at the
off-ramp and wait hours and hours for a ride. A ramp turd.
     She does not want to do this delivery at all.  But the franchisee wants
her to do it bad. Really  bad. The amount of money  he has offered her is so
high, it's stupid. The package must be  full  of  some  kind  of intense new
drug.
     But that's not as weird as what happens  next. She is cruising down the
Harbor Freeway, approaching the desired off-ramp, having pooned a southbound
semi.  A  quarter-mile from the  off-ramp,  a bullet-pocked black Oldsmobile
cruises past her, right-turn signal  flashing. He's going to exit. It's  too
good to be true. She poons the Oldsmobile.
     As  she cruises down  the ramp behind this flatulent  sedan, she checks
out the driver in his rearview mirror. It is the franchisee himself, the one
who is paying her a totally stupid amount of money to do this job.
     By this point, she's more afraid of him than she is of Compton. He must
be a psycho. He must be in love with her. This is all a twisted psycho  love
plot.
     But it's a little late now.  She stays with him, looking for a  way out
of this burning and rotting neighborhood.
     They are approaching a big, nasty-looking Mafia roadblock. He guns  the
gas pedal, headed straight for  death. She can see the destination franchise
ahead. At the last second, he whips the car around and squeals sideways to a
halt.
     He couldn't have been more helpful. She unpoons as he's giving her this
last little kick of energy  and sails through the checkpoint at  a safe  and
sane  speed. The  guards keep  their  guns  pointed at the sky, swivel their
heads to look at her butt as she rolls past them.

     The  Compton Nova Sicilia franchise is a grisly scene. It is a jamboree
of Young  Mafia.  These  youths  are even  duller than  the  ones  from  the
all-Mormon Deseret Burbclave. The boys  are wearing tedious black suits. The
girls are encrusted with  pointless femininity. Girls  can't  even be in the
Young Mafia; they have  to be in the Girls' Auxiliary and serve macaroons on
silver plates. "Girls" is too fine  a word for these organisms, too  high up
the evolutionary scale. They aren't even chicks.
     She's  going way  too  fast, so  she kicks  the board around  sideways,
plants pads, leans into it, skids to a  halt, roiling up a wave  of dust and
grit that dulls the glossy  shoes of several Young Mafia who are milling out
front, nibbling dinky Italo-treats and playing grown-up. It condenses on the
white lace stockings  of the  Young  Mafia  proto-chicks.  She falls off the
board, appearing to catch  her balance at the last moment. She stomps on the
edge  of the  plank with one  foot, and it bounces four  feet  into the air,
spinning rapidly around its long axis,  up into her armpit, where she clamps
it tight  under one arm. The spokes  of the smartwheels all retract  so that
the wheels are barely larger than their hubs. She slaps the MagnaPoon into a
handy socket on the bottom of the plank so that her gear is all in one handy
package.
     "Y.T.," she says. "Young, fast, and female. Where the fuck's Enzo?"
     The  boys decide to get  all "mature"  on Y.T.  Males  of this age  are
preoccupied with snapping each other's underwear and drinking until they are
in a coma. But around a female, they do the "mature" thing. It is hilarious.
One of them steps forward slightly, interposing himself between Y.T. and the
nearest proto-chick. "Welcome to  Nova Sicilia," he says. "Can  I assist you
in some way?"
     Y.T. sighs deeply. She is a fully independent businessperson, and these
people are trying to do a peer thing on her.
     "Delivery  for  one  Enzo?  Y'know, I  can't  wait  to  get out of this
neighborhood."
     "It's  a  good  neighborhood, now," the YoMa says.  "You  should  stick
around for a few minutes. Maybe you could learn some manners."
     "You should try surfing the Ventura at rush hour. Maybe you could learn
your limitations."
     The  YoMa laughs  like, okay,  if that's how  you want  it. He gestures
toward the door. "The man you want to talk  to is in there. Whether he wants
to talk to you or not, I'm not sure."
     "He fucking asked for me," Y.T. says.
     "He came across the country to be with us," the guy says, "and he seems
pretty happy with us."
     All the other YoMas mumble and nod supportively.
     "Then why are you standing outside?" Y.T. asks, going inside.
     Inside the  franchise, things are startlingly relaxed. Uncle Enzo is in
there,  looking just like he does  in the pictures, except bigger than  Y.T.
expected. He  is sitting  at a  desk playing cards with some other  guys  in
funeral  garb. He is smoking a cigar and nursing an  espresso. Can't get too
much stimulation, apparently.
     There's a whole Uncle Enzo portable support system in here. A traveling
espresso machine has been set up on another desk. A cabinet sits next to it,
doors open to reveal a big foil bag of Italian Roast Water-Process Decaf and
a box of Havana cigars. There's also a gargoyle in one comer, patched into a
bigger-than-normal laptop, mumbling to himself.
     Y.T. lifts her arm, allows  the  plank to fall into her hand. She slaps
it down on  top of an empty desk and  approaches Uncle  Enzo, unslinging the
delivery from her shoulder.
     "Gino, please,"  Uncle Enzo says,  nodding at  the delivery. Gino steps
forward to take it from her.
     "Need your signature on that," Y.T. says. For some  reason she does not
refer to him as "pal" or "bub."
     She's  momentarily  distracted by  Gino. Suddenly, Uncle Enzo has  come
rather  close  to her, caught her right  hand in his left  hand. Her Kourier
gloves have an opening on the back of the hand just big enough for his lips.
He plants a kiss on Y.T.'s hand. It's warm  and wet. Not slobbery and gross,
not antiseptic and dry either. Interesting. The guy has confidence going for
him.  Christ,  he's  slick.  Nice  lips. Sort  of  firm  muscular  lips, not
gelatinous and blubbery like fifteen-year-old  lips can be. Uncle Enzo has a
very  faint citrus-and-aged-tobacco smell to him.  Fully  smelling it  would
involve standing pretty close to him. He is towering over her, standing at a
respectable distance now, glinting at her through crinkly old-guy eyes.
     Seems pretty nice.
     "I  can't tell you  how much I've been looking forward to meeting  you,
Y.T.," he says.
     "Hi," she  says. Her voice sounds chirpier than she likes it to  be. So
she adds, "What's in that bag that's so fucking valuable, anyway.
     "Absolutely  nothing,"  Uncle Enzo says. His smile is not exactly smug.
More  embarrassed, like  what an awkward way to meet someone. "It all has to
do with imageering,"  he says,  spreading  one hand dismissively. "There are
not  many ways  for a  man like me  to meet  with  a young girl that  do not
generate incorrect images in the media. It's stupid. But we pay attention to
these things."
     "So, what did  you want to meet with me about? Got a delivery for me to
make?"
     All the guys in the room laugh.
     The sound startles Y.T. a little, reminds her that she is performing in
front of a crowd. Her eyes flick away from Uncle Enzo for a moment.
     Uncle Enzo notices  this. His smile gets infinitesimally  narrower, and
he hesitates for a moment.  In  that  moment, all the other guys in the room
stand up and head for the exit.
     "You may not believe me," he says,  "but I simply  wanted to thank  you
for delivering that pizza a few weeks ago."
     "Why  shouldn't  I believe  you?" she asks. She is amazed to hear nice,
sweet things coming out of her mouth.
     So is Uncle Enzo.  "I'm sure  you  of all people  can  come  up  with a
reason."
     "So," she says, "you having a nice day with all the Young Mafia?"
     Uncle Enzo gives her a look that says, watch it, child. A second  after
she gets  scared, she  starts  laughing,  because  it's a  put-on, he's just
giving her  a  hard time.  He smiles,  indicating that it's okay  for her to
laugh.
     Y.T. can't remember  when she's been so involved in a conversation. Why
can't all people be like Uncle Enzo?
     "Let me see,"  Uncle Enzo  says, looking at the ceiling,  scanning  his
memory banks.  "I know a few things  about you. That  you are  fifteen years
old, you live in a Burbclave in the Valley with your mother."
     "I know a few things about you, too," Y.T. hazards.
     Uncle Enzo  laughs. "Not  nearly as much as you think, I promise.  Tell
me, what does your mother think of your career?"
     Nice of him  to use the word "career." "She's not totally aware of it -
or doesn't want to know."
     "You're probably wrong," Uncle Enzo says. He says it cheerfully enough,
not  trying  to cut  her  down or  anything.  "You might  be shocked at  how
well-informed she is. This is  my experience, anyway. What does  your mother
do for a living?"
     "She works for the Feds."
     Uncle  Enzo finds that richly  amusing. "And her daughter is delivering
pizzas for Nova Sicilia. What does she do for the Feds?"
     "Some kind  of thing where she can't really tell me in case I blab  it.
She has to take a lot of polygraph tests."
     Uncle  Enzo seems to understand this very well. "Yes, a lot of Fed jobs
are that way."
     There is an opportune silence.
     "It kind of freaks me out," Y.T. says.
     "The fact that she works for the Feds?"
     "The polygraph tests. They put  a thing around her arm - to measure the
blood pressure."
     "A sphygmomanometer," Uncle Enzo says crisply.
     "It leaves  a  bruise around her arm.  For  some reason, that  kind  of
bothers me."
     "It should bother you."
     "And the house is bugged. So when I'm home - no matter what I'm doing -
someone else is probably listening."
     "Well, I can certainly relate to that," Uncle Enzo says.
     They both laugh.
     "I'm going to ask you  a  question  that  I've always wanted to  ask  a
Kourier," Uncle Enzo says. "I always watch you people through the windows of
my limousine. In  fact,  when a Kourier poons  me, I  always tell Peter,  my
driver, not to give them a hard time.  My question  is, you are covered from
head to toe in protective padding. So why don't you wear a helmet?"
     "The suit's got a  cervical airbag that blows up when you fall off  the
board, so you can bounce on your head. Besides, helmets feel weird. They say
it doesn't affect your hearing, but it does."
     "You use your hearing quite a bit in your line of work?"
     "Definitely, yeah."
     Uncle  Enzo is nodding. "That's what I suspected. We felt the same way,
the boys in my unit in Vietnam."
     "I heard you went to Vietnam, but - " She stops, sensing danger.
     "You thought it  was hype. No, I  went there. Could have stayed out, if
I'd wanted. But I volunteered."
     "You volunteered to go to Vietnam?"
     Uncle Enzo laughs. "Yes, I did. The only boy in my family to do so."
     "Why?"
     "I thought it would be safer than Brooklyn."
     Y.T. laughs.
     "A bad joke," he says. "I  volunteered because my father didn't want me
to. And I wanted to piss him off."
     "Really?"
     "Definitely.  I spent  years and years finding  ways  to piss him  off.
Dated black girls. Grew my hair long. Smoked marijuana. But the capstone, my
ultimate  achievement  - even  better  than having  my  ear  pierced  -  was
volunteering for service in Vietnam. But I had to take extreme measures even
then."
     Y.T.'s  eyes dart  back  and forth  between Uncle  Enzo's  creased  and
leathery earlobes. In the left one she just barely sees a tiny diamond stud.
     "What do you mean, extreme measures?"
     "Everyone  knew  who  I was.  Word  gets  around,  you know.  If  I had
volunteered for the  regular Army,  I would have ended up stateside, filling
out forms - maybe  even  at  Fort  Hamilton,  right there in Bensonhurst. To
prevent  that, I  volunteered for Special Forces, did everything  I could to
get into a front-line unit." He laughs. "And it worked. Anyway, I'm rambling
like an old man. I was trying to make a point about helmets."
     "Oh, yeah."
     "Our job was  to go through the jungle making trouble for some slippery
gentlemen  carrying guns  bigger  than  they  were.  Stealthy  guys. And  we
depended  on our hearing, too -just like you do. And you know what? We never
wore helmets."
     "Same reason."
     "Exactly.  Even though they didn't  cover the  ears,  really,  they did
something to your sense of hearing. I still think  I owe  my life  to  going
bareheaded."
     "That's really cool. That's really interesting."
     "You'd think they would have solved the problem by now."
     "Yeah," Y.T., volunteers, "some things never change, I guess."
     Uncle Enzo  throws  back his head and belly laughs. Usually, Y.T. finds
this  kind of thing pretty annoying,  but Uncle  Enzo  just seems  like he's
having a good time, not putting her down.
     Y.T. wants  to ask  him  how he went  from  the ultimate  rebellion  to
running  the family beeswax. She doesn't.  But  Uncle Enzo senses that it is
the next, natural subject of the conversation.
     "Sometimes I wonder who'll come after me," he says. "Oh, we have plenty
of excellent people in the  next generation. But after that - well, I  don't
know. I guess all old people feel like the world is coming to an end."
     "You got millions of those Young Mafia types," Y.T. says.
     "All destined to wear blazers and shuffle papers in suburbia. You don't
respect those people very much, Y.T., because you're young and arrogant. But
I don't respect them much either, because I'm old and wise."
     This  is a fairly shocking thing for Uncle Enzo to  be saying, but Y.T.
doesn't feel shocked. It just seems like a reasonable statement  coming from
her reasonable pal, Uncle Enzo.
     "None of them would ever volunteer to go get his legs  shot off  in the
jungle, just to piss off his old man.  They  lack a certain fiber.  They are
lifeless and beaten down."
     "That's  sad,"  Y.T.  says. It  feels better to say this  than to trash
them, which was her first inclination.
     "Well," says Uncle  Enzo.  It is the "well"  that begins the  end of  a
conversation. "I was  going to send you some roses, but  you wouldn't really
be interested in that, would you?"
     "Oh, I wouldn't mind," she says, sounding pathetically weak to herself.
     "Here's something better, since we are comrades in arms,"  he says.  He
loosens his tie  and  collar,  reaches  down  into  his shirt, pulls out  an
amazingly cheap steel  chain  with a couple of stamped silver tags  dangling
from it. "These are my old dog  tags," he says. "Been carrying  them  around
for  years, just  for the hell  of it. I would be amused  if you  would wear
them."
     Trying to  keep her knees steady, she puts the dog tags on. They dangle
down onto her coverall.
     "Better put them inside," Uncle Enzo says.
     She drops them down into the secret place between her breasts. They are
still warm from Uncle Enzo.
     "Thanks."
     "It's just for fun," he says, "but if  you  ever get into trouble,  and
you show those dog  tags to whoever it is that's giving you a bad time, then
things will probably change very quickly."
     "Thanks, Uncle Enzo."
     "Take care of yourself. Be good to your mother. She loves you."

        22

     As she steps out of the Nova Sicilia franchulate,  a guy is waiting for
her. He smiles, not without irony, and  makes just a hint of a  bow, sort of
to get  her attention. It's pretty  ridiculous, but  after being  with Uncle
Enzo for a while, she's definitely into it. So she doesn't laugh in his face
or anything, just looks the other way and blows him off.
     "Y.T. Got a job for ya," he says.
     "I'm busy," she says, "got other deliveries to make."
     "You  lie  like  a  mattress," he  says  appreciatively.  "Y'know  that
gargoyle in there? He's patched in to the RadiKS computer even as we  speak.
So we all know for a fact you don't got no jobs to do."
     "Well, I can't take jobs from  a customer," Y.T. says. "We're centrally
dispatched. You have to go through the 1-800 number."
     "Jeez, what  kind  of  a fucking  dickhead  do you think I am?" the guy
says.
     Y.T.  stops walking,  turns, finally looks at the guy. He's tall, lean.
Black suit, black hair. And he's got a gnarly-looking glass eye.
     "What happened to your eye?" she says.
     "Ice pick, Bayonne, 1985," he says. "Any other questions?"
     "Sorry, man, I was just asking."
     "Now back to business.  Because  I  don't  have my  head totally  up my
asshole, like you seem to assume, I am aware that all Kouriers are centrally
dispatched  through the 1-800 number. Now, we  don't like 1-800  numbers and
central  dispatching.  It's  just   a   thing   with  us.  We  like   to  go
person-to-person,  the old-fashioned way. Like,  on my  momma's  birthday, I
don't pick  up the  phone and dial 1-800-CALL-MOM. I go  there in person and
give  her  a kiss on the  cheek, okay?  Now in this  case,  we  want  you in
particular."
     "How come?"
     "Because  we just love to deal with difficult little chicks who ask too
many  fucking questions. So  our gargoyle has  already patched himself in to
the computer that RadiKS uses to dispatch Kouriers."
     The man with the  glass  eye  turns, rotating his head way, way  around
like  an owl, and  nods in the direction of  the  gargoyle. A  second later,
Y.T.'s personal phone rings.
     "Fucking pick it up," he says.
     "What?" she says into the phone.
     A computer  voice tells her that she  is  supposed  to make a pickup in
Griffith Park and deliver it to a Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates franchise in
Van Nuys.
     "If you want something delivered from point A to point B, why don't you
just drive  it down there yourselves?"  Y.T.  asks. "Put  it in one of those
black Lincoln Town Cars and just get it done."
     "Because in this case, the something doesn't exactly belong to  us, and
the people at point A and point B, well, we aren't necessarily  on the  best
of terms, mutually speaking."
     "You want me to steal something," Y.T. says.
     The man with  the glass  eye  is  pained, wounded.  "No,  no,  no. Kid,
listen. We're the fucking Mafia. We want to steal something, we already know
how  to do  that, okay? We don't need a fifteen-year-old girl's help  to get
something stolen. What we are doing here is more of a covert operation."
     "A spy thing." Intel.
     "Yeah. A spy thing," the man says, his tone of voice suggesting that he
is trying to humor someone. "And the  only way to get this operation to work
is if we have a Kourier who can cooperate with us a little bit."
     "So all  that  stuff with Uncle Enzo was fake," Y.T. says. "You're just
trying to get all friendly with a Kourier."
     "Oh, ho, listen to  this," says the man  with the glass  eye, genuinely
amused. "Yeah,  like we have to  go  all the  way to the  top  to  impress a
fifteen-year-old. Look, kid, there's a million  Kouriers out  there we could
bribe  to do this. We're going with you, again,  because you have a personal
relationship with our outfit."
     "Well, what do you want me to do?"
     "Exactly what you  would normally do  at this juncture," the  man says.
"Go to Griffith Park and make the pickup."
     "That's it?"
     "Yeah. Then make the delivery. But do us a favor and take I-5, okay?"
     "That's not the best way to do it - "
     "Do it anyway."
     "Okay."
     "Now come on, we'll give you an escort out of this hellhole."

     Sometimes, if the wind  is going  the  right  way, and you get into the
pocket of air behind a  speeding  eighteen-wheeler,  you don't  even have to
poon it.  The vacuum, like a mighty hoover, sucks you in. You can stay there
all day. But if you screw up, you suddenly find yourself alone and powerless
in the left lane of a highway with a convoy of semis  right behind you. Just
as  bad,  if you give  in  to  its  power, it will suck  you  right into its
mudflaps, you will become axle dressing, and  no one will ever know. This is
called the Magic Hoover Poon. It reminds Y.T.  of the way  her life has been
since the fateful night of the Hiro Protagonist pizza adventure.
     Her  poon  cannot miss  as  she slingshots  her way  up  the San  Diego
Freeway.  She  can  get  a  solid  yank  off  even  the  lightest, trashiest
plastic-and-aluminum  Chinese econobox. People don't  fuck with her. She has
established her space on the pavement.
     She is going to get so much business now. She will have to sub a lot of
work  out to  Roadkill.  And  sometimes,  just to  make  important  business
arrangements, they  will  have  to check  into  a motel somewhere - which is
exactly what real business people  do. Lately, Y.T. has been trying to teach
Roadkill  how to  give her  a massage. But Roadkill can never  get  past her
shoulder blades before he loses  it and starts being Mr. Macho. Which anyway
is kind of sweet. And anyway, you take what you can get.
     This is  not the most  direct route to Griffith Park by a longshot, but
this is what the  Mafia wants her  to do: Take 405 all the way  up into  the
Valley,  and then approach from that direction, which is the direction she'd
normally come from. They're so paranoid. So professional.
     LAX goes  by  on her left.  On her  right, she gets  a  glimpse  of the
U-Stor-It  where that  dweeb, her  partner, is  probably  goggled  into  his
computer.  She weaves through complex  traffic flows around  Hughes Airport,
which  is now  a  private  outpost of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. Continues
past the Santa Monica  Airport, which  just got bought out  by Admiral Bob's
Global  Security.  Cuts through the middle of Fedland, where her mother goes
to work every day.
     Fedland  used  to  be  the VA  Hospital  and a  bunch of other  Federal
buildings; now  it  has  condensed into a  kidney-shaped  lozenge that wraps
around  405.  It has  a barrier  around  it,  a  perimeter fence  put  up by
stringing chain link fabric,  concertina  wire,  heaps of rubble, and Jersey
barriers from one building  to the next. All of the buildings in Fedland are
big and ugly. Human beings mill around their plinths, wearing wool  clothing
the  color of  damp granite. They are scrawny and dark  underneath the white
majesty of the buildings.
     On the  far side of the Fedland  barrier, off to the right, she can see
UCLA, which is now being jointly run  by the Japanese and Mr.  Lee's Greater
Hong Kong and a few big American corporations.
     People say that over there to the left, in Pacific Palisades, is a  big
building above the  ocean where the Central Intelligence Corporation has its
West  Coast headquarters. Soon - like maybe tomorrow - she'll go  up  there,
find that building,  maybe just cruise past it and wave. She has great stuff
to tell Hiro now. Great intel  on Uncle Enzo. People would pay  millions for
it.
     But in her heart, she's already  feeling the  pangs  of conscience. She
knows that she cannot kiss  and  tell on the Mafia. Not because she's afraid
of them. Because they trust her.  They were nice  to her. And who knows , it
might turn into something. A better career than she could get with CIC.
     Not many  cars are taking the off-ramp into Fedland. Her mother does it
every morning, as  do a bunch of other  Feds. But all Feds go  to work early
and stay late.  It's a loyalty thing  with them. The Feds  have a fetish for
loyalty - since they don't make a lot of  money or get a lot of respect, you
have  to  prove you're  personally  committed and that you don't care  about
those trappings.
     Case in point: Y.T. has been pooned onto the  same cab all the way from
LAX. It's got  an Arab  in the back seat. His  burnous flutters in  the wind
from  the open window;  the  air  conditioning doesn't work, an L.A.  cabbie
doesn't make enough money to buy Chill - Freon - on the  underground market.
This  is  typical: only the Feds would make a  visitor take a  dirty, un-air
conditioned cab.  Sure  enough, the  cab puffs onto  the ramp  marked UNITED
STATES.  Y.T.  disengages and  slaps her  poon onto  a Valley-bound delivery
truck.
     On  top  of   the  huge  Federal   Building,  a  bunch   of  Feds  with
walkie-talkies  and dark  glasses and  FEDS windbreakers  lurk, aiming  long
lenses into the windshields of the vehicles coming up Wilshire Boulevard. If
this  were nighttime,  she'd probably see a  laser  scanner playing over the
bar-code license plate of the taxi as it veers onto the U.S. exit.
     Y.T.'s mom has told  her  all about these  guys. They are the Executive
Branch  General  Operational Command,  EBGOC.  The  FBI, Federal  Marshalls,
Secret Service, and  Special Forces all claim some separate identity  still,
like the  Army,  Navy, and Air  Force  used to, but they're  all  under  the
command of  EBGOC, they all do the same  things, and they  are more  or less
interchangeable. Outside of Fedland, everyone just knows them  as the  Feds.
EBGOC  claims the right to go anywhere, anytime, within the original borders
of  the  United States of  America, without a warrant or even a good excuse.
But they only really feet at home here,  in Fedland, staring down the barrel
of  a telephoto lens,  shotgun  microphone, or sniper rifle.  The longer the
better.
     Down  below them, the taxicab with the Arab in  the back slows  down to
sublight speed  and winds its way  down a  twisting slalom course  of Jersey
barriers with .50-caliber  machine gun nests  strategically  placed here and
there. It comes to a stop in front  of an STD device, straddling an open pit
where EBGOC  boys stand with dogs and high-powered spotlights to look up its
skirt for bombs or  NBCI  (nuclear-biological-chemical-informational) agents
in the undercarriage. Meanwhile, the  driver gets out and pops  the hood and
trunk  so  that more Feds can inspect  them;  another Fed leans  against the
window next to the Arab and grills him through the window.
     They say that  in D.C., all the museums  and  the  monuments  have been
concessioned out and turned into a tourist park that  now generates about 10
percent  of  the Government's revenue.  The Feds  could run  the  concession
themselves and  probably keep more  of the gross,  but that's not the point.
It's  a philosophical  thing.  A  back-to-basics  thing.  Government  should
govern. It's not in the entertainment industry, is it? Leave entertaining to
Industry weirdos - people who majored in tap dancing. Feds aren't like that.
Feds are serious people. Poli sci majors. Student council presidents. Debate
club chairpersons. The kinds of people who have the grit to wear a dark wool
suit and a tightly buttoned collar even when the temperature has greenhoused
up to a hundred and ten degrees and the humidity is thick enough  to stall a
jumbo jet. The  kinds  of people who feel most at home on the dark side of a
one-way mirror.

        23

     Sometimes, to  prove their manhood, boys of about Y.T.'s age will drive
to the eastern end of the Hollywood Hills, into Griffith Park, pick the road
of their choosing,  and  simply drive through  it.  Making it through  there
unscathed is a  lot like counting coup on  a High Plains battlefield; simply
having come that close to danger makes you more of a man.
     By  definition, all they  ever see are the through streets. If  you are
driving into Griffith Park for some highijnks  and you see a NO OUTLET sign,
you know that it  is time to  shift your dad's Accord into reverse and drive
it backward all the way back home,  revving the  engine way past the end  of
the tachometer.
     Naturally,  as soon as Y.T. enters the park, following the road she was
told to follow, she sees a NO OUTLET sign.
     Y.T.'s not the first Kourier to  take a  job like this, and so  she has
heard about the  place she is going. It is a narrow canyon, accessed only by
this  one road, and  down in  the  bottom  of the canyon  a new gang  lives.
Everyone calls  them  the  Falabalas, because  that's how they talk  to each
other. They have their own language and it sounds like babble.
     Right  now, the important  thing  is not to think about how stupid this
is.  Making  the  right decision is,  priority-wise, down  there along  with
getting enough niacin and writing a thank-you letter to grandma for the nice
pearl earrings. The only important thing is not to back down.
     A row of machine-gun nests  marks  the border of Falabala territory. It
seems like overkill to Y.T. But then she's never been in a conflict with the
Mafia,  either. She plays  it  cool, idles  toward the  barrier at maybe ten
miles an hour. This is where she'll freak out  and get scared if she's going
to.  She  is holding  aloft  a  color-faxed RadiKS document,  featuring  the
cybernetic radish logo, proclaiming  that  she really is here  to pick up an
important delivery, honest. It'll never work with these guys.
     But it does. A big gnarled-up coil of razor ribbon is pulled out of her
way, just like that, and she glides through without slowing down. And that's
when she knows  that it's  going  to be  fine.  These  people are just doing
business here, just like anyone else.
     She doesn't have to  skate far  into  the  canyon. Thank God.  She goes
around a few turns, into  kind of an open flat area surrounded by trees, and
finds herself in what looks like an open-air insane asylum.
     Or a Moonie festival or something.
     A couple of dozen people  are  here. None of them have been taking care
of themselves at  all. They are all wearing the  ragged remains of what used
to  be pretty  decent  clothing.  Half  a dozen of them are kneeling  on the
pavement with  their  hands clenched tightly together,  mumbling  to  unseen
entities.
     On the trunk lid of a dead car, they've set up an  old junked  computer
terminal, just a dark monitor screen with a big spider-web crack in it, like
someone bounced a coffee mug off the  glass. A fat  man with red  suspenders
dangling  around his knees is sliding his hands  up and down  the  keyboard,
whacking the  keys  randomly,  talking  out loud in a meaningless  babble. A
couple of the  others stand behind him, peeking over his shoulder and around
his body, and sometimes they try to horn in on it, but he shoves them out of
the way.
     There's  also a crowd  of  people clapping their  hands,  swaying their
bodies, and singing "The Happy  Wanderer." They're really into it, too. Y.T.
hasn't seen  such childlike glee on anyone's face since  the first  time she
let Roadkill take her clothes off. But this is a different kind of childlike
glee that does not  look  right on  a bunch of thirty-something people  with
dirty hair.
     And  finally, there  is a  guy  that Y.T.  dubs  the  High Priest. He's
wearing a formerly white lab coat, bearing the logo of some  company in  the
Bay Area. He's sacked out in the back of a dead station wagon, but when Y.T.
enters the area he jumps up and runs toward her in a way that she can't help
but find a little threatening. But compared to these others, he seems almost
like a regular, healthy, fit, demented bush-dwelling psychotic.
     "You're here to pick up a suitcase, right?"
     "I'm here to pick up something. I don't know what it is," she says.
     He goes over to  one of  the dead cars,  unlocks the hood, pulls out an
aluminum briefcase. It looks exactly like the one that Squeaky took  out  of
the BMW last night. "Here's your delivery,"  he  says, striding  toward her.
She backs away from him instinctively.
     "I understand, I understand," he says. "I'm a scary creep."
     He puts it on  the ground, puts his foot  on it, gives  it a shove.  It
slides across the pavement to Y.T., bouncing off the occasional rock.
     "There's no big hurry  on this  delivery,"  he says. "Would you like to
stay and have a drink? We've got Kool-Aid."
     "I'd love to," Y.T. says, "but my diabetes is acting up real bad."
     "Well, then you can just stay and be a guest of our  community. We have
a lot of wonderful things to tell you about. Things that could really change
your life."
     "Do you have anything in writing? Something I could take with me?"
     "Gee, I'm afraid  we don't. Why don't you stay. You seem like a  really
nice person."
     "Sorry, Jack, but you  must be confusing  me  with a bimbo," Y.T. says.
"Thanks for the suitcase. I'm out of here."
     Y.T. starts digging at the pavement with one foot, building up speed as
fast  as she can. On her way  out, she passes by a young woman with a shaved
head, dressed in the dirty and haggard remains of a Chanel knockoff. As Y.T.
goes by her, she smiles vacantly, sticks out  her hand, and waves. "Hi," she
says. "ba ma zu na la amu pa go lu ne me a ba du."
     "Yo," Y.T. says.

     A couple of minutes later, she's pooning her way up I-5, headed up into
Valley-land. She's a little freaked-out, her  timing is off, she's taking it
easy.  A  tune keeps  running  through her head:  "The Happy Wanderer." It's
driving her crazy.
     A large black blur  keeps pulling alongside her. It would be a tempting
target, so large and ferrous, if it were going  a little faster. But she can
make better time than this barge, even when she's taking it slow.
     The  driver's  side window of the  black  car rolls down. It's the guy.
Jason. He's  sticking his whole head out  the window  to  look back at  her,
driving  blind. The wind at fifty miles per hour does  not ruffle his firmly
gelled razor cut.
     He smiles.  He has  an imploring look  about him,  the  same look  that
Roadkill gets. He points suggestively at his rear quarter-panel.
     What  the  hell. The last time she pooned this guy, he took her exactly
where she was going. Y.T. detaches from the  Acura she's been hitched to for
the last half mile, swings it over to Jason's fat Olds.  And Jason takes her
off the freeway and  onto Victory  Boulevard, headed for Van  Nuys, which is
exactly right.
     But  after  a  couple  of miles, he swings the wheel  sharply right and
screeches into  the parking  lot of a ghost mall, which is wrong. Right now,
nothing's parked in the lot but an eighteen-wheeler, motor running, SALDUCCI
BROS. MOVING & STORAGE painted on the sides.
     "Come on,"  Jason says, getting out  of his Oldsmobile. "You don't want
to waste any time."
     "Screw  you,  asshole,"  she says,  reeling  in her  poon, looking back
toward the boulevard for some promising westbound traffic. Whatever this guy
has in mind, it is probably unprofessional.
     "Young lady," says another voice,  an  older and more arresting sort of
voice,  "it's fine if you  don't like Jason. But your pal, Uncle Enzo, needs
your help."
     A door on the back of the semi has opened up. A  man in a black suit is
standing there. Behind him,  the  interior of  the semi is brightly  lit up.
Halogen  light   glares  off   the   man's  slick  hairdo.  Even  with  this
backlighting, she can tell it is the man with the glass eye.
     "What do you want?" she says.
     "What  I  want," he says, looking her up and down, and  what I need are
different things. Right  now I'm  working, see, which means that what I want
is not  important. What I need is for you to get into this truck along  with
your skateboard and that suitcase."
     Then  he adds, "Am I getting  through  to you?"  He  asks the  question
almost rhetorically, like he presumes the answer is no.
     "He's for  real," Jason says,  as though  Y.T. must  be hanging  on his
opinion.
     "Well, there you have it," the man with the glass eye says.
     Y.T. is supposed  to be on her way  to a Reverend  Wayne's Pearly Gates
franchise. If she screws up  this delivery, that means she's double-crossing
God,  who  may  or  may  not  exist, and in  any  case  who  is  capable  of
forgiveness.  The Mafia  definitely exists and  hews to a higher standard of
obedience.
     She hands  her stuff - the plank and the aluminum case - up  to the man
with the glass eye, then vaults up into the back of the  semi,  ignoring his
proffered hand. He recoils, holds up his hand, looks at it to see if there's
something wrong with it. By the time her feet leave the ground, the truck is
already moving.  By the time the door  is pulled shut  behind her, they have
already pulled onto the boulevard.
     "Just gotta  run a few  tests  on this delivery of yours," the man with
the glass eye says.
     "Ever think of introducing yourself?" Y.T. says.
     "Nah," he says, "people always forget names. You can just think  of  me
as that one guy, y'know?"
     Y.T. is  not  really listening. She is checking  out the inside of  the
truck.
     The trailer of this rig consists of a single long skinny room. Y.T. has
just come in through its only entrance. At this end of the room, a couple of
Mafia guys are lounging around, the way they always do.
     Most of the room is taken up by electronics. Big electronics.
     "Going to  just  do some computer  stuff, y'know," he says, handing the
briefcase over  to a computer guy. Y.T. knows he's a computer guy because he
has long hair in a ponytail and he's wearing jeans and he seems gentle.
     "Hey, if anything happens to that, my  ass  is grass," Y.T. says. She's
trying  to  sound  tough  and  brave,  but  it's  a  hollow   act  in  these
circumstances.
     The man with the glass eye is, like, shocked.  "What do you think I am,
some kind of incredibly stupid dickhead?" he says. "Shit, that's just what I
need, trying to  explain to Uncle Enzo how I managed to get his little bunny
rabbit shot in the kneecaps."
     "It's  a noninvasive  procedure," the  computer guy  says  in a placid,
liquid voice.
     The computer guy rotates the case around  in his hand a few times, just
to  get a  feel for it. Then he slides it into a  large open-ended  cylinder
that  is resting  on the top of  a table. The walls  of the  cylinder are  a
couple of inches thick.  Frost appears to be growing on this  thing. Mystery
gases continuously slide  off  of it, like teaspoons  of milk  dropped  into
turbulent  water.  The gases  plunge out  across the  table and  drop to the
floor, where they make a  little carpet of  fog that flows and blooms around
their shoes. When the computer guy has it in place, he  yanks  his hand back
from the cold .
     Then he puts on a pair of computer goggles.
     That's all there  is to it.  He just sits there for a few minutes. Y.T.
is not a  computer person, but she knows that somewhere behind  the cabinets
and doors in  the  back of this truck there is a big computer doing a lot of
things right now.
     "It's  like a CAT scanner," the man with the glass eye says, using  the
same hushed tone of voice as a sportscaster in a golfing tournament. "But it
reads  everything,  you  know," he says, rotating  his hands  impatiently in
all-encompassing circles.
     "How much does it cost?"
     "I don't know."
     "What's it called?"
     "Doesn't really have a name yet."
     "Well, who makes it?"
     "We made the goddamn thing," the man  with  the  glass eye says. "Just,
like in the last couple weeks."
     "What for?"
     "You're  asking  too many  questions. Look. You're a  cute kid. I mean,
you're a hell of a  chick.  You're a  knockout. But don't go thinking you're
too important at this stage."
     At this stage. Hmm.

        24

     Hiro is in his 20-by-30 at  the U-Stor-It. He is spending a little time
in Reality, as  per the suggestion of his partner. The door is  open so that
ocean  breezes and  jet exhaust can  blow  through. All  the furniture - the
futons,  the cargo pallet, the experimental cinderblock furniture - has been
pushed up against the walls. He is  holding  a one-meter-long piece of heavy
rebar  with  tape wrapped  around  one end  to  make  a  handle.  The  rebar
approximates  a katana,  but  it is very much heavier.  He  calls it redneck
katana.
     He is in the kendo stance, barefoot. He  should  be  wearing voluminous
ankle-length culottes and a  heavy indigo tunic,  which  is  the traditional
uniform, but instead he is wearing jockey shorts.  Sweat is running down his
smoothly muscled cappuccino  back and exploring  his cleavage.  Blisters the
size of green grapes are forming on the ball  of his left foot. Hiro's heart
and lungs are well developed, and he has been  blessed with unusually  quick
reflexes, but he is not intrinsically strong, the way  his father  was. Even
if he were intrinsically strong,  working with the  redneck  katana would be
very difficult.
     He  is  full  of adrenaline,  his  nerves  are  shot, and  his mind  is
cluttered up with  free-floating anxiety -  floating around on  an  ocean of
generalized terror.
     He is shuffling back and forth down  the thirty-foot axis of the  room.
From time to time  he will accelerate, raise the redneck katana  up over his
head until it is pointed backward, then bring it swiftly  down, snapping his
wrists at  the  last moment so that it comes  to a  stop in  midair. Then he
says, "Next"'
     Theoretically. In fact, the redneck katana is difficult to stop once it
gets moving. But it's good exercise. His forearms look like bundles of steel
cables. Almost. Well, they will soon, anyway.
     The Nipponese don't  go in for this nonsense about  follow-through.  If
you  strike a man on the top of his  head with a katana and do  not make any
effort to stop the blade, it will divide his skull and probably get  hung up
in his  collarbone  or his  pelvis, and then  you  will be out  there in the
middle of the medieval battlefield with a foot on your late opponent's face,
trying to work the blade loose as his best  friend  comes running  up to you
with a certain  vengeful gleam in his eye. So the  plan is to snap the blade
to a full  stop just after the impact, maybe crease his brainpan an  inch or
two, then whip it out and look for another samurai, hence: "Next!"
     He has  been thinking  about what happened earlier tonight  with Raven,
which pretty much rules out sleep, and this is why he is practicing with the
redneck katana at three in the morning.
     He knows he  was  totally  unprepared. The  spear just came at  him. He
slapped at it with the blade. He happened to slap it at the right  time, and
it missed him. But he did this almost absentmindedly.
     Maybe that's how  great warriors do it. Carelessly,  not wracking their
minds with the consequences.
     Maybe he's flattering himself.

     The sound of a helicopter has been getting louder for some minutes now.
Even  though Hiro lives right next to the airport,  this is unusual. They're
not supposed to fly right near LAX, it raises evident safety questions.
     It doesn't stop  getting  louder  until it  is  very loud,  and at that
point, the helicopter is hovering a  few feet above the parking  lot,  right
out in front of Hiro and Vitaly's 20-by-30. It's a nice one, a corporate jet
chopper, dark green, with subdued  markings.  Hiro suspects that in brighter
light, he would be able to  make out the logo of a defense contractor,  most
likely General Jim's Defense System.
     A  pale-faced white man with a very high  forehead-cum-bald  spot jumps
out of  the  chopper, looking a lot more athletic than his face and  general
demeanor would lead you to expect,  and jogs across the parking lot directly
toward Hiro. This is the kind of guy Hiro remembers from when his dad was in
the  Army  - not  the gristly veterans of legends and  movies, just  sort of
regular  thirty-five-year-old guys rattling around in bulky uniforms. He's a
major. His name, sewn onto his BDUs, is Clem.
     "Hiro Protagonist?"
     "The same."
     "Juanita sent me to pick you up. She said you'd recognize the name."
     "I recognize the name. But I don't really work for Juanita."
     "She says you do now."
     "Well, that's nice," Hiro says. "So I guess it's kind of urgent?"
     "I think that would be a fair assumption," Major Clem says.
     "Can I spare a few minutes? Because  I've been working  out, and I need
to run next door."
     Major Clem looks next door. The next  logo down the  strip  is THE REST
STOP.
     "The situation is fairly static. You  could spare  five minutes," Major
Clem says.
     Hiro has an account with The Rest Stop. To  live at  the U-Stor-It, you
sort of have to have an account. So he gets to bypass the front office where
the attendant waits by the cash register. He shoves his membership card into
a slot, and a computer screen lights up with three choices:
        M
     F
     NURSERY (UNISEX)
     Hiro  slaps the "M" button. Then the screen changes to  a menu of  four
choices:
        OUR SPECIAL LIMITED FACILITIES - THRIFTY BUT SANITARY
     STANDARD FACILITIES - JUST LIKE HOME - MAYBE JUST A LITTLE BETTER
     PRIME FACILITIES - A GRACIOUS PLACE FOR THE DISCRIMINATING PATRON
     THE LAVATORY GRANDE ROYALE
     He  has  to  override   a  well-worn   reflex  to  stop  himself   from
automatically punching SPECIAL LIMITED FACILITIES, which is what he and  all
the other U-Stor-It  residents always use. Almost impossible to go in  there
and  not come in  contact  with someone  else's bodily fluids. Not a  pretty
sight. Not at all gracious. Instead - what the fuck, Juanita's going to hire
him, right? - he slams the button for LAVATORY GRANDE ROYALE.
     Never  been here  before.  It's  like  something on the top  floor of a
luxury  high-rise  casino  in  Atlantic City,  where they put  semi-retarded
adults from South Philly after they've blundered into the mega-jackpot. It's
got everything  that a  dimwitted  pathological gambler would  identify with
luxury: gold-plated  fixtures, lots of injection-molded pseudomarble, velvet
drapes, and a butler.
     None  of the U-Stor-It residents ever use  The  Lavatory Grande Royale.
The only reason it's here is that this place happens to be across the street
from  LAX. Singaporean  CEOs  who want to have  a shower  and  take a  nice,
leisurely crap, with all the sound effects, without having to hear and smell
other  travelers doing the same, can come  here  and  put  it  all  on their
corporate travel card.
     The butler is a thirty-year-old Centroamerican whose eyes look a little
funny,  like they've been  closed  for the last  several  hours.  He is just
throwing some improbably thick towels over his arm as Hiro bursts in.
     "Gotta get in and out in five minutes," Hiro says.
     "You  want  shave?"  the  butler  says.  He  paws  at  his  own  checks
suggestively, unable to peg Hiro's ethnic group.
     "Love to. No time."
     He  peels   off  his  jockey  shorts,  tosses   his  swords  onto   the
crushed-velvet  sofa,  and  steps  into  the marbleized  amphitheatre of the
shower stall. Hot water hits him from all directions at once. There's a knob
on the wall so you can choose your favorite temperature.
     Afterward, he'd like to take a  dump,  read  some of those glossy phone
book-sized magazines  next  to the high-tech shitter, but  he's  got  to get
going. He dries himself  off with a  fresh towel the size of a  circus tent,
yanks on  some loose drawstring  slacks and a T-shirt, throws some Kongbucks
at the butler, and runs out, girding himself with the swords.

     It's  a short  flight, mostly because the military  pilot  is  happy to
eschew comfort in favor of speed. The chopper  takes off at a shallow angle,
keeping low so it won't  get  sucked into any jumbo jets, and as soon as the
pilot gets room to  maneuver, he whips  the tail around, drops the nose, and
lets the rotor  yank them  onward  and upward across the  basin,  toward the
sparsely lit mass of the Hollywood Hills.
     But they stop short of the Hills, and end up on the roof of a hospital.
Part  of the  Mercy chain, which technically makes this Vatican airspace. So
far, this has Juanita written all over it.
     "Neurology ward," Major Clem says, delivering this string of nouns like
an order. "Fifth floor, east wing, room 564."

     The man in the hospital bed is Da5id.
     Extremely  thick, wide leather straps  have  been stretched across  the
head and foot of  the bed. Leather cuffs, lined with  fluffy sheepskin,  are
attached to the straps. These cuffs have been fastened around Da5id's wrists
and ankles. He's wearing a hospital gown that has mostly fallen off.
     The  worst  thing  is that  his eyes  don't  always point  in the  same
direction. He's hooked up to an EKG  that's charting his heartbeat, and even
though Hiro's not a doctor, he can see  it's not a regular pattern. It beats
too fast, then it doesn't beat at all,  then an alarm sounds, then it starts
beating again.
     He  has gone completely  blank. His eyes  are not  seeing  anything. At
first, Hiro thinks  that his body  is limp and relaxed. Getting  closer,  he
sees that Da5id is taut and shivering, slick with perspiration.
     "We put in a temporary pacemaker," a woman says.
     Hiro turns. It's a nun who also appears to be a surgeon.
     "How long has he been in convulsions?"
     "His ex-wife called us in, said she was worried."
     "Juanita."
     "Yes. When the paramedics arrived, he had fallen  out  of his chair  at
home  and was convulsing on the floor. You can see  a bruise, here, where we
think his computer fell off the table and hit him in the ribs. So to protect
him from further damage,  we put him  in  four-points. But for the last half
hour he's  been like  this -  like his whole body is  in fibrillation. If he
stays this way, we'll take the restraints off."
     "Was he wearing goggles?"
     "I don't know. I can check for you."
     "But you think this happened while he was goggled into his computer?"
     "I really don't know, sir. All I  know is,  he's  got  such bad cardiac
arrhythmia that  we had to implant a temporary pacemaker  right there on his
office  floor. We gave him some seizure  medication, which didn't work.  Put
him on some downers  to calm him,  which worked  slightly. Put his head into
various pieces  of imaging  machinery to find out  what the problem was. The
jury is still out on that."
     "Well,  I'm going  to go look at his  house,"  Hiro  says.  The  doctor
shrugs.
     "Let me know when he comes out of it," Hiro says.
     The doctor  doesn't  say anything  to  this. For  the  first time, Hiro
realizes that Da5id's condition may not be temporary.
     As Hiro is stepping  out into the hallway, Da5id speaks, "e ne em ma ni
a gi a gi ni mu ma ma dam e ne em am an ki ga a gi a gi..."
     Hiro turns around  and looks.  Da5id has  gone limp in  the restraints,
seems relaxed, half  asleep. He is looking at Hiro through half-closed eyes.
"e ne em dam gal nun na a gi agi e ne em u mu un abzu ka a gi a agi..."
     Da5id's  voice  is  deep  and placid,  with  no  trace  of stress.  The
syllables roll off his tongue like drool. As Hiro walks  down the hallway he
can hear Da5id talking all the way.
     "i ge en i ge en nu ge en nu ge en us sa tur ra lu ra ze em men..."

     Hiro gets back into the chopper. They cruise up the middle of Beachwood
Canyon, headed straight for the Hollywood sign.
     Da5id's  house has been transfigured by light. It's  at the end of  its
own little road, at the summit of a hill. The road has been blocked off by a
squat froglike jeep-thing  from General Jim's, saturated red  and blue light
sweeping  and pulsing  out of  it.  Another helicopter is  above the  house,
supported  on a swirling column of radiance. Soldiers  creep up and down the
property, carrying hand-held searchlights.
     "We took the precaution of securing the area," Major Clem says.
     At the fringes of all this light, Hiro  can see the dead organic colors
of  the  hillside.  The  soldiers  are trying  to  push  it back  with their
searchlights,  trying to burn it away.  He is about to  bury himself  in it,
become a single muddy  pixel in some airline  passenger's  window.  Plunging
into the biomass.
     Da5id's  laptop is  on the  floor next  to the table where  he liked to
work.  It is surrounded by medical debris. In the middle of this, Hiro finds
Da5id's  goggles, which either  fell  off when he hit  the  floor,  or  were
stripped off by the paramedics.
     Hiro picks up  the goggles. As he brings them  up  toward  his eyes, he
sees  the  image:  a wall of black-and-white  static.  Da5id's  computer has
snow-crashed.
     He closes his eyes and drops the goggles. You can't get hurt by looking
at a bitmap. Or can you?

     The house is sort of  a modernist castle with a high turret on one end.
Da5id and Hiro and the rest of the hackers used to  go  up there with a case
of beer and  a hibachi and just spend a whole night, eating jumbo shrimp and
crab legs and oysters and washing them down with beer. Now it's deserted, of
course, just  the hibachi,  which is rusted  and almost buried in gray  ash,
like an archaeological relic. Hiro has pinched one of Da5id's beers from the
fridge, and he sits up  here  for a while, in what  used to  be his favorite
place, drinking his beer slowly,  like he  used  to, reading stories in  the
lights.
     The old central  neighborhoods are packed  in tight  below  an eternal,
organic haze. In other  cities, you breathe  industrial contaminants, but in
L.A., you  breathe amino acids. The hazy  sprawl is ringed  and  netted with
glowing lines,  like hot wires in a toaster. At the outlet of the canyon, it
comes close enough that the light sharpens and breaks up into stars, arches,
glowing letters. Streams of red and  white corpuscles throb down highways to
the  fuzzy  logic of  intelligent  traffic  lights. Farther away,  spreading
across the basin,  a  million sprightly logos smear  into  solid  arcs, like
geometric  points  merging into  curves.  To either  side of  the  franchise
ghettos,  the loglo dwindles across a few  shallow layers of development and
into a surrounding dimness that is  burst here and there by  the  blaze of a
security spotlight in someone's backyard.
     The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in
one  place  will thrive in another. You  just  have  to  find a sufficiently
virulent business  plan, condense it into  a three-ring  binder - its DNA  -
xerox it, and embed it  in  the fertile lining of  a well-traveled  highway,
preferably  one with  a left-turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it
runs up against its property lines.
     In olden times, you'd wander down to Mom's Cafe for a bite to eat and a
cup  of joe,  and  you would  feel right at home. It worked just fine if you
never  left your hometown.  But if  you went to the next town over, everyone
would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate
Special  would  be  something  you  didn't  recognize.  If  you  did  enough
traveling, you'd never feel at home anywhere.
     But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can
walk into a  McDonald's and no  one will  stare at him. He can order without
having to  look  at  the menu,  and  the  food  will always  taste the same.
McDonald's  is  Home,  condensed  into a  three-ring binder and xeroxed. "No
surprises" is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal,
subliminally blazoned  on every sign  and  logo  that make up the curves and
grids of light that outline the Basin.
     The people  of  America, who  live in  the world's  most surprising and
terrible country, take comfort  in that motto. Follow the loglo  outward, to
where the growth is enfolded into the valleys  and the canyons, and you find
the land of the refugees. They  have fled from the true America, the America
of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop,  chaos  theory, cement overshoes, snake
handlers,  spree  killers,  space  walks, buffalo jumps,  drive-bys,  cruise
missiles,  Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle  gangs, and bungee jumping.
They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in  identical  computer-designed
Burbclave  street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical  sheetrock
shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks,  vast
house farms out in  the  loglo  wilderness, a culture  medium  for  a medium
culture.
     The only ones left  in the city are street  people, feeding off debris;
immigrants,  thrown out  like shrapnel from  the  destruction of  the  Asian
powers;  young bohos; and  the technomedia priesthood of  Mr. Lee's  Greater
Hong  Kong. Young smart people  like Da5id and  Hiro, who  take the  risk of
living  in the city because  they like  stimulation  and  they know they can
handle it.

        25

     Y.T. can't really tell where they are. It's clear that they're stuck in
traffic. It's not like this is predictable or anything.
     "Y.T. must get under way now," she announces.
     No reaction for a  sec.  Then  the  hacker guy sits back in  his chair,
stares out through his goggles,  ignoring the 3-D compu-display, taking in a
nice view of the wall. "Okay," he says.
     Quick as  a mongoose, the man with the  glass  eye darts in, yanks  the
aluminum case out of the cryogenic cylinder, tosses it to Y.T. Meantime, one
of the lounging-around Mafia  guys is  opening the  back door of  the truck,
giving them all a nice view of a traffic jam on the boulevard.
     "One  other thing,"  the  man  with  the glass  eye says, and shoves an
envelope into one of Y.T.'s multitudinous pockets.
     "What's that?" Y.T. says.
     He holds  up  his  hands  self-protectively.  "Don't worry, it's just a
little something. Now get going."
     He motions at the guy  who's holding her plank. The guy turns out to be
fairly hip,  because he just throws the plank. It lands  at an odd  angle on
the floor  between them. But the spokes have long ago seen the floor coming,
calculated all the  angles, extended and flexed themselves like the legs and
feet of a basketball player coming back  to  earth from  a monster dunk. The
plank  lands on its  feet, banks  this  way, then  that, as  it regains  its
balance, then steers itself right up to Y.T. and stops beside her.
     She stands  on  it, kicks a few  times, flies  out the back door of the
semi,  and  onto the  hood  of a Pontiac  that was  following them  much too
closely. Its windshield makes a nice surface to  bank  off of,  and she gets
her  direction neatly reversed by  the time she hits the pavement. The owner
of the Pontiac is honking self-righteously, but there's  no way he can chase
her  down  because traffic is  totally  stopped, Y.T. is the only  thing for
miles around that is actually capable of movement. Which is  the whole point
of Kouriers in the first place.

     The  Reverend  Wayne's Pearly Gates #1106 is  a pretty big one. Its low
serial number implies great age. It was built long ago,  when land was cheap
and  lots were big. The parking lot is half full. Usually,  all you see at a
Reverend   Wayne's   are   old   beaters  with  wacky   Spanish  expressions
nail-polished  on  the  rear   bumpers   -   the  rides  of  Centro-American
evangelicals  who have come up  north  to  get decent  jobs and  escape  the
relentlessly  Catholic style of their homelands. This lot also has a  lot of
just plain  old  regular  bimbo  boxes  with  license plates  from  all  the
Burbclaves.
     Traffic is moving a little better on this stretch of the boulevard, and
so Y.T. comes into the  lot at a pretty  good clip,  takes one or two orbits
around the franchise to work off her  speed. A smooth parking lot is hard to
resist  when  you  are going fast, and to  look  at  it from a slightly less
juvenile point of view, it's a good idea to scope things out, to be familiar
with your environment. Y.T. learns that this parking lot is linked with that
of a Chop Shop  franchise  next  door ("We  turn  any vehicle  into CASH  in
minutes!"), which in  turn flows into the lot of a neighboring strip mall. A
dedicated thrasher could probably navigate from L.A. to New York by coasting
from one parking lot into the next.
     This  parking lot  makes popping  and skittering noises in  some areas.
Looking down,  she  sees that behind the franchise, near the  dumpster,  the
asphalt is strewn  with  small glass vials,  like the one  that Squeaky  was
looking at last night. They are  scattered about like cigarette butts behind
a bar.  When  the  footpads  of  her  wheels  pass  over these  vials,  they
tiddlywink out from underneath and skitter across the pavement.
     People  are lined up  out  the door, waiting to get in.  Y.T. jumps the
line and goes inside.

     The front room of the Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates is, of course, like
all  the others. A row of padded vinyl chairs where worshippers can wait for
their number  to be called,  with a potted plant  at each  end  and a  table
strewn with  primeval magazines.  A toy  comer  where  kids can  kill  time,
reenacting  imaginary, cosmic battles in injection-molded plastic. A counter
done up  in fake wood so it looks like something  from an old church. Behind
the counter, a pudgy high school babe, dishwater blond  hair  that has  been
worked over pretty good  with a curling iron, blue metal-flake eyeshadow, an
even coat of red makeup covering her broad, gelatinous cheeks, a flimsy sort
of choir robe thrown over her T-shirt.
     When  Y.T. comes  in, she is right in  the middle of a transaction. She
sees Y.T. right away, but no  three-ring binder anywhere in the world allows
you to flag or fail in the middle of a transaction.
     Stymied, Y.T. sighs and crosses her arms to convey impatience.  In  any
other business  establishment,  she'd  already be raising hell and  marching
around behind the  counter as if she owned the  place. But this is a church,
damn it.
     There's a little rack along the  front of the counter bearing religious
tracts, free for the taking, donation requested. Several slots  on the  rack
are occupied  by the  Reverend  Wayne's famous bestseller.  How  America Was
Saved from Communism: ELVIS SHOT JFK.
     She pulls out the envelope that  the man  with the glass eye stuck into
her  pocket.  It  is not  thick and soft enough to  contain  a  lot of cash,
unfortunately.
     It contains half a dozen snapshots. All of  them feature Uncle Enzo. He
is on the broad, flat horseshoe  driveway of a large house, larger  than any
house  Y.T. has ever  seen with her  own  two  eyes.  He  is standing  on  a
skateboard.  Or  falling  off  of  a skateboard. Or  coasting,  slowly, arms
splayed wildly out to the sides, chased by nervous security personnel.
     A piece  of paper is wrapped around the pictures. It says: "Y.T. Thanks
for your help. As you can see from these pictures, I tried to train for this
assignment, but it's going to take some practice. Your friend, Uncle Enzo."
     Y.T.  wraps the pictures up just the way they  were, puts  them back in
her pocket, stifles a smile, returns to business matters.
     The girl in  the robe  is still performing her transaction  behind  the
counter.  The  transactee is a stocky Spanish-speaking  woman  in an  orange
dress.
     The  girl  types some stuff into  the computer. The customer  snaps her
Visa card down on the fake  wood altar top; it sounds like a rifle shot. The
girl  pries  the  card  up  using her  inch-long fingernails,  a  dicey  and
complicated operation that makes Y.T. think of insects climbing out of their
egg sacs. Then she  performs  the  sacrament, swiping  the card  through its
electromagnetic  slot with a carefully modulated sweep of the arm, as though
tearing  back  a  veil, handing over the  slip, mumbling that  she  needs  a
signature and  daytime phone number.  She  might as well have  been speaking
Latin, but that's okay, since this customer is familiar with the liturgy and
signs and numbers it before the words are fully spoken.
     Then  it  just remains for the  Word  from On  High. But computers  and
communications  are  awfully good  these days,  and it usually doesn't  take
longer than a couple of seconds to perform a  charge-card  verification. The
little machine beeps  out  its approval  code, heavenly tunes sing  out from
tinny speakers, and a wide pair of pearlescent doors in the back of the room
swing majestically open.
     "Thank  you for your  donation,"  the girl  says,  slurring  the  words
together into a single syllable.
     The customer stomps toward the double doors, drawn in by hypnotic organ
strains. The interior of the chapel  is weirdly  colored, illuminated partly
by  fluorescent fixtures wedged into the ceiling and partly by large colored
light  boxes  that simulate stained-glass  windows. The  largest  of  these,
shaped like  a fattened Gothic arch, is bolted to  the back wall,  above the
altar, and features a blazing trinity: Jesus, Elvis, and the Reverend Wayne.
Jesus gets top billing. The worshipper is  not  half a dozen steps into  the
place before  she thuds down  on her knees  in the  middle of the  aisle and
begins  to speak in tongues: "ar ia ari  ar isa ve na a mir ia i sa, ve na a
mir ia a sar ia..."
     The doors swing shut again.
     "Just a  sec," the girl says,  looking at Y.T. a  little nervously. She
goes  around  the  corner  and  stands  in  the  middle  of  the  toy  area,
inadvertently getting the hem of her robe caught up in a Ninja Raft Warriors
battle module, and knocks on the door to the potty.
     "Busy!" says a man's voice from the other side of the door.
     "The Kourier's here," the girl says.
     "I'll be right out," the man says, more quietly.
     And he really is right out. Y.T. does not perceive any waiting time, no
zipping  up of the  fly  or washing of the hands. He is wearing a black suit
with a clerical collar, pulling a  lightweight black robe on over that as he
emerges into  the  toy  area, crushing  little  action  figures and  fighter
aircraft beneath his  black  shoes. His hair is black and well greased, with
individual strands of gray, and he wears wire-rimmed bifocals with  a subtle
brownish tint. He has very large pores.
     And by the time  he gets close enough that Y.T. can see  all  of  these
details, she can also smell  him. She smells Old Spice, plus  a strong whiff
of vomit on his breath. But it's not boozy vomit.
     "Gimme that," he says, and yanks the aluminum briefcase from her hand.
     Y.T. never lets people do that.
     "You have to sign for it,  " she says.  But she knows it's too late. If
you  don't get  them to  sign  first,  you're screwed. You have no power, no
leverage. You're just a brat on a skateboard.
     Which is why  Y.T. never lets people  yank deliveries  out of her hand.
But this guy is a minister, for God's sake. She just didn't reckon on it. He
yanked it out of her hand - and now he runs with it back to his office.
     "I  can sign for it," the girl  says. She looks scared. More than that,
she looks sick.
     "It has to be him personally," Y.T. says. "Reverend Dale T. Thorpe."
     Now  she's done being shocked and  starting  to be pissed.  So she just
follows him right into his office.
     "You can't  go in there,"  the  girl says, but  she says  it  dreamily,
sadly, like this whole thing is already half forgotten. Y.T. opens the door.
     The Reverend Dale T. Thorpe sits at his desk. The aluminum briefcase is
open in front of him. It is filled with the same complicated bit of business
that she saw  the other  night, after the Raven thing. The Reverend  Dale T.
Thorpe seems to be leashed by the neck to this device.
     No, actually he is wearing something  on a  string  around his neck. He
was keeping it under his clothes, the way Y.T. keeps Uncle  Enzo's dog tags.
He has pulled it out now and shoved it into a slot inside the aluminum case.
It appears to be a laminated ID card with a bar code on it.
     Now  he  pulls the card out and  lets  it  dangle down  his front. Y.T.
cannot  tell whether  he has noticed her.  He is  typing  on  the  keyboard,
punching away with two fingers, missing letters, doing it again.
     Then motors and servos inside the  aluminum case whir  and shudder. The
Reverend Dale T. Thorpe has unsnapped one of the little vials from its place
in the lid and inserted it  into a socket next to the keyboard. It is slowly
drawn down inside the machine.
     The vial pops  back out  again. The red plastic cap is  emitting grainy
red  light. It has little  LEDs built  into it, and they  are  spelling  out
numbers, counting down seconds: 5,4,3,2,1...
     The Reverend Dale T. Thorpe holds the vial up to his left nostril. When
the LED counter gets down to zero, it hisses, like air coming out of a  tire
valve. At the same  time, he inhales deeply, sucking it all  into his lungs.
Then he shoots the vial expertly into his wastebasket.
     "Reverend?" the girl says. Y.T. spins around to see her drifting toward
the office. "Would you do mine now, please?"
     The Reverend Dale T. Thorpe does not answer. He has slumped back in his
leather swivel chair and is staring at a neon-framed blowup of Elvis, in his
Army days, holding a rifle.

        26

     When  he wakes up,  it's the middle of the day  and he is all dried out
from the sun, and birds are circling overhead, trying to decide whether he's
dead or alive. Hiro climbs down from  the roof  of the turret and,  throwing
caution to  the wind, drinks three glasses of L.A.  tap water.  He gets some
bacon out of Da5id's  fridge and throws it in the microwave. Most of General
Jim's people  have left, and there is only a token guard of soldiers down on
the road. Hiro locks all the doors that look out on the hillside, because he
can't  stop  thinking about  Raven. Then he  sits  at the kitchen  table and
goggles in.
     The Black Sun is mostly full of Asians, including a lot of people  from
the Bombay  film  industry, glaring  at each  other,  stroking  their  black
mustaches, trying to figure out what  kind  of hyperviolent action film will
play in Persepolis next year. It is nighttime there.  Hiro is one of the few
Americans in the joint.
     Along the back wall of the bar is a row  of private rooms, ranging from
little  tete-a-tetes to  big  conference  rooms where a bunch of avatars can
gather and have a meeting. Juanita is waiting for Hiro in one of the smaller
ones. Her avatar just looks like  Juanita. It is  an honest  representation,
with  no  effort made  to  hide the early suggestions of crow's-feet at  the
corners of her big black eyes. Her glossy hair is so well resolved that Hiro
can see individual strands refracting the light into tiny rainbows.
     "I'm at Da5id's house. Where are you?" Hiro says.
     "In an airplane - so I may break up," Juanita says.
     "You on your way here?"
     "To Oregon, actually."
     "Portland?"
     "Astoria."
     "Why on earth would you go to Astoria, Oregon, at a time like this?"
     Juanita takes a deep  breath, lets it out shakily. "If I told you, we'd
get into an argument."
     "What's the latest word on Da5id?" Hiro says.
     "The same."
     "Any diagnosis?"
     Juanita sighs, looks  tired. "There won't be any diagnosis,"  she says.
"It's a software, not a hardware, problem."
     "Huh?"
     "They're rounding  up the  usual  suspects. CAT scans,  NMR scans,  PET
scans, EEGs. Everything's fine. There's  nothing wrong with his brain -  his
hardware."
     "It just happens to be running the wrong program?"
     "His software got poisoned. Da5id  had  a snow crash last night, inside
his head."
     "Are you trying to say it's a psychological problem?"
     "It  kind of  goes beyond those  established categories," Juanita says,
"because it's a new phenomenon. A very old one, actually."
     "Does this thing just happen spontaneously, or what?"
     "You tell  me,"  she  says. "You were  there  last night. Did  anything
happen after I left?"
     "He had a Snow Crash hypercard that he got from Raven outside The Black
Sun."
     "Shit. That bastard."
     "Who's the bastard? Raven or Da5id?"
     "Da5id. I tried to warn him."
     "He used it." Hiro goes on to explain the Brandy with the magic scroll.
"Then later he had computer trouble and got bounced."
     "I  heard  about that  part,"  she  says.  "That's  why  I  called  the
paramedics."
     "I don't  see the connection between Da5id's  computer  having a crash,
and you calling an ambulance."
     "The Brandy's scroll wasn't just showing random static. It was flashing
up  a  large amount  of digital  information,  in binary form. That  digital
information was going  straight into Da5id's  optic  nerve. Which is part of
the  brain, incidentally - if you  stare into a person's pupil, you  can see
the terminal of the brain."
     "Da5id's not a computer. He can't read binary code."
     "He's a hacker. He messes  with  binary code for a living. That ability
is firm-wired into the deep  structures of his brain. So he's susceptible to
that form of information. And so are you, home-boy."
     "What kind of information are we talking about?"
     "Bad  news. A  metavirus," Juanita  says.  "It's  the  atomic  bomb  of
informational warfare - a virus that causes any system to infect itself with
new viruses."
     "And that's what made Da5id sick?"
     "Yes."
     "Why didn't I get sick?"
     "Too far away.  Your  eyes  couldn't  resolve  the bitmap. It has to be
right up in your face."
     "I'll think about that one," Hiro  says. "But  I have another question.
Raven  also  distributes  another  drug -  in Reality - called, among  other
things, Snow Crash. What is it?"
     "It's  not a drug,"  Juanita  says. "They make  it look like a drug and
feel  like a drug so  that  people  will  want to take  it. It's laced  with
cocaine and some other stuff."
     "If it's not a drug, what is it?"
     "It's  chemically processed  blood  serum taken  from  people  who  are
infected with the metavirus,"  Juanita says. "That is, it's just another way
of spreading the infection."
     "Who's spreading it?"
     "L. Bob Rife's private church. All of those people are infected."
     Hiro puts his head in his hands. He's not exactly  thinking about this;
he's letting it ricochet  around in his  skull, waiting for  it  to  come to
rest. "Wait a minute, Juanita. Make up your mind. This Snow Crash thing - is
it a virus, a drug, or a religion?"
     Juanita shrugs. "What's the difference?"

     That Juanita is talking this  way does not make  it any easier for Hiro
to get back on his feet in this conversation.
     "How can you say that? You're a religious person yourself."
     "Don't lump all religion together."
     "Sorry."
     "All people  have religions. It's like we have religion receptors built
into our  brain cells, or something, and we'll latch  onto anything  that'll
fill that niche for us. Now, religion used to be essentially viral - a piece
of  information  that  replicated inside  the  human mind, jumping  from one
person to the next. That's the way it used  to be, and unfortunately, that's
the  way it's  headed right now. But  there have  been  several  efforts  to
deliver us from the hands of primitive,  irrational religion. The first  was
made by  someone named  Enki about  four thousand years ago. The second  was
made  by Hebrew  scholars  in the eighth  century  B.C., driven out of their
homeland by the  invasion of Sargon II, but eventually it just devolved into
empty legalism. Another attempt was made by Jesus - that one was hijacked by
viral influences within fifty days of his death. The virus was suppressed by
the Catholic Church, but we're in the middle of a big epidemic  that started
in Kansas in 1900 and has been gathering momentum ever since."
     "Do you believe in God or not?" Hiro says. First things first.
     "Definitely."