NEAL STEPHENSON
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the other languages, wondenng which is which. It all looks like Taxilinga to Y.T.
The window is almost too grungy to see through, but she sees something black walking past it. Hiro.
About ten seconds later, her wristwatch goes off. She punches the emergency exit. The bell rings. The bars are trickier than she thought-good thing it’s not a real fire-but eventually she gets them open. She throws her plank outside onto the parking lot, drags her body through just as she bears the rear door being unlocked. By the time the three-ringer has found that all-important light switch, she is banking a sharp turn into the front lot-which has turned into a jeek festivall
Every jeek in Southern Cal is here, it seems, driving their giant, wrecked taxicabs with alien livestock in the back seat, reeking of incense and sloshing neon-hued Airwicksi They have set up a giant eight-tubed hookah on the trunk of one of the cabs and are slurping up great mountain-man lungfuls of choking smoke.
And they’re all staring at Hiro Protagonist, who is just staring back at them. Everyone in the parking lot looks completely astounded.
He must havemade his approach from the rear-didn’t realize that the front lot was full of jeeks. Whatever he was planning isn’t going to work. The plan is screwed.
The manager comes running around from the back of the Buy ‘n’ Fly, sounding a bloodcurdling Taxilinga tocsin. He’s got missile lock on Y.T.’s ass.
But the jeeks around the hookah don’t care about Y.T. They’ve got missile lock on Hiro. They carefully hang the ornate silver nozzles on a rack built into the neck of the mega-bong. Then they start moving toward him, reaching into the folds of their robes, the inner pockets of their windbreakers.
Y.T. is distracted by a sharp hissing noise. Her eyes glance back at Hiro, and she sees that he has withdrawn a three-foot, curved sword from a scabbard, which she did not notice before. He has dropped into a squat. The blade of the sword glitters painfully under the killer security lights of the Buy ‘n’ Fly.
How sweet!
It would be an understatement to say that the hookah boys are
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