NEAL STEPHENSON

“V/hat’s that?”

“Mixing business with pleasure. Going out with a colleague. It gets very confusing.”

“Yeah. I see what you mean.” She’s not exactly sure what a colleague is.

“I was thinking that we should be partners,” she says.

She’s expecting him to laugh at her. But instead he grins and nods his head slightly. “The same thing occurred to me. But I’d have to think about how it would work.”

She is astounded that he would actually be thinking this. Then she gets the sap factor under control and realizes: He’s waffling. Which means he’s probably lying. This is probably going to end with him trying to get her into bed.

“I gotta go,” she says. “Cotta get home.”

Now we’ll see how fast he loses interest in the partnership concept. She turns her back on him.

Suddenly, they are impaled on Hong Kong robot spotlights one more time.

Y.T. feels a sharp bruising pain in her ribs, as though someone punched her. But it wasn’t Hiro. He is an unpredictable freak who carries swords, but she can smell chick-punchers a mile off.

“Owl” she says, twisting away from the impact. She looks down to see a small heavy object bouncing on the ground at their feet. Out in the street, an ancient taxi squeals its tires, getting the

hell out of there. A peek is hanging out the rear window, shaldng his fist at them. He must have thrown a rock at her.

Except it’s not a rock. The heavy thing at her feet, the thing

that just bounced off of Y.T.’s ribcage, is a hand grenade. She stares for a second, recognizing it, a well-known cartoon icon made real.

Then her feet get knocked out from under her, too fast really to hurt. And just when she’s getting reoriented to that, there is a painfully loud bang from another part of the parking lot.

And then everything finally stops long enough to be seen and understood.

The Rat Thing has stopped. Which they never do. It’s part of their mystery that you never get to see them, they move so fast. No one knows what they look like.