SNOW CRASH

amb~nces. Every couple of blocks there is a cluster of cops and medica, 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 corners 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 Lnto a hop field: It is great cover. The hops are heavy, flowering vines that grow on trellises lashed toge,ther out of long

thing. P0 es. The trellises are eight feet high; you can’t see a

They all get out of the car.

‘T.Bo~e? Squeaky hollers.