SNOW CRASH

152

Armed and ready. The trigger’s hooked up to EEC 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. YT. 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.