NEAL STEPHENSON

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toward the wreckage of the Kowloon and holds the harpoon up over his head, a gesture of triumph and a promise all at once. Then he’s gone. A couple of minutes later, the submarine is gone, too.

“That guy gives me the creeps,” the man with the glass eye says.

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Once it starts coming clear to her, again, that these people are all twisted freaks, she starts to notice other things about them. For example, the whole time, no one ever looks her in the eye. Especially the men. No sex at all in these guys, they’ve got it pushed so far down inside of them. She can understand why they don’t look at the fat babushkas. But she’s a fifteen-year-old American chick, and she is used to getting the occasional look. Not here.

Until she looks up from her big vat of fish one day and finds that she is looking into some guy’s chest. And when she follows his chest upward to his neck, and his neck all the way up to his face, she sees dark eyes staring right back at her, right over the top of the counter.

He’s got something written on his forehead: POOR IMPULSE CONTROL. Which is kind of scary. Sexy, too. It gives him a certain measure of romance that none of these other people have. She was expecting the Raft to be dark and dangerous, and instead it’s just like working where her mother works. This guy is the first person she’s seen around this place who really looks like he belongs on the Raft.

And he’s got the look down, too. Incredibly rank style. Although he has a long wispy mustache that doesn’t do much for his face. Doesn’t bring out his features well at all.

“Do you take the nasty stuff? One fish head or two?” she says, dangling the ladle picturesquely. She always talks trash to people because none of them can understand what she’s saying.

“I’ll take whatever you’re offering,” the guy says. In English. Sort of a crisp accent.