SNOW CRASH

“Why should they want to?” Eliot says. “We got nothing they want except for poontang.”

“Are you saying these guys are homos?” Fisheye says, his face shriveling up.

“Shit, man,” Eliot says, “you didn’t even blink when I told you about the scalps.”

“I knew I didn’t like any of this boat shit,” Fisheye says.

“If this makes any difference to you, they’re not gay in the sense that we usually think of it,” Eliot explains. “They’re het, but they’re pirates. They’ll go after anything that’s warm and concave.”

Fisheye makes a snap decision. “Okay, you two guys, Him and Eliot, you’re Chinese. Take off your clothes.”

“What?”

“Do it. I’m the president, remember? You want Vic to do it for you?”

Eliot and Hiro can’t help looking over at Vic, who is just sitting there like a lump. There is something about his extremely blasé attitude that inspires fear.

“Do it or I’ll flicking kill you,” Fisheye says, finally driving the point home.

Eliot and Him, bobbing awkwardly on the unsteady floor of the raft, peel off their survival suits and step out of them. Then they pull off the rest of their clothes, exposing smooth bare skin to the air for the first time in a few days.

The trawler comes right alongside of them, no more than twenty feet away, and cuts its engines. They are nicely equipped:

haifa dozen Zodiacs with new outboards, an Exocet-type missile, two radars, and a fifty-caliber machine gun at each end of the boat, currently unmanned. A couple of speedboats are being towed behind the trawler like dinghys and each of these also has a heavy machine gun. And there is also a thirty-six-foot motor yacht, following them under its own power.

There are a couple of dozen guys in Bruce Lee’s pirate band, and they are now lined up along the trawler’s railing, grinning, whistling, howling like wolves, and waving unrolled trojans in the air.

“Don’t worry, man, I’m not going to let ‘em fuck you,” Fisheye says, grinning.