SNOW CRASH
But there will be more. Hiro knows they’re all out looking for him now. The gunners up there on the Enterprise don’t care how many of these Refus they have to kill in order to nail Him.
From the Malaysian neighborhood, he passes into a Chinese neighborhood. This one’s a lot more built up, it contains a number of steel ships and barges. It extends off into the distance, away from the Core, for as far as Hiro can see from his worthless sea-level vantage point.
He’s being watched by a man high up in the superstructure of one of those Chinese ships, another wirehead. Hiro can see the guy’s jaw flapping as he sends updates to Raft Central.
The big Catling gun on the deck of the Enterprise opens up again and fires another meteorite of depleted uranium slugs into the side of an unoccupied barge about twenty feet from Hiro. The entire side of the barge chases itself inward, like the steel has become liquid and is runnmg down a drain, and the metal turns bright as shock waves simply turn that thick layer of rust into an aerosol, blast it free from the steel borne on a wave of sound so powerful that it hurts Hiro down inside his chest and makes him feel sick.
The gun is radar controlled. It’s very accurate when it’s shooting at a piece of metal. It’s a lot less accurate when it’s trying to hit flesh and blood.
“Hiro? What the fuck’s going on?” Y.T. is shouting into his earphones.
“Can’t talk. Get me to my office,” Hiro says. “Pull me onto the back of the motorcycle and then drive it there.”
“I don’t know how to drive a motorcycle,” she says.
“It’s only got one control. Twist the throttle and it goes.”
And then he points his boat out toward the open water and drills it. Dimly superimposed on Reality, he can see the blackand-white figure of Y.T. sitting in front of him on the motorcycle; she reaches out for the throttle and both of them jerk forward and slam into the wall of a skyscraper at Mach 1.
He turns off his view of the Metaverse entirely, making the goggles totally transparent. Then he switches his system into full gargoyle mode: enhanced visible light with false-color infrared, plus millimeter-wave radar.
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