SNOW CRASH

risk he can handle, so he turns off Reality and returns to the Metaverse.

He’s sitting at his desk. Y.T. is standing next to him, arms crossed, radiating Attitude.

“Librarian?”

“Yes, sir,” the Librarian says, padding in.

“I need blueprints of the aircraft carrier Enterprise. Fast. If you can get me something in 3.D, that’d be great.”

“Yes, sir,” the Librarian says.

Hiro reaches out and grabs Earth.

“YOU ARE HERE,” he says.

Earth spins around until he’s staring straight down at the Raft. Then it plunges toward him at a terrifying rate. It takes all of three seconds for him to get there.

If he were in some normal, stable part of the world like lower Manhattan, this would actually work in 3.D. Instead, he’s got to put up with two-dimensional satellite imagery. He is looking at a red dot superimposed on a blackand-white photograph of the Raft. The red dot is in the middle of a narrow black channel of watec YOU ARE HERE.

It’s still an incredible maze. But it’s a lot easier to solve a maze when you’re looking down on it. Within about sixty seconds, he’s out in the open Pacific. It’s a foggy gray dawn. The plume of steam coming out of Reason’s heat exchanger just thickens it a little.

“Where the hell are you?” Y.T. says. “Leaving the Raft.”

“Gee, thanks for all your help.”

• “I’ll be back in a minute. I just need a second to get myself organized.”

“There’s a lot of scary guys around here,” Y.T. says. “They’re watching me.”

“It’s okay,” Hiro says. “I’m sure they’ll listen to Reason.”

59

He flips open the big suitcase. The screen is still on, showing him a flat desktop display with a menu bar at the top. He uses a trackball to pull down a menw