SNOW CRASH

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either side like meteors. Other than a swarm of Kouriers, traffic is light.

The RARE chopper comes thwacking in, dangerously close, and she looks up at it, just for an instant, and sees Raven looking at her through the window. He’s pulled his goggles up on his forehead, just for a second. He’s got a certain look on his face, and she realizes that he’s not pissed at her at all. He loves her.

She lets go of the handle and goes into free fall.

At the same time, she jerks the manual release on her cervical collar and goes into full Michelin Man mode as tiny gas cartridges detonate in several strategic locations around her bod. The biggest one goes off like an M-80 at the nape of her neck, unfurling the coverall’s collar into a cylindrical gasbag that shoots straight up and encases her entire head. Other airbags go off around her torso and her pelvis, paying lots of attention to that spinal column. Her joints are already protected by the armorgeL

Which is not to say that it doesn’t hurt when she lands. She can’t see anything because of the airbag around her head, of course. But she feels herself bouncing at least ten times. She skids fora quarter of a mile and apparently caroms off several cars along the way; she can hear their tires squealing. Finally, she goes butt first through someone’s windshield and ends up sprawled across their front seat; they veer into a Jersey barrier. The airbag deflates as soon as everything stops moving, and she claws it away from her face.

Her ears are ringing or something. She can’t hear anything. Maybe she busted her eardrums when the airbags went off.

But there’s also the question of the big chopper, which has a talent for making noise. She drags herself out onto the hood of the car, feeling little hunks of safety glass beneath her carving parallel scratches into the paint job.

Rife’s big Soviet chopper is right there, hovering about twenty feet above the avenue, and by the time she sees it, it has already accumulated a dozen more pOons. Her eyes follow the cables down to street level, and she sees Kouners straining at the lines; this time, they’re not letting go.

Rife gets suspicious, and the chopper gains altitude, lifting the Kouriers off their planks. But a passing double-bottom semi