NEAL STEPHENSON
It is Rife’s chopper, settling down on the tarmac a few dozen meters away from the jet. The thunder of the rotor blades and the blast of the wind seem to penetrate into Uncle Enzo’s brain. He closes his eyes against the wind and utterly loses his balance, has no idea where he is until he slams full-length into the pavement. The pavement beneath him is slippery and warm, and Uncle Enzo realizes that he is losing a great deal of blood.
Staring across the tarmac, he sees Raven making his way toward the aircraft, limping horrendously, one leg virtually useless. Finally, he gives up on it and just hops on his good leg.
Rife has climbed down out of the chopper. Raven and Rife are talking, Raven gesticulating back in Enzo’s direction. Then Rife nods his approval, and Raven turns around, his teeth bright and white. He’s not grimacing so much as he is smiling in anticipation. He begins to hop toward Uncle Enzo, pulling another glass knife out of his jacket The bastard is carrying a million of those things.
He’s coming after Enzo, and Enzo can’t even stand up without passing out
He looks around and sees nothing but a skateboard and a pair of expensive shoes and socks about twenty feet away. He can’t stand up, but he can do the GI crawl, and so he begins to pull
himself forward on his elbows even as Raven is hopping toward him one-legged.
They meet in an open lane between two adjacent jets. Enzo is on his belly, slumped over the skateboard. Raven is standing, supporting himself with one hand on the wing of the jet, the glass knife glittering in his other hand. Enzo is now seeing the world in dim black and white, like a cheap Metaverse terminal; this is how his buddies used to describe it in Vietnam right before they succumbed to blood loss.
“Hope you’ve done your last rites,” Raven says, “because there ain’t no time to call a priest”
“There is no need for one,” Uncle Enzo says, and punches the button on the skateboard labeled “RadiKS Narrow Cone Tuned Shock Wave Projector.”
The concussion nearly blows his head off. Uncle Enzo, if he survives, will never hear well again. But it does wake him up a little bit. He lifts his head off the board to see Raven standing
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