Snow Crash Part 32

Digging at the wave with one end of his paddle, the kayaker makes a few crude changes in his direction. Then he parks the paddle athwart the kayak, reaches down inside, and hauls out a small dark object, a tube about four feet long, which he hoists up to one shoulder.

He and the speedboat shoot past each other going in opposite directions, separated by a gap of only about twenty feet. Then the speedboat blows up. The Kowloon has overshot the site of all this action by a few thousand yards. It's pulling around into as tight a turn as a vessel of this size can handle, trying to throw a one-eighty so it can go back and deal with the Russians and, somewhat more problematically, with Raven.

Raven is paddling back toward his buddies.

"He's such an a.s.shole," Livio says. "What's he going to do, tow them out to the Raft behind his f.u.c.king kayak?"

"This gives me the creeps," the man with the gla.s.s eye says. "Make sure we got some guys up there with Stingers. They must have a chopper coming or something."

"No other ships on the radar," says one of the other soldiers, coming in from the bridge. "Just us and them. And no choppers either."

"You know Raven carries a nuke, right?" Hiro says.

"So I heard. But that kayak's not big enough. It's tiny. I can't believe you'd go out to sea in something like that."

A mountain is growing out of the sea. A bubble of black water that keeps rising and broadening. Well behind the bobbing raft, a black tower has appeared, jutting vertically out of the water, a pair of wings sprouting from its top. The tower keeps getting taller, the wings getting higher out of the water, as before and aft, the mountain rises and shapes itself. Red stars and a few numbers. But no one has to read the numbers to know it's a submarine. A nuclear-missile submarine.

Then it stops. So close to the Russians on their little raft that Gurov and friends can practically jump onto it. Raven paddles toward them, cutting through the waves like a gla.s.s knife.

"f.u.c.k me," the man with the gla.s.s eye says. He is utterly astounded. "f.u.c.k me, f.u.c.k me, f.u.c.k me. Uncle Enzo's gonna be p.i.s.sed."

"You couldn't of known," Livio says. "Should we shoot at 'em?"

Before the man with the gla.s.s eye can make a policy decision, the deck gun on the top of the nukesub opens up. The first sh.e.l.l misses them by just a few yards.

"Okay, we got a rapidly evolving situation. Hiro, you come with me."

The crew of the Kowloon has already sized up the situation and placed their bets on the nuclear submarine. They are running up and down the rails, dropping large, fibergla.s.s capsules into the water. The capsules break open to reveal bright orange folds, which blossom into life rafts.

Once the deck gunners on the nukesub figure out how to hit the Kowloon, the situation begins to evolve even more rapidly.

The Kowloon can't decide whether to sink, burn, or simply disintegrate, so it does all three at once. By that time, most of the people who were on it have made their way onto a life raft. They all bob on the water, zip themselves into orange survival suits, and watch the nukesub.

Raven is the last person to go belowdecks on the submarine. He spends a minute or two removing some gear from his kayak: a few items in bags, and one eight-foot spear with a translucent, leaf-shaped head. Before he disappears into the hatch, he turns toward the wreckage of the Kowloon and holds the harpoon up over his head, a gesture of triumph and a promise all at once. Then he's gone. A couple of minutes later, the submarine is gone, too.

"That guy gives me the creeps," the man with the gla.s.s eye says.

Once it starts coming clear to her, again, that these people are all twisted freaks, she starts to notice other things about them. For example, the whole time, no one ever looks her in the eye. Especially the men. No s.e.x at all in these guys, they've got it pushed so far down inside of them. She can understand why they don't look at the fat babushkas. But she's a fifteen-year-old American chick, and she is used to getting the occasional look. Not here.

Until she looks up from her big vat of fish one day and finds that she is looking into some guy's chest. And when she follows his chest upward to his neck, and his neck all the way up to his face, she sees dark eyes staring right back at her, right over the top of the counter.

He's got something written on his forehead: POOR IMPULSE CONTROL. Which is kind of scary. s.e.xy, too. It gives him a certain measure of romance that none of these other people have. She was expecting the Raft to be dark and dangerous, and instead it's just like working where her mother works. This guy is the first person she's seen around this place who really looks like he belongs on the Raft.

And he's got the look down, too. Incredibly rank style. Although he has a long wispy mustache that doesn't do much for his face. Doesn't bring out his features well at all.

"Do you take the nasty stuff? One fish head or two?" she says, dangling the ladle picturesquely. She always talks trash to people because none of them can understand what she's saying.

"I'll take whatever you're offering," the guy says. In English. Sort of a crisp accent.

"I'm not offering anything," she says, "but if you want to stand there and browse, that's cool."

He stands there and browses for a while. Long enough that people farther back in line stand up on tiptoe to see what the problem is. But when they see that the problem is this particular individual, they get down off their toes real fast, hunch down, sort of blend in to the ma.s.s of fishy-smelling wool.

"What's for dessert today?" the guy asks. "Got anything sweet for me?"

"We don't believe in dessert," Y.T. says. "It's a f.u.c.king sin, remember?"

"Depends on your cultural orientation."

"Oh, yeah? What culture are you oriented to?"

"I am an Aleut."

"Oh. I've never heard of that."

"That's because we've been f.u.c.ked over," the big scary Aleut says, "worse than any other people in history."

"Sorry to hear that," Y.T. says. "So, uh, do you want me to serve up some fish, or are you gonna stay hungry?"

The big Aleut stares at her for a while. Then he jerks his head sideways and says, "Come on. Let's get the f.u.c.k out of here."

"What, and skip out on this cool job?"

He grins ridiculously. "I can find you a better job."

"In this job, do I get to leave my clothes on?"

"Come on. We're going now," he says, those eyes burning into her. She tries to ignore a sudden warm tense feeling down between her legs.

She starts following him down the cafeteria line, heading for a gap where she can exit into the dining area. The head babushka b.i.t.c.h comes stomping out from in back, hollers at her in some incomprehensible language.

Y.T. turns to look back. She feels a pair of big hands sliding up her sides, coming up into her armpits, and she pulls her arms to her sides, trying to stop it. But it's no good, the hands come all the way up and keep lifting, keep rising into the air, bringing her with them. The big guy hoists her right up over the counter like she's a three-year-old and sets her down next to him. Y.T. turns back around to see the head babushka b.i.t.c.h, but she is frozen in a mixture of surprise, fear, and s.e.xual outrage. But in the end, fear wins out, she averts her eyes, turns away, and goes to replace Y.T. at vat position number nine.

"Thanks for the lift," Y.T. says, her voice wowing and fluttering ridiculously.

"Uh, didn't you want to eat something?"

"I was thinking of going out anyway," he says.

"Going out? Where do you go out on the Raft?"

"Come on, I'll show you."

He leads her down pa.s.sageways and up steep steel stairways and out onto the deck. It's getting close to twilight, the control tower of the Enterprise looms hard and black against a deep gray sky that's getting dark and gloomy so fast that it seems darker, now, than it will at midnight. But for now, none of the lights are on and that's all there is, black steel and slate sky.

She follows him down the deck of the ship to the stem. From here it's a thirty-foot drop to the water, they are looking out across the prosperous, clean white neighborhood of the Russian people, separated from the squalid dark tangle of the Raft per se by a wide ca.n.a.l patrolled by gun-toting blackrobes. There's no stairway or rope ladder here, but there is a thick rope hanging from the railing. The big Aleut guy hauls up a chunk of rope and drapes it under one arm and over one leg in a quick motion. Then he throws one arm around Y.T.'s waist, gathering her in the crook of his arm, leans back, and falls off the ship.

She absolutely refuses to scream. She feels the rope stop his body, feels his arm squeeze her so tight she chokes for a moment, and then she's hanging there, hanging in the crook of his arm.

She's got her arms down to her side, defiant. But just for the h.e.l.l of it, she leans into him, wraps her arms around his neck, puts her head on his shoulder, and hangs on tight. He rappels them down the rope, and soon they are standing on the sanitized, prosperous Russian version of the Raft.

"What's your name anyway?" she says.

"Dmitri Ravinoff," he says. "Better known as Raven."

Oh, s.h.i.t.

The connections between boats are tangled and unpredictable. To get from point A to point B, you have to wander all over the place. But Raven knows where he's going. Occasionally, he reaches out, grabs her hand, but he doesn't yank her around even though she's going a lot slower than he is. Every so often, he looks back at her with a grin, like, I could hurt you, but I won't.

They come to a place where the Russian neighborhood is joined to the rest of the Raft by a wide plank bridge guarded by Uzi dudes. Raven ignores them, takes Y.T.'s hand again, and walks right across the bridge with her. Y.T. hardly has time to think through the implications of this before it hits her, she looks around, sees all these gaunt Asians, staring back at her like she's a five-course meal, and realizes: I'm on the Raft. Actually on the Raft.

"These are Hong Kong Vietnamese," Raven says. "Started out in Vietnam, came to Hong Kong as boat people after the war there-so they've been living on sampans for a couple of generations now. Don't be scared, this isn't dangerous for you."

"I don't think I can find my way back here," Y.T. says.

"Relax," he says. "I've never lost a girlfriend."

"Have you ever had a girlfriend?"

Raven throws back his head and laughs. "A lot, in the old days. Not as many in the past few years."

"Oh, yeah? The old days? Is that when you got your tattoo?"

"Yeah. I'm an alcoholic. Used to get in a lot of trouble. Been sober for eight years."

"Then how come everyone's scared of you?"

Raven turns to her, smiles broadly, shrugs. "Oh, because I'm an incredibly ruthless, efficient, cold-blooded killer, you know."

Y.T. laughs. So does Raven.

"What's your job?" Y.T. asks.

"I'm a harpooner," he says.

"Like in Moby d.i.c.k?" Y.T. likes this idea. She read that book in school. Most of the people in her cla.s.s, even the power tools, thought that the book was totally entrenched. But she liked all the stuff about harpooning.

"Nah. Compared to me, those Moby d.i.c.ksters were f.a.ggots."

"What kind of stuff do you harpoon?"

"You name it."

From there on out, she just looks at him. Or at inanimate objects. Because otherwise she wouldn't see anything except thousands of dark eyes staring back at her. In that way, it's a big change from being a slop-slinger for the repressed.

Part of it is just because she's so different. But part of it is that there's no privacy on the Raft, you make your way around by hopping from one boat to the next. But each boat is home to about three dozen people, so it's like you are constantly walking through people's living rooms. And bathrooms. And bedrooms. Naturally, they look.

They tromp across a makeshift platform built on oil drums. A couple of Vietnamese dudes are there arguing or haggling over something looks like a slab of fish. The one who's turned toward them sees them coming. His eyes flicker across Y.T. without pausing, fix on Raven, and go wide. He steps back. The guy he's talking to, who has his back to them, turns around and literally jumps into the air, letting out a suppressed grunt. Both of them back well out of Raven's path.

And then she figures out something important: These people aren't looking at her. They're not even giving her a second glance. They're all looking at Raven. And it's not just a case of celebrity watching or something like that. All of these Raft dudes, these tough scary homeboys of the sea, are scared s.h.i.tless of this guy.

And she's on a date with him.

And it's just started.

Suddenly, walking through another Vietnamese living room, Y.T. has a flashback to the most excruciating conversation she ever had, which was a year ago when her mother tried to give her advice on what to do if a boy got fresh with her. Yeah, Mom, right. I'll keep that in mind. Yeah, I'll be sure to remember that. Y.T. knew that advice was worthless, and this goes to show she was right.

There are four men in the life raft: Hiro Protagonist, self-employed stringer for the Central Intelligence Corporation, whose practice used to be limited to so-called "dry" operations, meaning that he sat around and soaked up information and then later spat it back into the Library, the CIC database, without ever actually doing anything. Now his practice has become formidably wet. Hiro is armed with two swords and a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, known colloquially as a nine, with two ammunition clips, each carrying eleven rounds.

Vic, unspecified last name. If there was still such a thing as income tax, then every year when Vic filled out his 1040 form he would put down, as his occupation, "sniper." In cla.s.sic sniper style, Vic is reticent, un.o.btrusive. He is armed with a long, large-caliber rifle with a bulky mechanism mounted on its top, where a telescopic sight might be found if Vic were not at the leading edge of his profession. The exact nature of this device is not obvious, but Hiro presumes that it is an exquisitely precise sensor package with fine crosshairs superimposed on the middle. Vic may safely be presumed to be carrying additional small concealed weapons.

Eliot Chung. Eliot used to be the skipper of a boat called the Kowloon. At the moment, he is between jobs. Eliot grew up in Watts, and when he speaks English, he sounds like a black guy. Genetically speaking, he is entirely Chinese. He is fluent in both black and white English as well as Cantonese, Taxilinga, and some Vietnamese, Spanish, and Mandarin. Eliot is armed with a .44 Magnum revolver, which he carried on board the Kowloon "just for the halibut," i.e., he used it to execute halibut before pa.s.sengers hauled them on board. Halibut grow very large and can thrash so violently that they can easily kill the people who hook them; hence it is prudent to fire a number of sh.e.l.ls through their heads before taking them on board. This is the only reason Eliot carries a weapon; the other defensive needs of the Kowloon were seen to by crew members who were specialists in that kind of thing.

"Fisheye." This is the man with the gla.s.s eye. He will only identify himself by his nickname. He is armed with a large, fat black suitcase.

The suitcase is ma.s.sively constructed, with built-in wheels, and weighs somewhere between three hundred pounds and a metric ton, as Hiro discovers when he tries to move it. Its weight turns the normally flat bottom of the life raft into a puckered cone. The suitcase has a noteworthy attachment: a flexible three-inch-thick cable or hose or something, a couple of meters long, that emerges from one corner, runs up the sloping floor of the life raft, over the edge, and trails in the water. At the end of this mysterious tentacle is a hunk of metal about the size of a wastebasket, but so finely sculpted into so many narrow fins and vanes that it appears to have a surface area the size of Delaware. Hiro only saw this thing out of the water for a few chaotic moments, when it was being transferred into the life raft. At that time it was glowing red hot. Since then, it has lurked below the surface, light gray, impossible to see clearly because the water around it is forever churning in a full, rolling boil. Fist-sized bubbles of steam coalesce amid its fractal tracery of hot vanes and pummel the surface of the ocean, ceaselessly, all day and all night. The powerless life raft, sloshing around the North Pacific, emits a vast, spreading plume of steam like that of an Iron Horse chugging full blast over the Continental Divide. Neither Hiro nor Eliot ever mentions, or even notices, the by-now-obvious fact that Fisheye is traveling with a small, self-contained nuclear power source-almost certainly radiothermal isotopes like the ones that power the Rat Thing. As long as Fisheye refuses to notice this fact, it would be rude for them to bring it up.

All of the partic.i.p.ants are clad in bright orange padded suits that cover their entire bodies. They are the North Pacific version of life vests. They are bulky and awkward, but Eliot Chung likes to say that in northern waters, the only thing a life vest does is make your corpse float.

The lifeboat is an inflatable raft about ten feet long that does not come equipped with a motor. It has a tentlike, waterproof canopy that they can zip up all the way around, turning it into a sealed capsule so that the water stays out even in the most violent weather.

For a couple of days, a powerful chill wind coming down out off the mountains drives them out of Oregon, out toward the open water. Eliot explains, cheerfully, that this lifeboat was invented back in the old days, when they had navies and coast guards that would come and rescue stranded travelers. All you had to do was float and be orange. Fisheye has a walkie-talkie, but it is a short-range device. And Hiro's computer is capable of jacking into the net, but in this regard it functions much like a cellular telephone. It doesn't work out in the middle of nowhere.

When the weather is extremely rainy, they sit under the canopy. When it's less rainy, they sit above it. They all have ways of pa.s.sing the time.

Hiro clicks around with his computer, naturally. Being stranded on a life raft in the Pacific is a perfect venue for a hacker.

Vic reads and rereads a soaked paperback novel that he had in the pocket of his MAFIA windbreaker when the Kowloon got blown out from under them. These days of waiting are much easier for him. As a professional sniper, he knows how to kill time.

Eliot looks at things with his binoculars, even though there is very little to look at. He spends a lot of time messing around with the raft, fretting about it in the way that boat captains do. And he does a lot of fishing. They have plenty of stored food on the raft, but the occasional fresh halibut and salmon are nice to eat.

Fisheye has taken what appears to be an instruction manual from the heavy black suitcase. It is a miniature three-ring binder with pages of laser-printed text. The binder is just a cheap unmarked one bought from a stationery store. In these respects, it is perfectly familiar to Hiro: it bears the earmarks of a high-tech product that is still under development. All technical devices require doc.u.mentation of a sort, but this stuff can only be written by the techies who are doing the actual product development, and they absolutely hate it, always put the dox question off to the very last minute. Then they type up some material on a word processor, run it off on the laser printer, send the departmental secretary out for a cheap binder, and that's that.

But this only occupies Fisheye for a little while. He spends the rest of the time just staring off at the horizon, as though he's expecting Sicily to heave into view. It doesn't. He is despondent over the failure of his mission, and spends a lot of time mumbling under his breath, trying to find a way to salvage it.

"If you don't mind my asking," Hiro says, "what was your mission anyway?"