The Enforcers turn the entire block into a mobile cop headquarters with cars and paddy wagons1 and satellite links on flatbed trucks. Dudes with white coats are walking up and down through the hop2 field with Geiger counters. Squeaky is wandering around with his headset, staring into space, carrying on conversations with people who aren't there. A tow truck shows up, towing T-Bone's black BMW behind it.
"Yo, pod." Hiro turns around and looks. It's Y.T. She's just come out of a Hunan place across the street. She hands Hiro a little white box and a pair of chopsticks. "Spicy3 chicken with black bean sauce, no MSG. You know how to use chopsticks?"
"I got a double order," Y.T. continues, "'cause I figure we got some good intel tonight."
"Are you aware of what happened here?"
"No. I mean, some people obviously got hurt."
"But you weren't an eyewitness5."
"No, I couldn't keep up with them."
"That's good," Hiro says.
"What did happen?"
Hiro just shakes his head. The spicy chicken is glistening6 darkly under the lights; he has never been less hungry in his life. "If I had known, I wouldn't have gotten you involved. I just thought it was a surveillance job."
"What happened?"
"I don't want to get into it. Look. Stay away from Raven7, okay?"
"Sure," she says. She says it in the chirpy tone of voice that she uses when she's lying and she wants to make sure you know.
Squeaky hauls open the back door of the BMW and looks into the back seat. Hiro steps a little closer, gets a nasty whiff of cold smoke. It is the smell of burnt plastic.
The aluminum8 briefcase9 that Raven earlier gave to T-Bone is sitting in the middle of the seat. It looks like it has been thrown into a fire; it has black smoke stains splaying out around the locks, and its plastic handle is partially10 melted. The buttery leather that covers the BMW's seats has burn marks on it. No wonder T-Bone was pissed.
Squeaky pulls on a pair of latex gloves. He hauls the briefcase out, sets it on the trunk lid, and rips the latches11 open with a small prybar.
Whatever it is, it is complicated and highly designed. The top half of the case has several rows of the small red-capped tubes that Hiro saw at the U-Stor-It. There are five rows with maybe twenty tubes in each row.
The bottom half of the case appears to be some kind of miniaturized, old-fashioned computer terminal. Most of it is occupied by a keyboard. There is a small liquid-crystal display screen that can probably handle about five lines of text at a time. There is a penlike object attached to the case by a cable, maybe three feet long uncoiled. It looks like it might be a light pen or a bar-code scanner. Above the keyboard is a lens, set at an angle so that it is aimed at whoever is typing on the keyboard. There are other features whose purpose is not so obvious: a slot, which might be a place to insert a credit or ID card, and a cylindrical12 socket13 that is about the size of one of those little tubes.
This is Hiro's reconstruction14 of how the thing looked at one time. When Hiro sees it, it is melted together. Judging from the pattern of smoke marks on the outside of the case -- which appear to be jetting outward from the crack between the top and bottom -- the source of the flame was inside, not outside.
Squeaky reaches down and unsnaps one of the tubes from the bracket, holds it up in front of the bright lights of Chinatown. It had been transparent15 but was now smirched by heat and smoke. From a distance, it looks like a simple vial, but stepping up to look at it more closely Hiro can see at least half a dozen tiny individual compartments16 inside the thing, all connected to each other by capillary17 tubes. It has a red plastic cap on one end of it. The cap has a black rectangular window, and as Squeaky rotates it, Hiro can see the dark red glint of an inactive LED display inside, like looking at the display on a turned-off calculator. Underneath18 this is a small perforation. It isn't just a simple drilled hole. It is wide at the surface, rapidly narrowing to a nearly invisible pinpoint19 opening, like the bell of a trumpet20.
The compartments inside the vial are all partially filled with liquids. Some of them are transparent and some are blackish brown. The brown ones have to be organics of some kind, now reduced by the heat into chicken soup. The transparent ones could be anything.
"He got out to go into a bar and have a drink," Squeaky mumbles21. "What an asshole."
"Who did?"
"T-Bone. See, T-Bone was, like, the registered owner of this unit. The suitcase. And as soon as he got more than about ten feet away from it -- *foosh* -- it self-destructed."
"Why?"
Squeaky looks at Hiro like he's stupid. "Well, it's not like I work for Central Intelligence or anything. But I would guess that whoever makes this drug -- they call it Countdown, or Redcap, or Snow Crash -- has a real thing about trade secrets. So if the pusher abandons the suitcase, or loses it, or tries to transfer ownership to someone else -- *foosh*."
"You think the Crips are going to catch up with Raven?"
"Not in Chinatown. Shit," Squeaky says, getting pissed again in retrospect22, "I can't believe that guy. I could have killed him."
"Raven?"
"No. That Crip. Chasing Raven. He's lucky Raven got to him first, not me."
"You were chasing the Crip?"
"Yeah, I was chasing the Crip. What, did you think I was trying to catch Raven?"
"Sort of, yeah. I mean, he's the bad guy, right?"
"Definitely. So I'd be chasing Raven if I was a cop and it was my job to catch bad guys. But I'm an Enforcer, and it's my job to enforce order. So I'm doing everything I can -- and so is every other Enforcer in town -- to protect Raven. And if you have any ideas about trying to go and find Raven yourself and get revenge for that colleague of yours that he offed, you can forget it."
"Offed? What colleague?" Y.T. breaks in. She didn't see what happened with Lagos.
Hiro is mortified23 by this idea. "Is that why everyone was telling me not to fuck with Raven? They were afraid I was going to attack him?"
Squeaky eyes the swords. "You got the means."
"Why should anyone protect Raven?"
Squeaky smiles, as though we have just crossed the border into the realm of kidding around. "He's a Sovereign."
"So declare war on him."
"It's not a good idea to declare war on a nuclear power."
"Huh?"
"Christ," Squeaky says, shaking his head, "if I had any idea how little you knew about this shit, I never would have let you into my car. I thought you were some kind of a serious CIC wet-operations guy. Are you telling me you really didn't know about Raven?"
"Yes, that's what I'm telling you."
"Okay. I'm gonna tell you this so you don't go out and cause any more trouble. Raven's packing a torpedo24 warhead that he boosted from an old Soviet25 nuke sub. It was a torpedo that was designed to take out a carrier battle group with one shot. A nuclear torpedo. You know that funny-looking sidecar that Raven has on his Harley? Well, it's a hydrogen bomb, man. Armed and ready. The trigger's hooked up to EEC trodes embedded26 in his skull27. If Raven dies, the bomb goes off. So when Raven comes into town, we do everything in our power to make the man feel welcome."
Hiro's just gaping28. Y.T. has to step in on his behalf. "Okay," she says. "Speaking for my partner and myself, we'll stay away from him."
收听单词发音 |
1
wagons
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| n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车 | |
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hop
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| n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过 | |
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spicy
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| adj.加香料的；辛辣的，有风味的 | |
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shrugs
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| n.耸肩（以表示冷淡，怀疑等）( shrug的名词复数 ) | |
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eyewitness
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| n.目击者，见证人 | |
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glistening
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| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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raven
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| n.渡鸟，乌鸦；adj.乌亮的 | |
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aluminum
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| n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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briefcase
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| n.手提箱，公事皮包 | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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latches
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| n.（门窗的）门闩( latch的名词复数 )；碰锁v.理解( latch的第三人称单数 )；纠缠；用碰锁锁上（门等）；附着（在某物上） | |
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cylindrical
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| adj.圆筒形的 | |
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socket
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| n.窝，穴，孔，插座，插口 | |
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reconstruction
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| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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compartments
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| n.间隔( compartment的名词复数 )；（列车车厢的）隔间；（家具或设备等的）分隔间；隔层 | |
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capillary
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| n.毛细血管；adj.毛细管道；毛状的 | |
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underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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pinpoint
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| vt.准确地确定；用针标出…的精确位置 | |
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trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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mumbles
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| 含糊的话或声音，咕哝( mumble的名词复数 ) | |
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retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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mortified
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| v.使受辱( mortify的过去式和过去分词 )；伤害（人的感情）；克制；抑制（肉体、情感等） | |
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torpedo
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| n.水雷，地雷；v.用鱼雷破坏 | |
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Soviet
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| adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃 | |
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embedded
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| a.扎牢的 | |
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skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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