Chapter 55

It's pretty obvious which warehouse¹ we are looking for here. Fourth one on the left, the road that runs down toward the waterfront is blocked off by several shipping² containers -- the big steel boxes you see on the backs of eighteen-wheelers. They are arranged in a herringbone pattern, so that in order to get past them you have to slalom back and forth³ half a dozen times, passing through a narrow mazelike channel between high walls of steel. Guys with guns are perched on top, looking down at Y.T. as she guides her plank⁶ through the obstacle course. By the time she makes it out into the clear, she's been heavily checked out.

There is the occasional light-bulb-on-a-wire strung around, and even a couple of strings⁷ of Christmas-tree lights. These are switched on, just to make her feel a little more welcome. She can't see anything, just lights making colored halos amid a generalized cloud of dust and fog. In front of her, access to the waterfront is blocked off by another maze⁴ of shipping containers. One of them has a graffiti sign: THE UKOD SEZ: TRY SOME COUNTDOWN TODAY!

"What's the UKOD?" she says, just to break the ice a little.

"Undisputed King of the Ozone⁸ Destroyers," says a man's voice. He is just in the act of jumping down from the loading dock of the warehouse to her left. Back inside the warehouse, Y.T. can see electric lights and glowing cigarettes. "That's what we call Emilio."

"Oh, right," Y.T. says. "The Freon guy. I'm not here for Chill."

"Well," says the guy, a tall rangy dude in his forties, much too skinny to be forty years old. He yanks the butt⁹ of a cigarette from his mouth and throws it away like a dart¹⁰. "What'll it be, then?"

"What does Snow Crash cost?"

"One point seven five Gippers," the guy says.

"I thought it was one point five," Y.T. says.

The guy shakes his head. "Inflation, you know. Still, it's a bargain. Hell, that plank you're on is probably worth a hundred Gippers."

"You can't even buy these for dollars," Y.T. says, getting her back up. "Look, all I've got is one-and-a-half quadrillion dollars."

She pulls the bundle out of her pocket.

The guy laughs, shakes his head, hollers back to his colleagues inside the warehouse. "You guys, we got a chick here who wants to pay in Meeses."

"Better get rid of 'em fast, honey," says a sharper, nastier voice, "or get yourself a wheelbarrow."

It's an even older guy with a bald head, curly hair on the sides, and a paunch. He's standing¹¹ up on the loading dock.

"If you're not going to take it, just say so," Y.T. says. All of this chatter¹² has nothing to do with business.

"We don't get chicks back here very often," the fat bald old guy says. Y.T. knows that this must be the UKOD himself. "So we'll give you a discount for being spunky. Turn around."

"Fuck you," Y.T. says. She's not going to turn around for this guy.

Everyone within earshot laughs. "Okay, do it," the UKOD says.

The tall skinny guy goes back over to the loading dock and hauls an aluminum¹³ briefcase¹⁴ down, sets it on top of a steel drum in the middle of the road so that it's at about waist height. "Pay first," he says.

She hands him the Meeses. He examines the bundle, sneers¹⁵, throws it back into the warehouse with a sudden backhand motion. All the guys inside laugh some more.

He opens up the briefcase, revealing the little computer keyboard. He shoves his ID card into the slot, types on it for a couple of seconds.

He unsnaps a tube from the top of the briefcase, places it into the socket¹⁶ in the bottom part. The machine draws it inside, does something, spits it back out.

He hands the tube to Y.T. The red numbers on top are counting down from ten. 'When it gets down to one, hold it up to your nose and start inhaling," the guy says.

She's already backing away from him.

"You got a problem, little girl?" he says.

"Not yet," she says. Then she throws the tube up in the air as hard as she can. The chop of the rotor blades comes out of nowhere. The Whirlwind Reaper¹⁷ blurs¹⁸ over their heads; everyone crouches¹⁹ for an instant as surprise buckles²⁰ their knees. The tube does not come back to earth.

"You fucking bitch," the skinny guy says.

"That was a really cool plan," the UKOD says, "but the part I can't figure out is, why would a nice, smart girl like you participate in a suicide mission?"

The sun comes out. About half a dozen suns, actually, all around them up in the air, so that there are no shadows. The faces of the skinny man and the UKOD look flat and featureless under this blinding illumination. Y.T. is the only person who can see worth a damn because her Knight²¹ Visions have compensated²² for it; the men wince²³ and sag²⁴ beneath the light.

Y.T. turns to look behind herself. One of the miniature suns is hanging above the maze of shipping containers, casting light into all its crannies, blinding the gunmen who stand guard there. The scene flashes too light and too dark as her goggles²⁵' electronics try to make up their mind. But in the midst of this whole visual tangle²⁶ she gets one image printed indelibly on her retina: the gunmen going down like a treeline in a hurricane, and for just an instant, a line of dark angular things silhouetted²⁷ above the maze as they crest²⁸ it like a cybernetic tsunami²⁹. Rat Things.

They have evaded³⁰ the whole maze by leaping over it in long, flat parabolas. Along the way, some of them have slammed right through the bodies of men holding guns, like NFL fullbacks plowing³¹ full speed through nerdy sideline photographers. Then, as they land on the road in front of the maze, there is an instant burst of dust with frantic³² white sparks dancing around at the bottom, and while all this is happening, Y.T. doesn't hear, she feels one of the Rat Things impacting on the body of the tall skinny guy, hears his ribs³³ crackling like a ball of cellophane. Hell is already breaking loose inside the warehouse, but her eyes are trying to follow the action, watching the sparks-and-dust contrails of more Rat Things drawing themselves down the length of the road in an instant and then going airborne to the top of the next barrier.

Three seconds have passed since she threw the tube into the air. She is turning back to look inside the warehouse. But someone's on top of the warehouse, catching³⁴ her eye for a second. It's another gunman, a sniper, stepping out from behind an air-conditioning unit, just getting used to the light, raising his weapon to his shoulder. Y.T. winces³⁵ as a red laser beam from his rifle sweeps across her eyes once, twice as he zeroes his sights on her forehead. Behind him she sees the Whirlwind Reaper, its rotors making a disk under the brilliant light, a disk that is foreshortened into a narrow ellipse and then into a steady silver line. Then it flies right past the sniper.

The chopper pulls up into a hard turn, searching for additional prey³⁶, and something falls beneath it in a powerless trajectory³⁷, she thinks that it has dropped a bomb. But it's the head of the sniper, spinning rapidly, throwing out a fine pink helix under the light. The little chopper's rotor blade must have caught him in the nape of the neck. One part of her is dispassionately watching the head bounce and spin in the dust, and the other part of her is screaming her lungs out.

She hears a crack, the first loud noise so far. She turns to follow the sound, looking in the direction of a water tower that looms³⁸ above this area, providing a fine vantage point for a sniper.

But then her attention is drawn³⁹ by the pencil-thin blue-white exhaust of a tiny rocket that lances up into the sky from Ng's van. It doesn't do anything; it just goes up to a certain height and hovers⁴⁰, sitting on its exhaust. She doesn't care, she's kicking her way down the road now on her plank, trying to get something between her and that water tower.

There is a second cracking noise. Before this sound even reaches her ears, the rocket darts⁴¹ horizontally like a minnow, makes one or two minor⁴² cuts to correct its course, zeroes in on that sniper's perch⁵, up in the water tower's access ladder. There is a great nasty explosion without any flame or light, like the loud pointless booms that you get sometimes at fireworks shows. For a moment, she can hear the clamor of shrapnel ringing through the ironwork of the water tower. Just before she kicks her way back into the maze, a dustline whips past her, snapping rocks and fragments of broken glass into her face. It shoots into the maze. She hears it Ping-Pong all the way through, kicking off the steel walls in order to change direction. It's a Rat Thing clearing the way for her.

How sweet!

1 warehouse   

n.仓库；vt.存入仓库

参考例句：

• We freighted the goods to the warehouse by truck.我们用卡车把货物运到仓库。
• The manager wants to clear off the old stocks in the warehouse.经理想把仓库里积压的存货处理掉。

2 shipping   

n.船运（发货，运输，乘船）

参考例句：

• We struck a bargain with an American shipping firm.我们和一家美国船运公司谈成了一笔生意。
• There's a shipping charge of ￡5 added to the price.价格之外另加五英镑运输费。

3 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

4 maze   

n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑

参考例句：

• He found his way through the complex maze of corridors.他穿过了迷宮一样的走廊。
• She was lost in the maze for several hours.一连几小时，她的头脑处于一片糊涂状态。

5 perch   

n.栖木，高位，杆；v.栖息，就位，位于

参考例句：

• The bird took its perch.鸟停歇在栖木上。
• Little birds perch themselves on the branches.小鸟儿栖歇在树枝上。

6 plank   

n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目

参考例句：

• The plank was set against the wall.木板靠着墙壁。
• They intend to win the next election on the plank of developing trade.他们想以发展贸易的纲领来赢得下次选举。

7 strings   

n.弦

参考例句：

• He sat on the bed,idly plucking the strings of his guitar.他坐在床上，随意地拨着吉他的弦。
• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。

8 ozone   

n.臭氧，新鲜空气

参考例句：

• The ozone layer is a protective layer around the planet Earth.臭氧层是地球的保护层。
• The capacity of ozone can adjust according of requirement.臭氧的产量可根据需要或调节。

9 butt   

n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶

参考例句：

• The water butt catches the overflow from this pipe.大水桶盛接管子里流出的东西。
• He was the butt of their jokes.他是他们的笑柄。

10 dart   

v.猛冲，投掷；n.飞镖，猛冲

参考例句：

• The child made a sudden dart across the road.那小孩突然冲过马路。
• Markov died after being struck by a poison dart.马尔科夫身中毒镖而亡。

11 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

12 chatter   

vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战

参考例句：

• Her continuous chatter vexes me.她的喋喋不休使我烦透了。
• I've had enough of their continual chatter.我已厌烦了他们喋喋不休的闲谈。

13 aluminum   

n.(aluminium)铝

参考例句：

• The aluminum sheets cannot be too much thicker than 0.04 inches.铝板厚度不能超过0.04英寸。
• During the launch phase,it would ride in a protective aluminum shell.在发射阶段，它盛在一只保护的铝壳里。

14 briefcase   

n.手提箱，公事皮包

参考例句：

• He packed a briefcase with what might be required.他把所有可能需要的东西都装进公文包。
• He requested the old man to look after the briefcase.他请求那位老人照看这个公事包。

15 sneers   

讥笑的表情（言语）( sneer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• You should ignore their sneers at your efforts. 他们对你的努力所作的讥笑你不要去理会。
• I felt that every woman here sneers at me. 我感到这里的每一个女人都在嘲笑我。

16 socket   

n.窝，穴，孔，插座，插口

参考例句：

• He put the electric plug into the socket.他把电插头插入插座。
• The battery charger plugs into any mains socket.这个电池充电器可以插入任何类型的电源插座。

17 reaper   

n.收割者，收割机

参考例句：

• The painting is organized about a young reaper enjoying his noonday rest.这幅画的画面设计成一个年轻的割禾人在午间休息。
• A rabbit got caught in the blades of the reaper.一只兔子被卷到收割机的刀刃中去了。

18 blurs   

n.模糊( blur的名词复数 )；模糊之物；（移动的）模糊形状；模糊的记忆v.（使）变模糊( blur的第三人称单数 )；（使）难以区分

参考例句：

• The electron clouds are clearly visible as blurs surrounding the invisible nuclei. 电子云就象环绕着看不见的核的一片云雾。 来自辞典例句
• The letter had many blots and blurs. 信上有许多墨水渍和污迹。 来自辞典例句

19 crouches   

n.蹲着的姿势( crouch的名词复数 )v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• He crouches before rabbit hutch, shed sad tear for the first time. 他蹲在兔窝前，第一次流下了伤心的眼泪。 来自互联网
• A Malaysian flower mantis, which crouches among flowers awaiting unsuspecting prey. 一只马来西亚花螳螂，蜷缩在鲜花中等待不期而遇的猎物。 来自互联网

20 buckles   

搭扣，扣环( buckle的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• She gazed proudly at the shiny buckles on her shoes. 她骄傲地注视着鞋上闪亮的扣环。
• When the plate becomes unstable, it buckles laterally. 当板失去稳定时，就发生横向屈曲。

21 knight   

n.骑士，武士；爵士

参考例句：

• He was made an honourary knight.他被授予荣誉爵士称号。
• A knight rode on his richly caparisoned steed.一个骑士骑在装饰华丽的马上。

22 compensated   

补偿，报酬( compensate的过去式和过去分词 )； 给（某人）赔偿（或赔款）

参考例句：

• The marvelous acting compensated for the play's weak script. 本剧的精彩表演弥补了剧本的不足。
• I compensated his loss with money. 我赔偿他经济损失。

23 wince   

n.畏缩，退避，（因痛苦，苦恼等)面部肌肉抽动；v.畏缩，退缩，退避

参考例句：

• The barb of his wit made us wince.他那锋芒毕露的机智使我们退避三舍。
• His smile soon modified to a wince.他的微笑很快就成了脸部肌肉的抽搐。

24 sag   

v.下垂，下跌，消沉；n.下垂，下跌，凹陷，[航海]随风漂流

参考例句：

• The shelf was beginning to sag beneath the weight of the books upon it.书架在书的重压下渐渐下弯。
• We need to do something about the sag.我们须把下沉的地方修整一下。

25 goggles   

n.护目镜

参考例句：

• Skiers wear goggles to protect their eyes from the sun.滑雪者都戴上护目镜使眼睛不受阳光伤害。
• My swimming goggles keep steaming up so I can't see.我的护目镜一直有水雾，所以我看不见。

26 tangle   

n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱

参考例句：

• I shouldn't tangle with Peter.He is bigger than me.我不应该与彼特吵架。他的块头比我大。
• If I were you, I wouldn't tangle with them.我要是你，我就不跟他们争吵。

27 silhouetted   

显出轮廓的，显示影像的

参考例句：

• We could see a church silhouetted against the skyline. 我们可以看到一座教堂凸现在天际。
• The stark jagged rocks were silhouetted against the sky. 光秃嶙峋的岩石衬托着天空的背景矗立在那里。

28 crest   

n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖

参考例句：

• The rooster bristled his crest.公鸡竖起了鸡冠。
• He reached the crest of the hill before dawn.他于黎明前到达山顶。

29 tsunami   

n.海啸

参考例句：

• Powerful quake sparks tsunami warning in Japan.大地震触发了日本的海啸预警。
• Coastlines all around the Indian Ocean inundated by a huge tsunami.大海啸把印度洋沿岸地区都淹没了。

30 evaded   

逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出

参考例句：

• For two weeks they evaded the press. 他们有两周一直避而不见记者。
• The lion evaded the hunter. 那狮子躲开了猎人。

31 plowing   

v.耕( plow的现在分词 )；犁耕；费力穿过

参考例句：

• "There are things more important now than plowing, Sugar. "如今有比耕种更重要的事情要做呀，宝贝儿。 来自飘（部分）
• Since his wife's death, he has been plowing a lonely furrow. 从他妻子死后，他一直过着孤独的生活。 来自辞典例句

32 frantic   

adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的

参考例句：

• I've had a frantic rush to get my work done.我急急忙忙地赶完工作。
• He made frantic dash for the departing train.他发疯似地冲向正开出的火车。

33 ribs   

n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹

参考例句：

• He suffered cracked ribs and bruising. 他断了肋骨还有挫伤。
• Make a small incision below the ribs. 在肋骨下方切开一个小口。

34 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。

35 winces   

避开，畏缩( wince的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He winces at the memory of that experience. 他一回想起那番经历就畏缩起来。
• He winces at the memory of that defeat. 一想到那次失败他就畏缩了。

36 prey   

n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨

参考例句：

• Stronger animals prey on weaker ones.弱肉强食。
• The lion was hunting for its prey.狮子在寻找猎物。

37 trajectory   

n.弹道，轨道

参考例句：

• It is not difficult to sketch the subsequent trajectory.很容易描绘出它们最终的轨迹。
• The path followed by a projectile is called its trajectory.抛物体所循的路径称为它的轨道。

38 looms   

n.织布机( loom的名词复数 )v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的第三人称单数 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近

参考例句：

• All were busily engaged,men at their ploughs,women at their looms. 大家都很忙，男的耕田，女的织布。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The factory has twenty-five looms. 那家工厂有25台织布机。 来自《简明英汉词典》

39 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

40 hovers   

鸟( hover的第三人称单数 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫

参考例句：

• A hawk hovers in the sky. 一只老鹰在天空盘旋。
• A hen hovers her chicks. 一只母鸡在孵小鸡。

41 darts   

n.掷飞镖游戏；飞镖( dart的名词复数 )；急驰，飞奔v.投掷，投射( dart的第三人称单数 )；向前冲，飞奔

参考例句：

• His darts trophy takes pride of place on the mantelpiece. 他将掷镖奖杯放在壁炉顶上最显著的地方。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I never saw so many darts in a bodice! 我从没见过紧身胸衣上纳了这么多的缝褶！ 来自《简明英汉词典》

42 minor   

adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修

参考例句：

• The young actor was given a minor part in the new play.年轻的男演员在这出新戏里被分派担任一个小角色。
• I gave him a minor share of my wealth.我把小部分财产给了他。