Any ped can get into Griffith Park without being noticed. And Y.T. figures that despite the barriers across the road, the Falabala camp isn't too well protected, if you've got off-road capability1. For a skate ninja on a brand-new plank2 in a brand-new pair of Knight3 Visions (hey, you have to spend money to make money) there will be no problem. Just find a high embankment that ramps4 down into the canyon5, skirt the edge until you see those campfires down below. And then lean down that hill. Trust gravity.
She realizes halfway6 down that her blue-and-orange coverall, fly as it may be, is going to be a real attention getter in the middle of the night in the Falabala zone, so she reaches up to her collar, feels a hard disk sewn into the fabric7, presses it between thumb and finger until it clicks. Her coverall darkens, the colors shimmer8 through the electropigment like an oil slick, and then it's black.
On her first visit she didn't check this place out all that carefully because she hoped she'd never come back. So the embankment turns out to be taller and steeper than Y.T. remembered. Maybe a little more of a cliff, drop-off, or abyss than she thought. Only thing that makes her think so is that she seems to be doing a lot of free-fall work here. Major plummeting9. Big time ballistic styling. That's cool, it's all part of the job, she tells herself. The smartwheels are good for it. The tree trunks are bluish black, standing10 out not so well against a blackish blue background. The only other thing she can see is the red laser light of the digital speedometer down on the front of her plank, which is not showing any real information. The numbers have vibrated themselves into a cloud of gritty red light as the radar11 speed sensor12 tries to lock onto something.
She turns the speedometer off. Running totally black now. Precipitating13 her way toward the sweet 'crete of the creek14 bottom like a black angel who has just had the shroud15 lines of her celestial16 parachute severed17 by the Almighty18. And when the wheels finally meet the pavement, it just about drives her knees up through her jawbone. She finishes the whole gravitational transaction with not much altitude and a nasty head of dark velocity19.
Mental note: Next time just jump off a fucking bridge. That way there's no question of getting an invisible cholla shoved up your nose.
She whips around a corner, heeled over so far she could lick the yellow line, and her Knight Visions reveal all in a blaze of multispectral radiation. On infrared22, the Falabala encampment is a turbulating aurora23 of pink fog punctuated24 by the white-hot bursts of campfires. All of it rests on dim bluish pavement, which means, in the false-color scheme of things, that it's cold. Behind everything is the jagged horizon line of that funky25 improvised26 barrier technology that the Falabalas are so good at. A barrier that has been completely spumed, snubbed, and confounded by Y.T., who dropped out of the sky into the middle of the camp like a Stealth fighter with an inferiority complex. Once you're into the actual encampment, people don't really notice or care who you are. A couple people see her, watch her slide on by, don't get all hairy about it. They probably get a lot of Kouriers coming through here. A lot of dippy, gullible27, Kool-Aid drinking couriers. And these people aren't hip20 enough to tell Y.T. apart from that breed. But that's okay, she'll pass for now, as long as they don't check out the detailing on her new plank.
The campfires provide enough plain old regular visible light to show this sorry affair for what it is: a bunch of demented Boy Scouts28, a jamboree without merit badges or hygiene29. With the IR supered on top of the visible, she can also see vague, spectral21 red faces out in the shadows where her unassisted eyes would only see darkness. These new Knight Visions cost her a big wad of her Mob drug-running money. Just the kind of thing Mom had in mind when she insisted Y.T. get a part-time job.
Some of the people who were here last time are gone now, and there's a few new ones she doesn't recognize. There's a couple of people actually wearing duct-tape straitjackets. That's a fashion statement reserved for the ones who are totally out of control, rolling and thrashing around on the ground. And there's a few more who are spazzing out, but not as bad, and one or two who are just plain messed up, like plain old derelicts that you might see at the Snooze 'n' Cruise.
"Hey, look!" someone says. "It's our friend the Kourier! Welcome, friend!" She's got her Liquid Knuckles30 uncapped, available, and shaken well before use. She's got high-voltage, high-fashion metallic31 cuffs32 around her wrists in case someone tries to grab her by same. And a bundy stunner up her sleeve. Only the most tubular throwbacks carry guns. Guns take a long time to work (you have to wait for the victim to bleed to death), but paradoxically they end up killing33 people pretty often. But nobody hassles you after you've hit them with a bundy stunner. At least that's what the ads say.
So it's not like she exactly feels vulnerable or anything. But still, she'd like to pick her target. So she maintains escape velocity until she's found the woman who seemed friendly -- the bald chick in the torn-up Chanel knockoff -- and then zeroes in on her.
1 capability | |
n.能力;才能;(pl)可发展的能力或特性等 | |
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2 plank | |
n.板条,木板,政策要点,政纲条目 | |
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3 knight | |
n.骑士,武士;爵士 | |
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4 ramps | |
resources allocation and multiproject scheduling 资源分配和多项目的行程安排 | |
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5 canyon | |
n.峡谷,溪谷 | |
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6 halfway | |
adj.中途的,不彻底的,部分的;adv.半路地,在中途,在半途 | |
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7 fabric | |
n.织物,织品,布;构造,结构,组织 | |
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8 shimmer | |
v./n.发微光,发闪光;微光 | |
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9 plummeting | |
v.垂直落下,骤然跌落( plummet的现在分词 ) | |
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10 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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11 radar | |
n.雷达,无线电探测器 | |
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12 sensor | |
n.传感器,探测设备,感觉器(官) | |
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13 precipitating | |
adj.急落的,猛冲的v.(突如其来地)使发生( precipitate的现在分词 );促成;猛然摔下;使沉淀 | |
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14 creek | |
n.小溪,小河,小湾 | |
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15 shroud | |
n.裹尸布,寿衣;罩,幕;vt.覆盖,隐藏 | |
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16 celestial | |
adj.天体的;天上的 | |
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17 severed | |
v.切断,断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 );断,裂 | |
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18 almighty | |
adj.全能的,万能的;很大的,很强的 | |
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19 velocity | |
n.速度,速率 | |
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20 hip | |
n.臀部,髋;屋脊 | |
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21 spectral | |
adj.幽灵的,鬼魂的 | |
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22 infrared | |
adj./n.红外线(的) | |
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23 aurora | |
n.极光 | |
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24 punctuated | |
v.(在文字中)加标点符号,加标点( punctuate的过去式和过去分词 );不时打断某事物 | |
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25 funky | |
adj.畏缩的,怯懦的,霉臭的;adj.新式的,时髦的 | |
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26 improvised | |
a.即席而作的,即兴的 | |
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27 gullible | |
adj.易受骗的;轻信的 | |
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28 scouts | |
侦察员[机,舰]( scout的名词复数 ); 童子军; 搜索; 童子军成员 | |
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29 hygiene | |
n.健康法,卫生学 (a.hygienic) | |
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30 knuckles | |
n.(指人)指关节( knuckle的名词复数 );(指动物)膝关节,踝v.(指人)指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 );(指动物)膝关节,踝 | |
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31 metallic | |
adj.金属的;金属制的;含金属的;产金属的;像金属的 | |
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32 cuffs | |
n.袖口( cuff的名词复数 )v.掌打,拳打( cuff的第三人称单数 ) | |
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33 killing | |
n.巨额利润;突然赚大钱,发大财 | |
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