"Raven1," Hiro says, "let me tell you a story before I kill you."
"I'll listen," Raven says. "It's a long ride."
All vehicles in the Metaverse have voice phones on them. Hiro simply called home to the Librarian and had him look up Raven's number. They are riding in lockstep across the black surface of the imaginary planet now, though Hiro is gaining on Raven, meter by meter.
"My dad was in the Army in World War Two. Lied about his age to get in. They put him in the Pacific doing scut work. Anyway, he got captured by the Nipponese."
"So?"
"So they took him back to Nippon. Put him in a prison camp. There were a lot of Americans there, plus some Brits and some Chinese. And a couple of guys that they couldn't place. They looked like Indians. Spoke2 a little English. But they spoke Russian even better."
"They were Aleuts," Raven says. "American citizens. But no one had ever heard of them. Most people don't know that the Japanese conquered American territory during the war -- several islands at the end of the Aleutian chain. Inhabited. By my people. They took the two most important Aleuts and put them in prison camps in Japan. One of them was the mayor of Attu -- the most important civil authority. The other was even more important, to us. He was the chief harpooneer of the Aleut nation."
Hiro says, "The mayor got sick and died. He didn't have any immunities3. But the harpooneer was one tough son of a bitch. He got sick a few times, but he survived. Went out to work in the fields along with the rest of the prisoners, growing food for the war effort. Worked in the kitchen, preparing slop for the prisoners and the guards. He kept to himself a lot. Everyone avoided him because he smelled terrible. His bed stank4 up the barracks."
"He was cooking up aconite whale poison from mushrooms and other substances that he found in the fields and secreted5 in his clothing," Raven says.
"Besides," Hiro continues, "they were pissed at him because he broke out a windowpane in the barracks once, and it let cold air in for the rest of the winter. Anyway, one day, after lunch, all of the guards became terribly sick."
"Whale poison in the fish stew," Raven says.
"The prisoners were already out working in the fields, and when the guards began to get sick, they began to march them all back in toward the barracks, because they couldn't keep watch over them when they were doubled over with stomach cramps6. And this late in the war, it wasn't easy to bring in reinforcements. My father was last in the line of prisoners. And this Aleut guy was right in front of him."
Raven says, "As the prisoners were crossing an irrigation ditch, the Aleut dove into the water and disappeared."
"My father didn't know what to do," Hiro says, "until he heard a grunt7 from the guard who was bringing up the rear. He turned around and saw that this guard had a bamboo spear stuck all the way through his body. Just came out of nowhere. And he still couldn't see the Aleut. Then another guard went down with his throat slit8, and there was the Aleut, winding9 up and throwing another spear that brought down yet another guard."
"He had been making harpoons10 and hiding them under the water in the irrigation ditches," Raven says.
"Then my father realized," Hiro continues, "that he was doomed11. Because no matter what he said to the guards, they would consider him to have been a part of an escape attempt, and they would bring a sword and lop his head off. So, figuring that he might as well bring down a few of the enemy before they got to him, he took the gun from the first guard who had been hit, jumped down into the cover of the irrigation ditch, and shot another couple of guards who were coming over to investigate."
Raven says, "The Aleut ran for the border fence, which was a flimsy bamboo thing. There was supposedly a minefield there, but he ran straight across it with no trouble. Either he was lucky or else the mines -- if there were any -- were few and far between."
"They didn't bother to have strict perimeter12 security," Hiro says, "because Japan is an island -- so even if someone escaped, where could they run to?"
"An Aleut could do it, though," Raven says. "He could go to the nearest coastline and build himself a kayak. He could take to the open water and make his way up the coastline of Japan, then surf from one island to the next, all the way back to the Aleutians."
"Right," Hiro says, "which is the only part of the story that I never understood -- until I saw you on the open water, outrunning a speedboat in your kayak. Then I put it all together. Your father wasn't crazy. He had a perfectly13 good plan."
"Yes. But your father didn't understand it."
"My father ran in your father's footsteps across the minefield. They were free -- in Nippon. Your father started heading downhill, toward the ocean. My father wanted to head uphill, into the mountains, figuring that they could maybe live in an isolated14 place until the war was over."
"It was a stupid idea," Raven says. "Japan is heavily populated. There is no place where they could have gone unnoticed."
"My father didn't even know what a kayak was."
"Ignorance is no excuse," Raven says.
"Their arguing -- the same argument we're having now -- was their downfall. The Nipponese caught up with them on a road just outside of Nagasaki. They didn't even have handcuffs, so they tied their hands behind their backs with bootlaces and made them kneel on the road, facing each other. Then the lieutenant15 took his sword out of its sheath. It was an ancient sword, the lieutenant was from a proud family of samurai, and the only reason he was on this home-front detail was that he had nearly had one leg blown off earlier in the war. He raised the sword up above my father's head."
"It made a high ringing sound in the air," Raven says, "that hurt my father's ears."
"But it never came down."
"My father saw your father's skeleton kneeling in front of him. That was the last thing he ever saw."
"My father was facing away from Nagasaki," Hiro says. "He was temporarily blinded by the light, he fell forward and pressed his face into the ground to get the terrible light out of his eyes. Then everything was back to normal again."
"Except my father was blind," Raven says. "He could only listen to your father fighting the lieutenant."
"It was a half-blind, one-legged samurai with a katana versus16 a big strong healthy man with his arms tied behind his back," Hiro says. "A pretty interesting fight. A pretty fair one. My father won. And that was the end of the war. The occupation troops got there a couple of weeks later. My father went home and kicked around for a while and finally had a kid during the seventies. So did yours."
Raven says, "Ainchitka, 1972. My father got nuked twice by you bastards17."
"I understand the depth of your feelings," Hiro says. "But don't you think you've had enough revenge?"
"There's no such thing as enough," Raven says.
Hiro guns his motorcycle forward and closes on Raven, swinging his katana. But Raven reaches back -- watching him in the rearview mirror -- and blocks the blow, he's carrying a big long knife in one hand. Then Raven cuts his speed down to almost nothing and dives in between a couple of the stanchions. Hiro overshoots him, slows down too much, and gets a glimpse of Raven screaming past him on the other side of the monorail; by the time he's accelerated and cut through another gap, Raven has already slalomed over to the other side. And so it goes. They run down the length of the Street in an interlacing zigzag18 pattern, cutting back and forth19 under the monorail. The game is a simple one. All Raven has to do is make Hiro run into a stanchion. Hiro will come to a stop for a moment. By that time Raven will be gone, out of visual range, and Hiro will have no way to track him.
It's an easier game for Raven than for Hiro. But Hiro's better at this kind of thing than Raven is. That makes it a pretty even match. They slalom down the monorail track at speeds from sixty to sixty thousand miles per hour; all around them, low-slung commercial developments and high-tech20 labs and amusement parks sprawl21 off into the darkness. Downtown is before them, as high and bright as the aurora22 borealis rising from the black water of the Bering Sea.
收听单词发音 |
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raven
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| n.渡鸟，乌鸦；adj.乌亮的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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immunities
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| 免除，豁免( immunity的名词复数 )； 免疫力 | |
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stank
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| n. (英)坝，堰，池塘 动词stink的过去式 | |
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secreted
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| v.（尤指动物或植物器官）分泌( secrete的过去式和过去分词 )；隐匿，隐藏 | |
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cramps
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| n. 抽筋, 腹部绞痛, 铁箍 adj. 狭窄的, 难解的 v. 使...抽筋, 以铁箍扣紧, 束缚 | |
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grunt
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| v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝 | |
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slit
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| n.狭长的切口；裂缝；vt.切开，撕裂 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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harpoons
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| n.鱼镖，鱼叉( harpoon的名词复数 )v.鱼镖，鱼叉( harpoon的第三人称单数 ) | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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perimeter
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| n.周边，周长，周界 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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versus
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| prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下 | |
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bastards
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| 私生子( bastard的名词复数 )； 坏蛋； 讨厌的事物； 麻烦事 （认为别人走运或不幸时说）家伙 | |
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zigzag
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| n.曲折，之字形；adj.曲折的，锯齿形的；adv.曲折地，成锯齿形地；vt.使曲折；vi.曲折前行 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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high-tech
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| adj.高科技的 | |
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sprawl
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| vi.躺卧，扩张，蔓延；vt.使蔓延；n.躺卧，蔓延 | |
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aurora
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| n.极光 | |
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