The first poon smacks1 into the belly2 of the chopper as they are coming in low over the Valley. Y.T. feels it rather than hears it; she knows that sweet impact so well that she can sense it like one of those supersensitive seismo-thingies that detects earthquakes on the other side of the planet. Then half a dozen other poons strike in quick succession, and she has to force herself not to lean over and look out the window. Of course. The chopper's belly is a solid wall of Soviet3 steel. It'll hold poons like glue. If they just keep flying low enough to poon -- which they have to, to keep the chopper under the Mafia's radar4.
She can hear the radio crackling up front. "Take it up, Sasha, you're picking up some parasites5."
She looks out the window. The other chopper, the little aluminum6 corporate7 number, is flying alongside them, a little bit higher in the air, and all the people inside of it are peering out the windows, watching the pavement underneath8 them. Except for Raven9. Raven is still goggled10 into the Metaverse. Shit. The pilot's pulling the chopper to a higher altitude.
"Okay, Sasha. You lost 'em," the radio says. "But you still got a couple of them poon things hanging off your belly, so make sure you don't snag 'em on anything. The cables are stronger than steel."
That's all Y.T. needs. She opens the door and jumps out of the chopper. At least that's how it looks to the people inside. Actually she grabs a handhold on her way down and ends up dangling11 from the swinging, open door, looking inward toward the belly of the chopper. A couple of poons are stuck to it; thirty feet below, she can see the handles dangling on the ends of their lines, fluttering in the airstream. Looking into the open door she can't hear Rife12 but she can see him, sitting there next to the pilot, motioning: Down, take it down!
Which is what she figured. This hostage thing works two ways. She's no good to Rife unless he's got her, and she's in one piece.
The chopper starts losing altitude again, heading back down toward the twin stripe of loglo that marks out the avenue beneath them. Y.T. gets swinging back and forth13 on the door a little, finally swings in far enough that she can hook one of the poon cables with her foot. This next bit is going to hurt like hell. But the tough fabric14 of the coverall should prevent her from losing too much skin. And the sight of Tony lunging at her, trying to grab her sleeve, reinforces her own natural tendency not to think about it too hard. She lets go of the chopper's door with one of her hands, grabs the poon cable, winds it around the outside of her glove a couple of times, then lets go with the other hand.
She was right. It does hurt like hell. As she swings down under the belly of the chopper, out of Tony's grasp, something pops inside her hand -- probably one of those dinky little bones. But she gets the poon cable wrapped around her body the same way Raven did when he rappeled off the ship with her, and manages a controlled, burning slide down to the end. Down to the handle, that is. She hooks it onto her belt so she can't fall and then thrashes around for what seems like a whole minute until she's not tangled15 up in the cable anymore, just dangling by the waist, twisting around and around between the chopper and the street, out of control. Then she gets the handle in both hands and unhooks it from her belt so she's hanging by the arms again, which was the whole point of the exercise. As she rotates, she sees the other chopper above her and off to the side, glimpses the faces watching her, knows that all of this is being relayed, over the radio, to Rife.
Sure enough. The chopper cuts to about half its former speed, loses some altitude.
She clicks another control and reels out the line all the way to the end, dropping twenty feet in one thrill-packed moment. Now she's flying along, ten or fifteen feet above the highway, doing maybe forty-five miles an hour. The loglo signs shoot past her on either side like meteors. Other than a swarm16 of Kouriers, traffic is light. The RARE chopper comes thwacking in, dangerously close, and she looks up at it, just for an instant, and sees Raven looking at her through the window. He's pulled his goggles17 up on his forehead, just for a second. He's got a certain look on his face, and she realizes that he's not pissed at her at all. He loves her.
She lets go of the handle and goes into free fall.
At the same time, she jerks the manual release on her cervical collar and goes into full Michelin Man mode as tiny gas cartridges18 detonate in several strategic locations around her bod. The biggest one goes off like an M-80 at the nape of her neck, unfurling the coverall's collar into a cylindrical19 gasbag that shoots straight up and encases her entire head. Other airbags go off around her torso and her pelvis, paying lots of attention to that spinal20 column. Her joints21 are already protected by the armorgel.
Which is not to say that it doesn't hurt when she lands. She can't see anything because of the airbag around her head, of course. But she feels herself bouncing at least ten times. She skids22 for a quarter of a mile and apparently23 caroms off several cars along the way; she can hear their tires squealing24. Finally, she goes butt25 first through someone's windshield and ends up sprawled26 across their front seat; they veer27 into a Jersey28 barrier. The airbag deflates as soon as everything stops moving, and she claws it away from her face.
Her ears are ringing or something. She can't hear anything. Maybe she busted29 her eardrums when the airbags went off.
But there's also the question of the big chopper, which has a talent for making noise. She drags herself out onto the hood30 of the car, feeling little hunks of safety glass beneath her carving31 parallel scratches into the paint job. Rife's big Soviet chopper is right there, hovering32 about twenty feet above the avenue, and by the time she sees it, it has already accumulated a dozen more poons. Her eyes follow the cables down to street level, and she sees Kouriers straining at the lines; this time, they're not letting go.
Rife gets suspicious, and the chopper gains altitude, lifting the Kouriers off their planks34. But a passing double-bottom semi sheds a small army of Kouriers -- there must be a hundred of them pooned onto the poor thing -- and within a few seconds, all their MagnaPoons are airborne and at least half of them stick to the armor plating on the first try. The chopper lurches downward until all of the Kouriers are on the ground again. Twenty more Kouriers come flying in and nail it; those that can't, grab onto someone else's handle and add their weight. The chopper tries several times to rise, but it may as well be tethered to the asphalt by this point.
It starts to come down. The Kouriers fan out away from it so that the chopper comes down in the middle of a radial burst of poon cables.
Tony, the security guy, climbs down out of the open door, moving slowly, high-stepping his way through the web of cables but somehow retaining his balance and his dignity. He walks away from the chopper until he is out from under the rotor blades, then pulls an Uzi out from under his windbreaker and fires a short air burst.
"Get the fuck away from our chopper!" he is shouting.
The Kouriers, by and large, do. They're not stupid. And Y.T. is now walking around safe on the pavement, the mission is accomplished35, the Code is finished, there's no reason to hassle these chopper dudes anymore. They detach their poons from the belly of the chopper and reel in the cables.
Tony looks around and sees Y.T. She's walking directly toward the chopper. Her sprained36 body moves awkwardly.
"Get back in the chopper, you lucky bitch!" he says.
Y.T. picks up a loose poon handle that no one has bothered to reel in yet. She hits the button that turns off the electromagnet and its head drops off the chopper's armor. She reels it in until about four feet of slack is there between the reel and the head.
"There was this dude named Ahab that I read about," she says, whirling the poon around her head. "He got his poon cable all wrapped up around the thing he was trying to poon. It was a big mistake."
She lets the poon fly. It passes up through the plane of the rotor blades, near the Center, and she can see the unbreakable cable start to wind itself around the delicate parts of the rotor's axle, like a garrote around a ballerina's neck. Through the chopper's windshield she can see Sasha reacting, flipping37 switches frantically38, pulling levers, his mouth making a long string of Russian curses. The poon's handle gets snapped out of her hand, and she sees it get whipped into the center like it's a black hole.
"I guess he just didn't know when to let go, like some people," she says. Then she turns around and walks away from the chopper. Behind her, she can hear large pieces of metal going the wrong way, running into one another at high speed. Rife has figured it out a long time ago. He's already running down the middle of the highway with a submachine gun in one hand, looking for a car to commandeer. Above, the RARE chopper hovers39 and watches; Rife looks up to it and motions forward with one hand, shouting, "Go to LAX! Go to LAX!"
The chopper makes one last orbit over the scene, watching as Sasha puts the ruined gunship into cold shutdown, watching furious Kouriers overwhelming and disarming40 Tony and Frank and the President, watching as Rife stands in the middle of the left lane and forces a CosaNostra Pizza car to a stop, forces the driver out. But Raven isn't watching any of these things. He's looking out the window at Y.T. And as the chopper finally tilts41 forward and accelerates into the night, he grins at her and gives her the thumbs up. Y.T. bites her lower lip and flips42 him the bird. With that, the relationship is over, hopefully for all time.
Y.T. borrows a plank33 from an awed43 skater and pushes herself across the street to the nearest Buy 'n' Fly and starts trying to call Mom for a ride home.
收听单词发音 |
1
smacks
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| 掌掴（声）( smack的名词复数 )； 海洛因； （打的）一拳； 打巴掌 | |
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belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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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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radar
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| n.雷达，无线电探测器 | |
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parasites
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| 寄生物( parasite的名词复数 )； 靠他人为生的人； 诸虫 | |
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aluminum
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| n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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corporate
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| adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的 | |
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underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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raven
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| n.渡鸟，乌鸦；adj.乌亮的 | |
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goggled
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| adj.戴护目镜的v.睁大眼睛瞪视， （惊讶的）转动眼珠( goggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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rife
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| adj.(指坏事情)充斥的，流行的，普遍的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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goggles
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| n.护目镜 | |
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cartridges
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| 子弹( cartridge的名词复数 )； （打印机的）墨盒； 录音带盒； （唱机的）唱头 | |
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cylindrical
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| adj.圆筒形的 | |
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spinal
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| adj.针的，尖刺的，尖刺状突起的；adj.脊骨的，脊髓的 | |
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joints
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| 接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语） | |
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skids
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| n.滑向一侧( skid的名词复数 )；滑道；滚道；制轮器v.（通常指车辆） 侧滑( skid的第三人称单数 )；打滑；滑行；（住在）贫民区 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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24
squealing
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| v.长声尖叫，用长而尖锐的声音说( squeal的现在分词 ) | |
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butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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26
sprawled
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| v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词)；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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veer
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| vt.转向，顺时针转，改变；n.转向 | |
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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29
busted
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| adj. 破产了的，失败了的，被降级的，被逮捕的，被抓到的 动词bust的过去式和过去分词 | |
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hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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carving
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| n.雕刻品，雕花 | |
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32
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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plank
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| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 | |
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planks
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| （厚）木板( plank的名词复数 )； 政纲条目，政策要点 | |
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35
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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36
sprained
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| v.&n. 扭伤 | |
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37
flipping
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| 讨厌之极的 | |
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frantically
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| ad.发狂地, 发疯地 | |
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39
hovers
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| 鸟( hover的第三人称单数 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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40
disarming
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| adj.消除敌意的，使人消气的v.裁军( disarm的现在分词 )；使息怒 | |
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41
tilts
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| （意欲赢得某物或战胜某人的）企图，尝试( tilt的名词复数 ) | |
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42
flips
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| 轻弹( flip的第三人称单数 )； 按（开关）； 快速翻转； 急挥 | |
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43
awed
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| adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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