Hiro goes over the lip of the amphitheater doing a couple of hundred miles per hour and soars out into space, in free fall, above the heads of a quarter of a million wildly cheering hackers2.
They all know Hiro. He's the guy with the swords. He's a friend of Da5id's. And as his own personal contribution to the benefit, he's apparently4 decided5 to stage a sword fight with some kind of hulking, scary-looking daemon on a motorcycle. Don't touch that dial, it's going to be a hell of a show.
He lands on the stage and bounces to a halt next to his motorcycle. The bike still works, but it's worthless down here. Raven6 is ten meters away, grinning at him.
"Bombs away," Raven says. He pulls the glowing blue lozenge out of his sidecar with one hand and drops it on the center of the amphitheater. It breaks open like the shell of an egg and light shines out of it. The light begins to grow and take shape.
The crowd goes wild.
Hiro runs toward the egg. Raven cuts him off. Raven can't move around on his feet now because he's lost a leg. But he can still control the bike. He's got his long knife out now, and the two blades come together above the egg, which has become the vortex of a blinding, deafening7 tornado8 of light and sound. Colored shapes, foreshortened by their immense speed, shoot from the center of it and take positions above their heads, building a three-dimensional picture.
The hackers are going nuts. Hiro knows that the Hacker3 Quadrant in The Black Sun is, at this moment, emptying itself out. They are all cramming9 through the exit and running down the Street toward the plaza10, coming to see Hiro's fantastic show of light, sound, swords, and sorcery.
Raven tries to shove Hiro back. It would work in Reality because Raven has such overpowering strength. But avatars are equally strong, unless you hack1 them up in just the right way. So Raven gives a mighty11 push and then pulls his knife back so that he can take a cut at Hiro's neck when Hiro flies away from him; but Hiro doesn't fly away. He waits for the opening and then takes Raven's sword hand off. Then, just in case, he takes Raven's other hand off. The crowd screams in delight.
"How do I stop this thing?" Hiro says.
"Beats me. I just deliver 'em," Raven says.
"Do you have any concept of what you just did?"
"Yeah. Realized my lifelong ambition," Raven says, a huge relaxed grin spreading across his face. "I nuked America."
Hiro cuts his head off. The crowd of doomed12 hackers rises to its feet and shrieks13.
Then they go silent as Hiro abruptly14 disappears. He has switched over to his small, invisible avatar. He is hovering15 in the air now above the shattered remains16 of the egg; gravity takes him right down into the center of it. As he falls, he is muttering to himself: "SnowScan." It's the piece of software he wrote while he was killing17 time on the liferaft. The one that searches for Snow Crash.
1 hack | |
n.劈,砍,出租马车;v.劈,砍,干咳 | |
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2 hackers | |
n.计算机迷( hacker的名词复数 );私自存取或篡改电脑资料者,电脑“黑客” | |
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3 hacker | |
n.能盗用或偷改电脑中信息的人,电脑黑客 | |
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4 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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5 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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6 raven | |
n.渡鸟,乌鸦;adj.乌亮的 | |
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7 deafening | |
adj. 振耳欲聋的, 极喧闹的 动词deafen的现在分词形式 | |
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8 tornado | |
n.飓风,龙卷风 | |
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9 cramming | |
n.塞满,填鸭式的用功v.塞入( cram的现在分词 );填塞;塞满;(为考试而)死记硬背功课 | |
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10 plaza | |
n.广场,市场 | |
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11 mighty | |
adj.强有力的;巨大的 | |
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12 doomed | |
命定的 | |
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13 shrieks | |
n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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14 abruptly | |
adv.突然地,出其不意地 | |
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15 hovering | |
鸟( hover的现在分词 ); 靠近(某事物); (人)徘徊; 犹豫 | |
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16 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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17 killing | |
n.巨额利润;突然赚大钱,发大财 | |
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