chopped off. It is the slick corporate chopper with the RARE logo that she saw earlier.
The wireheads try to drag her over a gangplank thingy that leads them across open water to the next ship. She manages to get turned around backward, grabs the railings with both hands, hooks her ankles into the stanchions, and hangs on. One of them grabs her around the waist from behind and tries to yank her body loose while the other one stands in front of her and pries her fingers loose, one at a time.
Several guys are piling out of the RARE chopper. They are wearing coveralls with gear stuck into the pockets, and she sees at least one stethoscope. They haul big fiberglass cases out of the chopper, with red crosses painted on their sides, and run into the containership. Y.T. knows that this is not being done for the benefit of some fat businessman who stroked a lobe over his stewed prunes. They are going in there to reanimate her boyfriend. Raven pumped full of speed: just what the world needs right now.
They drag her across the deck of the next ship. From there they take a stairway thingy up to the next ship after that, which is very big. She thinks it's an oil tanker. She can look across its broad deck, through a tangle of pipes, rust seeping through white paint, and see the Enterprise on the other side. That's where they're going.
There's no direct connection. A crane on the deck of the Enterprise has swung itself over to dangle a small wire cage over the tanker, just a few feet off the deck; it bobs up and down and glides back and forth over a fairly large area as the two ships rock in different ways and it swings like a pendulum at the end of its cable. It has a door on one side, which is hanging open.
They sort of toss her into it head first, keeping her arms pinned to her sides so she can't push it away from her, and then they spend a few seconds folding her legs in behind her. It's obvious by now that talking doesn't work, so she just fights silently. She manages to give one of them a good stomp to the bridge of the nose, and both feels and hears the bone break, but the man doesn't react in any way, other than snapping his head back on impact. She's so busy watching him, waiting to see when he's going to figure out that his nose is broken and that she's responsible for it, that she stops kicking and flailing long enough to get all shoved into the cage. Then the door snaps shut.
An experienced raccoon could get the latch open. This cage isn't made to hold people. But by the time she gets her body worked around to the point where she can reach it, she's twenty feet above the deck, looking down on a lead of black water between the tanker and the Enterprise. Down below, she can see an abandoned zodiac caroming back and forth between the steel walls.
Not everything is exactly right on the Enterprise. Something is burning somewhere. People are firing guns. She's not entirely sure she wants to be there. As long as she is high up in the air, she reconnoiters the ship and confirms that there is no way off, no handy gangplanks or stairway thingies.
She is being lowered toward the Enterprise. The cage is careening back and forth, skimming just over the deck on its cable, and when it finally touches the deck, it skids for a few feet before coming to a halt. She pops the latch and climbs out of there. Now what?
There's a bullseye painted on the deck, a few helicopters parked around the edges and lashed down. And there is one helicopter, a mammoth twin-engine jet number, kind of a flying bathtub festooned with guns and missiles, sitting right in the middle of the bullseye, all of its lights on, engine whining, rotors spinning desultorily. A small cluster of men is standing next to it.
Y.T. walks toward it. She hates this. She knows this is exactly what she's supposed to do. But there really is no other choice. She wishes, profoundly, that she had her plank with her. The deck of this aircraft carrier is some of the best skating territory she has ever seen. She has seen, in movies, that carriers have big steam catapults for throwing airplanes into the sky. Think of what it would be like to ride a steam catapult on your plank!
As she is walking toward the helicopter, one of the men standing by it detaches himself from the group and walks toward her. He's big, with a body like a fifty-five-gallon drum, and a mustache that turns up at the corners. And as he comes toward her he is laughing in a satisfied way, which pisses her off.
'Well, don't you look like a forlorn lil thang!' he says. 'Shit, honey, you look like a drowned rat that got dried out again.'
'Thanks,' she says. 'You look like chiseled Spam.'
'Very funny,' he says.
'Then how come you're not laughing? Afraid it's true?'
'Look,' he says, 'I don't have time for this fucking adolescent banter. I grew up and got old 'pecifically to get away from this.'
'It's not that you don't have time,' she says. 'It's that you're not very good at it.'
'You know who I am?' he asks.
'Yeah, I know. You know who I am?'
'Y.T. A fifteen-year-old Kourier.'
'And personal buddy of Uncle Enzo,' she says, whipping off the string of dog tags and tossing them. He holds out one hand, startled, and the chain whips around his fingers. He holds them up and reads them.
'Well, well,' he says, 'this is quite a little memento.' He throws them back at her. 'I know you're buddies with Uncle Enzo. Otherwise I just woulda dunked you instead a bringing you here to my spread. And I frankly don't give a shit,' he says, 'because by the time this day is through, either Uncle Enzo will be out of a job, or else I'll be, as you said, chiseled Spam. But I figure that the Big Wop will be a lot less likely to throw a Stinger through the turbine of my chopper there if he knows his little chiquita is on board.'
'It's not like that,' Y.T. says. 'It's not a relationship where fucking is part of it.' But she is chagrined to learn that the dog tags, after all this time, did not have any magical effect on the bad guys.
Rife turns around and starts walking back to the chopper. After a few steps, he turns back and looks at her, just standing there, trying not to cry. 'You coming?' he says.
She looks at the chopper. A ticket off the Raft.
'Can I leave a note for Raven?'
'Far as Raven is concerned, I think you already made your point - haw haw haw. Come on, girl, we're wasting jet fuel over there - that ain't good for the goddamn environment.'
She follows him to the chopper, climbs on board. It's warm and light inside here, with nice seats. Like coming in off a hard February day of thrashing the grittier highways and settling into a padded easy chair
'Had the interior redone,' Rife says. 'This is a big old Sov gunship and it wasn't made for comfort. But that's the price you pay for all that armor plating.'
There's two other guys in here. One is about fifty, sort of gaunt, big pores, wire-rimmed bifocals, carrying a laptop. A techie. The other is a bulky African-American with a gun. 'Y.T.,' says the always polite L. Bob Rife, meet Frank Frost, my tech director, and Tony Michaels, my security chief.'
'Ma'am,' says Tony.
'Howdy,' says Frank.
'Suck my toes,' says Y.T.
'Don't step on that, please,' Frank says.
Y.T. looks down. Climbing into the empty seat nearest the door, she has stepped on a package resting on the floor. It's about the dimensions of a phone book, but irregular, very heavy, swaddled in bubble pack and clear plastic. She can see glimpses of what's inside. Light reddish brown in color. Covered with chicken scratches. Hard as a rock.
'What's that?' Y.T. says. 'Homemade bread from Mom?'
'It's an ancient artifact,' Frank says, all pissed off. Rife chuckles, pleased and relieved that Y.T. is now insulting someone else.
Another man duck-walks across the flight deck, in mortal fear of the whirling rotor blades, and climbs in. He's about sixty, with a dirigible of white hair that was not ruffled in any way by the downdraft.
'Hello, everyone,' he says cheerfully. 'I don't think I've met all of you. Just got here this morning and now I'm on my way back again!'
'Who are you?' Tony says.
The new guy looks crestfallen. 'Greg Ritchie,' he says.
Then, when no one seems to react, he jogs their memory. 'President of the United States.'
'Oh! Sorry. Nice to meet you, Mr. President,' Tony says, extending his hand. 'Tony Michaels.'
'Frank Frost,' Frank says, extending his hand and looking bored.
'Don't mind me,' Y.T. says, when Ritchie looks her way. 'I'm a hostage.'
