straining krill from the sea.'
Hiro wedges himself between a couple of Nipponese businessmen. One is wearing a uniform blue, but the other is a neo-traditional, wearing a dark kimono. And, like Hiro, he's wearing two swords - the long katana on his left hip and the one-handed wakizashi stuck diagonally in his waistband. He and Hiro glance cursorily at each other's armaments. Then Hiro looks away and pretends not to notice, while the neo-traditional is freezing solid, except for the corners of his mouth which are curling downward. Hiro has seen this kind of thing before. He knows he's about to get into a fight.
People are moving out of the way; something big and inexorable is plunging through the crowd, shoving avatars this way and that. Only one thing has the ability to shove people around like that inside The Black Sun, and that's a bouncer daemon.
As they get closer, Hiro sees that it's a whole flying wedge of them, gorillas in tuxedos. Real gorillas. And they seem to be headed toward Hiro.
He tries to back away, but he quickly runs into something. Looks like Bigboard finally got him in trouble; he's on his way out of the bar.
'Da5id,' Hiro says. 'Call them off, man, I'll stop using it.'
All of the people in his vicinity are staring over Hiro's shoulder, their faces illuminated by a stew of brilliant colored lights.
Hiro turns around to look at Da5id. But Da5id's not there anymore.
Instead of Da5id, there is just a jittering cloud of bad digital karma. It's so bright and fast and meaningless that it hurts to look at. It flashes back and forth from color to black and white, and when it's in color, it rolls wildly around the color wheel as though being strafed with highpowered disco lights. And it's not staying within it's own body space; hair-thin pixel lines keep shooting off to one side, passing all the way across The Black Sun and out through the wall. It is not so much an organized body as it is a centrifugal cloud of lines and polygons whose center cannot hold, throwing bright bits of body shrapnel all over the room, interfering with people's avatars, flickering and disappearing.
The gorillas don't mind. They shove their long furry fingers into the midst of the disintegrating cloud and latch onto it somehow and carry it past Hiro, toward the exit. Hiro looks down as it goes past him and sees what looks very much like Da5id's face as viewed through a pile of shattered glass. It's just a momentary glimpse. Then the avatar is gone, expertly drop-kicked out the front door, soaring out over the Street in a long flat arc that takes it over the horizon. Hiro looks up the aisle to see Da5id's table, empty, surrounded by stunned hackers. Some of them are shocked, some are trying to stifle grins.
Da5id Meier, supreme hacker overload, founding father of the Metaverse protocol, creator and proprietor of the world-famous Black Sun, has just suffered a system crash. He's been thrown out of his own bar by his own daemons.
10
About the second or third thing they learned how to do when studying to become Kouriers was how to shiv open a pair of handcuffs. Handcuffs are not intended as longterm restraint devices, millions of Clink franchisees to the contrary. And the longtime status of skateboarders as an oppressed ethnic group means that by now all of them are escape artists of some degree.
First things first. Y.T. has many a thing hanging off her uniform. The uniform has a hundred pockets, big flat pockets for deliveries and eensy narrow pockets for gear, pockets sewn into sleeves, thighs, shins. The equipment stuck into these multifarious pockets tends to be small, tricky, lightweight: pens, markers, penlights, penknives, lock picks, bar-code scanners, flares, screwdrivers, Liquid Knuckles, bundy stunners, and lightsticks. A calculator is stuck upside-down to her right thigh, doubling as a taxi meter and a stopwatch.
On the other thigh is a personal phone. As the manager is locking the door upstairs, it begins to ring. Y.T. unhooks it with her free hand. It is her mother.
'Hi, Mom. Fine, how are you? I'm at Tracy's house. Yeah, we went to the Metaverse. We were just fooling around at this arcade on the Street. Pretty bumpin'. Yes, I used a nice avatar. Nah, Tracy's mom said she'd give me a ride home later. But we might stop off at the joyride on Victory for a while, okay? Okay, well, sleep tight, Mom. I will. I love you, too. See you later.'
She punches the flash button, killing the chat with Mom and giving her a fresh dial tone in the space of about half a second. 'Roadkill,' she says.
The telephone remembers and dials Roadkill's number.
Roaring sounds. This is the sound of air peeling over the microphone of Roadkill's personal phone at some terrifying velocity. Also the competing whooshes of many vehicles' tires on pavement, broken by chuckhole percussion; sounds like the crumbling Ventura.
'Yo, Y.T.,' Roadkill says, ''sup?'
''Sup with you?'
'Surfing the Turf. 'Sup with you?'
'Maxing The Clink.'
'Whoa! Who popped you?'
'MetaCops. Affixed me to the gate of White Columns with a loogie gun.'
'Whoa, how very! When you leaving?'
'Soon. Can you swing by and give me a hand?.'
'What do you mean?'
Men. 'You know, give me a hand. You're my boyfriend,' she says, speaking very simply and plainly. 'If I get popped, you're supposed to come around and help bust me out.' Isn't everyone supposed to know this stuff? Don't parents teach their kids anything anymore?
'Well, uh, where are you?'
'Buy 'n' Fly number 501,762.'
'I'm on my way to Bernie with a super-ultra.'
As in San Bernardino. As in super-ultra-high-priority delivery. As in, you're out of luck.
'Okay, thanks for nothing.'
'Sorry.'
'Surfing safety,' Y.T. says, in the traditional sarcastic sign off.
'Keep breathing,' Roadkill says. The roaring noise snaps off.
What a jerk. Next date, he's really going to have to grovel. But in the meantime, there's one other person who owes her one. The only problem is that he might be a spaz. But it's worth a try.
'Hello?' he says into his personal phone. He's breathing hard and a couple of sirens are dueling in the background.
'Hiro Protagonist?'
'Yeah, who's this?'
'Y.T. Where are you?'
'In the parking lot of a Safeway on Oahu,' he says. And he's telling the truth; in the background she can hear the shopping carts performing their clashy, anal copulations.
'I'm kind of busy now, Whitey - but what can I do for you?'
'It's Y.T.,' she says, 'and you can help bust me out of The Clink.' She gives him the details.
'How long ago did he put you there?'
'Ten minutes.'
'Okay, the three-ring binder for Clink franchises states that the manager is supposed to check on the detainee half an hour after admission.'
'How do you know this stuff?' she says accusingly.
'Use your imagination. As soon as the manager pulls his half-hour check, wait for another five minutes, and then make your move. I'll try to give you a hand. Okay?'
'Got it.'
