obvious: a slot, which might be a place to insert a credit or ID card, and a cylindrical socket that is about the size of one of those little tubes.
This is Hiro's reconstruction of how the thing looked at one time. When Hiro sees it, it is melted together. Judging from the pattern of smoke marks on the outside of the case - which appear to be jetting outward from the crack between the top and bottom - the source of the flame was inside, not outside.
Squeaky reaches down and unsnaps one of the tubes from the bracket, holds it up in front of the bright lights of Chinatown. It had been transparent but was now smirched by heat and smoke. From a distance, it looks like a simple vial, but stepping up to look at it more closely Hiro can see at least half a dozen tiny individual compartments inside the thing, all connected to each other by capillary tubes. It has a red plastic cap on one end of it. The cap has a black rectangular window, and as Squeaky rotates it, Hiro can see the dark red glint of an inactive LED display inside, like looking at the display on a turned-off calculator. Underneath this is a small perforation. It isn't just a simple drilled hole. It is wide at the surface, rapidly narrowing to a nearly invisible pinpoint opening, like the bell of a trumpet.
The compartments inside the vial are all partially filled with liquids. Some of them are transparent and some are blackish brown. The brown ones have to be organics of some kind, now reduced by the heat into chicken soup. The transparent ones could be anything.
'He got out to go into a bar and have a drink,' Squeaky mumbles. 'What an asshole.'
'Who did?'
'T-Bone. See, T-Bone was, like, the registered owner of this unit. The suitcase. And as soon as he got more than about ten feet away from it - foosh - it self-destructed.'
'Why?'
Squeaky looks at Hiro like he's stupid. 'Well, it's not like I work for Central Intelligence or anything. But I would guess that whoever makes this drug - they call it Countdown, or Redcap, or Snow Crash - has a real thing about trade secrets. So if the pusher abandons the suitcase, or loses it, or tries to transfer ownership to someone else - foosh.'
'You think the Crips are going to catch up with Raven?'
'Not in Chinatown. Shit,' Squeaky says, getting pissed again in retrospect, 'I can't believe that guy. I could have killed him.''
'Raven?'
'No. That Crip. Chasing Raven. He's lucky Raven got to him first, not me.'
'You were chasing the Crip?'
'Yeah, I was chasing the Crip. What, did you think I was trying to catch Raven?'
'Sort of, yeah. I mean, he's the bad guy, right?'
'Definitely. So I'd be chasing Raven if I was a cop and it was my job to catch bad guys. But I'm an Enforcer, and it's my job to enforce order. So I'm doing everything I can - and so is every other Enforcer in town - to protect Raven. And if you have any ideas about trying to go and find Raven yourself and get revenge for that colleague of yours that he offed, you can forget it.'
'Offed? What colleague?' Y.T. breaks in. She didn't see what happened with Lagos.
Hiro is mortified by this idea. 'Is that why everyone was telling me not to fuck with Raven? They were afraid I was going to attack him?'
Squeaky eyes the swords. 'You got the means.'
'Why should anyone protect Raven?'
Squeaky smiles, as though we have just crossed the border into the realm of kidding around. 'He's a Sovereign.'
'So declare war on him.'
'It's not a good idea to declare war on a nuclear power.'
'Huh?'
'Christ,' Squeaky says, shaking his head, 'if I had any idea how little you knew about this shit, I never would have let you into my car. I thought you we're some kind of a serious CIC wet-operations guy. Are you telling me you really didn't know about Raven?'
'Yes, that's what I'm telling you.'
'Okay. I'm gonna tell you this so you don't go out and cause any more trouble. Raven's packing a torpedo warhead that he boosted from an old Soviet nuke sub. It was a torpedo that was designed to take out a carrier battle group with one shot. A nuclear torpedo. You know that funny-looking sidecar that Raven has on his Harley? Well, it's a hydrogen bomb, man. Armed and ready. The trigger's hooked up to EEG trodes embedded in his skull. If Raven dies, the bomb goes off. So when Raven comes into town, we do everything in our power to make the man feel welcome.'
Hiro's just gaping. Y.T. has to step in on his behalf. 'Okay,' she says. 'Speaking for my partner and myself, we'll stay away from him.'
21
Y.T. reckons she is going to spend all afternoon being a ramp turd. The surf is always up on the Harbor Freeway, which gets her from Downtown into Compton, but the off-ramps into that neighborhood are so rarely used that three-foot tumbleweeds grow in their potholes. And she's definitely not going to travel into Compton under her own power. She wants to poon something big and fast.
She can't use the standard trick of ordering a pizza to her destination and then pooning the delivery boy as he roars past, because none of the pizza chains deliver to this neighborhood. So she'll have to stop at the off-ramp and wait hours and hours for a ride. A ramp turd.
She does not want to do this delivery at all. But the franchisee wants her to do it bad. Really bad. The amount of money he has offered her is so high, it's stupid. The package must be full of some kind of intense new drug.
But that's not as weird as what happens next. She is cruising down the Harbor Freeway, approaching the desired off-ramp, having pooned a southbound semi. A quarter-mile from the off-ramp, a bullet-pocked black Oldsmobile cruises past her, right-turn signal flashing. He's going to exit. It's too good to be true. She poons the Oldsmobile.
As she cruises down the ramp behind this flatulent sedan, she checks out the driver in his rearview mirror. It is the franchisee himself, the one who is paying her a totally stupid amount of money to do this job.
By this point, she's more afraid of him than she is of Compton. He must be a psycho. He must be in love with her. This is all a twisted psycho love plot.
But it's a little late now. She stays with him, looking for a way out of this burning and rotting neighborhood.
They are approaching a big, nasty-looking Mafia roadblock. He guns the gas pedal, headed straight for death. She can see the destination franchise ahead. At the last second, he whips the car around and squeals sideways to a halt.
He couldn't have been more helpful. She unpoons as he's giving her this last little kick of energy and sails through the checkpoint at a safe and sane speed. The guards keep their guns pointed at the sky, swivel their heads to look at her butt as she rolls past them.
The Compton Nova Sicilia franchise is a grisly scene. It is a jamboree of Young Mafia. These youths are even duller than the ones from the all-Mormon Deseret Burbclave. The boys are wearing tedious black suits. The girls are encrusted with pointless femininity. Girls can't even be in the Young Mafia; they have to be in the Girls' Auxiliary and serve macaroons on silver plates. 'Girls' is too fine a word for these organisms, too high up the evolutionary scale. They aren't even chicks.
She's going way too fast, so she kicks the board around sideways, plants pads, leans into it, skids to a halt, roiling up a wave of dust and grit that dulls the glossy shoes of several Young Mafia who are milling out front, nibbling dinky Italo-treats and playing grown-up. It condenses on the white lace stockings of the Young Mafia proto-chicks. She falls off the board, appearing to catch her balance at the last moment. She stomps on the edge
