'I'm on the Raft, too. Hey, we just made twenty-five million dollars.'
He is sure that just this one time, Y.T. is going to be impressed by something that he says. But she's not.
'That'll buy me a really happening funeral when they mail me home in a piece of Tupperware,' she says.
'Why would that happen?'
'I'm in trouble,' she admits - for the first time in her life. 'I think my boyfriend is going to kill me.'
'Who's your boyfriend?'
'Raven.'
If avatars could turn pale and woozy and have to sit down on the sidewalk, Hiro's would. 'Now I know why he has POOR IMPULSE CONTROL tattooed across his forehead.'
'This is great. I was hoping to get a little cooperation or at least maybe some advice,' she says.
'If you think he's going to kill you, you're wrong, because if you were right, you'd be dead,' Hiro says.
'Depends on your assumptions,' she says. She goes on to tell him a highly entertaining story about a dentata.
'I'm going to try to help you,' Hiro says, 'but I'm not necessarily the safest guy on the Raft to hang out with, either.'
'Did you hook up with your girlfriend yet?'
'No. But I have high hopes for that. Assuming I can stay alive.'
'High hopes for what?'
'Our relationship.'
'Why?' she asks. 'What's changed between then and now?'
This is one of these utterly simple and obvious questions that is irritating because Hiro's not sure of the answer. 'Well, I think I figured out what she was doing - why she came here.'
'So?'
Another simple and obvious question. 'So, I feel like I understand her now.'
'You do?'
'Yeah, well, sort of.'
'And is that supposed to be a good thing?'
'Well, sure.'
'Hiro, you are such a geek. She's a woman, you're a dude. You're not supposed to understand her. That's not what she's after.'
'Well, what is she after, do you suppose - keeping in mind that you've never actually met the woman, and that you're going out with Raven?'
'She doesn't want you to understand her. She knows that's impossible. She just wants you to understand yourself. Everything else is negotiable.'
'You figure?'
'Yeah. Definitely.'
'What makes you think I don't understand myself?'
'It's just obvious. You're a really smart hacker and the greatest sword fighter in the world - and you're delivering pizzas and promoting concerts that you don't make any money off of. How do you expect her to - '
The rest is drowned out by sound breaking in through his earphones, coming in from Reality: a screeching, tearing noise riding in high and sharp above the rumbling noise of heavy impact. Then there is just the screaming of terrified neighborhood children, the cries of men in Tagalog, and the groaning and popping sound of a steel fishing trawler collapsing under the pressure of the sea.
'What was that?' Y.T. says.
'Meteorite,' Hiro says.
'Huh?''
'Stay tuned,' Hiro says, 'I think I just got into a Gatling gun duel.'
'Are you going to sign off?'
'Just shut up for a second.'
This neighborhood is U-shaped, built around a sort of cove in the Raft where half a dozen rusty old fishing boats are tied up. A floating pier, pieced together from mismatched pontoons, runs around the edge.
The empty trawler, the one they've been cutting up for scrap, has been hit by a burst from the big gun on the deck of the Enterprise. It looks as though a big wave picked it up and tried to wrap it around a pillar: one whole side is collapsed in, the bow and the stem are actually bent toward each other. Its back is broken. Its empty holds are ingurgitating a vast, continuous rush of murky brown seawater, sucking in that variegated sewage like a drowning man sucks air. It's heading for the bottom fast.
Hiro shoves Reason back into the zodiac, jumps in, and starts the motor. He doesn't have time to untie the boat from the pontoon, so he snaps through the line with his wakizashi and takes off.
The pontoons are already sagging inward and down, pulled together by the ruined ship's mooring lines. The trawler is falling off the surface of the water, trying to pull in the entire neighborhood like a black hole.
A couple of Filipino men are already out with short knives, hacking at the stuff that webs the neighborhood together, trying to cut loose the parts that can't be salvaged. Hiro buzzes over to a pontoon that is already knee- deep under the water, finds the ropes that connect it to the next pontoon, which is even more deeply submerged, and probes them with his katana. The remaining ropes pop like rifle shots, and then the pontoon breaks loose, shooting up to the surface so fast that it almost capsizes the zodiac.
A whole section of the pontoon pier, along the side of the trawler, can't be salvaged. Men with fishing knives and women with kitchen cleavers are down on their knees, the water already rising up under their chins, cutting their neighborhood free. It breaks loose one rope at a time, haphazardly, tossing the Filipinos up into the air. A boy with a machete cuts the one remaining line, which pops up and lashes him across the face. Finally, the raft is free and flexible once again, bobbing and waving back toward equilibrium, and where the trawler was, there's nothing but a bubbling whirlpool that occasionally vomits up a loose piece of floating debris.
Some others have already clambered up onto the fishing boat that was tied up next to the trawler. It has suffered some damage, too: several men cluster around and lean over the rail to examine a couple of large impact craters on the side. Each hole is surrounded by a shiny dinner plate-sized patch that has been blown free of all paint and rust. In the middle is a hole the size of a golf ball.
Hiro decides it's time to leave.
But before he does, he reaches into his coverall, pulls out a money clip, and counts out a few thousand Kongbucks. He puts them on the deck and weighs them down under the corner of a red steel gasoline tank. Then he hits the road.
He has no trouble finding the canal that leads to the next neighborhood. His paranoia level is way up, and so he glances back and forth as he pilots his way out of there, looking up all the little alleys. In one of those niches, he sees a wirehead, mumbling something.
The next neighborhood is Malaysian. Several dozen of them are gathered near the bridge, attracted by the noise. As Hiro is entering their neighborhood, he sees men running down the undulating pontoon bridge that serves as the main street, carrying guns and knives. The local constabulary. More men of the same description emerge from the byways and skiffs and sampans, joining them.
A tremendous whacking and splintering and tearing noise sounds right beside him, as though a lumber truck has just crashed into a brick wall. Water splashes his body, and an exhalation of steam passes over his face. Then it's quiet again. He turns around, slowly and reluctantly. The nearest pontoon isn't there anymore, just a bloody, turbulent soup of splinters and chaff,
He turns around and looks behind him. The wirehead he saw a few seconds ago is out in the open now, standing all by himself at the edge of a raft. Everyone else has cleared out of there. He can see the bastard's lips moving. Hiro whips the boat around and returns to him, drawing his wakizashi with his free hand, and cuts him down on the spot.
But there will be more. Hiro knows they're all out looking for him now. The gunners up there on the Enterprise don't care how many of these Refus they have to kill in order to nail Hiro.
From the Malaysian neighborhood, he passes into a Chinese neighborhood. This one's a lot more built up, it
