Hiro has just been shot in the back with a burst of machine-gun fire. All of the bullets have slapped into his vest and dropped to the floor, but in doing so they have cracked about half of the ribs on that side of his body and bruised a few internal organs. He turns around, which hurts.
The Enforcer has given up on bullets and whipped out another weapon. It says so right on Hiro’s goggles: PACIFIC ENFORCEMENT HARDWARE, INC. MODEL SX-29 RESTRAINT PROJECTION DEVICE (LOOGIE GUN). Which is what he should have used in the first place.
You can’t just carry a sword around as an empty threat. You shouldn’t draw it, or keep it drawn, unless you intend to kill someone. Hiro runs toward The Enforcer, raising the katana to strike. The Enforcer does the proper thing, namely, gets the hell out of his way. The silver ribbon of the katana shines up above the crowd. It attracts Enforcers and repels everyone else, so as Hiro runs down the center of the Towne Hall, he has no one in front of him and many shiny dark creatures behind him.
He turns off all of the techno-shit in his goggles. All it does is confuse him; he stands there reading statistics about his own death even as it’s happening to him. Very post-modern. Time to get immersed in Reality, like all the people around him.
Not even Enforcers will fire their big guns in a crowd, unless it’s point-blank range, or they’re in a really bad mood. A few loogies shoot past Hiro, already so spread out as to be nothing more than an annoyance, and splat into bystanders, wrapping them in sticky gossamer veils.
Somewhere between the 3-D video-game arcade and the display window full of terminally bored prostitutes, Hiro’s eyes clear up and he sees a miracle: the exit of the inflatable dome, where the doors exhale a breeze of synthetic beer breath and atomized body fluids into the cool night air.
Bad things and good things are happening in quick succession. The next bad thing happens when a steel grate falls down to block the doors.
What the hell, it’s an inflatable building. Hiro turns on the radar just for a moment and the walls seem to drop away and become invisible; he’s seeing through them now, into the forest of steel outside. It doesn’t take long to locate the parking lot where he left his bike, supposedly under the protection of some armed attendants.
Hiro fakes toward the whorehouse, then cuts directly toward an exposed section of wall. The fabric of the building is tough, but his katana slices a six-foot rent through it with a single gliding motion, and then he’s outside, spat out of the hole on a jet of fetid air.
After that—after Hiro gets onto his motorcycle, and the New South Africans get into their all-terrain pickups, and The Enforcers get into their slick black Enforcer mobiles, and they all go screaming out onto the highway—after that it’s just a chase scene.
Chapter Fourty-One
Y.T. has been to some unusual places in her career. She has the visas of some three dozen countries laminated onto her chest. And on top of the real countries she has picked up and/or delivered to such charming little vacation spots as the Terminal Island Sacrifice Zone and the encampment in Griffith Park. But the weirdest job of all is this new one: someone wants her to deliver some stuff to the United States of America. Says so right there on the job order.
It’s not much of a delivery, just a legal-size envelope.
“You sure you don’t just want to mail this?” she asks the guy when she picks it up. It’s one of these creepy office parks out in the Burbs. Like a Burbclave for worthless businesses that have offices and phones and stuff but don’t actually seem to do anything.
It’s a sarcastic question, of course. The mail doesn’t work, except in Fedland. All the mailboxes have been unbolted and used to decorate the apartments of nostalgia freaks. But it’s also kind of a joke, because the destination is, in fact, a building in the middle of Fedland. So the joke is: If you want to deal with the Feds, why not use their fucked-up mail system? Aren’t you afraid that by dealing with anything as incredibly cool as a Kourier you will be tainted in their eyes?
“Well, uh, the mail doesn’t come out here, does it?” the guy says.
No point in describing the office. No point in even allowing the office to even register on her eyeballs and take up valuable memory space in her brain. Fluorescent lights and partitions with carpet glued to them. I prefer my carpet on the floor, thank you. A color scheme. Ergonomic shit. Chicks with lipstick. Xerox smell. Everything’s pretty new, she figures.
The legal envelope is resting on the guy’s desk. Not much point in describing him, either. Traces of a southern or Texan accent. The bottom edge of the envelope is parallel to the edge of the desk, one-quarter inch away from it, perfectly centered between the left and right sides. Like he had a doctor come in here and put it on the desk with tweezers. It is addressed to: ROOM 968A, MAIL STOP MS-1569835, BUILDING LA-6, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
“You want a return address on this?” she says.
“That’s not necessary.”
“If I can’t deliver it, there’s no way I can get it back to you, because these places all look the same to me.”
“It’s not important,” he says. “When do you think you’ll get it there?”
“Two hours max.”
“Why so long?”
“Customs, man. The Feds haven’t modernized their system like everyone else.” Which is why most Kouriers will do anything to avoid delivering to Fedland. But it’s a slow day today, Y.T. hasn’t been called in to do any secret missions for the Mafia yet, and maybe she can catch Mom on her lunch break.
“And your name is?”
“We don’t give out our names.”
“I need to know who’s delivering this.”
“Why? You said it wasn’t important.”
The guy gets really flustered. “Okay,” he says. “Forget it. Just deliver it, please.”
Okay, be that way, she mentally says. She mentally says a number of other things, too. The man is an obvious pervert. It’s so plain, so open: “And your name is?” Give me a break, man.