"Нейл Стефенсон. Snow Crash (Снежная лавина, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

wristwatch-pulls her shiv kit from one of the narrow pockets on her sleeve.
She also hauls out a light-stick and snaps it so she can see 'sup. She finds
one piece of narrow, flat spring steel, slides it up into the manacle's
innards, depresses the spring-loaded pawl. The cuff, formerly a one-way
ratchet that could only get tighter, springs loose from the cold-water pipe.
She could take it off her wrist, but she has decided she likes the look
of it. She cuffs the loose manacle onto her wrist, right next to the other
one, forming a double bracelet. The kind of thing her mom used to do, back
when she was a punk.
The steel door is locked, but Buy 'n' Fly safety regs mandate an
emergency exit from the basement in case of fire. Here, it's a basement
window with mondo bars and a big red multilingual lire alarm bolted onto it.
The red looks black in the green glow of the ligbtstick. She reads the
instructions that are in English, runs through it once or twice in her mind,
then waits for the alarm to go off. She whiles away the time by reading the
instructions in all
NEAL STEPHENSON
75
the other languages, wondenng which is which. It all looks like
Taxilinga to Y.T.
The window is almost too grungy to see through, but she sees something
black walking past it. Hiro.
About ten seconds later, her wristwatch goes off. She punches the
emergency exit. The bell rings. The bars are trickier than she thought-good
thing it's not a real fire-but eventually she gets them open. She throws her
plank outside onto the parking lot, drags her body through just as she bears
the rear door being unlocked. By the time the three-ringer has found that
all-important light switch, she is banking a sharp turn into the front lot-
which has turned into a jeek festivall
Every jeek in Southern Cal is here, it seems, driving their giant,
wrecked taxicabs with alien livestock in the back seat, reeking of incense
and sloshing neon-hued Airwicksi They have set up a giant eight-tubed hookah
on the trunk of one of the cabs and are slurping up great mountain-man
lungfuls of choking smoke.
And they're all staring at Hiro Protagonist, who is just staring back
at them. Everyone in the parking lot looks completely astounded.
He must havemade his approach from the rear-didn't realize that the
front lot was full of jeeks. Whatever he was planning isn't going to work.
The plan is screwed.
The manager comes running around from the back of the Buy 'n' Fly,
sounding a bloodcurdling Taxilinga tocsin. He's got missile lock on Y.T.'s
ass.
But the jeeks around the hookah don't care about Y.T. They've got
missile lock on Hiro. They carefully hang the ornate silver nozzles on a
rack built into the neck of the mega-bong. Then they start moving toward
him, reaching into the folds of their robes, the inner pockets of their
windbreakers.
Y.T. is distracted by a sharp hissing noise. Her eyes glance back at
Hiro, and she sees that he has withdrawn a three-foot, curved sword from a
scabbard, which she did not notice before. He has dropped into a squat. The