Zodiac by Neal Stephenson Read Free Book Online Page B

hard. I grew up in a family that liked to fish, and I couldn’t bring myself to break up the party. I backed off on the throttle when I was far away, and coasted to a safe distance where I wouldn’t scare off any of those precious shit-eaters under the pier. Circled it slowly, looking at the fishermen, and they looked back at me. The name of my organization was writ large in orange tape on the side of the Zodiac. I wondered if they were reading it, and making the connection with those threatening signs just above their heads.
    They were Vietnamese and black, with a few Hispanics. The blacks I wasn’t as worried about. Not because they were black butbecause they seemed to fish for recreation. They’d been fishing here forever. You saw old black guys everywhere in Boston where there was water, sitting there in their old fedoras, staring at the water, waiting. Never saw them catch anything. But the Vietnamese went at it with a passion born of long-term protein deficiency.
    There was kind of a ripple of interest up there on a corner of the pier and the crowd parted, leaving one Vietnamese in the middle. They were getting their lines and poles out of his way so he could reel one in. A flopping, good-sized flounder emerged, seeming to levitate because you couldn’t see the line. Headed for a family wok in Boston. It wouldn’t yield much meat, but the concentration of PCBs and heavy metals in that flesh would be thousands of times what it was in the water around us.
    I glumly watched it ascend, thinking, these guys must use heavy-duty lines, because they had to support the whole weight of the fish. You didn’t have a chance to net it in the water. The lucky angler made a grab for his prize and our eyes snagged each other for a second. I’d seen this guy before; he was a busboy at the Pearl.
    What the fuck. Cranked up the Zode, twisted it, blew a crater in the Harbor and wheeled it around. Flounder be damned. When it came to this issue, GEE was fucked both ways. Try to stop them from poisoning themselves, and you look like you’re interfering with a band of spunky immigrants. But now I had a face, at least. There wasn’t any reason to hound this particular busboy, but I had good relations with Hoa and maybe I could get in touch with these people through him. Maybe GEE could run a free fishing charter out into the Atlantic, take these people out where they could catch some real fish. But pause to consider what the liability insurance would cost on that sucker.
    Then, out of nowhere, it hit me: what I needed was some bitterly cold beer and really loud, brain-crushing rock and roll. Maybe some nitrous to go with that. I lit a cigar, cranked the Mercury up into one loud, long power chord, and headed for our naval base.

5
    Bartholomew was lurking in his van in front of GEE when I got back. He started leaning on the horn as soon as he spotted me climbing up out of the T. All around the square, defense contractors flocked to their metallized windows to see if their BMWs were being violated, then drifted back, unable to localize the sound. I sauntered on purpose, pretended to ignore him, climbed the stairs to get my bike. I should have known that if I wanted recreation, my roommate would be thinking along the same lines. That is why, despite many kinds of incompatibility, we lived together: our minds ran in parallel ruts.
    â€œHey, you!” Tricia shouted, as I unlocked my bike. “That ain’t yours.”
    â€œI’m fuckin’ out of here,” I said.
    â€œJim called,” she said coyly, so I stepped just barely inside the door.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThey’re ready and waiting.”
    â€œHe found a beachhead?”
    â€œYeah.” Reading from a note, now: “Dutch Marshes State Park, ten miles north of Blue Kills. Take Garden State Parkway south to the Route 88 exit … well, this goes on for a while. Here you go.”
    â€œDon’t want