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going to have more important things to do than look after it.
Cowboy does the chore swiftly, automatically. All along, there is a feeling: I
have done this too often not to know what it's about.
Neurotransmitters awaken the five studs in his head and Cowboy watches the
insides of his skull blaze with incandescent light, the liquid-crystal data
matrices of the panzer molding themselves to the configuration of his mind.
His heart beats faster; he's living in the interface again, the eye-face, his
expanded mind racing like electrons through the circuits, into the metal and
crystal heart of the machine. He can see around the panzer a full 360 degrees,
and there are other boards in his strange mental space for engine displays and
the panzer systems. He does a system check and a comp check and a weapons
check, watching the long rows of green as they light up. His physical
perceptions are no longer in three dimensions: the boards overlap and
intertwine as they weave in and out of the face, as they mirror the subatomic
reality of the electronics and the data that are the dying day outside.
Neurotransmitters lick with their chemical tongues the metal and crystal in
his head, and electrons spit from the chips, racing along the cables to the
engine starters, and through a dozen sensors Cowboy feels the bladed turbines
reluctantly turn as the starters moan, and then flame torches the walls of the
combustion chambers and the blades spin into life with a screaming whine.
Cowboy monitors the howling exhaust as it belches fire. On his mental displays
Cowboy can see the
Dodger and Arkady and the ground crew watching the panzer through the blurred
exhaust haze, and he watches fore and aft and checks the engine displays and
sees another set of green lights and knows it's time to move.
The howling of the engines beats at his senses. Warren's spent the last week
tuning them, running check after check, making certain they will perform
beyond expectations. They're military surplus jets, monsters. They aren't
built to ride this close to the ground, and without Cowboy's straddling this
mutant creature every inch of the way they're going to run away with him.
Inside the rubber-tasting mask his lips draw back from his teeth and he grins:
he will ride this beast across the Alley and through the web of traps set up
this side of the Mississippi and add another layer of permeable sky to the
distance separating him from the lesser icons of
file:///F|/rah/Walter%20Jon%20Williams/Williams,%20Walter%20Jon%20-%20Hardwire
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d.txt glory that are the other panzerboys, more proof that the flaming
corn-alcohol throbs through his chest like blood and that the shrieking
exhaust flows from his lungs like breath, that his eyes beam radar and his
fingers can flick missiles forth like pebbles. Through his sensors he can
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taste the exhaust and see the sky and the prairie sunset, and part of his mind
can feel the throbbing radio energies that are the enemy's search planes, and
it seems to him that the watchers and the escort vehicles are suddenly
lessened, separated from him by more than a few hundred yards-he will be
taking the panzer over the Line, and they will not, and he looks at them from
within his interface, from his immeasurable height of radiant glory and pities
them for what they do not know.
At the moment the ultimate beneficiaries of his run-the hospitals in New
England, the thirdmen, his own portfolio, possibly the immeasurably distant,
insanely gluttonous creatures who ride their Orbital factories and look down
on the Earth as a fast-depleting treasure house to be plundered-all these fade
down long redshifting lines, as if blurred by distance and the flaming jet's
exhaust. The reality is here in the panzer. Discontent is banished. Action is
the thing, and all.
He diverts a part of the jets exhaust and another set of fans whine into life,
lifting the ground-effect panzer with a lurch onto its inflatable self-sealing
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