Cryptonomicon (90 page)

“It was felt that there was value in physically moving this stuff around, giving people a direct physical analog of the value-assertions that they were making,” Randy says. “Also that it would be useful to appraise this stuff literally in the cold light of day.” As opposed to ten or twelve emotionally fraught people clambering around a packed-to-the-ceiling U-Stor-It locker with flashlights, sniping at each other from behind the armoires.

“Once we’ve all made our choices, then what? You sit down and figure it out on a spreadsheet, or something?”

“It is much too computationally intensive to be solved that way. Probably a genetic algorithm is called for—certainly there won’t be a mathematically exact solution. My father knows a researcher in Geneva who has done work on problems isomorphic to this one, and sent him e-mail last
night. With any luck we will be able to ftp some suitable software and get it running on the Tera.”

“The Terror?”

“Tera. As in Teraflops.”

“That does me no good at all. When you say ‘as in’ you are supposed to give me something more familiar to relate it to.”

“It is one of the ten fastest computers on the planet. Do you see that red brick building just to the right of the end of the -
y
axis,” Randy says, pointing down the hill, “just behind the new gym?”

“The one with all the antennas?”

“Yes. The Tera machine is in there. It was made by a company in Seattle.”

“It must have been very expensive.”

“My dad talked them out of it.”

“Yes!” says Uncle Red cheerfully, returning from high-
x
-value territory. “The man is a legendary donation-raiser.”

“He must have a persuasive side to him that I have not been perceptive enough to notice yet,” Aunt Nina says, wandering curiously towards some large cardboard boxes.

“No,” Randy says, “it’s more like he just goes in and flops around on the conference table until they become so embarrassed for his sake that they agree to sign the check.”

“You’ve seen him do this?” Aunt Nina says skeptically, sizing up a box labeled
CONSTITUENTS OF UPSTAIRS LINEN CLOSET
.

“Heard about it. High-tech is a small town,” Randy says.

“He’s been able to make great capital of his father’s work,” Uncle Red says. “ ‘If my father had patented even one of his computer inventions, Palouse College would be bigger than Harvard,’ and so on.”

Aunt Nina has got the box open now. It is almost completely filled by a single Qwlghmian blanket, in a dark greyish-brown on dark brownish-grey plaid. The blanket in question is about an inch thick, and, during wintertime family reunions, was infamous as a booby prize of sorts among the Waterhouse grandchildren. The smell of mothballs, mildew, and heavily oiled wool causes Aunt Nina’s nose to wrinkle, as it did Aunt Annie’s before her. Randy re
members bedding down beneath this blanket once at the age of about nine, and waking up at two in the morning with bronchial spasms, hyperthermia, and vague memories of a nightmare about being buried alive. Aunt Nina slams the box flaps shut, turns around, and looks in the direction of the Impala. Robin Shaftoe is already running towards them. Being not bad at math himself, he was quick to pick up on this whole concept, and knows from experience that the blanket box will have to be trundled deep out into (-
x,
-
y
) territory.

“I guess I’m just worried,” Aunt Nina says, “about having my preferences mediated by this supercomputer. I have tried to make it clear what I want. But will the computer understand that?” She has paused by the
CERAMICS
box in a way that is tantalizing Randy, who badly wants to have a look inside, but doesn’t want to arouse suspicions. He’s the referee and is sworn to objectivity. “Forget the china,” she says, “too old-ladyish.”

Uncle Red wanders over and disappears behind one of the dead cars, presumably to take a leak. Aunt Nina says, “How about you, Randy? As the eldest son of the eldest son, you must have some feelings about this.”

“No doubt when my parents’ time comes, they will pass on some of Grandma and Grandpa’s legacy to me,” Randy says.

“Oh, very circumspect. Well done,” Aunt Nina says. “But as the only grandchild who has any memories of your grandfather at all, there must be something here that you might like to have.”

“There’ll probably be some odds and ends that nobody wants,” Randy says. Then like an almost perfect moron—like an organism genetically engineered to be a total, stupid idiot—Randy glances directly at the Trunk. Then he tries to hide it, which only makes it more conspicuous. He guesses that his mostly beardless face must be an open book, and wishes he had never shaved. A bullet of ice strikes him in the right cornea with a nearly audible splot. The ballistic impact blinds him and the thermal shock gives him an ice-cream headache. When he recovers enough to see again, Aunt Nina is walking around the trunk, kind of spiraling in
towards it in a rapidly decaying orbit. “Hmm. What’s in here?” She grips the handle at one end and finds she can barely get it off the ground.

“Old Japanese code books. Bundles of ETC cards.”

“Marcus?”

“Yes, ma’am!” says Marcus Aurelius Shaftoe, returning from the double-negative quadrant.

“What is the angle exactly in between the +
x
and +
y
axes?” Aunt Nina asks. “I would ask the referee, here, but I’m beginning to have doubts about his objectivity.”

M.A. glances at Randy and decides he had best interpret this last comment as good-natured familial horsing-around. “Would you like that in radians or degrees, ma’am?”

“Neither. Just demonstrate it for me. Take this great big trunk on that strong back of yours and just split the middle between +
x
and +
y
axes and keep walking until I say when.”

“Yes, ma’am.” M.A. hefts the trunk and starts walking, frequently looking back and forth to verify that he’s exactly in the middle. Robin stands off at a safe distance watching with interest.

Uncle Red, returning from his piss-break, watches this in horror. “Nina! Love! That’s not worth the cost of shipping it home! What on earth are you doing?”

“Making sure I get what I want,” Nina says.

Randy gets a small part of what he wants two hours later, when his own mother breaks the seal on the
CERAMICS
box to verify that the china is in good condition. At the time, Randy and his father are standing next to the Trunk. It is rather late in his parent’s value-plotting work and so pieces of fine furniture are now widely scattered across the parking lot, looking like the aftermath of one of those tornadoes that miraculously sets things down intact after whirling them through the skies for ten miles. Randy is trying to find a way to talk up the emotional value of this trunk without violating his oath of objectivity. The chances of anyone other than Nina ending up with this trunk are actually quite miserable, since she (to Red’s horror) left almost everything clumped around the Origin except for it and
the coveted Console. But if Dad would at least move the thing off dead center—which no one except Nina has done—then, if the Tera awards it to him tomorrow morning, Randy can plausibly argue that it’s something other than a computer error. But Dad is taking most of his cues from Mom and is having none of it.

Mom has bitten her gloves off and is parting layer after layer of crumpled newsprint with magenta hands. “Oh, the gravy boat!” she exclaims, and hoists up something that is more of a heavy cruiser than a boat. Randy agrees with Aunt Nina that the design is old-ladyish in the extreme, but that’s kind of tautological since he has only seen it in the house of his grandmother, who has been an old lady for as long as he has known her. Randy walks towards his mother with his hands in his pockets, still trying to play it cool for some reason. This obsession with secrecy may have gone a bit far. He has seen this gravy boat maybe twenty times in his life, always at family reunions, and seeing it now roils up a whole silt-cloud of long-settled emotions. He reaches out, and Mom remits it to his mittened hands. He pretends to admire it from the side, and then flips it over to read the words glazed on the bottom.
ROYAL ALBERT—LAVENDER ROSE
.

For a moment he is sweating under a vertical sun, swaying to keep his balance on a rocking boat, smelling the neoprene of hoses and flippers. Then he’s back in the Palouse. He begins thinking about how to sabotage the computer program to ensure that Aunt Nina gets what she wants, so that she’ll give him what is rightfully his.

L
IEUTENANT
N
INOMIYA REACHES
B
UNDOK ABOUT
two weeks after Goto Dengo, accompanied by several bashed and scraped wooden cases. “What is your specialty?” asks Goto Dengo, and Lieutenant Ninomiya responds by opening up one of the cases to reveal a surveyor’s transit swaddled in clean, oiled linen. Another case contains an
equally perfect sextant. Goto Dengo gawks. The gleaming perfection of the instruments is a marvel. But even more marvelous is that they sent him a surveyor only twelve days after he requested one. Ninomiya grins at the look on his new colleague’s face, revealing that he has lost all of his front teeth except for one, which happens to be mostly gold.

Before any engineering can be done, all of this wilderness must be brought into the realm of the known. Detailed maps must be prepared, watersheds charted, soil sampled. For two weeks Goto Dengo has been going around with a pipe and a sledgehammer taking core samples of the dirt. He has identified rocks from the streambeds, estimated the flow rates of the Yamamoto and Tojo Rivers, counted and catalogued trees. He has trudged through the jungle and planted flags around the approximate boundaries of the Special Security Zone. The whole time, he’s been worrying about having to perform the survey himself, using primitive, improvised tools. And all of a sudden, here is Lieutenant Ninomiya with his instruments.

The three Lieutenants, Goto, Mori, and Ninomiya, spend a few days surveying the flat, semi-open land straddling the lower Tojo River. The year, 1944, is turning out to be dry so far, and Mori does not want to construct his military barracks on land that will turn into a marsh after the first big rain. He is not concerned about the comfort of the prisoners, but he would at least like to ensure that they won’t get washed away. The lay of the land is also important in setting up the interlocking fields of fire that will be necessary to put down any riots or mass escape attempts. They put Bundok’s few enlisted men to work gathering bamboo stakes, then drive these in to mark the locations of roads, barracks, barbed-wire fences, guard towers, and a few carefully sited mortar emplacements from which the guards will be able to fill the atmosphere in any chosen part of the camp with shrapnel.

When Lieutenant Goto takes Lieutenant Ninomiya up into the jungle, clambering up the steep valley of the Tojo, Lieutenant Mori must stay behind—in accordance with Captain Noda’s orders. This is just as well, since Mori has his work cut out for him down below. The captain has granted
Ninomiya a special dispensation to see the Special Security Zone.

“Elevations are of supreme importance in this project,” Goto Dengo tells the surveyor on the way up. They are burdened with surveying equipment and fresh water, but Ninomiya clambers up the rocky gulch of the half-parched river just as ably as Goto Dengo himself. “We will begin by establishing the level of Lake Yamamoto—which does not exist yet—and then work downwards from there.”

“I have also been ordered to obtain the precise latitude and longitude,” says Ninomiya.

Goto Dengo grins. “That’s hard—there is nowhere to see the sun.”

“What about the three peaks?”

Goto Dengo turns to see if Ninomiya is joking. But the surveyor is looking intently up the valley.

“Your dedication sets a good example,” Goto Dengo says.

“This place is paradise compared to Rabaul.”

“Is that where you were sent from?”

“Yes.”

“How did you escape? It is cut off, isn’t it?”

“It has been cut off for some time,” Ninomiya says curtly. Then, he adds: “They came and got me in a submarine.” His voice is husky and faint.

Goto Dengo is silent for a while.

Ninomiya has a system all worked out in his head, which they put into effect the next week, after they have done a rough survey of the Special Security Zone. Early in the morning, they hoist an enlisted man into a tree with a canteen, a watch, and a mirror. There is nothing special about this tree except for a bamboo stake recently driven into the ground nearby, labeled
MAIN DRIFT.

Then Lieutenants Ninomiya and Goto climb to the top of the mountain, which takes them about eight hours. It is dreadfully arduous, and Ninomiya is shocked that Goto volunteers to go with him. “’I want to see this place from the top of Calvary,” Goto Dengo explains. “Only then will I have the insight to perform my duty well.”

On the way up, they compare notes, New Guinea vs.
New Britain. It seems that the latter’s only saving grace is the settlement of Rabaul, a formerly British port complete with a cricket oval, now the linchpin of Nipponese forces in Southwest Asia. “For a long time it was a great place to be a surveyor,” Ninomiya says, and describes the fortifications that they built there in preparation for MacArthur’s invasion. He has a draftsman’s enthusiasm for detail and at one point talks nonstop for an hour describing a particular system of bunkers and pillboxes down to the last booby trap and glory hole.

As the climb gets harder, the two vie with each other in belittling its difficulty. Goto Dengo tells the tale of climbing over the snow-covered mountain range in New Guinea.

“Nowadays, on New Britain we climb volcanoes all the time,” Ninomiya says offhandedly.

“Why?”

“To collect sulfur.”

“Sulfur? Why?”

“To make gunpowder.”

After this they don’t talk for a while.

Goto Dengo tries to dig them out of a conversational hole. “It’ll be a bad day for MacArthur when he tries to take Rabaul!”

Ninomiya trudges along silently for a bit, trying to control himself, and fails. “You idiot,” he says, “don’t you see? MacArthur isn’t coming. There’s no need.”

“But Rabaul is the cornerstone of the whole theater!”

“It is a cornerstone of soft, sweet wood in a universe of termites,” Ninomiya snaps. “All he has to do is ignore us for another year, and then everyone will be dead of starvation or typhus.”

The jungle thins out. The plants are wrestling for footholds on a loose slope of volcanic cinders, and only smaller ones endure. This puts Goto Dengo in the mind of writing a poem in which the small, tenacious Nipponese prevail over the big, lumbering Americans, but it has been a long time since he wrote a poem and he can’t make the words go together.

Someday the plants will turn this cone of scoria and rub
ble into soil, but not yet. Now that Goto Dengo can finally see for more than a few yards he is beginning to understand the lay of the land. The numerical data that he and Ninomiya have compiled over the last week is being synthesized, within his mind, into a solid understanding of how this place works.

Calvary is an old cinder cone. It started as a fissure from which ash and scoria were ejected, one fragment at a time, for thousands of years, tumbling up and outwards in a family of mortar-shell-like parabolic curves, varying in height and distance depending on the size of each fragment and the direction of the wind. They landed in a wide ring centered on the fissure. As the ring grew in height it naturally spread out into a broad, truncated cone with a central pit gouged out of its top, with the spitting fissure in the bottom of that pit.

The winds here tend to come from a little bit east of due south, and so the ash tended to be pushed towards the north-by-northwest edge of the cone’s rim. That is still the highest point of the cinder cone. But the fissure died out eons ago, or perhaps was plugged by its own emissions, and the whole structure has been much eroded since then. The southern rim of the cone is just a barrier of low hills perforated by the courses of the Yamamoto River and the two tributaries that come together to form the Tojo River. The central pit is a bowl of loathsome jungle, so saturated with chlorophyll that it looks black from above. Birds cruise above the canopy, looking like colored stars from up here.

The northern rim still rises a good five hundred meters above the bowl of jungle, but its formerly smooth arc has been dissected by erosion to form three distinct summits, each one a pile of red scoria half-concealed by a stubble of green vegetation. Without discussion, Ninomiya and Goto Dengo head for the one in the middle, which is the highest. They reach it at about two-thirty in the afternoon, and immediately wish they hadn’t because the sun is beating almost straight down on top of them. But there is a cool breeze up here, and once they have protected their heads with makeshift burnooses, it’s not so bad. Goto Dengo sets up the tripod and the transit while Ninomiya uses his sex
tant to shoot the sun. He has a pretty good German watch which he zeroed against the radio transmission from Manila this morning, and this enables him to reckon the longitude. He works the calculation out on a scrap of paper on his lap, then goes back and does it again to double-check the numbers, speaking them out loud. Goto Dengo copies them down in his notebook, just in case Ninomiya’s notes get lost.

At three o’clock sharp, the enlisted man down in the tree begins to flash his mirror at them: a brilliant spark from a dark rug of jungle that is otherwise featureless. Ninomiya centers his transit on this signal and takes down more figures. In combination with various other data from maps, aerial photos, and the like, this should enable him to make an estimate of the main shaft’s latitude and longitude.

“I don’t know how accurate this will be,” he frets, as they trudge down the mountain. “I have the peak exactly—what did you call it? Cavalry?”

“Close enough.”

“This means soldiers on horseback, correct?”

“Yes.”

“But the site of the shaft I will not have very precisely unless I can use better techniques.”

Goto Dengo considers telling him that this is perfectly all right, that the place was made to be lost and forgotten. But he keeps his mouth shut.

The survey work takes another couple of weeks. They figure out where the shore of Lake Yamamoto will be and calculate its volume. It will be more of a pond than a lake—less than a hundred meters across—but it will be deceptively deep, and it will hold a lot of water. They calculate the angle of the shaft that will connect the bottom of the lake to the main network of tunnels. They figure out where all of the horizontal tunnels will emerge from the walls of the Tojo River’s gorge, and stake out the routes of roads and railways that will lead to those openings, so that debris can be removed and precious war material brought in for storage. They double- and triple-check all of it to make sure that no fragment of the works will be visible from the air.

Meanwhile, down below, Lieutenant Mori and a small
work detail have planted some fenceposts and strung some barbed wire—just enough to contain a hundred or so prisoners, who arrive packed into a couple of military trucks. When these are put to work, the camp expands very rapidly; the military barracks go up in a few days and the double barbed-wire perimeter is completed. They never seem to lack for supplies here. Dynamite comes in by the truckload, as if it weren’t desperately needed in places like Rabaul, and is carefully stored under the supervision of Goto Dengo. Prisoners carry it into a special shed that has been constructed for this purpose in the shade of the jungle. Goto Dengo has not been close to the prisoners before, and is startled to realize that they are all Chinese. And they are not speaking the dialect of Canton or of Formosa, but rather one that Goto Dengo heard frequently when he was posted in Shanghai. These prisoners are northern Chinese.

It is stranger and stranger all the time, this Bundok place.

The Filipinos, he knows, have been uniquely surly about their inclusion in the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere. They are well-armed, and MacArthur has been egging them on. Many thousands of them have been taken prisoner. Within half a day’s drive of Bundok there are more than enough Filipino prisoners to fill Lieutenant Mori’s camp and accomplish Lieutenant Goto’s project. And yet the powers that be have shipped hundreds of Chinese people all the way down from Shanghai to do this work.

At times like this he begins to doubt his own sanity. He feels an urge to discuss the matter with Lieutenant Ninomiya. But the surveyor, his friend and confidant, has made himself scarce since his work was completed. One day, Goto Dengo goes by Ninomiya’s tent and finds it empty. Captain Noda explains that the surveyor was called away suddenly to perform important work elsewhere.

About a month later, when the road-building work in the Special Security Zone is well underway, some of the Chinese workers who are digging begin shouting excitedly. Goto Dengo understands what they are saying.

They have uncovered human remains. The jungle has done its work and practically nothing is left but bones, but the smell, and the legions of ants, tell him that the corpse is
a fairly recent one. He grabs a shovel from one of the workers and pulls up a scoop of dirt and carries it over to the river, dripping tangles of ants. He lowers it carefully into the running water. The dirt dissolves into a brown trail in the river and the skull is soon revealed: the dome of the head, the eye sockets still not entirely empty, the nasal bone with some fragments of cartilage still attached, and finally the jaws, pocked with old abscesses and missing most of their teeth, except for one gold tooth in the middle. The current turns the skull over slowly, as if Lieutenant Ninomiya is hiding his face in shame, and Goto Dengo sees a neat hole punched through the base of the skull.

He looks up. A dozen Chinese are gathered above him on the riverbank, watching him impassively.

“Do not speak of this to any of the other Nipponese,” Goto Dengo says. Their eyes go wide and their lips part in astonishment as they hear him speaking the precise dialect of Shanghai prostitutes.