Cryptonomicon

So he ends up at the Qrtt residence. Waterhouse and Mr. and Mrs. Qrtt spend the evening huddled round the only source of heat: a coal-burning toaster that has been bricked into the socket of an old fireplace. Every so often Mr. Qrtt opens the door and pelts the ashes with a mote of coal. Mrs. Qrtt ferries out the chow and spies on Waterhouse. She notices his slightly asymmetrical walk and manages to ferret out that he had a spot of polio at one point. He plays the organ--they have a pedal powered harmonium in the parlor--and she remarks on that.

***

Waterhouse first sees Outer Qwghlm through a scupper. He doesn't even know what a scupper is, except a modality of vomiting. The ferry crew gave him and the other half-dozen passengers detailed vomiting instructions before they fought past the Utter Maurby breakwater, the salient point being that if you leaned over the rail, you would almost certainly be swept overboard. Much better to get down on all fours and aim at a scupper. But half the time when Waterhouse peers down one of these, he sees not water but some distant point on the horizon, or seagulls chasing the ferry, or the distinctive three-pronged silhouette of Outer Qwghlm.

The prongs, called Sghrs, are basaltic columns. This being the middle of the Second World War, and Outer Qwghlm being the part of the British Isles closest to the action of the Battle of the Atlantic, they are now flecked with little white radio shacks and hairy with antennas. There is a fourth sghr, much lower than the others and easily mistaken for a mere hillock, that rises above Outer Qwghlm's only harbor (and, indeed, only settlement, not counting the naval base on the other side). On top of this fourth sghr is the castle that is the nominal home of Nigel St. John Gloamthorpby-Woadmire and that is to be the new headquarters of Detachment 2702.

Five minutes' walk encompasses the whole town. A furious rooster chases a feeble sheep down the main street. There is snow at the higher elevations, but just grey slush down here, which is indistinguishable from the grey cobblestones until you step on it and fall down on your ass. The Encyclopedia Qwghlmianahad made much use of the definite article--the Town, the Castle, the Hotel, the Pub, the Pier. Waterhouse stops in at the Shithouse to deal with some aftershocks of the sea voyage, and then walks up the Street. The Automobile pulls up alongside and offers him a ride; it turns out to be the Taxi, too. It takes him round the Park where he notices the Statue (ancient Qwghlmians thrashing hapless Vikings); this gesture that does not go unnoted by the Taxi Driver, who veers into the Park to give him a better look.

The Statue is the sort that has a great deal to say and covers a correspondingly large expanse of real estate. Its pedestal is a slab of native basalt, covered on at least one side with what Waterhouse recognizes, from the Encyclopedia,as Qwghlmian runes. To an ignorant philistine, these might look like an endless, random series of sans-serif Xs, Is, Vs, hyphens, asterisks, and upside-down Vs. But it is an enduring source of pride to--

"We didn't care for those Romans and that Julius Caesar fellow," observes the taxi driver, "and we weren't too taken with their alphabet either."

Indeed the Encyclopedia Qwghlmianafeatures a lengthy article about the local system of runes. The author of this article has such a chip on his shoulder that the thing is almost physically painful to read. The Qwghlmian practice of eschewing the use of curves and loops, forming all glyphs out of straight lines, far from being crude--as some English scholars have asserted--gives the script a limpid austerity. It is an admirably functional style of writing in a place where (after all the trees were cut down by the English) most of the literate intellectual class suffered from chronic bilateral frostbite.

Waterhouse has rolled down the window so that he can get a clearer view; apparently someone has lost the Squeegee. The chill breeze washing over his face finally begins to clear away his seasickness, to the point where he begins to wonder how he should go about making contact with the Whore.

Then he realizes, with some disappointment, that if the Whore has half a brain in her head, she's across the island at the naval base.