Cryptonomicon

When he ventures back, he finds Ghnxh whittling an electrode from an ingot of pure carbon. The jar of aqua regia has been capped off now, and a variety of anodes, cathodes, and other working substances are suspended in it, held in place by clamps of hammered gold. Thick wires, in insulating sheathes of hand-knit asbestos, twist out of the jar and into the business end of the galvanick lucipher: a copper salad bowl whose mouth is closed off by a Fresnel lens like the ones on a lighthouse. When Ghnxh gets his carbon whittled to just the right size and shape, he fits it into a little hatch in the side of this bowl, and casually throws a Frankensteinian blade switch. A spark pops across the contacts like a firecracker.

For a moment, Waterhouse thinks that one wall of the building has collapsed, exposing them to the direct light of the sun. But Ghnxh has simply turned on the galvanick lucipher, which soon becomes about ten times brighter, as Ghnxh adjusts a bronze thumbscrew. Crushed with shame, Waterhouse puts his Navy flashlight back into its prissy little belt holster, and precedes Ghnxh out of the room, the galvanick lucipher casting palpable warmth on the back of his neck. "We've got about two hours before she goes dead on us," Ghnxh says significantly.

They work out a modus vivendi,all right: Waterhouse kicks an old door open and then Ghnxh strides into the room that is on the other side and sweeps the beam of the lantern around as if it were a flame thrower, driving back dozens or hundreds of squealing skerries. Waterhouse clambers cautiously into the room, typically making his way over the collapsed remnants of whatever roof or story used to be overhead. He gives the place a quick inspection, trying to gauge how much effort would be required to make it liveable for any more advanced organism.

Half of the castle has, at one point or another, been burned down by a combination of Barbary corsairs, lightning bolts, Napoleon, and smoking in bed. The Barbary corsairs did the best job of it (probably just trying to stay warm), or maybe it's just that the elements have had longer to decompose what little was left behind by the flames. In any case, in that section of the castle, Waterhouse finds a place where there's not too much rubble to shovel out, and where they can quickly enclose an adequate space with a combination of tarps and planks. It is diametrically opposed to the part of the castle that is still inhabited, which exposes it to winter storms but protects it from the prying eyes of the staff. Waterhouse paces off some rough measurements, then goes to his room, leaving Ghnxh to see to the decommissioning of the galvanick lucipher.

Waterhouse sketches out some plans for the upcoming work, at long last putting his hitherto misspent engineering skills to some use. He draws up a bill of required materials, naturally involving a good many numbers:

100 8' 2 x 4s is a typical entry. He writes out the list a second time, in words not numbers: ONE HUNDRED EIGHT FOOT TWO BY FOURS. This wording is potentially confusing, so he changes it to TWO BY FOUR BOARDS ONE HUNDRED COUNT LENGTH EIGHT FEET.

Next he pulls a sheet of what looks like ledger paper, divided vertically into groups of five columns. Into these columns he transcribes the message, ignoring spaces:

TWOBY FOURB OARDS ONEHU NDRED

COUNT LENGT HEIGH TFEET

and so on. Wherever he encounters a letter J he writes I in its stead, so that JOIST comes out as IOIST. He only uses every third line of the page.

Ever since he left Bletchley Park, he has been carrying several sheets of onionskin paper around in his breast pocket; when he sleeps, he puts them under his pillow. Now he takes them out and selects one page, which has a serial number typed across the top and is otherwise covered with neatly typed letters like this:

ATHOP COGNQ DLTUI CAPRH MULEP

and so on, all the way down to the bottom of the page.