Cryptonomicon

"Look. My job's pretty simple," Randy says. "There's that big Nipponese cable from Taiwan down to Luzon. A router at each end. Then there's the network of short-run, interisland cables that the AVCLA people are laying in the Philippines. Each cable segment begins and ends at a router, as you know. My job is to program the routers, make sure the data will always have a clear path from Taiwan to Kinakuta."

Cantrell glances away, worried that he's about to get bored. Randy practically lunges across the table, because he knows it's not boring. "John! You are a major credit card company!"

"Okay." Cantrell meets his gaze, slightly unnerved.

"You are storing your data in the Kinakuta data haven. You need to download a terabyte of crucial data. You begin the process--your encrypted bytes are screaming up through the Philippines at a gigabyte per second, to Taiwan, from there across to the States." Randy pauses and swigs Guinness, building the drama. "Then a ferry capsizes off Cebu."

"So?"

"So, in the space of ten minutes, a hundred thousand Filipinos all pick up their telephones simultaneously."

Cantrell actually whacks his forehead. "Oh, my god!"

"Now you understand! I've been configuring this network so that no matter what happens, the data continues to flow to that credit-card company. Maybe at a reduced speed--but it flows."

"Well, I can see how that would keep you busy."

"And that's why all I'm really up to speed on is these routers. And incidentally they're good routers, but they just don't have enough capacity to feed a Crypt of that size, or justify it economically."

"The gist of Avi and Beryl's explanation," Cantrell says, "is that Epiphyte is no longer the sole carrier into the Crypt."

"But we're laying the cable here from Palawan--"

"The sultan's minions have been out drumming up business," Cantrell says. "Avi and Beryl are being vague, but from comparing notes with Tom, and reading tea leaves, methinks there's one, maybe two other cables coming into Kinakuta."

"Wow!" Randy says. It's all he can think of. "Wow!" He drinks about half of his Guinness. "It makes sense. If they're doing it once with us, they can do it again, with other carriers.

"They used us as leverage to bring in others," Cantrell says.

"Well . . . the question is, then, is the cable through the Philippines still needed? Or wanted?"

"Yup," Cantrell says.

"It is?"

"No. I mean, yup, that's the question, all right."

Randy considers it. "Actually, this could be good news for yourphase of the operation. More pipes into the Crypt means more business in the long run.

Cantrell raises his eyebrows, a little worried about Randy's feelings. Randy leans back in his chair and says, "We've had debates before about whether it makes sense for Epiphyte to be screwing around with cables and routers in the Philippines."

Cantrell says, "The business plan has always maintained that it would make economic sense to be running a cable through the Philippines even if there weren't a Crypt at the end of it."

"The business plan has to say the Intra-Philippines network could be spun off as an independent business, and still survive," Randy says, "to justify our doing it."

Neither one of them needs to say any more. They've been concentrating on each other pretty intensely for a while, shutting out the rest of the bar with their postures, and now, spontaneously, both of them lean back, stretch, and begin looking around. The timing's fortuitous, because Goto Furudenendu has just come in with a posse of what Randy guesses are civil engineers: healthy-looking, clean-cut Nipponese men in their thirties. Randy invites him over with a smile, then flags down their waiter and orders a few of those great big bottles of bitterly cold Nipponese beer.

"This reminds me--the Secret Admirers are really on my case," Randy says.

Cantrell grins, showing some affection for those crazy Secret Admirers. "Smart, rabidly paranoid people are the backbone of cryptology," he says, "but they don't always understand business."

"Maybe they understand it too well," Randy says. He is left with some residual annoyance that he came down to the Bomb and Grapnel party in order to answer the question posed by [email protected] ("Why are you doing it?") and he still doesn't know. As a matter of fact, he knows less now than he did before.