Cryptonomicon

On the prairie, those flint arrowheads can be found lodged in every sort of natural matrix: soil, sod, the mud of a riverbank, the heartwood of a tree. Waterhouse has a talent for finding them. How can he walk across a field salted, by the retreat of the last glacier, with countless stones, and pick out the arrowheads? Why can the human eye detect a tiny artificial form lost in nature's torn and turbulent cosmos, a needle of data in a haystack of noise? It is a sudden, sparking connection between minds, he supposes. The arrowheads are human things broken loose from humanity, their organic parts perished, their mineral forms enduring--crystals of intention. It is not the form but the lethal intent that demands the attention of a selfish mind. It worked for young Waterhouse, hunting for arrowheads. It worked for the pilots of the airplanes that hounded U-553 this morning. It works for the listeners of the Beobachtung Dienst,who have trained their ears to hear what is being said by Churchill and FDR on what are supposed to be scrambled telephones. But it doesn't work very well with crypto. That is too bad for everyone except the British and the Americans, who have devised mathematical systems for picking out arrowheads amid pebbles.

Caesar's Reef gashed the underside of U-553's bow section open while shoving the entire boat up and partly out of the water. Momentum almost carried her over the hump, but she got hung up in the middle, stranded, a wave-battered teeter-totter. Her bows have mostly filled with water now, and so it is the sharp stern that projects up above the crests of the seas. She has been abandoned by her crew, which means that according to the traditions of maritime law, she is up for grabs. The Royal Navy has called dibs. A screen of destroyers patrols the area, lest some sister U-boat slip in and torpedo the wreck.

Waterhouse had been collected from the castle in unseemly haste. Dusk is now falling like a lead curtain, and wolf packs hunt at night. He is on the bridge of a corvette, a tiny escort ship that, in any kind of chop, has the exact hydrodynamics of an empty oil drum. If he stays down below he'll never stop vomiting, and so he stands abovedecks, feet braced wide, knees bent, holding onto a rail with both hands, watching the wreck come closer. The number 553is painted on her conning tower, beneath a cartoon of a polar bear hoisting a beer stein.

"Interesting," he says to Colonel Chattan. "Five-five-three is the product of two prime numbers--seven and seventy-nine."

Chattan manages an appreciative smile, but Waterhouse can tell that it's nothing more than a spectacular display of breeding.

The remainder of Detachment 2702 is, meanwhile, finally arriving. Having just finished with the successful Norway-ramming mission, they were on their way to their new base of operations on Qwghlm when they received word of U-553's grounding. They rendezvoused with Waterhouse right here on this boat--haven't even had a chance to sit down yet, much less unpack. Waterhouse has told them several times how much they are going to like Qwghlm and has run out of other things to say--the crew of this corvette lacks Ultra Mega clearance, and there is nothing that Waterhouse could conceivably talk about with Chattan and the others that is not classified at the Ultra Mega level. So he's trying gamely with prime number chitchat.

Some of the detachment--the Marine lieutenant and most of the enlisted men--were dropped off in Qwghlm so that they could settle into their new quarters. Only Colonel Chattan and a noncom named Sergeant Robert Shaftoe have accompanied Waterhouse to the U-boat.

Shaftoe has a wiry build, bulging Alley Oop forearms and hands, and blond hair in a buzz cut that makes his big blue eyes look bigger. He has a big nose and a big Adam's apple and big acne scars and some other scars around the orbits of his eyes. The large features in the trim body give him an intense presence; it is hard not to keep looking over in his direction. He seems like a man with powerful emotions but an even more powerful discipline that keeps them under control. He stares directly and unblinkingly into the eyes of whoever is talking. When no one is talking, he stares at the horizon and thinks. When he is thinking, he twiddles his fingers incessantly. Everyone else is using their fingers to hold on to something, but Shaftoe is planted on the deck like a fat geezer waiting in line for a movie. He, like Waterhouse, but unlike Chattan, is dressed in heavy foul weather gear that they have borrowed from the stores of this torpedo boat.