Cryptonomicon

Concerning the possibility that I am ''an old enemy'' of yours. I'm dismayed that one so young can already have old enemies. Or perhaps you are referring to a recently acquired enemy of advanced years? Several candidates come to mind. But I suspect you are referring to Andrew Loeb. I am not he. This would be obvious to you if you had visited his website recently.

Why are you building the Crypt? Signed.

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It is not at all interesting to watch the numbers over the elevators and try to predict which one will arrive first, but it is more interesting than just standing there. One of them has been stuck on the floor above Randy's for at least a minute; he can hear it buzzing angrily. In Asia many business men--especially some of the overseas Chinese--would think nothing of commandeering one of the hotel's elevators around the clock for their own personal use, stationing minions in it, in eight-hour shifts, to hold their thumbs on the DOOR OPEN button, ignoring its self-righteous alarm buzzer.

Ding.Randy spins around on the balls of his feet (just try thatlittle maneuver in a pair of sneakers!). Once again he has backed the wrong horse: the winner is an elevator that was on the very top floor of the hotel last time he scanned it. This is an elevator with purpose, a fast-track lift. He walks towards the green light. The doors part. Randy stares squarely into the face of Dr. Hubert (the Dentist) Kepler, D.D.S.

Or perhaps you are referring to a recently acquired enemy of advanced years?

"Good morning, Mr. Waterhouse! When you stand with your mouth open like that, you remind me of one of my patients."

"Good morning, Dr. Kepler." Randy hears his words from the other end of a mile-long bumwad tube, and immediately reviews them in his own mind to make sure he has not revealed any proprietary corporate information or given Dr. Kepler any reason to file a lawsuit.

The doors start to close and Randy has to whack them open with his laptop case.

"Careful! That's an expensive piece of equipment, I'd wager," says the Dentist.

Randy is about to say I go through laptops like a transvestite goes through nylonsthough maybe like a high-speed drill through a necrotic molarwould be more thematically apropos, but instead he clams up and says nothing at all, finding himself in dangerous territory: he is carrying proprietary AVCLA information on this thing, and if the Dentist gets the impression that Randy's being cavalier with it, he might spew out a barrage of torts, like Linda Blair and the pea soup.

"It's, uh, a pleasant surprise to see you in Kinakuta," Randy stammers.

Dr. Kepler wears eyeglasses the size of a 1959 Cadillac's windshield. They are special dentist eyeglasses, as polished as the Palomar mirror, coated with ultrareflective material so that you can always see the reflection of your own yawning maw in them, impaled on a shaft of hot light. The Dentist's own eyes merely haunt the background, like a childhood memory. They are squinty grey-blue eyes, turned down at the edges as if he is tired of the world, with Stygian pupils. A trace of a smile always seems to be playing around his withered lips. It is the smile of a man who is worrying about how to meet his next malpractice insurance payment while patiently maneuvering the point of his surgical-steel crowbar under the edge of your dead bicuspid, but who has read in a professional magazine that patients are more likely to come back, and less likely to sue you, if you smile at them. "Say," he says, "I wonder if I could have a quick huddle with you sometime later."

Spit, please.

Saved by the bell! They have reached the ground floor. The elevator doors open to reveal the endangered-marble lobby of the Foote Mansion. Bellhops, disguised as wedding cakes, glide to and fro as if mounted on casters. Not ten feet away is Avi, and with him are two beautiful suits from which protrude the heads of Eb and John. All three heads turn towards them. Seeing the Dentist, Eb and John adopt the facial expressions of B-movie actors whose characters have just taken small-caliber bullets to the center of the forehead. Avi, by contrast, stiffens up like a man who stepped on a rusty nail a week ago and has just felt the first stirrings of the tetanus infection that will eventually break his spine.

"We've got a busy day ahead of us," Randy says. "I guess my answer is yes, subject to availability."

"Good. I'll hold you to it," says Dr. Kepler, and steps out of the elevator. "Good morning, Mr. Halaby. Good morning, Dr. Föhr. Good morning, Mr. Cantrell. Nice to see you all looking so very much like gentlemen."

Nice to see you acting like one.

"The pleasure is ours," Avi says. "I take it we'll be seeing you later?"