Cryptonomicon

How did this bullet come from America to my hand?

We have lost. The war is over.

I must go home and tell everyone.

I must be like my father, a rational man, explaining the facts of the world to the people at home, who are crippled by superstitions.

He lets the bullet go again, watches it drop towards the bottom of the sea, where the ships, and all of the young men of Kulu, are bound.

Chapter 38 MUGS

Hey, it's an immature market.

The rationalizations have not actually begun yet--Randy's still sitting in the sultan's big conference room, and the meeting's just getting up to speed.

Naturally the early adopters are not going to be your regular joes.

Tom Howard has taken the floor to explain his work. Randy doesn't have much to do, so he's imagining tonight's conversation in the Bomb and Grapnel.

It's like the Wild West--a little unruly at first, then in a few years it settles down and you've got Fresno.

Most of the delegations have brought hired guns: engineers and security experts who'll get a bounty if they can find a flaw in Tom's system. One by one, these guys stand up to take their shots.

Ten years from now, widows and paperboys will be banking in cyberspace.

Magnificent isn't the word you would normally use to describe Tom Howard; he's burly and surly, completely lacking in social graces, and doesn't apologize for it. Most of the time he sits silently, wearing an expression of sphinxlike boredom, and so it's easy to forget how good he is.

But during this particular half hour of Tom Howard's life, it is of the essence that he be magnificent. He is going blade-to-blade with the Seven Samurai here: the nerdiest high-octane Ph.D.s and the scariest private-security clicks that Asia can produce. One-by-one they come after him and he cuts their heads off and stacks them on the table like cannon-balls. Several times he has to stop and think for sixty seconds before delivering the deathblow. Once he has to ask Eberhard Föhr to make some calculations on his laptop. Occasionally he has to call on the cryptographic expertise of John Cantrell, or to look over at Randy for a nod or shake of the head. But eventually, he shuts the hecklers up. Beryl wears a not very convincing smile throughout the entire thing. Avi just grips the arms of his chair, his knuckles going from blue to white to pink to a normal healthy glow over the course of the final five minutes, when it's clear that the Samurai are withdrawing in disarray. It makes Randy want to empty a six-shooter into the ceiling and holler, "Yeee haaw!" at the top of his lungs.

Instead he listens, just in case Tom gets tripped up in the briar patch of plesiosynchronous protocol arcana, whence only Randy can drag him out. This gives him some more time to survey the faces of the other people in the room. But the meeting is a couple of hours old now, and they are all as familiar to him as siblings.

Tom wipes his sword on his pantleg and thwacks his big ass resoundingly into his leather chair. Minions scurry into the room bringing tea and coffee and sugar/fat pods. Dr. Pragasu stands up and introduces John Cantrell.

Sheesh! So far, the agenda is revolving entirely around Epiphyte Corp. What gives?

Dr. Pragasu, having developed a friendly relationship with these California hackers, is pimping them to his big money contacts. That's what gives.

This is very interesting from a business standpoint. But Randy finds it a bit irksome and threatening, this one-way flow of information. By the time they go home, this assemblage of shady gmokes is going to know everything about Epiphyte Corp., but Epiphyte will still be in the dark. No doubt that's exactly how they want it.

It occurs to Randy to look over at the Dentist. Dr. Hubert Kepler is sitting on the same side of the table as he is, and so it's hard to read his face. But it's clear he's not listening to John Cantrell. He's covering his mouth with one hand and staring into space. His Valkyries are furiously passing notes back and forth, like naughty cheerleaders.

Kepler's just as surprised as Randy. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who delights in surprises.

What can Randy do right now to enhance shareholder value? Intrigue is not his specialty; he'll leave that to Avi. Instead, he tunes out the meeting, opens up his laptop, and begins to hack.

Hacking is an overly glorious word for this. Everyone in Epiphyte Corp. has a laptop with a tiny built-in video camera, so that they can do long-distance videoconferencing. Avi insisted on it. The camera is almost invisible: just an orifice a couple of millimeters across, mounted in the top center of the frame that surrounds the screen. It doesn't have a lens as such--it's a camera in the oldest sense, a camera obscura. One wall contains the pinhole and the opposite wall is a silicon retina.