Cryptonomicon

"Now, a lot of the people the nerd dealt with were incredibly bad guys. Peg house habitues. Escaped convicts from all over the world. Psychotic gunslingers. People who owned slaves and massacred Indians. I'll bet that the first day, or week, or month, or year, that the nerd moved to the gold-mining town and hung out his shingle, he was probably scared shitless. He probably had moral qualms too--very legitimate ones, perhaps," Avi adds, giving Randy a sidelong glance. "Some of those pioneering nerds probably gave up and went back East. But y'know what? In a surprisingly short period of time, everything became pretty damn civilized, and the towns filled up with churches and schools and universities, and the sort of howling maniacs who got there first were all assimilated or driven out or thrown into prison, and the nerds had boulevards and opera houses named after them. Now, is the analogy clear?"

"The analogy is clear," Tom Howard says. He is less troubled by this than any of them, with the possible exception of Avi. But then, his hobby is collecting and shooting rare automatic weapons.

No one else will say anything; it is Randy's job to be troublesome. "Uh, how many of those assayers got gunned down in the street after they pissed off some psychotic gold miner?" he asks.

"I don't have any figures on that," Avi says.

"Well, I am not fully convinced that I really need this," Randy says.

"We all need to decide that question for ourselves," says Avi.

"And then vote, as a corporation whether to stay in or pull out right?" Randy says.

Avi and Beryl look meaningfully at each other.

"Getting out, at this point, would be, uh, complicated," Beryl says. Then, seeing a look on Randy's face, she hastens to add: "not for individuals who might want to leave Epiphyte. That's easy. No problem. But for Epiphyte to get out of this, uh . . ."

"Situation," Cantrell offers.

"Dilemma," Randy says.

Eb mumbles a word in German.

"Opportunity," Avi counters.

"...would be all but impossible," Beryl says.

"Look," Avi says, "I don't want anyone to feel compelled to stay in a situation where they have moral qualms."

"Or fear imminent summary execution," Randy adds helpfully.

"Right. Now, we've all put a ton of work into this thing, and that work ought to be worth something. To be totally above-board and explicit, let me reiterate what is already in the bylaws, which is that anyone can pull out; we'll buy back your stock. After what's happened here the last couple of days, I'm pretty confident that we could raise enough money to do so. You'd make at least as much as if you had stayed home doing a regular salaried job."

Younger, less experienced high-tech entrepreneurs would have scoffed bitterly at this. But everyone on this crew actually finds it impressive that Avi can put a company together and keep it alive long enough to make it worth the work they've put into it.

The black Mercedes cruises up. Dr. Mohammed Pragasu strides over to meet it, greets the South Americans in fairly decent Spanish, makes a couple of introductions. The scattered clumps of businessmen begin to draw closer together, converging on the cavern's entrance. Prag is making a head count, taking attendance. Someone's missing.

One of the Dentist's aides is maneuvering towards Prag in lavender pumps, a cellphone clamped to her head. Randy breaks away from Epiphyte and sets a collision course, reaching Prag's vicinity just in time to hear the woman tell him, "Dr. Kepler will be joining us late--some important business in California. He sends his apologies."

Dr. Pragasu nods brightly, somehow avoids eye contact with Randy, who is now close enough to floss Prag's teeth, and turns, clamping his hardhat down on top of his glossy hair. "Please follow me, everyone," he announces, "the tour begins."

It is a dull tour, even for those who have never been inside the place. Whenever Prag leads them to a new spot, everyone looks around and gets their bearings; conversation lulls for ten or fifteen seconds, then picks up again; the high-ranking executives stare unseeingly at the hewn stone walls and mutter to each other while their engineering consultants converge on the Goto engineers and ask them learned questions.

All of the construction engineers work for Goto and are, of course, Nipponese. There is another who stands apart. "Who's the heavyset blond guy?" Randy asks Tom Howard.

"German civil engineer on loan to Goto. He seems to specialize in military issues."

" Arethere any military issues?"

"At some point, about halfway into this project, Prag suddenly decided he wanted the whole thing bombproof."

"Oh. Is that Bomb with a capital B, by any chance?"

"I think he's just about to talk about that," Torn says, leading Randy closer.

Someone has just asked the German engineer whether this place is nuclear-hardened.