Cryptonomicon

The three Lieutenants, Goto, Mori and Ninomiya, spend a few days surveying the flat, semi-open land straddling the lower Tojo River. The year, 1944, is turning out to be dry so far, and Mori does not want to construct his military barracks on land that will turn into a marsh after the first big rain. He is not concerned about the comfort of the prisoners, but he would at least like to ensure that they won't get washed away. The lay of the land is also important in setting up the interlocking fields of fire that will be necessary to put down any riots or mass escape attempts. They put Bundok's few enlisted men to work gathering bamboo stakes, then drive these in to mark the locations of roads, barracks, barbed-wire fences, guard towers, and a few carefully sited mortar emplacements from which the guards will be able to fill the atmosphere in any chosen part of the camp with shrapnel.

When Lieutenant Goto takes Lieutenant Ninomiya up into the jungle, clambering up the steep valley of the Tojo, Lieutenant Mori must stay behind--in accordance with Captain Noda's orders. This is just as well, since Mori has his work cut out for him down below. The captain has granted Ninomiya a special dispensation to see the Special Security Zone.

"Elevations are of supreme importance in this project," Goto Dengo tells the surveyor on the way up. They are burdened with surveying equipment and fresh water, but Ninomiya clambers up the rocky gulch of the half-parched river just as ably as Goto Dengo himself. "We will begin by establishing the level of Lake Yamamoto--which does not exist yet--and then work downwards from there."

"I have also been ordered to obtain the precise latitude and longitude," says Ninomiya.

Goto Dengo grins. "That's hard--there is nowhere to see the sun."

"What about the three peaks?"

Goto Dengo turns to see if Ninomiya is joking. But the surveyor is looking intently up the valley.

"Your dedication sets a good example," Goto Dengo says.

"This place is paradise compared to Rabaul."

"Is that where you were sent from?"

"Yes."

"How did you escape? It is cut off, isn't it?"

"It has been cut off for some time," Ninomiya says curtly. Then, he adds: "They came and got me in a submarine." His voice is husky and faint.

Goto Dengo is silent for a while.

Ninomiya has a system all worked out in his head, which they put into effect the next week, after they have done a rough survey of the Special Security Zone. Early in the morning, they hoist an enlisted man into a tree with a canteen, a watch, and a mirror. There is nothing special about this tree except for a bamboo stake recently driven into the ground nearby, labeled MAIN DRIFT.

Then Lieutenants Ninomiya and Goto climb to the top of the mountain, which takes them about eight hours. It is dreadfully arduous, and Ninomiya is shocked that Goto volunteers to go with him. "I want to see this place from the top of Calvary," Goto Dengo explains. "Only then will I have the insight to perform my duty well."

On the way up, they compare notes, New Guinea vs. New Britain. It seems that the latter's only saving grace is the settlement of Rabaul, a formerly British port complete with a cricket oval, now the linchpin of Nipponese forces in Southwest Asia. "For a long time it was a great place to be a surveyor," Ninomiya says, and describes the fortifications that they built there in preparation for MacArthur's invasion. He has a draftsman's enthusiasm for detail and at one point talks nonstop for an hour describing a particular system of bunkers and pillboxes down to the last booby trap and glory hole.

As the climb gets harder, the two vie with each other in belittling its difficulty. Goto Dengo tells the tale of climbing over the snow-covered mountain range in New Guinea.

"Nowadays, on New Britain we climb volcanoes all the time," Ninomiya says offhandedly.

"Why?"

"To collect sulfur."

"Sulfur? Why?"

"To make gunpowder."

After this they don't talk for a while.

Goto Dengo tries to dig them out of a conversational hole. "It'll be a bad day for MacArthur when he tries to take Rabaul!"

Ninomiya trudges along silently for a bit, trying to control himself, and fails. "You idiot," he says, "don't you see? MacArthur isn't coming. There's no need."

"But Rabaul is the cornerstone of the whole theater!"

"It is a cornerstone of soft, sweet wood in a universe of termites," Ninomiya snaps. "All he has to do is ignore us for another year, and then everyone will be dead of starvation or typhus."

The jungle thins out. The plants are wrestling for footholds on a loose slope of volcanic cinders, and only smaller ones endure. This puts Goto Dengo in the mind of writing a poem in which the small, tenacious Nipponese prevail over the big, lumbering Americans, but it has been a long time since he wrote a poem and he can't make the words go together.