Cryptonomicon

It is wonderfully healthy to be talking like this, but it is a portentous departure from their usual hard-core technical mode. They are wondering about whether it is even worth it for them to be mixed up in this stuff. Heedless certainty sure is easier.

"Well, what about those Secret Admirers who were hanging around outside Ordo?" Randy asks.

"What about them? You're asking me about their state of mind?"

"Yeah. That is what we are talking about. States of mind."

Cantrell shrugs. "I don't know specifically who they were. I'd guess there are one or two honest-to-god scary fanatics. Setting them aside, maybe a third of them are just too young and immature to understand what's going on. It was just a lark for them. The other two-thirds probably had very sweaty palms."

"They looked like they were trying awfully hard to keep up a cheerful front."

"They were probably happy to get out of there, and to go sit in a dark cool room and drink beer afterwards. Certainly a lot of them have been sending me e-mail about the Crypt since then."

"As an alternative to violent resistance to the United States Government, I assume and hope you mean."

"Exactly. Sure. I mean, that's what the Crypt is becoming. Right?"

The question sounds a little querulous to Randy. "Right," he says. He wonders why he feels so much more settled about this stuff than John Cantrell does, and then recalls, that he has nothing left to lose.

Randy takes one last breath of dry, machine-cooled air and holds it refreshingly in his lungs as they step out into the heat of the evening. He has learned to relax into the climate; you can't fight it. There is a humming logjam of black Mercedes-Benzes waiting to pick up the Sultan– and Vizier-Class passengers. Very few Wallah-Class passengers get off at Kinakuta; most of them are in transit to India. Because this is the kind of place where everything works just perfectly, Randy and John are in the Humvee about twenty seconds later, and twenty seconds after that driving at a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour down a long horizontal shaft of ghastly blue-green freeway-light.

"We have been assuming that this Humvee is not bugged," Cantrell says, "so, if you were holding back on something, you can speak freely now."

Randy writes, Let's stop assuming anything of the kindon a notepad and holds it up. Cantrell raises his eyebrows one notch but of course does not seem especially surprised--he spends all of his time around people trying to outdo each other in paranoia. Randy writes We have been under srv'nce by a former NSA hondo gone private.Then he adds, Prob. Working for 1 or more Crypt clients.

How do you know?Cantrell mouths.

Randy sighs, then writes: I was contacted by a Wizard.

Then, as long as John's preoccupied with working his way around a left-lane fender bender, he adds, Think of it as due diligence, underworld style.

Cantrell says out loud, "Tom has been pretty scrupulous about making sure his house is bug-free. I mean, he built the thing, or had it built, from the ground up." He veers off onto an exit ramp and plunges into the jungle.

"Good. We can talk there," Randy says, then writes, Remember the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow--bugs mixed into the concrete by KGB--had to be torn down.

Cantrell grabs the pad and scribbles blind on the dashboard while maneuvering the Humvee up a curving mountain road into the cloud forest. What do you want to talk about that is so secret? Arethusa? Give me agenda pls.

Randy: (1) Lawsuit & whether Epiphyte can continue to exist. (2) That NSA tapper, and Wizard, exist. (3) Maybe Arethusa.

Cantrell grins and writes, I have good news re: Tombstone's /.

"/"in this context is UNIX for the root of the file system, which in the case of Tombstone is synonymous with the hard drive that Randy tried to wipe. Randy raises his eyebrows skeptically and Cantrell grins, nods, and draws his thumb across his throat.