Cryptonomicon

"Or kill them," Randy says.

Enoch Root takes this in stride. "That road gives way to a rather vast area in which gold might hypothetically have been hidden. Hundreds of square miles. Much of it is jungle. Much has difficult topography. Lots of volcanoes, some extinct, some vomiting up mudflows from time to time. But some is flat enough to grow tropical crops, and in those places, people have settled during the decades since the war, and put together the rudiments of an economy."

"Who owns the land?"

"You've gotten to know the Philippines well," Enoch Root says. "You go immediately to the central question."

"Around here, asking who owns the land is like complaining about the weather in the Midwest," Randy muses.

Enoch Root nods. "I could spend a long time answering your question. The answer is that patterns of ownership changed just after the war, and then changed again under Marcos, and yet again in the last few years. So we have several epochs, if you will. First epoch: before the war. Land owned by certain families."

"Of course."

"Of course. Second epoch: the war. A vast area sealed off by the Nipponese. Some of the families who owned the land prospered under the occupation. Others went bankrupt. Third epoch: postwar. The bankrupt families went away. The prosperous ones expanded their holdings. As did the church and the government."

"Why?"

"The government made part of the land--the jungle--into a national park. And after the eruptions, the church established the mission where I work."

"Eruptions?"

"In the early 1950s, just to make things interesting--you know, things are never interesting enough in the Philippines--the volcanoes acted up. A few lahars came through the area, wiped out some villages, redirected some rivers, displaced many people. The church set up the hospital to help those people."

"A hospital doesn't take up very much land," Randy observes.

"We also have farms. We are trying to help the locals become more self-reliant." Enoch Root acts like he basically does not want to talk about this. "At any rate, things then settled down into a pattern that more or less endured until the Marcos era, when various people were forced to sell some of their holdings to Ferdinand and Imelda and various of their cousins, nephews, cronies, and bootlicks."

"They were looking for Nipponese war gold."

"Certain of the locals have made a business of pretending to remember where the gold is," Enoch Root says. "Once it was understood just how remunerative this could be, it spread like a virus. Everyone claims to have hazy memories of the war now, or of tales that Dad or Granddad told them. The Marcos-era treasure-hunters did not display the cautious skepticism that might have been expected from people with more piercing intellects. Many holes were dug. No gold was found. Things settled down. Then, in the last few years, the Chinese came in."

"Filipinos of Chinese ancestry, or--"

"Chinese of Chinese ancestry," Enoch Root says. "Northern Chinese. Robust ones who like spicy food. Not the usual gracile Cantonese-speaking fish-eaters."

"These people are from where, then--Shanghai?"

Root nods. "Their company is one of these post-Maoist monstrosities. Headed up by an actual Long March veteran. Wily survivor of many purges. Name of Wing. Mr. Wing--or General Wing as he likes to be addressed when he is feeling nostalgic--handled the transition to capitalism rather deftly. Built hydroelectric projects with slave labor during the Great Leap Forward, parlayed that into control of a very large government ministry which has now become a sort of corporation. Mr. Wing has the ability to shut off the electricity to just about any home or factory or even military base in China, and by Chinese standards this makes him into a distinguished elder statesman."

"What does Mr. Wing want there?"

"Land.Land. More land."

"What sort of land?"

"Land in the jungle. Oddly enough."

"Maybe he wants to build a hydroelectric project."

"Yes, and maybe you're a heroin smuggler. Say, Randy, don't think I'm rude for saying so, but you have sauce in your beard." Enoch Root thrusts a hand through the bars, proffering a paper napkin. Randy takes it and, lifting it to his face, notes that the following letters are written on it: OSKJJ JGTMW. Randy pretends to daub sauce off his beard.

"Now I've gone and done it," says Enoch Root, "given you my whole supply of bumwad."

"Greater love hath no man," Randy says. "And I see you gave me your other deck of cards too--you are too generous."

"Not at all--I thought you might want to play solitaire, just as I did."

"Don't mind if I do," Randy says, setting his dinner tray aside and reaching for the deck.