Cryptonomicon

He is following the Army boys down black-smudged tunnels bored through a variegated matrix of concrete, masonry, and solid rock. The caves were there first, eaten into the stone by rain and waves, then enlarged and rationalized by Spaniards with chisels, jackhammers, blasting powder. Then along came the Americans with bricks, and finally the Nipponese with reinforced concrete.

As they work their way into the maze, they pass down some tunnels that apparently acted like blowtorches: the walls have been scoured clean as if a torrent had been running through it for a million years, silver pools lie on the floor where guns or filing cabinets melted into puddles. Stored heat still radiates from the walls, adding to the heat of the Philippine climate, making all of them sweat even more, if that is possible.

Other corridors, other rooms were nothing more than backwaters in the river of fire. Looking into doorways, Waterhouse can see books that were charred but not consumed, blackened papers spilling from burst cabinets--"One moment," he says. His escort spins around just in time to see Waterhouse ducking through a low door into a tiny room, where something has caught his eye.

It's a heavy wooden cabinet, mostly transmuted into charcoal now, so it looks like the cabinet's gone but its shadow persists. Someone has already pulled one of its doors off its hinges, allowing black confetti to flood into the room. The cabinet was filled with slips of paper, mostly burned now, but thrusting his hand into the ash-heap (slowly! Most of this place is still hot) Waterhouse pulls out a bundle, nearly intact.

"What kind of money is that?" the Army guy asks.

Waterhouse pulls a bill from the top of the bundle. The top is printed in Japanese characters and bears an engraved picture of Tojo. He flips it over. The back is printed in English: TEN POUNDS.

"Australian currency," Waterhouse says.

"Don't look Australian to me," the Army guy says, glowering at Tojo.

"If the Nips had won..." Waterhouse says, and shrugs. He throws the stack of ten-pound notes onto the ash-heap of history and carries his single copy out into the corridor. A necklace of lightbulbs has been strung along the ceiling. The light glances off what looks like pools of quicksilver on the floor: the remains of guns, belt buckles, steel cabinets and doorknobs, melted down into puddles in the holocaust, now congealed.

The fine print on the bill says, IMPERIAL RESERVE BANK, MANILA.

"Sir! You okay?" the Army guy says. Waterhouse realizes he's been thinking for a while.

"Carry on," he says, and stuffs the bill in his pocket.

He was thinking about whether it was okay to take some of this money with him. It's okay to take souvenirs, but not to loot. So he can take the money if it's worthless, but not if it is real money.

Now, someone who was not so inclined to think and ponder everything to the nth degree would immediately see that the money was worthless, because, after all, the Japanese did not take Australia and never will. So that money's just a souvenir, right?

Probably right. The money is effectively worthless. But if Waterhouse were to find a real Australian ten-pound note and read the fine print, it would also probably bear the imprimatur of a reserve bank somewhere.

Two pieces of paper, each claiming to be worth ten pounds, each very official-looking, each bearing the name of a bank. One of them a worthless souvenir and one legal tender for all debts public and private. What gives?

What it comes down to is that people trust the claims printed on one of those pieces of paper but don't trust the other. They believe that you could take the real Australian note to a bank in Melbourne, slide it over the counter, and get silver or gold--or somethingat least--in exchange for it.

Trust goes a long way, but at some point, if you're going to sponsor a stable currency, you must put up or shut up. Somewhere, you have to actually have a shitload of gold in the basement. Around the time of the evacuation from Dunkirk, when the Brits were looking at an imminent invasion of their islands by the Germans, they took all of their gold reserves, loaded them on board some battleships and passenger liners, and squirted them across the Atlantic to banks in Toronto and Montreal. This would have enabled them to keep their currency afloat even if the Germans had overrun London.