Cryptonomicon

"The world is bleeding. It needs medicine and bandages. These cost money."

"But before this war, all of this gold was out here, in the sunlight. In the world. Yet look what happened." Goto Dengo shudders. "Wealth that is stored up in gold is dead. It rots and stinks. True wealth is made every day by men getting up out of bed and going to work. By school children doing their lessons, improving their minds. Tell those men that if they want wealth, they should come to Nippon with me after the war. We will start businesses and build buildings."

"Spoken like a true Nipponese," Enoch says bitterly. "You never change."

"Please make me understand what you are saying."

"What of the man who cannot get out of bed and work, because he has no legs? What of the widow who has no husband to work, no children to support her? What of children who cannot improve their minds because they lack books and schoolhouses?"

"You can shower gold on them," Goto Dengo says. "Soon enough, it will all be gone."

"Yes. But some of it will be gone into books and bandages."

Goto Dengo does not have a rejoinder for this. He is not outsmarted so much as sad and tired. "What do you want? You think I should give the gold to the Church?"

Enoch Root looks mildly taken aback, as if the idea hadn't really occurred to him before. "You could do worse, I suppose. The Church has two thousand years of experience in using its resources to help the poor. It has not always been perfect. But is has built its share of hospitals and schools."

Goto Dengo shakes his head. "I have only been in your Church for a few weeks and already I have many doubts about it. It has been a good thing for me. But to give it so much gold--I am not sure if this is a good idea."

"Don't look at me as if you expect me to defend the Church's imperfections," says Enoch Root. "They have kicked me out of the priesthood."

"Then what shall I do?"

"Perhaps give it to the Church with conditions."

"What?"

"You can stipulate that it only be used to educate children, if you choose."

Goto Dengo says, "Educated men created this cemetery."

"Then choose some other condition."

"My condition is that if that gold ever comes out of the ground, it should be used so that we do not have any more wars like this one."

"And how should we accomplish such a thing, Goto Dengo?"

Goto Dengo sighs. "You put a big weight on my shoulders!"

"No. I did not put the weight on your shoulders. It has always been there." Enoch Root stares mercilessly into Goto Dengo's tormented face. "Jesus takes away the sins of the world, but the world remains: a physical reality on which we are doomed to live until death takes us away from it. You have confessed, and you have been forgiven, and so the greater part of your burden has been taken away by grace. But the gold is still there, in a hole in the ground. Did you think that the gold all turned into dirt when you swallowed the bread and the wine? That is not what we mean by transubstantiation." Enoch Root turns his back and walks away, leaving Goto Dengo alone in the bright avenues of the city of the dead.

Chapter 97 RETURN

"I SHALL RETURN" wrote Randy in his first e-mail message to Amy after he got to Tokyo. Returning to the Philippines is not a very good idea at all, and probably not the kind of thing that the old mellow Randy would have even considered. But here he is on a beach in the Sultanate of Kinakuta, down below Tom Howard's personal citadel, dipped in sunblock and Dramamined to the gills, getting ready to return. Reckoning that the goatee would make him easy to identify, he has shaved it off, and reckoning that hair is useless where he's headed (the jungle, jail, and Davy Jones's Locker being the three most likely possibilities), has run a buzzer over his head and shorn himself down to about an eighth of an inch all around. This in turn has necessitated finding a hat, to prevent radiation burns of the skull, and the only hat in Tom Howard's house that fits Randy is an outback number that some cephalomegalic Aussie contractor left behind there, evidently because its fragrance had begun to attract nocturnal rodents with a proclivity for aimless gnawing.