Cryptonomicon

The expressions of the others seemed to say that this was a telling blow, righteously struck.

"I'm not sure what a technocrat is," Randy said. "Am I a technocrat? I'm just a guy who went down to the bookstore and bought a couple of textbooks on TCP/IP, which is the underlying protocol of the Internet, and read them. And then I signed on to a computer, which anyone can do nowadays, and I messed around with it for a few years, and now I know all about it. Does that make me a technocrat?"

"You belonged to the technocratic elite even before you picked up that book," Kivistik said. "The ability to wade through a technical text, and to understand it, is a privilege. It is a privilege conferred by an education that is available only to members of an elite class. That's what I mean by technocrat."

"I went to a public school," Randy said. "And then I went to a state university. From that point on, I was self-educated."

Charlene broke in. She had been giving Randy dirty looks ever since this started and he had been ignoring her. Now he was going to pay. "And your family?" Charlene asked frostily.

Randy took a deep breath, stifled the urge to sigh. "My father's an engineer. He teaches at a state college."

"And his father?"

"A mathematician."

Charlene raised her eyebrows. So did nearly everyone else at the table. Case closed.

"I strenuously object to being labeled and pigeonholed and stereotyped as a technocrat," Randy said, deliberately using oppressed-person's language, maybe in an attempt to turn their weapons against them but more likely (he thinks, lying in bed at three A.M. in the Manila Hotel) out of an uncontrollable urge to be a prick. Some of them, out of habit, looked at him soberly; etiquette dictated that you give all sympathy to the oppressed. Others gasped in outrage to hear these words coming from the lips of a known and convicted white male technocrat. "No one in my family has ever had much money or power," he said.

"I think that the point that Charlene's making is like this," said Tomas, one of their houseguests who had flown in from Prague with his wife Nina. He had now appointed himself conciliator. He paused long enough to exchange a warm look with Charlene. "Just by virtue of coming from a scientific family, you are a member of a privileged elite. You're not aware of it--but members of privileged elites are rarely aware of their privileges."

Randy finished the thought. "Until people like you come along to explain to us how stupid, to say nothing of morally bankrupt, we are."

"The false consciousness Tomas is speaking of is exactly what makes entrenched power elites so entrenched," Charlene said.

"Well, I don't feel very entrenched," Randy said. "I've worked my ass off to get where I've gotten."

"A lot of people work hard all their lives and get nowhere," someone said accusingly. Look out! The sniping had begun.

"Well, I'm sorry I haven't had the good grace to get nowhere," Randy said, now feeling just a bit surly for the first time, "but I have found that if you work hard, educate yourself and keep your wits about you, you can find your way in this society."

"But that's straight out of some nineteenth-century Horatio Alger book," Tomas sputtered.

"So? Just because it's an old idea doesn't mean it's wrong." Randy said.

A small strike force of waitpersons had been forming up around the fringes of the table, arms laden with dishes, making eye contact with each other as they tried to decide when it was okay to break up the fight and serve dinner. One of them rewarded Randy with a platter carrying a wigwam devised from slabs of nearly raw tuna. The pro-consensus, anti-confrontation elements then seized control of the conversation and broke it up into numerous small clusters of people all vigorously agreeing with one another. Jon cast a watery look at Randy, as if to say, was it good for you too? Charlene was ignoring him intensely; she was caught up in a consensus cluster with Tomas. Nina kept trying to catch Randy's eye, but he studiously avoided this because he was afraid that she wanted to favor him with a smoldering come-hither look, and all Randy wanted to do right then was to go thither. Ten minutes later, his pager went off, and he looked down to see Avi's number on it.

Chapter 7 BURN

The American base at Cavite, along the shore of Manila Bay, burns real good once the Nips have set it on fire, Bobby Shaftoe and the rest of the Fourth Marines get a good long look at it as they cruise by, sneaking out of Manila like thieves in the night. He has never felt more personally disgraced in his life, and the same thing goes for the other Marines. The Nips have already landed in Malaya and are headed for Singapore like a runaway train, they are besieging Guam and Wake and Hong Kong and God knows what else, and it should be obvious to anyone that they are going to hit the Philippines next. Seems like a regiment of hardened China Marines might actually come in handy around here.