Cryptonomicon

her speed. The square mileage that must be searched will increase as the square of that radius.

Going up the Channel, while submerged,just isn't going to work-they'll run into one of the block ships that the Brits sank there to prevent U-boats from doing just that. The surface is the only way, and it's a hell of a lot faster too. This raises the airplane issue. Airplanes search not for the boat itself, which is tiny and dark, but for its wake, which is white and spreads for miles on calm water. There will be no wake behind U-691 tonight-or rather, there will be, but it will be lost in random noise of much higher amplitude. Bischoff decides that covering distance is more important than being subtle at the moment, and so he brings her up to the surface and then pins the throttle. This will burn fuel insanely, but U-691 has a range of eleven thousand miles.

Sometime around noon the next day, U-691, battering its way through a murderous storm, lances the Straits of Dover and breaks through into the North Sea. She must be lighting up every radar screen in Europe, but airplanes can't do much in this weather.

'The prisoner Shaftoe wishes to speak to you,' says Beck, who has gone back to being his second-in- command, as if nothing had ever been different. War gives men good ignoring skills. Bischoff nods.

Shaftoe enters the control room, accompanied by Root, who will apparently serve as translator, spiritual guide, and/or wry observer. 'I know a place where we can go,' Shaftoe says.

Bischoff is floored. He hasn't thought about where they were actually goingin days. The concept of having a coherent goal is almost beyond his comprehension.

'It is-' Bischoff gropes '-touchingthat you have taken an interest.'

Shaftoe shrugs. 'I heard you were in deep shit with Donitz.'

'Not as bad as I was,' Bischoff says, immediately perceiving the folksy wisdom of this American barnyard metaphor. 'The depth is the same, but now I am head up instead of head down.'

Shaftoe chuckles delightedly. They are all buddies now. 'You have any charts of Sweden?'

This strikes Bischoff as a good but half-witted idea. Seeking temporary refuge in a neutral country: fine. But much more likely is that they run the boat aground on a rock.

'There's a bay there, by this little town,' Shaftoe says. 'We know the depths.'

'How could that be?'

'Because we charted the fucking thing ourselves, a couple of months ago, with a rock on a string.'

'Was this before or after you boarded the mysterious U-boat full of gold?' Bischoff asks.

'Just before.'

'Would it be out of line for me to inquire what an American Marine Raider and an ANZAC chaplain were doing in Sweden, a neutral country, performing bathymetric surveys?'

Shaftoe doesn't seem to think it's out of line at all. He's in such a good mood from the morphine. He tells another yam. This one begins on the coast of Norway (he is deliberately vague about how he got there) and is all about how Shaftoe led Enoch Root and a dozen or so men, including one who had a serious ax wound to the leg (Bischoff raises his eyebrows) all the way across Norway on skis, slaying pursuing Germans right and left, and into Sweden. The story then bogs down for a while because there are no more Germans to kill, and Shaftoe, sensing that Bischoffs attention is beginning to wander, tries to inject some lurid thrills into the narrative by describing the progress of the gangrene up the leg of the officer who ran afoul of the ax (who, as far as Bischoff can make out, was under suspicion as a possible German spy). Shaftoe keeps encouraging Root to jump in and tell the story of how Root performed several consecutive amputations of the officer's leg, all the way up to the pelvis. Just as Bischoff is finally starting to actually care about this poor bastard with the gangrenous leg, the story takes another zigzag: they reach a little fishing town on the Gulf of Bothnia. The gangrenous officer is delivered into the hands of the town doctor. Shaftoe and his comrades hole up in the woods and strike up what sounds like an edgy relationship with a Finnish smuggler and his lissome daughter. And now it's clear that Shaftoe has reached his favorite part of the story, which is this Finnish girl. And indeed, up to this point his story-telling style has been as rude and blunt and functional as the inside of a U-boat. But now he relaxes, begins to smile, and becomes damn near poetic-to the point where a few members of Bischoff's crew, who speak a little bit of English, start to loiter within earshot. Essentially the story goes totally off the rails at this point, and while it's entertaining material, it appears to be headed exactly nowhere. Bischoff finally interrupts with 'What about the guy with the bad leg?' Shaftoe frowns and bites his lip. 'Oh, yeah,' he finally says, 'he died.'

'The rock on the string,' prompts Enoch Root. 'Remember? That's why you were telling the story.'

'Oh, yeah,' Shaftoe says, 'they came and picked us up with a little submarine. That's how we got to Qwghlm and saw the U-boat with the gold. But before they could enter the harbor, they had to have a chart. So Lieutenant Root and I went out on a fucking rowboat with a rock on a string and charted it.'

'And you still have a copy of this chart with you?' Bischoff asks skeptically.

'Nah,' Shaftoe says, with a flip coolness that in a less charismatic man would be infuriating. 'But the lieutenant remembers it. He's really good at remembering numbers. Aren't you, sir?'

Enoch shrugs modestly. 'Where I grew up, memorizing the digits of pi was the closest thing we had to entertainment.'

Chapter 48 CANNIBALS

Goto Dengo flees through the swamp. He is fairly certain that he is being chased by the cannibals who just cooked up the friend with whom he had washed ashore. He climbs up a tangle of vines and hides himself several meters above the ground; men with spears search the general area, but they do not find him.

He passes out. When he wakes up, it's dark, and some small animal is moving in the branches nearby. He is so desperate for food that he grabs at it blindly. The creature has a body the size of a house cat, but long leathery arms: some kind of huge bat. It bites him several times on the hands before he crushes it to death. Then he eats it raw.

The next day he goes forth into the swamp, trying to put more distance between himself and the cannibals. Around midday he finds a stream-the first one he's seen. For the most part the water just seeps out of New Guinea though marshes, but here is an actual river of cold, fresh water, just narrow enough to jump across.

A few hours later he finds another village that is similar to the first one, but only about half as big. The number of dangling heads is much smaller; maybe these headhunters are not quite as fearsome as the first group. Again there is a central fire where white stuff is being cooked in a pot: in this case, it appears to be a wok, which they must have gotten though trade. The people of this village don't know a starving Nipponese soldier is lurking in the vicinity, so they are not very vigilant. Around twilight, when the mosquitoes come out of the swamps in a humming fog, they all retire into their longhouses. Goto Dengo runs out into the middle of the compound, grabs the wok, and makes off with it. He forces himself not to take any of the food until he is far away, hidden in a tree again, and then he gorges himself. The food is a rubbery gel of what would appear to be pure starch. Even to a ravenous man, it has no flavor at all. Nevertheless he licks the wok clean. While he is doing so, an idea comes to him.

The next morning, when the sun's bubble bursts out of the sea, Goto Dengo is kneeling in the bed of the river, scooping sand up into thewok and swirling it around, hypnotized by the maelstrom of dirt and foam, which slowly develops a glittering center.

The next morning Dengo is standing on the edge of the village bright and early, shouting: 'Ulab! Ulab! Ulab!'which is what the people in the first village called gold.