Cryptonomicon

chase sheep, or to-well, to the Southwest Pacific to be pursued through the jungle by starving Nips draped with live satchel charges.

The RAAF chap forces himself to smile, chucks Waterhouse gently on the shoulder. Someone in this group is going to have to take the unpleasant job of playing diplomat, smoothing it all over, and with the true Inner Qwghlmian's nose for a shit job, RAAF boy has just volunteered. 'With us,' he explains brightly, 'what you just said isn't a polite greeting.'

'Oh,' Waterhouse says, 'what did I say, then?'

'You said that while you were down at the mill to lodge a complaint about a sack with a weak seam that sprung loose on Thursday, you were led to understand, by the tone of the proprietor's voice, that Mary's great-aunt, a spinster who had a loose reputation as a younger woman, had contracted a fungal infection in her toenails.'

There is a long silence. Then everyone speaks at once. Finally a woman's voice breaks through the cacophony: 'No, no!' Waterhouse looks; it's Mary. 'I understood him to say that it was at the pub, and that he was there to apply for a job catching rats, and that it was my neighbor's dog that had come down with rabies.'

'He was at the basilica for confession-the priest-angina-' someone shouts from the back. Then everyone talks at once: 'The dockside-Mary's half-sister-leprosy-Wednesday-complaining about a loud party!'

There's a strong arm around Waterhouse's shoulders, turning him away from all for this. He cannot turn his head to see who owns this limb, because his vertebrae have again become unstacked. He figures out that it's Rod, nobly taking his poor addled Yank roommate under his wing. Rod pulls a clean hanky from his pocket and puts it up to Waterhouse's mouth, then takes his hand away. The hanky sticks to his lip, which is now shaped like a barrage balloon.

That's not the only decent thing he does. He even gets Waterhouse a drink, and finds him a chair. 'You know about the Navajos?' Rod asks.

'Huh?'

'Your marines use Navajo Indians as radio operators-they can speak to each other in their own language and the Nips have no idea what the fuck they're saying.'

'Oh. Yeah. Heard about that,' Waterhouse says.

'Winnie Churchill heard about those Navajos. Liked the idea. Wanted His Majesty's forces to do likewise. We don't have Navajos. But-'

'You have Qwghlmians,' Waterhouse says.

'There are two different programs underway,' Rod says. 'Royal Navy is using Outer Qwghlmians. Army and Air Force are using Inner.'

'How's it working out?'

Rod shrugs. 'So-so. Qwghlmian is a very pithy language. Bears no relationship to English or Celtic-its closest relatives are !Qnd, which is spoken by a tribe of pygmies in Madagascar, and Aleut. Anyway, the pithier, the better, right?'

'By all means,' Waterhouse says. 'Less redundancy-harder to break the code.'

'Problem is, if it's not exactly a deadlanguage, then it's lying on a litter with a priest standing over it making the sign of the cross. You know?'

Waterhouse nods.

'So everyone hears it a little differently. Like just now-they heard your Outer Qwghlmian accent, and assumed you were delivering an insult. But I could tell you were saying that you believed, based on a rumor you heard last Tuesday in the meat market, that Mary was convalescing normally and would be back on her feet within a week.'

'I was trying to say that she looked beautiful,' Waterhouse protests.

'Ah!' Rod says. 'Then you should have said, 'Gxnn bhldh sqrd m!''

'That's what I said!'

'No, you confused the mid-glottal with the frontal glottal,' Rod says.

'Honestly,' Waterhouse says, 'can you tell them apart over a noisy radio?'

'No,' Rod says. 'On the radio, we stick to the basics: 'Get in there and take that pillbox or I'll fucking kill you.' And that sort of thing.'

Before much longer, the band has finished its last set and the party's over. 'Well,' Waterhouse says, 'would you tell Mary what I really did mean to say?'

'Oh, I'm sure there's no need,' Rod says confidently. 'Mary is a good judge of character. I'm sure she knows what you meant. Qwghlmians excel at nonverbal communication.'

Waterhouse just barely restrains himself from saying I guess you'd have to,which would probably just earn him another slug in the face. Rod shakes his hand and departs. Waterhouse, marooned by his shoes, hobbles out.

Chapter 62 INRI

Goto Dengo lies on a cot of woven rushes for six weeks, under a white cone of mosquito netting that stirs in the breezes from the windows. When there is a typhoon, the nurses clasp mother-of-pearl shutters over the windows, but mostly they are left open day and night. Outside the window, an immense stairway has been hand- carved up the side of a green mountain. When the sun shines, the new rice on those terraces fluoresces; green light boils into the room like flames. He can see small gnarled people in colorful clothes transplanting rice seedlings and tinkering with the irrigation system. The wall of his room is plain, cream-colored plaster spanned with forking deltas of cracks, like the blood vessels on the surface of an eyeball. It is decorated only with a crucifix carved out of napa wood in maniacal detail. Jesus's eyes are smooth orbs without pupil or iris, as in Roman statues. He hangs askew on the crucifix, arms stretched out, the ligaments probably pulled loose from their moorings now, the crooked legs, broken by the butt of a Roman spear, unable to support the body. A pitted, rusty iron nail transfixes each palm, and a third suffices for both feet. Goto Dengo notices after a while that the sculptor has arranged the three nails in a perfect equilateral triangle. He and Jesus spend many hours and days staring at each other through the white veil that hangs around the bed; when it shifts in the mountain breezes, Jesus seems to writhe. An open scroll is fixed to the top of the crucifix; it says I.N.R.I. Goto Dengo spends a long time trying to fathom this. I Need Rapid something? Initiate Nail Removal Immediately?

The veil parts and a perfect young woman in a severe black-and-white habit is standing in the gap, radiant in the green light coming off the terraces, carrying a bowl of steaming water. She peels back his hospital gown and begins to sponge him off. Goto Dengo motions towards the crucifix and asks about it-perhaps the woman has learned a little Nipponese. If she hears him, she gives no sign. She is probably deaf or crazy or both; the Christians are notorious for the way they dote on defective persons. Her gaze is fixed on Goto Dengo's body, which she swabs gently but implacably, one postage-stamp-sized bit at a time. Goto Dengo's mind is still playing tricks with him, and looking down at his naked torso he gets all turned around for a moment and thinks that he is looking at the nailed wreck of Jesus. His ribs are sticking out and his skin is a cluttered map of sores and scars. He cannot possibly be good for anything now; why are they not sending him back to Nippon? Why haven't they simply killed him? 'You speak English?' he says, and her huge brown eyes jump just a bit. She is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. To her, he must be a loathsome thing, a specimen under a glass slide in a pathology lab. When she leaves the room she will probably go and wash herself meticulously and then do anything to flush the memory of Goto Dengo's body out of her clean, virginal mind.

He drifts away into a fever, and sees himself from the vantage point of a mosquito trying to find a way in through the netting: a haggard, wracked body splayed, like a slapped insect, on a wooden trestle. The only way you can tell he's Nipponese is by the strip of white cloth tied around his forehead, but instead of an orange sun painted on it is an inscription: I.N.R.I.

A man in a long black robe is sitting beside him, holding a string of red coral beads in his hand, a tiny crucifix dangling from that. He has the big head and heavy brow of those strange people working up on the rice terraces, but his receding hairline and swept-back silver-brown hair are very European, as are his intense eyes. 'Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum,' he is saying. 'It is Latin. Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.'

'Jew? I thought Jesus was Christian,' said Goto Dengo.