Cryptonomicon

exclusively interested in the e-banking thing. That was our first clue. Then, this!' He holds up his newspapers, whacks the dollar brandishing moppet with the back of his hand. 'So, that's the business we're in now.'

'We are bankers,' Randy says. He will have to keep saying this to himself for a while in order to believe it, like, 'We are striving with all our might to uphold the goals of the 23rd Party Congress.' We are bankers. We are bankers.

'Banks used to issue their own currencies. You can see these old banknotes in the Smithsonian. 'First National Bank of South Bumfuck will remit ten pork bellies to the bearer,' or whatever. That had to stop because commerce became nonlocal-you needed to be able to take your money with you when you went out West, or whatever.'

'But if we're online, the whole world is local,' Randy says.

'Yeah. So all we need is something to back the currency. Gold would be good.'

'Gold?Are you joking?Isn't that kind of old- fashioned?'

'It was until all of the unbacked currencies in Southeast Asia went down the toilet.'

'Avi, so far I am still kind of confused, frankly. You seem to be working your way around to telling me that my little trip to see the gold in the jungle was no coincidence. But how can we use that gold to back our currency?'

Avi shrugs as if it's such a minor detail he hasn't even bothered to think about it. 'That's just a deal-making issue.'

'Oh, god.'

'These people who sent you a message want to get into business with us. Your trip to see the gold was a credit check.'

They are walking through a tunnel toward the garage, stuck behind an extended clan of Southeast Asians in elaborate headdresses. Perhaps the entire remaining gene pool of some nearly extinct mountain dwelling minority group. Their belongings are in giant boxes wrapped in iridescent pink synthetic twine, balanced atop airport luggage carts.

'A credit check.' Randy always hates it when he gets so far behind Avi that all he can do is lamely repeat phrases.

'You know how, when you and Charlene bought that house, the lender had to look at it first?'

'I bought it for cash.'

'Okay, okay, but in general, before a bank will issue a mortgage on a house, they will inspect it. Not in great detail, necessarily. They'll just have some executive of the bank drive by the property to verify that it exists and is where the documents claim it is, and so on.

'So, that's what my journey to the jungle was about?'

'Yeah. Some of the potential, uh, participants in the project just wanted to make it clear to us that they were, in fact, in possession of this gold.'

'I really have to wonder what 'possession' denotes in this case.'

'Me too,' Avi says. 'I've been sort of puzzling over that one.' Hence, Randy thinks, the frowny look in the airport.

'I just thought they wanted to sell it,' Randy says.

'Why? Why sell it?'

'To liquidate it. So they could buy real estate. Or five thousand pairs of shoes. Or something.'

Avi scrunches his face in disappointment. 'Oh, Randy, that is really unworthy, alluding to the Marcoses. The gold you saw is pocket change compared to what Ferdinand Marcos dug up. The people who set up your trip to the jungle are satellites of satellites of him.'

'Well. Consider it a cry for help,' Randy says. 'Words seem to be passing back and forth between us, but I understand less and less.'

Avi opens his mouth to respond, but just then the animists trigger their car alarm. Unable to propitiate it, they form a circle around the car and grin at one another. Avi and Randy pick up their pace and get well away from it.

Avi stops and straightens, as if pulled up short. 'Speaking of not understanding things,' he says, 'you need to communicate with that girl. Amy Shaftoe.'

'Has she been communicating with you?'

'In the course of twenty minutes' phone conversation, she has deeply and eternally bonded with Kia,' Avi says.

'I would believe that without hesitation.'

'It wasn't even like they got to know each other. It was like they knew each other in a previous life and had just gotten back in touch.'

'Yeah. So?'

'Kia now feels bound by duty and honor to present a united front with America Shaftoe.'

'It all hangs together,' Randy says.

'Acting sort of like Amy's emotional agent or lawyer, she has made it clear to me that we, Epiphyte Corporation, owe Amy our full attention and concern.'

'And what does Amy want?'

'That was my question,' Avi says, 'and I was made to feel very bad for asking it. Whatever it is that we- that you-owe to Amy is something so obvious that merely manifesting a need to verbalize it is... just... really...'

'Shabby. Insensitive.'

'Coarse. Brutish.'

'A really transparent, toddler-level exercise in the cheapest kind of, of. . .'

'Of evasion of personal responsibility for one's own gross misdeeds.'

'Kia was rolling her eyes, I imagine. Her lip was sort of curled.'

'She drew breath as if to give me a good piece of her mind but then thought better of it.'

'Not because you're her boss. But because you would never understand.'

'This is just one of those evils that has to be sort of accepted and swallowed, by any mature woman who's been around the block.'

'Who knows the harsh realities. Yeah,' Randy says.

'Okay, you can tell Kia that her client's needs and demands have been communicated to the guilty party-'

'Have they?'

'Tell her that the fact that her client hasneeds and demands has been heavy- handedly insinuated to me and that it is understood that the ball is in my court.'

'And we can stand down to some kind of detente while a response is prepared?'

'Certainly. Kia can return to her normal duties for the time being.'

'Thank you, Randy.'

Avi's Range Rover is parked in the most remote part of the roof of the parking ramp, in the center of about twenty-five empty parking spaces that form a sort of security buffer zone. When they have traversed about half of the glacis, the car's headlights flutter, and Randy hears the preparatory snap of a sound system being energized. 'The Range Rover has picked us up on Doppler radar,' Avi says hastily.

The Range Rover speaketh in a fearsome Oz-like voice cranked up to burning-bush decibel levels. 'You are being tracked by Cerberus! Please alter your course immediately!'

'I can't believe you bought one of these things,' Randy says.

'You have encroached on the Cerberus defensive perimeter! Move back. Move back,' says the Range Rover. 'An armed response team is being placed on standby.'

'It is the only cryptographically sound car alarm system,' Avi says, as if that settles the matter. He digs out a keychain attached to a black polycarbonate fob with the same dimensions, and number of buttons, as a television remote control. He enters a long series of digits and cuts off the voice in the middle of proclaiming that Randy and Avi are being recorded on a digital video camera that is sensitive into the near-infra red range.