Cryptonomicon

organ maker.'

'Could I, uh, see it?' Comstock asks.

'Sure! It's down in my lab.'

Going to see it is more complicated. First everyone has to use the toilet, then the cameras and strobes have to be moved down to the lab and set up. When they've all filed in, Waterhouse is standing next to a giant rack of pipes with thousands of wires hanging out of it.

'That's it?' Comstock says, when the group is finally assembled. Pea-sized drops of mercury are scattered around the floor like ball bearings. The flat soles of Comstock's shoes explode them into bursts rolling in all directions.

'That's it.'

'What did you call it again?'

'The RAM,' Waterhouse says. 'Random Access Memory. I was going to put a picture of a ram on it. Y'know, one of those sheeps with the big huge curly horns?'

'Yes.'

'But I didn't have time, and I'm not that good at drawing pictures.' Each pipe is four inches in diameter and thirty-two feet long. There must be a hundred of them, at least-Comstock is trying to remember that requisition that he signed, months ago-Waterhouse had ordered enough drain pipe to plumb a whole goddamn military base.

The pipes are laid out horizontally, like a rank of organ pipes that has been knocked flat. Stuck into one end of each pipe is a little paper speaker ripped from an old radio.

'The speaker plays a signal-a note-that resonates in the pipe, and creates a standing wave,' Waterhouse says. 'That means that in some parts of the pipe, the air pressure is low, and in other parts it is high.' He is backing down the length of one of the pipes, making chopping motions with his hand. 'These U-tubes are full of mercury.' He points to one of several U-shaped glass tubes that are plumbed into the bottom of the long pipe.

'I can see that very plainly, Waterhouse,' Comstock says. 'Could you keep backing up to the next one?' he requests, peering over the photographers' shoulder through the viewfinder. 'You're blocking my view-that's better- farther-farther-' because he can still see Waterhouse's shadow. 'That's good. Hit it!'

The photographer pulls the trigger, the strobe flares.

'If the air pressure in the organ pipe is high, it pushes the mercury down a little bit. If it's low, it sucks the mercury up. I put an electrical contact into each U-tube-just a couple of wires separated by an air gap. If those wires are high and dry (like because high air pressure in the organ pipe is shoving the mercury down away from them), no current flows. But if they are immersed in the mercury (because low air pressure in the organ pipe is sucking the mercury up to cover them), then current flows between them, because mercury conducts electricity! So the U-tubes produce a set of binary digits that is like a picture of the standing wave-a graph of the harmonics that make up the musical note that is being played on the speaker. We feed that vector back to the oscillator circuit that is driving the speaker, so that the vector of bits keeps refreshing itself forever, unless the machine decides to write a new pattern of bits into it.'

'Oh, so the ETC machinery actually can control this thing?' Comstock asks.

Again with the laugh. 'That's the whole point! This is where the logic boards bury and disinter the data!' Waterhouse says. 'I'll show you!' And before Comstock can order him not to, Waterhouse has nodded to a corporal standing at the other end of the room, wearing the protective earmuffs that are generally issued to the men who fire the very largest artillery. That corporal nods and hits a switch. Waterhouse slams his hands over his ears and grins, showing a little too much gum for Comstock's taste, and then time stops, or something, as all of those pipes come alive playing variations on the same low C.

It's all Comstock can do not to drop to his knees; he has his hands over his ears, of course, but the sound's not really coming in through his ears, it is entering his torso directly, like X-rays. Hot sonic tongs are rummaging through his viscera, beads of sweat being vibrated loose from his scalp, his nuts are hopping around like Mexican jumping beans. The crescents of mercury in all those U-tubes are shifting up and down, opening and closing the contacts, but systematically: it is not turbulent sloshing around, but a coherent progression of discrete controlled shiftings, informed by some program.

Comstock would draw his sidearm and put a bullet through Waterhouse's head, but he'd have to take one hand off one ear. Finally it stops.

'The machine just calculated the first hundred numbers in the Fibonacci sequence,' Waterhouse says.

'As I understand it, this RAM is just the part where you bury and disinter the data,' Comstock says, trying to master the higher harmonics in his own voice, trying to sound and act as if he saw this kind of thing daily. 'If you had to give a name to the whole apparatus, what would you call it?'

'Hmmm,' Waterhouse says. 'Well, its basic job is to perform mathematical calculations-like a computer.'

Comstock snorts. 'A computer is a human being.'

'Well ... this machine uses binary digits to do its computing. I suppose you could call it a digital computer.'

Comstock writes it out in block letters on his legal pad: DIGITAL COMPUTER.

'Is this going to go into your report?' Waterhouse asks brightly.

Comstock almost blurts report? Thisis my report!Then a foggy memory comes back to him. Something about Azure. Something about gold mines. 'Oh, yeah,' he murmurs. Oh, yeah, there's a war on.He considers it. 'Nah. Now that you mention it, this isn't even a footnote.' He looks significantly at his pair of hand-picked math whizzes, who are gazing at the RAM like a couple of provincial Judean sheep-shearers getting their first look at the Ark of the Covenant. 'We'll probably just keep these photos for the archives. You know how the military is with its archives.'

Waterhouse goes into that dreadful laugh again.

'Do you have anything else to report before we adjourn?' Comstock says, desperate to silence him.

'Well, this work has given me some new ideas on information theory which you might find interesting-'

'Write them down. Send them to me.'

'There's one other thing. I don't know if it is really germane here, but-'

'What is it, Waterhouse?'

'Uh, well ... it seems that I'm engaged to be married!'

Chapter 68 CARAVAN

Randy has lost all he owned, but gained an entourage. Amy has decided that she might as well come north with him, as long as she happens to be on this side of the Pacific Ocean.

This makes him happy. The Shaftoe boys, Robin and Marcus Aurelius, consider themselves invited along- like much else that in other families would be the subject of extended debate, this goes without saying, apparently.

This makes it imperative that they drivethe thousand or so miles to Whitman, Washington, because the Shaftoe boys are not really the sort who are in position to simply drop the hot-rod off at the Park 'n' Ride, run into the airport, and demand tickets on the next flight to Spokane. Marcus Aurelius is a college sophomore on an ROTC scholarship and Robin's attending some kind of military prep school. But even if they did have that kind of money rattling around in their pockets, actually spending it would offend their native frugality. Or so Randy assumes, for the first couple of days. It's the obvious assumption to make, given that the Cash Flow Issue seems always to be on their mind. For example the boys made Herculean efforts to consume every spoonful of the gut-busting vat of oatmeal cooked by Amy the morning after the quake, and finding it beyond their endurance they carefully decanted the remainder into a Ziploc bag while fretting at length about the high cost of Ziploc bags and didn't Randy have any old glass jelly jars or something, some where in the basement, that might be unbroken and usable for this purpose.

Randy has had plenty of time to disabuse himself of this fallacy (namely that their airplane-avoidance is