CERAMICS box to verify that the china is in good condition. At the time, Randy and his father are standing next to the Trunk. It is rather late in his parent's value-plotting work and so pieces of fine furniture are now widely scattered across the parking lot, looking like the aftermath of one of those tornadoes that miraculously sets things down intact after whirling them through the skies for ten miles. Randy is trying to find a way to talk up the emotional value of this trunk without violating his oath of objectivity. The chances of anyone other than Nina ending up with this trunk are actually quite miserable, since she (to Red's horror) left almost everything clumped around the Origin except for it and the coveted Console. But if Dad would at least move the thing off dead center-which no one except Nina has done-then, if the Tera awards it to him tomorrow morning, Randy can plausibly argue that it's something other than a computer error. But Dad is taking most of his cues from Mom and is having none of it.
Mom has bitten her gloves off and is parting layer after layer of crumpled newsprint with magenta hands. 'Oh, the gravy boat!' she exclaims, and hoists up something that is more of a heavy cruiser than a boat. Randy agrees with Aunt Nina that the design is old-ladyish in the extreme, but that's kind of tautological since he has only seen it in the house of his grandmother, who has been an old lady for as long as he has known her. Randy walks towards his mother with his hands in his pockets, still trying to play it cool for some reason. This obsession with secrecy may have gone a bit far. He has seen this gravy boat maybe twenty times in his life, always at family reunions, and seeing it now roils up a whole silt-cloud of long-settled emotions. He reaches out, and Mom remits it to his mittened hands. He pretends to admire it from the side, and then flips it over to read the words glazed on the bottom.
ROYAL ALBERT-LAVENDER ROSE.
For a moment he is sweating under a vertical sun, swaying to keep his balance on a rocking boat, smelling the neoprene of hoses and flippers. Then he's back in the Palouse. He begins thinking about how to sabotage the computer program to ensure that Aunt Nina gets what she wants, so that she'll give him what is rightfully his.
Chapter 71 GOLGOTHA
Lieutenant Ninomiya reaches Bundok about two weeks after Goto Dengo, accompanied by several bashed and scraped wooden cases. 'What is your specialty?' asks Goto Dengo, and Lieutenant Ninomiya responds by opening up one of the cases to reveal a surveyor's transit swaddled in clean, oiled linen. Another case contains an equally perfect sextant. Goto Dengo gawks. The gleaming perfection of the instruments is a marvel. But even more marvelous is that they sent him a surveyor only twelve days after he requested one. Ninomiya grins at the look on his new colleague's face, revealing that he has lost all of his front teeth except for one, which happens to be mostly gold.
Before any engineering can be done, all of this wilderness must be brought into the realm of the known. Detailed maps must be prepared, watersheds charted, soil sampled. For two weeks Goto Dengo has been going around with a pipe and a sledgehammer taking core samples of the dirt. He has identified rocks from the streambeds, estimated the flow rates of the Yamamoto and Tojo Rivers, counted and catalogued trees. He has trudged through the jungle and planted flags around the approximate boundaries of the Special Security Zone. The whole time, he's been worrying about having to perform the survey himself, using primitive, improvised tools. And all of a sudden, here is Lieutenant Ninomiya with his instruments.
The three Lieutenants, Goto, Mori and Ninomiya, spend a few days surveying the flat, semi-open land straddling the lower Tojo River. The year, 1944, is turning out to be dry so far, and Mori does not want to construct his military barracks on land that will turn into a marsh after the first big rain. He is not concerned about the comfort of the prisoners, but he would at least like to ensure that they won't get washed away. The lay of the land is also important in setting up the interlocking fields of fire that will be necessary to put down any riots or mass escape attempts. They put Bundok's few enlisted men to work gathering bamboo stakes, then drive these in to mark the locations of roads, barracks, barbed-wire fences, guard towers, and a few carefully sited mortar emplacements from which the guards will be able to fill the atmosphere in any chosen part of the camp with shrapnel.
When Lieutenant Goto takes Lieutenant Ninomiya up into the jungle, clambering up the steep valley of the Tojo, Lieutenant Mori must stay behind-in accordance with Captain Noda's orders. This is just as well, since Mori has his work cut out for him down below. The captain has granted Ninomiya a special dispensation to see the Special Security Zone.
'Elevations are of supreme importance in this project,' Goto Dengo tells the surveyor on the way up. They are burdened with surveying equipment and fresh water, but Ninomiya clambers up the rocky gulch of the half- parched river just as ably as Goto Dengo himself. 'We will begin by establishing the level of Lake Yamamoto-which does not exist yet-and then work downwards from there.'
'I have also been ordered to obtain the precise latitude and longitude,' says Ninomiya.
Goto Dengo grins. 'That's hard-there is nowhere to see the sun.'
'What about the three peaks?'
Goto Dengo turns to see if Ninomiya is joking. But the surveyor is looking intently up the valley.
'Your dedication sets a good example,' Goto Dengo says.
'This place is paradise compared to Rabaul.'
'Is that where you were sent from?'
'Yes.'
'How did you escape? It is cut off, isn't it?'
'It has been cut off for some time,' Ninomiya says curtly. Then, he adds: 'They came and got me in a submarine.' His voice is husky and faint.
Goto Dengo is silent for a while.
Ninomiya has a system all worked out in his head, which they put into effect the next week, after they have done a rough survey of the Special Security Zone. Early in the morning, they hoist an enlisted man into a tree with a canteen, a watch, and a mirror. There is nothing special about this tree except for a bamboo stake recently driven into the ground nearby, labeled MAIN DRIFT.
Then Lieutenants Ninomiya and Goto climb to the top of the mountain, which takes them about eight hours. It is dreadfully arduous, and Ninomiya is shocked that Goto volunteers to go with him. 'I want to see this place from the top of Calvary,' Goto Dengo explains. 'Only then will I have the insight to perform my duty well.'
On the way up, they compare notes, New Guinea vs. New Britain. It seems that the latter's only saving grace is the settlement of Rabaul, a formerly British port complete with a cricket oval, now the linchpin of Nipponese forces in Southwest Asia. 'For a long time it was a great place to be a surveyor,' Ninomiya says, and describes the fortifications that they built there in preparation for MacArthur's invasion. He has a draftsman's enthusiasm for detail and at one point talks nonstop for an hour describing a particular system of bunkers and pillboxes down to the last booby trap and glory hole.
As the climb gets harder, the two vie with each other in belittling its difficulty. Goto Dengo tells the tale of climbing over the snow-covered mountain range in New Guinea.
'Nowadays, on New Britain we climb volcanoes all the time,' Ninomiya says offhandedly.
'Why?'
'To collect sulfur.'
'Sulfur? Why?'
'To make gunpowder.'
After this they don't talk for a while.
Goto Dengo tries to dig them out of a conversational hole. 'It'll be a bad day for MacArthur when he tries to take Rabaul!'
Ninomiya trudges along silently for a bit, trying to control himself, and fails. 'You idiot,' he says, 'don't you see? MacArthur isn't coming. There's no need.'
'But Rabaul is the cornerstone of the whole theater!'
'It is a cornerstone of soft, sweet wood in a universe of termites,' Ninomiya snaps. 'All he has to do is ignore us for another year, and then everyone will be dead of starvation or typhus.'
The jungle thins out. The plants are wrestling for footholds on a loose slope of volcanic cinders, and only
