them-the floor or the ceiling, depending on which way you look at it-must be thick enough to support itself. In the structure we are walking through, the rock is just barely thick enough. But when the demolition charges have been set off, the rock will be shattered so that reconstructing these drifts will be a physical impossibility.'
'Excellent!' says The General, and again tells his aide to make a note of it-apparently so that the other Goto Dengos in the other Golgothas can do the same.
At one point a drift has been plugged by a wall made of rubble stuck together with mortar. Goto Dengo shines his lantern on it, lets the General see the iron rails disappearing beneath the masonry. 'To a thief coming down from the fool's chamber, this will look like the main drift,' he explains. 'But if he demolishes that wall, he dies.'
'Why?'
'Because on the other side of that wall is a shaft that connects to the lake Yamamoto pipe. One blow from a sledgehammer and that wall will explode from the water pressure that will be on the other side of it. Then Lake Yamamoto rushes forth from that hole like a tsunami.'
The General and his aide spend some time cackling over this one.
Finally they waddle down a drift into a vault, half the dimensions of the main vault, that is illuminated from above by dim bluish sky-light. Goto Dengo turns on some electric lights as well. 'The fool's vault,' he announces. He points up the vertical shaft in the ceiling. 'Our ventilation has been courtesy of this.' The General peers upwards and sees, a hundred meters above them, a circle of radiant green-blue jungle quartered by the spinning swastika of a big electric fan. 'Of course, we would not want thieves to find the fool's chamber too easily or it wouldn't fool anyone. So we have added some features, up there, to make it interesting.'
'What sorts of features?' asks Captain Noda, stepping crisply into his role as straight man.
'Anyone who attacks Golgotha will attack from above-to gain horizontal access, the distance is too great. This means they will have to tunnel downwards, either through fresh rock or through the column of rubble with which this ventilation shaft will be filled. In either case, they will discover, when they are about halfway down, a stratum of sand, three to five meters in depth, spread across the whole area. I need hardly remind you that, in nature, pockets of sand are never found in the middle of igneous rock!'
Goto Dengo begins climbing up the ventilation shaft. Halfway to the surface, it comes up into a network of small, rounded, interconnected chambers, whittled out of the rock, with fat pillars left in place to hold up the ceiling. The pillars are so thick and numerous that it's not possible to see very far, but when the others have arrived, and Goto Dengo begins leading them from room to room, they learn that this system of chambers extends for a considerable distance.
He takes them to a place where an iron manhole is set into a hole in the rock wall, sealed in place with tar. 'There are a dozen of these,' he says. 'Each one leads to the Lake Yamamoto shaft-so pressurized water will be behind it. The only thing holding them in place right now is tar-obviously not enough to hold back the pressure of the lake water. But when we have filled these rooms with sand, the sand will hold the manholes in place. But if a thief breaks in and removes the sand, the manhole explodes out of its seat and millions of gallons of water force their way into his excavation.'
From there, another climb up the shaft takes them to the surface, where Captain Noda's men are waiting to move the ventilation fan out of their way, and his aide is waiting with bottles of water and a pot of green tea.
They sit at a folding table and refresh themselves. Captain Noda and The General talk about goings-on in Tokyo-evidently The General just flew down from there a few days ago. The General's aide performs calculations on his clipboard.
Finally, they hike up over the top of the ridge to take a look at Lake Yamamoto. The jungle is so thick that they almost have to fall into it before they can see it. The General pretends to be surprised that it is an artificial body of water. Goto Dengo takes this as a high commendation. They stand, as people often will, at the edge of the water, and say nothing for a few minutes. The General smokes a cigarette, squinting through the smoke across the lake, and then turns to the aide and nods. This seems to communicate much to the aide, who turns to face Captain Noda and pipes up with a question: 'What is the total number of workers?'
'Now? Five hundred.'
'The tunnels were designed with this assumption?'
Captain Noda shoots an uneasy look at Goto Dengo. 'I reviewed Lieutenant Goto's work and found that it was compatible with that assumption.'
'The quality of the work is the highest we have seen,' the aide continues.
'Thank you!'
'Or expect to see,' The General adds.
'As a result, we may wish to increase the amount of material stored at this site.'
'I see.'
'Also . . . the schedule may have to be greatly accelerated.'
Captain Noda looks startled.
'He has landed on Leyte with a very great force,' The General says bluntly, as if this had been expected for years.
'Leyte!? But that is so close.'
'Precisely.'
'It is insane,' Noda raves. 'The Navy will crush him-it is what we have been waiting for all these years! The Decisive Battle!'
The General and the aide stand uncomfortably for a few long moments, seemingly unable to speak. Then The General fixes Noda with a long, frigid stare. 'The Decisive Battle was yesterday.'
Captain Noda whispers, 'I see.' He suddenly looks about ten years older, and he is not at a point in his life where he can spare ten years.
'So. We may accelerate the work. We may bring more workers for the final phase of the operation,' says the aide in a soft voice.
'How many?'
'The total may reach a thousand.'
Captain Noda stiffens, grunts out a
'But sir, with all due respect, the complex is very well ventilated.'
'We will need more deep, wide ventilation shafts,' Captain Noda says. 'Enough for an additional five hundred workers.'
'Oh.'
'Begin the work immediately.'
Chapter 74 THE MOST CIGARETTES
From: [email protected]
Subject: Pontifex Transform: tentative verdict
Randy.
I forwarded the Pontifex transform to the Secret Admirers mailing list as soon as you forwarded it to me, so it has been rattling around there for a couple of weeks now. Several very smart people have analyzed it for weaknesses, and found no obvious flaws. Everyone agrees that the specific steps involved in this transform are a little bit peculiar, and wonders who came up with them and how-but that is not uncommon with good cryptosystems.
So the verdict, for now, is that [email protected] knows what he's doing-notwithstanding his strange fixation on the number 54.
—Cantrell
'Andrew Loeb,' Avi says.
