Cryptonomicon

'SPOT? Oh. Rings a bell. French photo-imaging satellite?'

'Yeah. You can buy time on SPOT for a very reasonable fee. And it's got enough resolution to distinguish Glory IVfrom, say, a container-ship or an oil tanker. So all they had to do was wait until their spies on the waterfront told them that Glorywas out to sea, outfitted for salvage work, and then use SPOT to locate them.'

'What kind of precision can SPOT provide in terms of latitude and longitude?' Randy asks.

'That's a very good question. I'll have someone look into it,' Avi says.

'If it's to within a hundred meters, then Andrew can find the wreck by just sending some people there. If it's much more than that, he'll have to go out and do a survey of his own.'

'Unless he subpoenas the information from us,' Avi says.

'I'd like to see Andrew Loeb go up against the Philippine legal system.'

'You aren't in the Philippines-remember?'

Randy swallows and it comes out sounding like gollumagain.

'Do you have any information about that wreck on your laptop?'

'If I do, it's encrypted.'

'So he'll just subpoena your encryption key.'

'What if I forget my encryption key?'

'Then it's further evidence of how incompetent you are as a manager.'

'Still, it's better than-'

'What about e-mail?' Avi asks. 'Have you ever sent the location of the wreck in an e-mail message? Have you ever put it into a file?'

'Probably. But it's all encrypted.'

This doesn't seem to ease the sudden tension on Avi's face.

'Why do you ask?' Randy says.

'Because,' Avi says, pivoting to face in the general direction of downtown Los Altos. 'All of a sudden I am thinking about Tombstone.'

'Through which passeth all of our e-mail,' Randy says.

'On whose hard drives all of our files are stored,' Avi says.

'Which is located in the State of California, within easy subpoena range.'

'Suppose you cc'd all of us on the same e-mail message,' Avi says. 'Cantrell's software, running on Tombstone, would have made multiple copies of that message and encrypted each one separately using the recipient's public key. These would have been mailed out to the recipients. Most of whom keep copies of their old e-mail messages on Tombstone.'

Randy's nodding. 'So if Andrew could subpoena Tombstone, he could find all of those copies and insist that you, Beryl, Tom, John, and Eb supply your decryption keys. And if all of you claimed you had forgotten your keys, then you are obviously lying through your teeth.'

'Contempt of court for the whole gang,' Avi says.

'The most cigarettes,' Randy says. This is a contraction of the phrase, 'We could end up in prison married to the guy with the most cigarettes,' which Avi coined during their earlier Andrew-related legal troubles and had so many occasions to repeat that it was eventually reduced to this vestigial three words. Hearing it come out of his own mouth takes Randy back a few years, and fills him with a spirit of defiant nostalgia. Although he would feel considerably more defiant if they had actually won that case.

'I am just trying to figure out whether Andrew would know of Tombstone's existence,' Avi says.

He and Randy begin following their own footprints back towards Avi's house. Randy notices that his stride is longer now. 'Why not? The Dentist's due diligence people have been lodged in our butt-cracks ever since we gave them those shares.'

'I detect some resentment in your voice, Randy.'

'Not at all.'

'Perhaps you disagree with my decision to settle the earlier breach-of-contract lawsuit by giving the Dentist some Epiphyte shares.'

'It was a sad day. But there was no other way out of the situation.'

'Okay.'

'If I'm going to resent you for that, Avi, then you should resent me for not having made a better contract with Semper Marine.'

'Ah, but you did! Handshake deal. Ten percent. Right?'

'Right. Let's talk about Tombstone.'

'Tombstone's in a closet that we are subletting from Novus Ordo Seclorum Systems,' Avi says. 'I can tell you the due diligence boys have never been to Ordo.'

'We must be paying rent to Ordo, then. They'd see the rent checks.'

'A trivial amount of money. For storage space.'

'The computer's a Finux box. A donated piece of junk running free software. No paper trail there,' Randy says. 'What about the T1 line?'

'They would have to be aware of the T1 line,' Avi says. 'That is both more expensive and more interesting than renting some storage space. And it generates a paper trail a mile wide.'

'But do they know where it goes?'

'They would only need to go to the telephone company and ask them where the line is terminated.'

'Which would give them what? The street address of an office building in Los Altos,' Randy says. 'There are, what, five office suites in that building.'

'But if they were smart-and I'm afraid that Andrew does have this particular kind of intelligence-they would notice that one of those suites is leased by Novus Ordo Seclorum Systems Inc.-a highly distinctive name that also appears on those rent checks.'

'And a subpoena against Ordo would follow immediately,' Randy says. 'When did you first hear about this lawsuit, by the way?'

'I got the call first thing this morning. You were still sleeping. I can't believe you drove down from Seattle in one push. It's like a thousand miles.'

'I was trying to emulate Amy's cousins.'

'You described them as teenagers.'

'But I don't think that teenagers are the way they are because of their age. It's because they have nothing to lose. They simultaneously have a lot of time on their hands and yet are very impatient to get on with their lives.'

'And that's kind of where you are right now?'

'It's exactly where I am.'

'Horniness too.'

'Yeah. But there are ways to deal with that.'

'Don't look at me that way,' Avi says. 'I don't masturbate.'

'Never?'

'Never. Formally gave it up. Swore off it.'

'Even when you're on the road for a month?'

'Even then.'

'Why on earth would you do such a thing, Avi?'

'Enhances my devotion to Devorah. Makes our sex better. Gives me an incentive to get back home.'

'Well, that's very touching,' Randy says, 'and it might even be a good idea.'

'I'm quite certain that it is.'

'But it's more masochism than I'm really willing to shoulder at this point in my life.'

'Why? Are you afraid that it would push you into-'

'Irrational behavior? Definitely.'

'And by that,' Avi says, 'you mean, actually committing to Amy in some way.

'I know you thinkthat you just kicked me in the nuts rhetorically,' Randy says, 'but your premise is totally wrong. I'm ready to commit to her at any time. But for god's sake, I'm not even sure