Cryptonomicon

on the war.

Which doesn't seem to be working for Waterhouse. He makes his way carefully across the street, thinking very hard about the direction of the traffic, on the assumption that someone inside will be watching him. He goes inside, holding the door for a fearsomely brisk young woman in a quasimilitary outfit-who makes it clear that Waterhouse had better not expect to Get Anywhere just because he's holding the door for her-and then for a tired- looking septuagenarian gent with a white mustache.

The lobby is well guarded and there is some business with Waterhouse's credentials and his orders. Then he makes the obligatory mistake of going to the wrong floor because they are numbered differently here. This would be a lot funnier if this were not a military intelligence headquarters in the thick of the greatest war in the history of the world.

When he does get to the right floor, though, it is a bit posher than the wrong one was. Of course, the underlying structure of everything in England is posh. There is no in-between with these people. You have to walk a mile to find a telephone booth, but when you find it, it is built as if the senseless dynamiting of pay phones had been a serious problem at some time in the past. And a British mailbox can presumably stop a German tank. None of them have cars, but when they do, they are three-ton hand-built beasts. The concept of stamping out a whole lot of cars is unthinkable-there are certain procedures that have to be followed, Mt. Ford, such as the hand-brazing of radiators, the traditional whittling of the tyres from solid blocks of cahoutchouc.

Meetings are all the same. Waterhouse is always the Guest; he has never actually hosted a meeting. The Guest arrives at an unfamiliar building, sits in a waiting area declining offers of caffeinated beverages from a personable but chaste female, and is, in time, ushered to the Room, where the Main Guy and the Other Guys are awaiting him. There is a system of introductions which the Guest need not concern himself with because he is operating in a passive mode and need only respond to stimuli, shaking all hands that are offered, declining all further offers of caffeinated and (now) alcoholic beverages, sitting down when and where invited. In this case, the Main Guy and all but one of the Other Guys happen to be British, the selection of beverages is slightly different, the room, being British, is thrown together from blocks of stone like a Pharaoh's inner tomb, and the windows have the usual unconvincing strips of tape on them. The Predictable Humor Phase is much shorter than in America, the Chitchat Phase longer.

Waterhouse has forgotten all of their names. He always immediately forgets the names. Even ifhe remembered them, he would not know their significance, as he does not actually have the organization chart of the Foreign Ministry (which runs Intelligence) and the Military laid out in front of him. They keep saying 'woe to hice!' but just as he actually begins to feel sorry for this Hice fellow, whoever he is, he figures out that this is how they pronounce 'Waterhouse.' Other than that, the one remark that actually penetrates his brain is when one of the Other Guys says something about the Prime Minister that implies considerable familiarity. And he's not even the Main Guy. The Main Guy is much older and more distinguished. So it seems to Waterhouse (though he has completely stopped listening to what all of these people are saying to him) that a good half of the people in the room have recently had conversations with Winston Churchill.

Then, suddenly, certain words come into the conversation. Water house was not paying attention, but he is pretty sure that within the last ten seconds, the word Ultra was uttered. He blinks and sits up straighter.

The Main Guy looks bemused. The Other Guys look startled.

'Was something said, a few minutes ago, about the availability of coffee?' Waterhouse says.

'Miss Stanhope, coffee for Captain Woe To Hice,' says the Main Guy into an electrical intercom. It is one of only half a dozen office intercoms in the British Empire. However, it is cast in a solid ingot from a hundred pounds of iron and fed by 420-volt cables as thick as Waterhouse's index finger. 'And if you would be so good as to bring tea.'

So, now Waterhouse knows the name of the Main Guy's secretary. That's a start. From that, with a bit of research he might be able to recover the memory of the Main Guy's name.

This seems to have thrown them back into the Chitchat Phase, and though American important guys would be fuming and frustrated, the Brits seem enormously relieved. Even more beverages are ordered from Miss Stanhope.

'Have you seen Dr. Shehrrrn recently?' the Main Guy inquires of Waterhouse. He has a touch of concern in his voice.

'Who?' Then Waterhouse realizes that the person in question is Commander Schoen, and that here in London the name is apt to be pronounced correctly, Shehrrninstead of Shane.

'Commander Waterhouse?' the Main Guy says, several minutes later. On the fly, Waterhouse has been trying to invent a new cryptosystem based upon alternative systems of pronouncing words and hasn't said anything in quite a while.

'Oh, yeah! Well, I stopped in briefly and paid my respects to Schoen before getting on the ship. Of course, when he's, uh, feeling under the weather, everyone's under strict orders not to talk cryptology with him.'

'Of course.'

'The problem is that when your whole relationship with the fellow is built around cryptology, you can't even really poke your head in the door without violating that order.'

'Yes, it is most awkward.'

'I guess he's doing okay.' Waterhouse does not say this very convincingly and there is an appropriate silence around the table.

'When he was in better spirits, he wrote glowingly of your work on the Cryptonomicon,'says one of the Other Guys, who has not spoken very much until now. Waterhouse pegs him as some kind of unspecified mover and shaker in the world of machine cryptology.

'He's a heck of a fella,' Waterhouse says.

The Main Guy uses this as an opening. 'Because of your work with Dr. Schoen's Indigo machine, you are, by definition, on the Magic list. Now that this country and yours have agreed-at least in principle-to cooperate in the field of cryptanalysis, this automatically puts you on the Ultra list.'

'I understand, sir,' Waterhouse says.

'Ultra and Magic are more symmetrical than not. In each case, a belligerent Power has developed a machine cypher which it considers to be perfectly unbreakable. In each case, an allied Power has in fact broken that cypher. In America, Dr. Schoen and his team broke Indigo and devised the Magic machine. Here, it was Dr. Knox's team that broke Enigma and devised the Bombe. The leading light here seems to have been Dr. Turing. The leading light with you chaps was Dr. Schoen, who is, as you said, under the weather. But he holds you up as comparable to Turing, Commander Waterhouse.'

'That's pretty darn generous,' Waterhouse says.

'But you studied with Turing at Princeton, did you not?'

'We were there at the same time, if that's what you mean. We rode bikes. His work was a lot more advanced.'

'But Turing was pursuing graduate studies. You were merely an undergraduate.'

'Sure. But even allowing for that, he's way smarter than me.'

'You are too modest, Captain Waterhouse. How many undergraduates have published papers in international journals?'

'We just rode bikes,' Waterhouse insists. 'Einstein wouldn't give me the time of day.'

'Dr. Turing has shown himself to be rather handy with information theory,' says a prematurely haggard guy with long limp grey hair, whom Waterhouse now pegs as some sort of Oxbridge don. 'You must have discussed this with him.

The don turns to the others and says, donnishly, 'Information Theory would inform a mechanical calculator in much the same way as, say, fluid dynamics would inform the hull of a ship.' Then he turns back to Waterhouse and says, somewhat less formally: 'Dr. Turing has continued to develop his work on the subject since he vanished, from your point of view, into the realm of the Classified. Of particular interest has been the subject of just how much information can be extracted from seemingly random data.'

Suddenly all of the other people in the room are exchanging those amused looks again. 'I gather from your reaction,' says the Main Guy, 'that this has been of continuing interest to you as well.'

Waterhouse wonders what his reaction was. Did he grow fangs? Drool into his coffee?