Cryptonomicon

canoe-shaped affair maybe forty feet long, with long outriggers on either side. A couple of ragged flags fly from a short mast, and bright laundry flaps gaily from various lines strung here and there. A big, naked diesel engine sits in the middle of the hull flailing the atmosphere with black smoke. Forward of that, several Filipinos, including women and children, are gathered in the shade of a bright blue tarpaulin, eating. Aft, a couple of men are fiddling with diving equipment. One of them is holding something up to his mouth: a microphone. A voice blares from Glory'sradio, speaking Tagalog. Ernesto stifles a laugh, picks up the mike, and answers briefly. Randy doesn't know what they are saying, but he suspects it is something like 'Let's horse around later, our client is on the bridge right now.'

'Business associates,' Amy explains dryly. Her body language says that she wants to get away from Randy and back to work.

'Thanks for the tour,' Randy says. 'One question.'

Amy raises her eyebrows, trying to look patient.

'How much of Semper Marine's revenue derives from treasure hunting?'

'This month? This year? The last ten years? Over the lifetime of the company?' Amy says.

'Whatever.'

'That kind of income is sporadic,' Amy says. 'Glorywas paid for, and then some, by pottery that we recovered from a junk. But some years we get all of our revenue from jobs like this one.'

'In other words, boring jobs that suck?' Randy says. He just blurts it out. Normally he controls his tongue a little better. But shaving off his beard has blurred his ego boundaries, or something.

He's expecting her to laugh or at least wink a him, but she takes it very seriously. She has a pretty good poker face. 'Think of it as making license plates,' she says.

'So you guys are basically a bunch of treasure hunters,' Randy says. 'You just make license plates to stabilize your cash flow.'

'Call us treasure hunters if you like,' Amy says. 'Why are you in business, Randy?' She turns around and stalks out of the place.

Randy's still watching her go when he hears Ernesto cursing under his breath, not so much angry as astonished. Gloryis swinging around the tip of Corregidor's tail now and the entire southern side of the island is becoming visible for the first time. The last mile or so of the tail curves around to form a semicircular bay. Anchored in the center of this bay is a white ship that Randy identifies, at first, as a small ocean liner with rakish and wicked lines. Then he sees the name painted on its stern: RUI FALEIRO-SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA

Randy goes and stands next to Ernesto and they stare at the white ship for a while. Randy has heard about it, and Ernesto, like everyone else in the Philippines, knows about it. But seeing it is another thing entirely. A helicopter sits on its afterdeck like a toy. A dagger-shaped muscle boat hangs from a davit, ready for use as a dinghy. A brown-skinned man in a gleaming white uniform can be seen polishing a brass rail.

'Rui Faleiro was Magellan's cosmographer,' Randy says.

'Cosmographer?'

'The brains of the operation,' Randy says, tapping his head.

'He came here with Magellan?' Ernesto asks.

In most of the world, Magellan is thought of as the first guy who went around the world. Here, everyone knows he only made it as far as Mactan Island, where he was killed by Filipinos.

'When Magellan set out on his ship, Faleiro stayed behind in Seville,' Randy says. 'He went crazy.'

'You know a lot about Magallanes, eh?' Ernesto says. 'No,' Randy says, 'I know a lot about the Dentist.'

* * *

'Don't talk to the Dentist. Ever. Not about anything. Not even tech stuff. Any technical question he asks you is just a stalking horse for some business tactic that is as far beyond your comprehension as Godel's Proof would be to Daffy Duck.'

Avi told Randy this spontaneously one evening, as they were tucking into dinner at a restaurant in downtown Makati. Avi refuses to discuss anything important within a mile of the Manila Hotel because he thinks every room, and every table, is under surveillance.

'Thanks for the vote of confidence,' Randy said.

'Hey,' Avi said, 'I'm just trying to stake out my turf here-justify my existence in this project. I'll handle the business stuff.'

'You're not being a little paranoid?'

'Listen. The Dentist has at least a billion dollars of his own, and another ten billion under management-half the fucking orthodontists in Southern California retired at age forty because he dectupled their IRAs in the space of two or three years. You don't achieve those kinds of results by being a nice guy.'

'Maybe he just got lucky.'

'He did get lucky. But that doesn't mean he's a nice guy. My point is that he put that money into investments that were extremely risky. He played Russian roulette with his investors' life savings, keeping them in the dark. I mean, this guy would invest in a Mindanao kidnapping ring if it gave a good rate of return.'

'Does he understand that he was lucky, I wonder?'

'That's my question. I'm guessing no. I think he considers himself to be an instrument of Divine Providence, like Douglas MacArthur.'

* * *

Rui Faleirois the pride of Seattle's superyacht industry, which has been burgeoning, ever so discreetly, of late. Randy gleaned a few facts about it from a marketing brochure that was published before the Dentist actually bought the ship. So he knows that the helicopter and the speedboat came included in the purchase price, which has never been divulged. The vessel contains, among other things, ten tons of marble. The master bedroom suite contains full his and hers bathrooms lined with black marble and pink marble respectively, so that the Dentist and the Diva don't have to fight over sink space when they are primping for a big event in the yacht's grand ballroom.

'The Dentist?' Ernesto says.

'Kepler. Doctor Kepler,' Randy says. 'In the States, some people call him the Dentist.' People in the high- tech industry.

Ernesto nods knowingly. 'A man like that could have had any woman in the world,' he says. 'But he picked a Filipina.'

'Yes,' Randy says cautiously.

'In the States, do people know the story of Victoria Vigo?'

'I must tell you that she is not as famous in the States as she is here.'

'Of course.'

'But some of her songs were very popular. Many people know that she came from great poverty.'

'Do people in the States know about Smoky Mountain? The garbage dump in Tondo, where children hunt for food?'

'Some of them do. It will be very famous when the movie about Victoria Vigo's life shows on television.'

Ernesto nods, seemingly satisfied. Everyone here knows that a movie about the Diva's life is being made, starring herself. They generally don't know that it's a vanity project, financed by the Dentist, and that it will be aired only on cable television in the middle of the night.

But they probably know that it will leave out all the good parts.

* * *