Cryptonomicon

'Sir! It is general issue military stencils, Sir!'

'Sergeant! How many letters are there in the alphabet?'

'Twenty-six, sir!' responds Shaftoe crisply.

Privates Daniels, Nathan and Branph whistle coolly at each other-this Sergeant Shaftoe is sharp as a tack.

'Now, how many numerals?'

'Ten, sir!'

'And of the thirty-six letters and numerals, how many of them are represented by unused stencils in this wastebasket?'

'Thirty-five, sir! All except for the numeral 2, which is the only one we need to carry out your orders, sir!'

'Have you forgotten the second part of my order, Sergeant?'

'Sir, yes, sir!' No point in lying about it. Officers actually like it when you forget their orders because it reminds them of how much smarter they are than you. It makes them feel needed.

'The second part of my order was to take strict measures to leave behind no trace of the changeover!'

'Sir, yes, I do remember that now, sir!'

Lieutenant Ethridge, who was just a bit huffy first, has now calmed down quite a bit, which speaks well of him and is duly, silently noted by all of the men, who have known him for less than six hours. He is now speaking calmly and conversationally, like a friendly high school teacher. He is wearing the heavy-rimmed black military eyeglasses known in the trade as RPGs, or Rape Prevention Glasses. They are strapped to his head by a hunk of black elastic. They make him look like a mental retard. 'If some enemy agent were to go through the contents of this wastebasket, as enemy agents have been known to do, what would he find?'

'Stencils sir!'

'And if he were to count the numerals and letters, would he notice anything unusual?'

'Sir! All of them would be clean except for the numeral twos which would be missing or covered with paint, sir!'

Lieutenant Ethridge says nothing for a few minutes, allowing his message to sink in. In reality no one knows what the fuck he is talking about. The atmosphere becomes tinderlike until finally, Sergeant Shaftoe makes a desperate stab. He turns away from Ethridge and towards the men. 'I want you Marines to get paint on all of those goddamn stencils!' he barks.

The Marines charge the wastebaskets as if they were Nip pillboxes, and Lieutenant Ethridge seems mollified. Bobby Shaftoe, having scored massive points, leads Privates Daniels, Nathan, and Branph out into the street before Lieutenant Ethridge figures out that he was just guessing. They head for the meat locker up on the ridge, double-time.

These Marines are all lethal combat veterans or else they never would have gotten into a mess this bad- trapped on a gratuitously dangerous continent (Africa) surrounded by the enemy (United States Army troops). Still, when they get into that locker and take their first gander at PFC Hott, a hush comes over them.

Private Branph clasps his hands, rubbing them together surreptitiously. 'Dear Lord-'

'Shut up, Private!' Shaftoe says, 'I already did that.'

'Okay, Sarge.'

'Go find a meat saw!' Shaftoe says to Private Nathan.

The privates all gasp.

'For the fucking pig!' Shaftoe clarifies. Then he turns to Private Daniels, who is carrying a featureless bundle, and says, 'Open it up!'

The bundle (which was issued by Ethridge to Shaftoe) turns out to contain a black wetsuit. Nothing GI; some kind of European model. Shaftoe unfolds it and examines its various parts while Privates Nathan and Branph dismember Frosty the Pig with vigorous strokes of an enormous bucksaw.

They are all working away silently when a new voice interrupts. 'Dear Lord,' the voice begins, as they all look up to see a man standing nearby, hands clasped prayerfully. His words, sacramentally condensed into an outward and visible cloud of steam, veil his face. His uniform and rank are obscured by an Army blanket thrown over his shoulders. He'd look like a camel-riding Holy Land prophet if he were not clean-shaven and wearing Rape Prevention Glasses.

'Goddamn it!' Shaftoe says. 'I already said a fucking prayer.'

'But are we praying for Private Hott, or for ourselves?' the man says. This is a poser. Everything becomes quiet as the meat saw stops moving. Shaftoe drops the wetsuit and stands up. Blanket Man's got very short grizzly hair, or maybe that's frost coalescing on his scalp. His ice colored eyes meet Shaftoe's through the mile-thick lenses of his RPGs, as if he's really expecting an answer. Shaftoe takes a step closer and realizes that the man is wearing a clerical collar.

'You tell me, Rev,' Shaftoe says.

Then he recognizes Blanket Man. He's about to let fly with a lusty What in the fuck are you doing here,but something makes him hold back. The chaplain's eyes make a sideways dart so small and so fast that only Shaftoe, who's practically rubbing noses with him, could possibly see it.

The message being: Shut up, Bobby, we'll talk later.

'Private Hott is with God now-or wherever people go after they die,' says Enoch 'You can call me Brother' Root.

'What kind of an attitude is that!? Course he's with God. Jesus Christ! 'Wherever they go when they die.' What kind of a chaplain are you?'

'I guess I'm a Detachment 2702 kind of chaplain,' the chaplain says. Lieutenant Enoch Root finally breaks eye contact with Shaftoe and turns his gaze to where the action is. 'As you were, fellows,' he says. 'Looks like bacon tonight, huh?'

The men chuckle nervously and resume sawing.

Once they get the pig's carcass disentangled from Hott's, each of the Marines grabs a limb. They carry Hott out into the butcher shop, which has been temporarily evacuated for purposes of this operation, so that Hott's former comrades-in-shanks will not spread rumors.

Hasty evacuation of a butcher shop after one of its workers has been found dead on the floor could spawn a few rumors in and of itself. So the cover story du jour, freshly spun by Lieutenant Ethridge, is that Detachment 2702 is (contrary to all outward appearances) an elite, crack medical team concerned that Hott had been struck down by a rare new form of North African food poisoning. Maybe even something deliberately left behind by the French, who are, by accounts, a little irritable about having their battleship sunk. Anyway, the whole shop (the story goes) has to be shut down for the day and gone over with a nit comb. Hott's corpse will be cremated before being sent back to the family, just to make sure that the dreaded affliction does not spread into Chicago-the planetary abbatoir capital-where its incalculable consequences could alter the outcome of the war.

There is a GI coffin laid out on the floor, just to preserve the fiction. Shaftoe and his men ignore it completely and begin dressing the body, first in an appalling pair of swim trunks, then various components of the wetsuit.

'Hey!' Ethridge says. 'I thought you were going to do the gloves last.'

'Sir, we're doing them first, by your leave, sir!' Bobby Shaftoe says.

'On account of his fingers will thaw out first and once that happens we are screwed, sir!'

'Well, slap this on him first,' Ethridge says, and hands over a wrist watch. Shaftoe hefts it and whistles. It's a beaut: a Swiss chronometer in solid uranium, its jewel-laden movement throbbing away like the heart beat of a small mammal. He swings it on the end of its wristband, made in cunningly joined armor plates. It is heavy enough to stun a muskellunge.

'Nice,' Shaftoe says, 'but it doesn't tell time too good.'

'In the time zone where we are going,' Ethridge says, 'it does.'

The chastened Shaftoe sets about his work. Meanwhile, Lieutenants Ethridge and Root are making themselves useful. They carry the crudely sawed remains of Frosty the Pig into the butcher shop and throw them on a gigantic scale. They add up to some thirty kilograms, whatever the fuck thatmeans. Enoch Root, showing an appetite for physical labor that is duly and silently noted by the men, hauls in another pig