Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson Read Free Book Online Page A

funny.
     
    The next day, Avi sent a message called, simply, “More.” Perhaps he had lost track of the number of guidelines he’d issued so far.
     
    Another principle: this time we retain control of the corporation. That means that we keep at least fifty percent of the shares— — —which means little to no outside investment until we’ve built up some value.
     
    “You don’t have to convince me,” Randy mumbles to himself, as he reads this.
     
    This shapes the kinds of businesses we can get into. Forget anything that requires a big initial investment.
     
    Luzon is green-black jungle mountains gouged with rivers that would appear to be avalanches of silt. As the navy-blue ocean verges on its khaki beaches, the water takes on the shocking iridescent hue of a suburban swimming pool. Farther south, the mountains are swidden-scarred—the soil beneath is bright red and so these parts look like fresh lacerations. But most is covered with foliage that looks like the nubby green stuff that model railroaders put over their papiér-mâche hills, and in vast stretches of the mountains there are no signs whatsoever that human beings have ever existed. Closer to Manila, some of the slopes are deforested, sprinkled with structures, ribboned with power-line cuts. Rice paddies line the basins. The towns are accretions of shanties, nucleated around large cross-shaped churches with good roofs.
    The view gets blurry as they belly down into the pall of sweaty smog above the city. The plane begins to sweat like a giant glass of iced tea. The water streams off in sheets, collects in crevices, whips off the flaps’ trailing edges.
    Suddenly they are banking over Manila Bay, which is marked with endless streaks of brilliant red—some kind of algal bloom. Oil tankers trail long time-delayed rainbows that flourish in their wakes. Every cove is jammed with long skinny boats with dual outriggers, looking like brightly painted water skaters.
    And then they are down on the runway at NAIA, Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Guards and cops of various stripes are ambling around with M-16s or pistol-handled pump shotguns, wearing burnooses fashioned from handkerchiefs clamped to the head with American baseball caps. A man dressed in a radiant white uniform stands below the ragged maw of the jetway holding his hands downwards with fluorescent orange sticks in them, like Christ dispensing mercy on a world of sinners. Sulfurous, fulminating tropical air begins to leak in through the jumbo’s air vents. Everything moistens and wilts.
    He is in Manila. He takes his passport out of his shirt pocket. It says, RANDALL LAWRENCE WATERHOUSE .
     
    This is how Epiphyte Corporation came into existence:
    “I am channeling the bad shit!” Avi said.
    The number came through on Randy’s pager while he was sitting around a table in a grubhouse along the coast with his girlfriend’s crowd. A place where, every day, they laser-printed fresh menus on 100% recycled imitation parchment, where oscilloscope tracings of neon-colored sauces scribbled across the plates, and the entrees were towering, architectonic stacks of rare ingredients carved into gemlike prisms. Randy had spent the entire meal trying to resist the temptation to invite one of Charlene’s friends (any one of them, it didn’t matter) out on the sidewalk for a fistfight.
    He glanced at his pager expecting to see the number of the Three Siblings Computer Center, which was where he worked (technically, still does). The fell digits of Avi’s phone number penetrated the core of his being in the same way that 666 would a fundamentalist’s.
    Fifteen seconds later, Randy was out on the sidewalk, swiping his card through a pay phone like an assassin drawing a single-edged razor blade across the throat of a tubby politician.
    “The power is coming down from On High,” Avi continued. “Tonight, it happens to be coming through me—you poor bastard.”
    “What do you want me to do?” Randy asked,