Cryptonomicon

"Alfred invests his money in a company that is run by Barney. When I say 'run by' what I mean is that Barney has ultimate responsibility for what that company does. So, perhaps Barney is the chairman of the board of directors in this case. He's been chosen, by Alfred, Alice, Agnes, Andrew, and the other investors, to look after the company. He and the other directors hire corporate officers--such as Chuck, who is the president. Chuck and the other officers hire Drew to run one of the company's divisions. Drew hires Edgar, the engineer, and so on and so forth. So, in military terms, there is a whole chain of command that extends down to the guys in the trenches, like Edgar."

"And Barney's the man at the top of the chain of the command," Doug says.

"Right. So, just like a general, he is ultimately responsible for everything that is done below him. Alfred has personally entrusted Barney with that money. Barney is legally required to exercise due diligence in seeing that the money is spent responsibly. If Barney fails to show due diligence, he is in major legal trouble."

"Ah."

"Yeah. That gets Barney's attention. Alfred's lawyers might show up at any moment and demand proof that due diligence is being exercised. Barney needs to stay on his toes, make sure that his ass is covered at all times."

"Barney in this case is the Dentist?"

"Yeah. Alfred, Agnes, and the others are all of the people in his investment club--half of the orthodontists in Orange County."

"And you are Edgar the Engineer."

"No, you are Edgar the Engineer. I am a corporate officer of Epiphyte. I am more like Chuck or Drew."

Amy breaks in. "But what does the Dentist have over you? You don't work for him."

"I'm sorry to tell you that is no longer the case, as of yesterday."

This gets the Shaftoes' attention.

"The Dentist now owns ten percent of Epiphyte."

"How did that come about? Last I was informed of anything," Doug says accusingly, "the son of a bitch was suing you."

"He was suing us," Randy says, "because he wanted in. None of our stock was for sale, and we were not planning to go public anytime soon, so the only way he could get in was by essentially blackmailing us with a lawsuit."

"You said it was a bogus lawsuit!" Amy exclaims, the only person here who is bothering to show, or feel, any moral outrage.

"It was. But it would have cost so much to litigate it that it would have bankrupted us. On the other hand, when we offered to sell the Dentist some stock, he dropped the suit. We got our hands on some of his money, which is always useful."

"But now you are beholden to his due diligence people."

"Yeah. They are on the cable ship even as we speak--they came out on a tender this morning."

"What do they think you are doing?"

"I told them that the sidescan sonar revealed some fresh anchor scars near the cable route, which needed to be assessed."

"Very routine."

"Yeah. Due diligence people are easy to manipulate. You just have to act really diligent. They eat it up."

"We're there," Amy says, and hauls back on a joystick, twisting her body to put a little English on the maneuver.

Doug and Randy look at the TV screen. It is completely dark. Digits along the bottom state that the pitch is five degrees and the roll is eight, which means that the ROV is nearly level. The yaw number is spinning around rapidly, meaning that the ROV is rotating around its vertical axis like a fishtailing car. "Should come into view at around fifty degrees," Amy mutters.

The yaw numbers slow down, dropping through a hundred degrees, ninety, eighty. At around seventy degrees, something rotates into view at the edge of the screen. It looks like a rugged, particolored sugarloaf rising from the seafloor. Amy gooses the controls a couple of times and the rotation drops to a crawl. The sugarloaf glides into the center of the screen and then stops. "Locking in the gyros," Amy says, whacking a button. "All forward." The sugarloaf slowly begins to get bigger. The ROV is moving towards it, its direction automatically stabilized by its built-in gyroscopes.

"Swing wide around it to starboard," Doug says. "I want a different angle on this." He pays some attention to a VCR that's supposed to be recording this feed.

Amy lets the joystick come back to neutral, then executes a series of moves that causes them to lose the image of the wreck for a minute. All they can see are coral formations passing beneath the ROV's cameras. Then she yaws it around to the left and there it is again: the same streamlined projectile shape. But from this angle, they can see it's actually projecting from the seafloor at a forty-five degree angle.

"It looks like the nose of an airplane. A bomber," Randy says. "Like a B-29."

Doug shakes his head. "Bombers had to have a circular cross--section because they were pressurized. This thing does not have a circular cross section. It is more eliptical."

"But I don't see all of the railings and guns and, and--"