Cryptonomicon

"Your marines use Navajo Indians as radio operators--they can speak to each other in their own language and the Nips have no idea what the fuck they're saying."

"Oh. Yeah. Heard about that," Waterhouse says.

"Winnie Churchill heard about those Navajos. Liked the idea. Wanted His Majesty's forces to do likewise. We don't have Navajos. But--"

"You have Qwghlmians," Waterhouse says.

"There are two different programs underway," Rod says. "Royal Navy is using Outer Qwghlmians. Army and Air Force are using Inner."

"How's it working out?"

Rod shrugs. "So-so. Qwghlmian is a very pithy language. Bears no relationship to English or Celtic--its closest relatives are !Qnd, which is spoken by a tribe of pygmies in Madagascar, and Aleut. Anyway, the pithier, the better, right?"

"By all means," Waterhouse says. "Less redundancy--harder to break the code."

"Problem is, if it's not exactly a deadlanguage, then it's lying on a litter with a priest standing over it making the sign of the cross. You know?"

Waterhouse nods.

"So everyone hears it a little differently. Like just now--they heard your Outer Qwghlmian accent, and assumed you were delivering an insult. But I could tell you were saying that you believed, based on a rumor you heard last Tuesday in the meat market, that Mary was convalescing normally and would be back on her feet within a week."

"I was trying to say that she looked beautiful," Waterhouse protests.

"Ah!" Rod says. "Then you should have said, 'Gxnn bhldh sqrd m!'"

"That's what I said!"

"No, you confused the mid-glottal with the frontal glottal," Rod says.

"Honestly," Waterhouse says, "can you tell them apart over a noisy radio?"

"No," Rod says. "On the radio, we stick to the basics: 'Get in there and take that pillbox or I'll fucking kill you.' And that sort of thing."

Before much longer, the band has finished its last set and the party's over. "Well," Waterhouse says, "would you tell Mary what I really did mean to say?"

"Oh, I'm sure there's no need," Rod says confidently. "Mary is a good judge of character. I'm sure she knows what you meant. Qwghlmians excel at nonverbal communication."

Waterhouse just barely restrains himself from saying I guess you'd have to,which would probably just earn him another slug in the face. Rod shakes his hand and departs. Waterhouse, marooned by his shoes, hobbles out.

Chapter 62 INRI

Goto Dengo lies on a cot of woven rushes for six weeks, under a white cone of mosquito netting that stirs in the breezes from the windows. When there is a typhoon, the nurses clasp mother-of-pearl shutters over the windows, but mostly they are left open day and night. Outside the window, an immense stairway has been hand-carved up the side of a green mountain. When the sun shines, the new rice on those terraces fluoresces; green light boils into the room like flames. He can see small gnarled people in colorful clothes transplanting rice seedlings and tinkering with the irrigation system. The wall of his room is plain, cream-colored plaster spanned with forking deltas of cracks, like the blood vessels on the surface of an eyeball. It is decorated only with a crucifix carved out of napa wood in maniacal detail. Jesus's eyes are smooth orbs without pupil or iris, as in Roman statues. He hangs askew on the crucifix, arms stretched out, the ligaments probably pulled loose from their moorings now, the crooked legs, broken by the butt of a Roman spear, unable to support the body. A pitted, rusty iron nail transfixes each palm, and a third suffices for both feet. Goto Dengo notices after a while that the sculptor has arranged the three nails in a perfect equilateral triangle. He and Jesus spend many hours and days staring at each other through the white veil that hangs around the bed; when it shifts in the mountain breezes, Jesus seems to writhe. An open scroll is fixed to the top of the crucifix; it says I.N.R.I. Goto Dengo spends a long time trying to fathom this. I Need Rapid something? Initiate Nail Removal Immediately?