Cryptonomicon

Chapter 51 OUTPOST

When their sergeant was aerosolized by the Australian with the tommy gun, Goto Dengo and his surviving comrades were left mapless, and mapless in the jungles of New Guinea during a war is bad, bad, bad.

In another country, they might have been able to keep walking downhill until they reached the ocean, and then follow the coastline to their destination. But travel along the coast is even more nearly impossible than travel in the interior, because the coast is a chain of pestilential headhunter-infested marshes.

In the end, they find a Nipponese outpost by simply following the sound of the explosions. They may not have maps, but the American Fifth Air Force does.

The relentless bombing is reassuring, in a way, to Goto Dengo. After their encounter with the Australians, he entertains an idea that he dare not voice: that by the time they reach their destination, it might already have been overrun by the enemy. That he can even conceive of such a possibility proves beyond all doubt that he is no longer fit to be a soldier of the emperor.

In any case, the drone of the bombers' engines, the tympanic thuds of the explosions, the flashes on the night horizon give them plenty of helpful hints as to where the Nipponese people are located. One of Goto Dengo's comrades is a farmboy from Kyushu who seems to be capable of substituting enthusiasm for food, water, sleep, medicine, and any other bodily needs. As they trudge onwards through the jungle, this boy keeps his spirits up by looking forward to the day when they draw close enough to hear the sound of the antiaircraft batteries and see the American planes, torn open by shellfire, spiraling into the sea.

That day never arrives. As they get closer, though, they can find the outpost with their eyes closed, simply by following the reek of dysentery and decaying flesh. Just as the stench draws close enough to be overpowering, the enthusiastic boy makes an odd grunting sound. Goto Dengo turns to see a peculiar, small, oval-shaped entrance wound in the center of the boy's forehead. The boy falls down and lies on the ground quivering.

“We are Nipponese!” Goto Dengo says.

The tendency of bombs to fall out of the sky and blow up among them whenever the sun is up dictates that bunkers and foxholes be dug. Unfortunately ground coincides with water table. Footprints fill up with water before the foot has even been worried loose from the clutching mud. Bomb craters are neat, circular ponds. Slit trenches are zigzagging canals. There are no wheeled vehicles and no beasts of burden, no livestock, no buildings. Those pieces of charred aluminum must have been parts of airplanes once. There are a few heavy weapons, but their barrels are cracked and warped from explosions, and pocked with small craters. Palm trees are squat stumps crowned with a few jagged splinters radiating away from the site of the most recent explosion. The expanse of red mud is flecked with random clutches of gulls tearing at bits of food; Goto Dengo suspects already what they're eating, and confirms this when he cuts his bare foot on an excerpt of a human jawbone. The sheer volume of high explosive that has detonated here has suffused every molecule of the air, water, and earth with the chemical smell of TNT residue. This smell reminds Goto Dengo of home; the same stuff is good for pulverizing any rock that is standing between you and a vein of ore.

A corporal escorts Goto Dengo and his one surviving comrade from the perimeter to a tent that has been pitched out on the mud, its ropes tied not to stakes but to jagged segments of tree trunks, or heavy fragments of ruined weapons. Inside, the mud is paved with the lids of wooden crates. A shirtless man of perhaps fifty sits crosslegged on top of an empty ammunition box. His eyelids are so heavy and swollen that it is difficult to tell whether he is awake. He breathes erratically. When he inhales, his skin retracts into the interstices between ribs, producing the illusion that his skeleton is trying to burst free from his doomed body. He has not shaved in a long time, but doesn't have enough whiskers to muster a real beard. He is mumbling to a clerk, who squats on his haunches atop a crate lid stenciled MANILA and copies down his words.

Goto Dengo and his comrade stand there for perhaps half an hour, desperately trying to master their disappointment. He expected to be lying in a hospital bed drinking miso soup by now. But these people are in worse shape than he is; he is afraid that they might ask him for help.

Still, it is good just to be under canvas, and standing in the presence of someone who has authority, who is taking charge. Clerks enter the tent carrying message decrypts, which means that somewhere around here is a functioning radio station, and a staff with codebooks. They are not totally cut off.

“What do you know how to do?” says the officer, when Goto Dengo is finally granted the opportunity to introduce himself.

“I am an engineer,” says Goto Dengo.

“Ah. You know how to build bridges? Airstrips?”

The officer is engaging in a bit of whimsy here; bridges and airstrips are as far beyond their grasp as intergalactic starships. All of his teeth have fallen out and so he gums his words, and sometimes must pause to draw breath two or three times in the course of a sentence.

“I will build such things if it is my commander's wish, though for such things, others have skill far better than mine. My specialty is underground works.”

“Bunkers?”

A wasp stings him on the back of the neck and he inhales sharply. “I will build bunkers if it is my commander's wish. My specialty is tunnels, in earth or in rock, but especially in rock.”

The officer stares at Goto Dengo fixedly for a few moments, then directs a glance at his clerk, who nods a little bow and takes it down. “Your skills are useless here,” he says offhandedly, as if this is true of just about everyone.

“Sir! Also, I am proficient with the Nambu light machine gun.”

“The Nambu is a poor weapon. Not as good as what the Americans and Australians have. Still, useful in jungle defense.”

“Sir! I will defend our perimeter to my last breath—”

“Unfortunately they will not attack us from the jungle. They bomb us. But the Nambu cannot hit a plane. When they come, they will come from the ocean. The Nambu is useless against an amphibious assault.”

“Sir! I have lived in the jungle for six months.”

“Oh?” For the first time, the officer seems interested. “What have you been eating?”

“Grubs and bats, sir!”

“Go and find me some.”

“At once, sir!”

He untwists some old rope to make twine, and knots the twine into nets, and hangs the nets in trees. Once that is done, his life is simple: every morning he climbs up into the trees to collect bats from the nets. Then he spends the afternoon digging grubs out of rotten logs with a bayonet. The sun goes down and he stands in a foxhole full of sewage until it comes up again. When bombs go off nearby, the concussion puts him into a state of shock so profound as to separate mind from body entirely; for several hours afterwards, his body goes around doing things without his telling it to. Stripped of its connections to the physical world, his mind runs in circles like an engine that has sheared its driveshaft and is screaming along at full throttle, doing no useful work while burning itself up. He usually does not emerge from this state until someone speaks to him. Then more bombs fall.

One night he notices that there is sand beneath his feet. Strange.

The air smells clean and fresh. Unheard of.

Others are walking on the sand with him.

They are being escorted by a couple of shambling privates, and a corporal bent under the weight of a Nambu. The corporal is peering into Goto Dengo's face strangely. “Hiroshima,” he says.

“Did you say something to me?”

“Hiroshima.”

“But what did you say before you said 'Hiroshima'?”

“In?”

“In Hiroshima.”

“What did you say before you said 'in Hiroshima'?”

“Aunt.”

“You were talking to me about your aunt in Hiroshima?”

“Yes. Her too.”

“What do you mean, her too?”

“The same message.”

“What message?”

“The message that you memorized for me. Give her the same message.”

“Oh,” Goto Dengo says.

“You remember the whole list?”

“The list of people I'm supposed to give the message to?”

“Yes. Recite the list again.”

The corporal has an accent from Yamaguchi, which is where most of the soldiers posted here came from. He seems more rural than urban. “Uh, your mother and father back on the farm in Yamaguchi.”

“Yes!”

“And your brother, who is—in the Navy?”

“Yes!”

“And your sister, who is—”

“A schoolteacher in Hiroshima, very good!”

“As well as your aunt who is also in Hiroshima.”

“And don't forget my uncle in Kure.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

“That's okay! Now tell me the message again, just to make sure you won't forget it.”

“Okay,” says Goto Dengo, and draws a deep breath. He is really starting to come around now. They are trudging down to the sea: he and half a dozen others, all unarmed and carrying small bundles, accompanied by the corporal and privates. Below, in the gentle surf, a rubber boat awaits them.

“We're almost there! Tell me the message! Tell it back to me!”

“My beloved family,” Goto Dengo begins.

“Very good—perfect so far!” says the corporal.

“My thoughts are with you as always,” Goto Dengo guesses.

The corporal looks a bit crestfallen. “Close enough—keep going.”

They have reached the boat. The crew shoves it out into the surf a few paces. Goto Dengo stops talking for a few moments as he watches the others wade out to it and climb in. Then the corporal prods him in the back. Goto Dengo staggers out into the ocean. No one has started yelling at him yet—in fact they reach for him, pulling him in. He tumbles into the bottom of the boat and clambers up to a kneeling position as the crew begin to row it out into the surf. He locks eyes with the corporal, back on the beach.

“This is the last message you will receive from me, for by now I have long since gone to my rest on the sacred soil of the Yasukuni Shrine.”

“No! No! That's totally wrong!” hollers the corporal.

“I know that you will visit me there and remember me fondly, as I remember you.”

The corporal splashes into the surf, trying to chase the boat, and the privates plunge in after him and grab him by the arms. The corporal shouts, “Soon we will deal the Americans a smashing defeat and then I will march home through the streets of Hiroshima in triumph along with my comrades!” He recites it like a schoolboy doing his lessons.

“Know that I died bravely, in a magnificent battle, and never for one moment shirked my duty!” Goto Dengo shouts back.

“Please send me some strong thread so that I can mend my boots!” the corporal cries.

“The Army has looked after us well, and we have lived the last months of our lives in such comfort and cleanliness that you would hardly guess we had ever left the Home Islands!” Goto Dengo shouts, knowing that he must be difficult to hear now above the surf. “When the final battle came, it came quickly, and we went to our deaths in the full flower of our youth, like the cherry blossoms spoken of in the emperor's rescript, which we all carry against our breasts! Our departure from this world is a small price to pay for the peace and prosperity that we have brought to the people of New Guinea!”

“No, that's totally wrong!” wails the corporal. But his comrades are dragging him up the beach now, back towards the jungle, where his voice is lost in an eternal cacophony of hoots, screeches, twitters and eerie cries.

Goto Dengo smells diesel and stale sewage. He turns around. The stars behind them are blocked out by something long and black and shaped kind of like a submarine.

“Your message is much better,” someone mumbles. It is a young fellow carrying a toolbox: an airplane mechanic who has not seen a Nipponese airplane in half a year.

“Yes,” says another man—also a mechanic, apparently. “His family will find your message much more comforting.”

“Thank you,” Goto Dengo says. “Unfortunately I have no idea what the kid's name is.”

“Then go to Yamaguchi,” says the first mechanic, “and pick some old couple at random.”