Cryptonomicon (75 page)

First day’s travel got us across the central Luzon plain (rice and sugar cane) to the town of San Juan at the foot of the southernmost extension of the Cordillera Central (trees and bugs). By this point it was dark, and to my relief, neither DMS nor Bong-Bong was eager to brave twisty Cordillera roads in darkness. We stayed in a guest house. At this point, having devoted much time to detailed Pig Truck description I will elide various details concerning San Juan, its inhabitants (of various taxonomic phyla some of which I had never encountered until that night), the character-building nature of our lodgings and, in particular, their fanciful plumbing system which was a credit to the imagination, though not the hydrostatic acumen, of its anonymous creator. It was the kind of hostel that makes a traveler eager to get an early and explosively sudden start in the morning, which we did.

A note now about the physical properties of space, as perceived by human beings imprisoned within bodies of limited physical capabilities. I have long noticed that space seems to be more compressed, more involuted, somehow psychically LARGER in some places than others. Covering a distance of three or four miles in the totally open scrublands of central Washington State is a simple matter, and takes
less than an hour on foot, and only a few minutes if you have some kind of vehicle. Covering the same distance in Manhattan takes much longer. It’s not just that the space in Manhattan is more physically obstructed (though it definitely is) but that there is some kind of psychological impact that alters the way you perceive and experience distance. You cannot see as far, and what you do see is so full of people, buildings, goods, vehicles, and other stuff that it takes your brain some amount of effort to sort through, to process. Even if you had some kind of magic carpet that would glide past all of the physical obstructions the distance would seem much longer, and would take longer to cover, simply because your mind would have to deal with more stuff.

The same thing is true of a jungle type of environment as opposed to the plains. Traversing the physical space is basically an ongoing battle against hundreds of different combatants each one of which is, to a traveler, an obstruction, a hazard, or both. I.e., no matter which one of them predominates in a given ten-square-meter area, you are still screwed, as far as getting across that ten square meters is concerned. There are roads through the jungle, but even when they are in good repair they seem more like bottlenecks than vectors of motion, and they are never in good repair—mudslides, fallen trees, huge chuckholes, and the like block them every few hundred meters. Also the same perceptual thing is at work here—you can’t see more than a few meters in any direction, and what you do see is dense with visual inputs, some of which, like
butterflies, are (okay, okay) beautiful. My reason for mentioning this is that I know that everyone who reads this probably has multiple maps of Luzon on their wall or in their computer, which, when consulted, will cause it to seem as if we are dealing with a triflingly small area, and covering minuscule distances. But you must try not to think this way and instead imagine that Luzon is effectively as large as, say, the United States west of the Mississippi. In terms of the time it takes to get around the place, it is at least that big.

I mention this not out of some impulse to mewl and convince you all of how strenuously I have worked, but because until you grasp this central fact of the effectively vast size of this part of the world, you will be completely unable to believe the dumbfounding facts that I am slowly getting around to revealing.

We went into the mountains. Around midday, we encountered our first military roadblock. Distance covered from San Juan was pathetic from cartographic p.o.v., but in terms of unexpected hassles creatively surmounted, wrenchingly difficult decisions made, & pits of despair climbed out of by the emotional fingernails, should be considered magnificent achievement on par with any given day of the Lewis & Clark expedition, (excluding, of course, anomalous days such as their first encounters with Ursus horribilis & their epic, stocking-foot traversal of Bitterroot Range.) Roadblock was established in the low-key Filipino style: one man in military uniform (U.S. Army castoffs) standing by roadside smoking & beckoning.
We were at a rare wide spot in the road, a place where oncoming Chicken-playing vehicles could pull aside abjectly. Four members of Army (later pegged by insignia-savvy DMS as a first lieutenant, a sergeant, and two privates) had ensconced selves on parked Humvee type vehicle w/absurdly long whip antenna clamped to bumper. The privates, armed with M-16s, stiffly unfolded selves from repose & adopted positions flanking THE GRACE OF GOD from behind, keeping their weapons pointed vaguely at the ground, as if more worried about entomological threats than our little band of travelers. Sergeant was armed with what I first perceived as L-shaped nightstick fashioned from parts scavenged from plumbing aisle of home improvement store & painted black, but on further examination proved to be a submachine gun.

Said Sergeant approached Bong-Bong Gad’s door & conversed with same in Tagalog. Lieutenant was armed only with sidearm & supervised these operations from a shaded area near the Humvee, seeming to espouse a hands-off, as opposed to micromanaging, leadership style. This inspection was limited to the Sergeant peering in through TGOG’s glassless windows & exchanging hearty greetings with DMS (evidently Jean Nguyen & Jackie Woo spoke even less Tagalog than Yours Truly). We were then allowed to proceed, although I noticed that the lieutenant immediately commenced a radio transmission. “The sergeant say there are Nice People Around,” Bong-Bong Gad explained to me, using a coy local euphemism for NPA, or New People’s Army, a supposedly revolutionary, but ev
idently somewhat feckless guerilla organization descended in a direct line from the Hukbalahaps, or Huks, the fighters who resisted the Nipponese occupation (but not so desultorily) in WW2.

We then covered an amount of distance equivalent, in terms of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, to one more Lewis And Clark Expedition Day, a convenient unit of distance, danger, perspirational weight loss, poor sphincter control, wishing you were at home, exasperation, & emotional toll which I will hereinafter abbreviate as LAC. So after 1 LAC we arrived at another roadblock similar to the first except that here there was a troop truck in addition to the Humvee, and some tents pitched, and a pit latrine, whose odor & appearance suggested a long-standing military presence in this area. A luckless private was made to crawl underneath THE GRACE OF GOD with a flashlight, inspecting its undercarriage. The three duffel bags were removed and their contents spread out. I should mention that upon my joining this expedition in Manila, DMS had gone through my bag with a level of inquisitiveness annoying at the time, refused to allow me to bring certain items (such as pharmaceuticals) and transferred remaining items to clear plastic bags of Ziploc type which were placed in the duffels. Merits of this highly modular approach now became clear as inspection of our cargo was wondrously facilitated: duffels were simply upended over tarps spread on ground & contents inspected by sight through transparent inner bags, sometimes by feel to check for compositional inhomogeneities. Certain of these
bags contained cartons of American-brand tobacco products which as expected did not make it back into the duffels. Most of my DMS-mandated supply of alkaline AA batteries, which I had thought radically out of proportion to projected demand, also vanished at this time. We were sent on our way and after approx. 0.5 LAC (mostly occasioned by need to remove downed tree from roadway) arrived at a town that appeared seemingly out of nowhere in jungle valley, astride a river. Slept like a dead man in startlingly decent guesthouse that night. Woke up next morning & looked out window to observe large crowd of locals milling around in street below in their best meshback caps & American basketball t-shirts. Descended stairs to discover DMS in dining room, strategically flanked by Jean Nguyen & Jackie Woo, at other tables in corners of room, wearing climatically inappropriate jackets & generally projecting the image of concealed-weapon-equipped badass motherfuckers not to be trifled with.

Not wishing to interfere with this psychodrama, Yours Truly took innocuous position at yet another table, well away from projected gunfire corridors, accepted coffee from proprietor, declined local delicacies, negotiated (see expense report) for loan of bowl & spoon, breakfasted upon Cap’n Crunch & warm UHT milk from duffel bag (former had been packed into a Ziploc that when fully loaded adopted the distinctive pillow shape of an individual nugget of Cap’n Crunch, only much larger). Explosive crunching noises of nuggets caused Yours Truly to feel conspicuous and Western. Jean Nguyen & Jackie
Woo had declined all refreshments except tea, the better to project image of hair-trigger alertness & potential for instantaneous violence. DMS was eating an omelette with approx. diameter of a Hula Hoop & engaging in one short conversation after another with locals, who were admitted through front door of building one at a time by proprietor and allowed to present their cases to DMS as if he were a traveling magistrate. Between two such interviews, DMS noted my presence in room & bade me join him. I moved my Cap’n Crunch infrastructure to corner of table not occupied by omelette & sat with him during the next couple of dozen interviews, which were conducted in mixture of English and Tagalog. Crowd in street dwindled gradually as they were interviewed and then dismissed by DMS.

Subject matter of interviews could be induced by Yours Truly only by recognizing occasional English words & adopting a basically intuitive pattern-recognition approach not amenable to rational explication here. Most common keywords: Nippon, the Nipponese, the War, Gold, Treasure, Excavations, Yamashita, Mass Executions. Emotional tenor of these conversations consisted of polite but extreme skepticism on part of DMS, while confronted by desperate need to be believed on part of interviewees. In the end DMS did not believe any of them as far as I could discern. They either became obstreperous & had to be shown the door (glancing warily at Jean Nguyen & Jackie Woo) or adopted a wounded & aggrieved stance. DMS was amused by the former & disgusted by the latter. Yours Truly mused
silently upon inappropriateness of his own presence in this setting & fondly remembered predictable comforts of home, even of Manila. Upon completion of breakfast & of interviews, DMS divulged, in response to my inquiries, that he had been at it for two hours before I had arrived & that formation of this milling crowd occurs spontaneously before doors of any lodgings he takes in the Philippines owing to his reputation as treasure-hunter. We had avoided it in San Juan only because he goes there frequently and has already interviewed everyone in region with Nipponese War Gold stories, found 99.9% of them lacking credibility, investigating the remaining .1% with occasionally lucrative results.

THE GRACE OF GOD had been washed and buffed by Fidel Gad in magnificently insouciant gesture of defiance of jungle elements. We proceeded across river. Racial variations were conspicuous on faces, and in physiognomies, of townspeople. Philippines were settled by countless overlapping waves of prehistoric migrants each racially & linguistically incompatible with the last; this in combination with the spatial involution phenom. which I have, I think sufficiently belabored by this point, makes for your basic patchwork of different ethnic groups. The fork in the river around which this town was nucleated was meeting-point of unofficial turfs of three such different cultures. Lure of bright lights, or even dim, flickering ones, has drawn thousands down from mountains in recent generations to establish several distinct barangays. This morning’s interviewees were migrants from
the mountains, or their sons or grandsons, who claimed to have first-hand knowledge of sites of Yamashita’s hoards, or to have heard about same from late ancestors.

After covering about 1.5 LACs through jungle (roads, slopes, & conditions getting worse all the time) we encountered another military roadblock that had (somewhat incredibly to my mind) been established at a pass over a ridge, overlooking some rice terraces that had (even more incredibly) been hacked out of an essentially vertical south-facing slope thousands of years ago by the evidently fearsomely tenacious ancestors of the locals. Here we were thoroughly searched. My testicles were squeezed at some length by a sergeant with a pencil mustache, whose motives did not appear to be sexual, but who simultaneously looked me searchingly in the eye, awaiting a look of submission or hopelessness on the face of the squeezed. The others were subjected to the same treatment and probably endured it with more stoicism than Yours Truly. No lethal weapons were found attached to any of our scrota, but (surprise!) Jean (“John Wayne”) Nguyen and Jackie Woo were discovered to be armed to the teeth, and DMS somewhat less so. This is the part where Yours Truly expected to be shot in the nape of the neck whilst kneeling above a shallow grave, but ironically the authorities were far more interested in my cache of Cap’n Crunch than the weaponry sported by my comrades. Negotiations took place between DMS and the captain in charge of this outpost, in the privacy of a tent. DMS emerged with a thinner wallet and full clearance to proceed, on the conditions
that (1) all supplies of Cap’n Crunch be donated to the officers’ mess, and (2) a full inventory of weapons and ammo would be taken upon our return & compared with today’s findings to make sure that we were not smuggling arms to the Nice People Around.

Three days’ excruciatingly slow travel, comprising maybe another 10 LACs, awaited us. According to my map and GPS we were circumnavigating a cluster of active volcanoes that frequently spew out lahars (mud avalanches) which, when they impact upon ruts in the jungle that I’m here calling roads, cause logistical problems well into the realm of the absurd. We passed entire towns that had been buried and abandoned. Church steeples projected at angles from the grey mud, held up by the same flows that had knocked them askew. Skulls of goats, dogs, etc. protruded from mud that had hardened around living animals like concrete. We bedded down nightly at small settlements after propitiating locals with gifts of penicillin (which Filipinos use like aspirin), batteries, disposable lighters, & whatever else had been left to us by the soldiers at the roadblocks. We slept on benches, floor, roof, or front seats of THE GRACE OF GOD, beneath mosquito nets.