Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

his mother’s people were unbelievably peculiar New Mexican crypto-Jews who had been living on mesas, dodging Jesuits, shooting rattlesnakes and eating jimson weed for three hundred years; they looked like Indians and talked like cowboys. In his relations with other people, therefore, Avi dithered. Most of the time he was courtly and correct in a way that was deeply impressive to businesspeople—Nipponese ones expecially—but there were these eruptions, from time to time, as if he’d been dipping into the loco weed. Randy had learned to deal with it, which is why Avi called him at times like this.
    “Oh, calm down!” Randy said. He watched a tanned girl rollerblade past him, on her way up from the beach. “Innately hedged?”
    “As long as the Philippines don’t have their shit together, there’ll be plenty of OCWs. They will want to communicate with their families—the Filipinos are incredibly family-oriented. They make Jews look like a bunch of alienated loners.”
    “Okay. You know more about both groups than I do.”
    “They are sentimental and affectionate in a way that’s very easy for us to sneer at.”
    “You don’t have to be defensive,” Randy said, “I’m not sneering at them.”
    “When you hear their song dedications on the radio, you’ll sneer,” Avi said. “But frankly, we could take some pointers from the Pinoys on this front.”
    “You are so close to being sanctimonious right now—”
    “I apologize,” Avi said, with absolute sincerity. Avi’s wife had been pregnant almost continuously for the four years they’d been married. He was getting more religiously observant daily and couldn’t make it through a conversationwithout mentioning the Holocaust. Randy was a bachelor who was just about to break up with the chick he’d been living with.
    “I believe you, Avi,” Randy said. “Is it a problem with you if I buy a business-class ticket?”
    Avi didn’t hear him, so Randy assumed that meant yes. “As long as that’s the case, there will be a big market for Pinoy-grams.”
    “Pinoy-grams?”
    “For god’s sake, don’t say it out loud! I’m filling out the trademark application as we speak,” Avi said. Randy could hear a rattling sound in the background, computer keys impacting so rapidly it sounded like Avi was simply holding the keyboard between his pale, spindly hands and shaking it violently up and down. “But if the Filipinos do get their shit together, then we see explosive growth in telecoms, as in any other Arday.”
    “Arday?”
    “R-D-A-E. Rapidly Developing Asian Economy. Either way, we win.”
    “I gather you want to do something with telecoms?”
    “Bingo.” In the background, a baby began to cough and cry. “Gotta go,” Avi said, “Shlomo’s asthma is spiking again. Take down this fingerprint.”
    “Fingerprint?”
    “For my encryption key. For e-mail.”
    “Ordo?”
    “Yeah.”
    Randy took out a ballpoint pen and, finding no paper in his pocket, poised it over the palm of his hand. “Shoot.”
    “67 81 A4 AE FF 40 25 9B 43 0E 29 8D 56 60 E3 2F.” Then Avi hung up the phone.
    Randy went back into the restaurant. On his way back, he asked the waiter to bring him a half-bottle of good red wine. Charlene heard him, and glowered. Randy was still thinking about innate ferocity, and did not see it in her face; only a schoolmarmishness common among all of her friends. My god! I have to get out of California, he realized.

SEAWEED
----
    Woman holds baby
    Eyes pale as a muzzle flash
    Band chimes frozen tears
     
    T HE F OURTH M ARINES IS MARCHING DOWNHILL TO the strains of John Philip Sousa, which ought to be second nature to a Marine. But the Fourth Marines have been in Shanghai (which ain’t no halls of Montezuma nor shores of Tripoli) for too long, longer than Marines should ever stay in one place, and Bobby’s already seen his sergeant, one Frick, throw up from opium withdrawal.
    A Marine band is several Shanghai blocks ahead. Bobby’s platoon