ing kindergarten. And I
saw M.A. more recently he was probably eight or ten."
     "And you are related to them how, one more time?"
     "I think  Robin  is  my  second  cousin.  And  I  could explain  M.A.'s
relationship to me, but you'd  start shifting  around  and heaving great big
sighs before I got more'n halfway through it."
     "So, to these  guys, you are a shirttail relative they glimpsed once or
twice when they were tiny little boys."
     Amy shrugs. "Yeah."
     "So, like what possessed them to come out here?"
     Amy looks blank.
     "I mean," Randy says, "from the general attitude they copped, when they
fishtailed  to a stop in  the middle of my front yard and leapt out of their
red hot, bug encrusted vehicle, fresh from  Tennessee, obviously the  number
one mission objective was to ensure that the flower of Shaftoe womanhood was
being treated with all  of the  respect, decency, worshipfulness, et cetera,
properly owed it."
     "Oh. That's not really the vibe that I got."
     "Oh, it <I>wasn't?</I> Really?"
     "No. Randy, my family sticks together. Just 'cause we haven't seen each
other for a while doesn't mean our obligations have lapsed."
     "Well, you are making an implied comparison to my family here which I'm
not that crazy about  and maybe  we  should talk about later. But  as far as
those  family  obligations  go,  I  do  <I>certainly</I> think  that one  of  those
obligations is to preserve your notional virginity."
     "Who says it's notional?"
     "It's <I>got</I> to be notional to <I>them</I> because they haven't seen you for most
of your life. That's all I mean."
     "I think you are blowing the perceived sexual aspect of this  thing way
out of  proportion," Amy says. "Which is perfectly normal, for a guy, and  I
don't think less of you for it."
     "Amy, Amy. Have you done the math on this thing?"
     "Math?"
     "Counting  the  trip  through Manila traffic  to  NAIA,  the  check  in
procedure,  and  formalities at  SFO,  my entire journey from Manila  to San
Francisco took me something  like eighteen  hours.  Twenty for you.  Another
four  hours to get down  to  my house. Then eight hours after we  got to  my
house, in the middle of the night, Robin and Marcus Aurelius showed up. Now,
if  we  assume  that  the Shaftoe family grapevine functions at the speed of
light, it means that these guys, shooting hoops in front of their trailer in
Tennessee,  received a news flash that  a female Shaftoe was in some kind of
guy related personal distress at about  the time you  jumped off of <I>Glory IV</I>
and hopped in a taxi in Manila."
     "I sent e mail from <I>Glory,"</I> Amy says.
     "To whom?"
     "The Shaftoe mailing list."
     "God!" Randy says, slapping himself in the face.  "What did this e mail
say?"
     "Can't remember," Amy  says. "That I was headed for California. I might
have made some kind of backhanded remark about  a young man I wanted to talk
to. I was kinda upset  at the time and I can't remember exactly what  I have
said."
     "I  think you  said something  like  'I  am  going to  California where
Randall Lawrence Waterhouse, who has AIDS, is going  to forcibly sodomize me
upon arrival.' "
     "No, it was nothing of the kind."
     "Well, I think that someone  read it between the lines. So,  anyway, Ma
or Auntie Em or someone emerges from the side door, shaking flour out of her
gingham apron I'm imagining this."
     "I can tell."
     "And  she  says,  'Boys,  your umpteenth  cousin thrice removed America
Shaftoe has sent  us e mail from Uncle  Doug's boat  in the South China  Sea
stating that she is having  some kind  of dispute with a young man  and it's
not out of the question that  she might need someone  around to  lend  her a
hand. In California.  Would  you swing by and look in on her?' And  they put
away their  basketball and say, 'Yes ma'am, what city and address?' and  she
says, 'Never you mind, just get on Interstate  40 and drive west not failing
to maintain an average speed of between one hundred and a hundred and twenty
percent of the legal speed limit and call me collect from a Texaco somewhere
and I will supply you with specific target coordinates later,' and they say,
'Yes ma'am' and thirty seconds later they are laying a patch in the driveway
as  they  pull  five  gees  backing  out  of the  garage  and  thirty  hours
subsequently  they are  in  my front yard, shining  their twenty five D cell
flashlights into my eyes and asking me a  lot of  pointed  questions. Do you
have any idea how far the drive is?"
     "I have no idea."
     "Well, according to M.A.'s Rand McNally  Road  Atlas,  it  is  an  even
twenty one hundred miles."
     "So?"
     "So that  means that  they maintained an average speed of seventy miles
an hour for a day and a half"
     "A day and a quarter," Amy says.
     "Do you have any idea how difficult that is to do?"
     "Randy, you push on the  gas pedal and keep it between  the lines.  How
hard is that?"
     "I'm not  saying it's an intellectual challenge.  I'm  saying that this
willingness to,  e.g., urinate  into empty McDonald's cups  rather than stop
the car, suggests a  kind  of  urgency. Passion, even. And being  a guy, and
having had the experience of being a guy of the age of M.A. and Robin, I can
tell  you that one of the  few things that gets  your blood  boiling to that
extent is this notion of  some female you love being done wrong by a strange
male."
     "Well, what if they did?" Amy says. "Now they think you're okay."
     "They do? Really?"
     "Yeah.  The  financial  disaster  aspect  makes  you more  human.  More
approachable. And it excuses a lot."
     "Do I need an excuse for something?"
     "Not in my book."
     "But to the extent they thought I was a rapist, it kind of palliates my
image problems."
     A brief lull in the conversation ensues. Then Amy pipes up.
     "So tell me about your family, Randy."
     "In the next couple of  days, you're  going to learn a great deal  more
than I would like you to about  my  family. And so am I. So let's talk about
something else."
     "Okay. Let's talk about business."
     "Okay. You go first."
     "We got a German  television producer coming out next  week to  have  a
look  at the U  boat. They might do a documentary about it.  We have already
hosted several German print journalists."
     "You have?"
     "It has caused a sensation in Germany."
     "Why?"
     "Because no one can figure out how it got there. Now, your turn."
     "We  are going  to  launch  our own currency." By saying this, Randy is
divulging proprietary information to someone not  authorized to hear it. But
he  does it anyway,  because  opening himself up to Amy in this way,  making
himself vulnerable to her, gives him a hard on.
     "How do you go about that? Don't you have to be a government?"
     "No. You  have to  be a  bank.  Why  do you think they're  called  bank
notes?" Randy  is fully aware  of  the insanity of divulging secret business
information to a woman solely for purposes of sexual self titillation but it
is in the nature of things, right now, that he doesn't especially care.
     "Okay but still, usually it's done by <I>government</I> banks, right?"
     "Only  because  people  tend  to  <I>respect</I>  the  government  banks.  But
government banks in Southeast Asia have a huge image problem right now. That
image problem translates directly into crashing exchange rates."
     "So, how do you do it?"
     "Get  a big pile of gold. Issue  certificates saying 'this  certificate
can be redeemed for such and such an amount of gold.' That's all there is to
it."
     "What's wrong with dollars and yen and stuff?"
     "The certificates the banknotes  are printed on paper.  We're going  to
issue electronic banknotes."
     "No paper at all?"
     "No paper at all."
     "So you can only spend it on the Net."
     "Correct."
     "What if you want to buy a sack of bananas?"
     "Find a banana merchant on the Net."
     "Seems like paper money'd be just as good."
     "Paper  money is  traceable  and perishable  and  has other  drawbacks.
Electronic banknotes are fast and anonymous."
     "What's an electronic banknote look like, Randy?"
     "Like any other digital thing: a bunch of bits."
     "Doesn't that make it kind of easy to counterfeit?"
     "Not if you have good crypto," Randy says. "Which we do."
     "How did you get it?"
     "By hanging out with maniacs."
     "What kind of maniacs?"
     "Maniacs who think that  having  good  crypto is  of  near  apocalyptic
importance."
     "How'd they get around to thinking any such thing?"
     "By  reading about people like Yamamoto who  died because they  had bad
crypto, and then projecting that kind of thing into the future."
     "Do you agree with  them?" Amy asks. It might be one of  those  pivotal
moment in the relationship questions.
     "At two in the morning, when I'm lying awake in bed, I do," Randy says.
"In the light of day, it all seems like  paranoia." He  glances over at Amy,
who's  looking at  him appraisingly, because he hasn't actually answered the
question yet. He's got to  pick one  thing  or the other.  "Better safe than
sorry, I guess. Having good crypto can't hurt, and it might help."
     "And it might make you a lot of money along the way," Amy reminds him.
     Randy  laughs.  "At  this  point,  it's not  even about trying  to make
money," he says. "I just don't want to be totally humiliated."
     Amy smiles cryptically.
     "What?" Randy demands.
     "You sounded just like a Shaftoe when you said that," Amy says.
     Randy drives the car in silence for about  half an hour  after that. He
was right, he suspects: it <I>was</I> a pivotal moment in  the relationship. All he
can do now is totally screw it up. So he shuts up and drives.


     <B>Chapter 69 THE GENERAL</B>


     For  two months  he sleeps on  a beach on New Caledonia,  stretched out
under a mosquito net, dreaming of worse places, polishing his line.
     In Stockholm, someone from the  British Embassy  got  him to a  certain
cafe. A gentleman he met in the  cafe got him to a car. The car got him to a
lake where a floatplane just happened to  be sitting with its motors running
and  its  lights  off. The Special  Air  Service  got  him to  London. Naval
Intelligence got him back to D.C., drained his brain, and turned him over to
the Marines with a big stamp on his  papers saying that  he must never again
be sent  into combat; he  Knew  Too Much  to  be taken prisoner. The Marines
found that he  Knew  Too Little to serve as a Rear Echelon Motherfucker, and
gave  him a choice: a one way ticket home, or higher education. He opted for
the ticket home,  then talked a green officer into believing that his family
had moved, and home was now San Francisco.
     You could  practically cross San Francisco Bay by jumping from one Navy
ship  to the next.  The waterfront was lined with the  Navy's piers, depots,
hospitals, and  prisons.  All of  them  were  guarded by Shaftoe's  military
brothers. Shaftoe's  tattoos  were  obscured  by civilian  clothes  and  his
haircut grown  out.  But he  only had to  look  a Marine  in the eye from  a
stone's throw, and that Marine would recognize him for a brother in need and
open any  gate for  him,  break any regulation, probably  even lay  down his
life. Shaftoe stowed away on a ship bound for Hawaii so fast  he didn't even
have time to  get drunk. From Pearl, it took him four days to get on  a ship
to Kwajalein. There, he was a legendary hero. His money was no good on Kwaj;
he smoked, drank and ate for a week without  being allowed to spend  a dime,
and  finally  his brothers got  him on  a plane that  took him a  couple  of
thousand miles due south to Noumea, in New Caledonia.
     They did so  with great  reluctance.  They would willingly  have  hit a
beach with him,  but  this was different:  they were sending him  perilously
close to SOWESPAC, the Southwest Pacific Theater, the domain of The General.
Even  now, a  couple of years after  The General had sent them  into action,
poorly  armed and  poorly  supported, on  Guadalcanal,  Marines still  spent
approximately  fifty  percent of their waking hours talking about what a bad
guy  he  was.  He  secretly  owned  half of  Intramuros.  He  had  become  a
billionaire from Spanish gold  that his father had  dug  up when  he'd  been
governor of the Philippines. Quezon had secretly named  him postwar dictator
of  the archipelago.  The General was running for president, and in order to
win,  he was  going to start throwing battles just to make F.D.R.  look bad,
and blaming it all on the Marines. And if that didn't work he'd come back to
the States  and stage  a coup  d'etat.  Which would be  beaten back, against
enormous odds, by the United States Marine Corps. Semper Fi!
     Anyway, his brothers got him to New Caledonia.  Noumea's a  neat French
city of wide  streets  and  tin  roofed buildings, fronting on  a big harbor
lined  with mountainous dumps of nickel and chromium ore from gigantic mines
up island. The place is about one  third Free French (there's pictures of de
Gaulle all over the  place), one third American  servicemen, and  one  third
cannibals. Word on the street is that the cannibals have not eaten any white
people in twenty seven years, so Bobby Shaftoe, sleeping out  on that beach,
feels almost as safe as he did in Sweden.
     But when he  reached  Noumea he slammed into a barrier more  impervious
than  any  brick  wall:  the  imaginary  line  between  the  Pacific theater
(Nimitz's  turf) and SOWESPAC. Brisbane, The General's headquarters, is just
a short (by Pacific standards) hop almost due west. If he can just get there
and deliver his line, everything's going to be fine.
     During   his  first  couple  of  weeks  on  the  beach,  he's  stupidly
optimistic. Then he's depressed for about a month,  thinking he'll never get
off  this  place.  Finally  he  starts  to  come  around, starts to  display
adaptability again. He's had no luck getting on board a ship. But the amount
of  air  traffic is  incredible. Seems  that The  General  likes  airplanes.
Shaftoe starts tailing flyboys.  The MPs won't  give him the time of day, he
can't get into an Army NCOs' Club to save his life.
     But  an NCOs' Club offers strictly limited entertainments. Customers in
search of more profound  satisfactions must leave  the perimeter  defined by
hardassed MPs and enter  the  civilian  economy. And when  horny, well  paid
American flyboys  are dropped into a  culture defined half by cannibals  and
half by Frenchmen, you get a  hell of  a civilian economy.  Shaftoe  finds a
vantage point outside  an  airbase gate,  plants himself  there, his pockets
loaded with cigarette  packs (the Marines on  Kwaj  left him with a lifetime
supply) and  waits.  Flyboys come out in twos and threes. Shaftoe  picks out
the sergeants, follows them to bars and whorehouses, sits down in their line
of  sight,  begins to chain smoke. Before long they've come over and started
to bum cigarettes off him. This leads to conversations.
     Once he gets this routine figured out, he learns a lot about  the Fifth
Air Force in a big hurry, makes a lot of friends. In a few weeks, he strikes
the  jackpot.  He goes over  the airfield fence  at 1:00 A.M.  of a moonless
night, belly  crawls  for  about a mile along the shoulder of  a runway, and
just barely makes a rendezvous with  the  crew of the Tipsy Tootsie, a B  24
Liberator  bound  for  Brisbane.  In fairly short order,  he  finds  himself
stuffed  into  the  glass sphere  at the tail  of the plane:  the  rear ball
turret. Its  purpose,  of  course, is to shoot down  Zeroes,  which tend  to
attack from  behind. But Tipsy Tootsie's crew  seems to  think that they are
about  as  likely to find  Zeroes around here as  they would be over central
Missouri.
     They warned him to wear something warm, but he didn't have any thing of
that  nature. Tipsy  Tootsie has barely left the  runway  when he  begins to
understand his mistake: the  temperature drops  like a  five  hundred  pound
bomb. It is physically impossible for him to get out of the turret. Even  if
he could, it  would just lead to his  getting arrested; he has been smuggled
on board without  the knowledge of the officers who are actually  flying the
plane. Calmly he  decides  to  add  prolonged  hypothermia  to  his  already
extensive knowledge of suffering. After a couple  of  hours, he either loses
consciousness or falls asleep, and this helps.
     He  is awakened by pink light that comes  from every direction at once.
The plane has lost altitude, the temperature  has risen, his body has thawed
out enough to bring him awareness. After a few minutes he's able to move his
arms. He reaches into the pink  glow and rubs condensation off the inside of
the ball turret. He takes out a hanky, wipes the  whole thing clean, and now
he's looking straight down the throat of a Pacific dawn.
     The sky is streaked and mottled by black clouds, like jets of squid ink
in a Caribbean cove. For  a  while,  it's  as  if he  is  under  water  with
Bischoff.
     Puckered scars mar the  Pacific in loops and lines, and he is  reminded
of his own naked flesh. But the hard jagged pieces work their way out of the
scar tissue like old shrapnel:  coral reefs emerging from a  shallowing sea.
Warmer and warmer. He begins to shiver again.
     Someone has dumped  brown dust  into  the Pacific, made a great pile of
it. On the  edge of the pile, is a  city. The city swings around them, comes
closer. Warmer and warmer. It's Brisbane. A runway streaks  up and he thinks
it's going to take his  ass off,  like the  world's biggest belt sander. The
plane stops. He smells gasoline.
     The pilot discovers him,  loses his temper, and makes ready to call the
MPs. "I'm here to work for The General," Shaftoe mumbles  through blue lips.
It just makes  the pilot want to slug  him. But  after  Shaftoe has  uttered
these words, everything is different, the angry officers stand a pace or two
farther away from  him, tone  down their  language, knock  off the  threats.
Shaftoe knows, from this, that The General does things differently.
     He spends a day recovering in a flophouse, then rises, shaves, drinks a
cup of coffee, and strikes out in search of brass.
     To his extreme  chagrin, he learns that The General has  relocated  his
headquarters to Hollandia, in  New Guinea. But his wife and son, and a bunch
of his staff, are  still staying at  Lennon's Hotel. Shaftoe  goes there and
analyzes the traffic pattern: to pull into the hotel's horseshoe drive,  the
cars have  to come around a particular corner, just up  the  street. Shaftoe
finds a  good loitering place near  that corner,  and waits. Looking through
the  windows of  the approaching  cars, he can  see the epaulets,  count the
stars and eagles.
     Seeing two stars, he decides to make his move. Jogging down the  block,
he reaches the awning  of the hotel  just as this  general's  door is  being
hauled open by his driver.
     "'Scuse me, General, Bobby Shaftoe reporting for duty, sir!" he blurts,
snapping out the perfectest salute in military history.
     "And who  the hell might you  be, Bobby  Shaftoe?" says  this  general,
hardly  batting an eye.  He  talks  like Bischoff! This  guy actually has  a
German accent!
     "I've killed  more Nips  than seismic activity. I'm trained to jump out
of  airplanes.  I speak a little Nip.  I can survive  in the jungle.  I know
Manila like the back of my  hand. My wife and child are there. And I'm kinda
at loose ends. Sir!"
     In  London, in  D.C., he'd  never have gotten this close, and if he had
he'd have been shot or arrested.
     But this is SOWESPAC,  and so the next morning at dawn he's  on a  B 17
bound for Hollandia, wearing Army green, no rank.
     New Guinea is a nasty looking piece of work: a gangrenous dragon with a
wicked, rocky spine, covered  with  ice. Just looking  at  it makes  Shaftoe
shiver from a queasy combination  of hypothermia and  incipient malaria. The
whole thing belongs  to The General now. Shaftoe can plainly see that such a
country could only  be conquered by a man who  was completely fucking out of
his  mind.  A month  in Stalingrad would be preferable  to twenty four hours
down there.
     Hollandia  is on the  north shore  of  this  beast,  facing, naturally,
towards the  Philippines. It  is well  known throughout  Marinedom that  The
General  has caused  a palace to be  built for himself there. Some credulous
fools actually  believe the  rumor that  it is merely  a complete 200% scale
replica of the Taj Mahal, built by enslaved Marines, but savvy jarheads know
that  it  is  actually  a  much vaster compound  built  out of  construction
materials  stolen from Navy hospital ships, dotted  with pleasure domes  and
fuck houses for his  string of Asiatic concubines, with  a soaring cupola so
high that The General can go up there and see what the Nips are doing to his
extensive real estate holdings in Manila, 1,500 miles to the northwest.
     Bobby  Shaftoe  sees no  such thing  out the windows of the  B  17.  He
glimpses one large and nice looking house up on a mountain above the sea. He
supposes that it  is a mere sentry post,  marking the benighted perimeter of
The  General's  domain. But almost immediately the B  17 bounces  down on  a
runway. The cabin is invaded  by  an equatorial miasma. It's like  breathing
Cream  O'  Wheat  direct  from  a  blurping vat. Shaftoe  feels  his  bowels
loosening  up already. Of  course there are  many Marines who feel that Army
uniform  trousers  look  best when  feces  stained.  Shaftoe must  put  such
thoughts out of his head.
     All the  passengers  (mostly  colonels and better)  move  as  to  avoid
working up a sweat, even though they are already drenched.  Shaftoe wants to
kick their fat, waffled butts downstairs he's in a hurry to get to Manila.
     Pretty soon he is hitching a ride  on the rear bumper of a jeep full of
brass.  The  airfield is  still ringed with ack ack guns, and shows signs of
having been bombed and strafed not  too long ago. Some of  these  signs  are
obvious  physical  evidence  like shell holes,  but Shaftoe gets most of his
information from watching the men:  their posture, their  facial expressions
as they stare into the sky, tell him exactly what the threat level is.
     No wonder, he thinks, remembering the sight  of that big white house up
on  the  mountain.  You  can  probably  see  that  thing by  moonlight,  for
crissakes! It must be visible from Tokyo! It's just begging to be strafed.
     Then, as the jeep begins  to trundle up the mountain in first  gear, he
figures it out: that thing's just  a decoy. The General's real command  post
must be a network of deep tunnels hidden beneath the jungle floor,  and <I>that</I>
is where you would have to look for your Asiatic concubines, etc.
     The  trip up the mountain takes an  eon.  Shaftoe jumps  off  and  soon
outpaces the whining jeep, and the one in front of it. Then he's on his own,
walking through the jungle. He'll just follow the tracks until they lead him
straight  to  the  cleverly  camouflaged  mineshaft that leads  down to  The
General's HQ.
     The walk gives him plenty of time to have a  couple of smokes and savor
the unrelieved nightmarishness  of the New  Guinea jungle, compared to which
Guadalcanal, which  he thought was the  worst place on earth,  seems like  a
dewy  meadow strewn with bunnies and butterflies. Nothing is more satisfying
than to consider that the Nips and the United States  Army spent a couple of
years beating the crap out of each other here.  Pity  the Aussies had to get
mixed up in it, though.
     The tracks  take him  straight to that big white clay pigeon of a house
up on  the  mountainside. They've gone way  overboard in trying  to make the
house  look like  someone's actually living there. Shaftoe can see furniture
and everything. The walls are crisscrossed by bullet  trails. They have even
set up  a mannequin on the balcony, in  a <I>pink  silk dressing gown,</I>  corncob
pipe,  and aviator  sunglasses,  scanning  the  bay through  binoculars!  As
reluctant as he is to approve  of anything done by the Army, Shaftoe  cannot
keep himself from laughing out loud at this witticism. Military humor at its
finest.  He  can't  believe  they  got away  with  it.  A  couple  of  press
photographers are standing down below, taking pictures of the scene.
     Standing in the middle of  the house's mud parking lot, he  plants  his
feet wide and thrusts his middle finger  up at that mannequin. Hey, asshole,
this one's from the Marines on Kwajalein! Damn, this feels good.
     The  mannequin  swivels  and aims  its  binoculars  directly  at  Bobby
Shaftoe, who freezes solid in his bird flipping posture as if  caught in the
gaze of a basilisk. Down below, air raid sirens begin to weep and wail.
     The binoculars  come away from the sunglasses. A  puff of smoke  blurts
out of the pipe. The General snaps out a sarcastic salute. Shaftoe remembers
to put his finger away, then stands there, rooted like a dead mahogany.
     The General  reaches up and removes the  pipe from his mouth  so he can
say, "Magandang gabi."
     "You  mean,  <I>'magandang umaga,'  "</I> Shaftoe says. <I>"Gabi</I>  means <I>night</I> and
<I>umaga</I> means <I>morning."</I>

     The drone of  airplane engines  is now getting  quite  noticeable.  The
press photographers decide to pack it in, and disappear into the house.
     "When you're headed  north from Manila  towards Lingayen and you get to
the fork  in the road at Tarlac and you take the right fork, there, and head
across the cane breaks  towards Urdaneta, what's the first village you  come
to?"
     "It's a trick question," Shaftoe  says. "North of  Tarlac there  are no
cane breaks, just rice paddies."
     "Hmm.   Very  good,"  The  General  says   grumpily.  Down  below,  the
antiaircraft guns open up with a fantastic clattering; from this distance it
sounds as if the north coast  of New  Guinea  is being jackhammered into the
sea. The  General  ignores it. If  he  were only <I>pretending</I> to ignore it, he
would  at  least <I>look</I> at  the  incoming  the Zeroes, so  that he could  <I>stop</I>
pretending to ignore them when it got too  dangerous. But he doesn't even do
so much as look. Shaftoe forces himself not to look either. The General asks
him a big long question in Spanish. He has a beautiful voice. He sounds like
he is  standing in an  anechoic  sound booth in New  York City or Hollywood,
narrating a newsreel about how great he is.
     "If you're trying to find out if I <I>hablo Espa&ntilde;ol,</I> the answer is,
<I>un poquito,"</I> Shaftoe says.
     The General cups  a hand to his ear  irritably. He can't hear  anything
except for the pair of Zeroes converging on him and Shaftoe at three hundred
odd  miles per hour, liquefying tons of  biomass with dense streams of  12.7
millimeter  slugs.  He keeps a sharp eye on  Shaftoe as a  trail of  bullets
thuds across the parking lot, spraying  Shaftoe's trouser legs with mud. The
same line of bullets makes a sudden upwards right angle turn when it reaches
the  wall  of the General's house,  climbs straight up the wall, tears out a
chunk  of the balcony's railing  about a foot away from where the  General's
hand is  resting,  beats up a  bunch of furniture back inside the house, and
then clears the roof of the house and vanishes.
     Now that the  planes  have  passed  overhead, Shaftoe can look at  them
without having  to worry that he is giving The General the  idea that  he is
some kind  of lily livered pansy.  The meatballs on their wings  broaden and
glower as they bank sharply, sharper than any American plane, and come round
for a second try.
     "I said " The General  begins.  But then the  atmosphere's  riven by  a
series of bizarre whizzing noises. One of the  house's  windows  is suddenly
punched out of its frame. Shaftoe hears a thud from inside and some crockery
breaking.  For  the  first  time, The  General  shows some  awareness that a
military  action is taking place.  "Warm up  my jeep, Shaftoe," he says,  "I
have a bone to pick with my triple A boys." Then he turns around and Shaftoe
gets a look at  the back of  his pink silk dressing gown. It is embroidered,
in black thread, with a giant lizard, rampant.
     The General  suddenly turns around. "Is  that you screaming down there,
Shaftoe?"
     "Sir, no sir!"
     "I  distinctly  heard you scream."  MacArthur turns his back on Shaftoe
again, giving him another look at the lizard (which  on second thought might
be some sort of Chinese  dragon design) and goes  inside the house, mumbling
irritably to himself.
     Shaftoe gets into the vehicle indicated and starts the engine.
     The General  emerges  from  the house and begins to plod across the lot
cradling an  unexploded antiaircraft shell in  his arms. The wind  makes his
pink silk dressing gown billow all around him.
     The Zeroes come back and  strafe the parking lot again, cutting a truck
nearly in half. Shaftoe feels  as if his intestines  have dissolved  and are
about to  spurt  from  his  body. He  closes  his  eyes,  puckers  his  anal
sphincter,  and clenches his teeth. The  General takes  a  seat next to him.
"Down the hill," he orders. "Drive towards the sound of the guns."
     They have barely gotten onto the road when their progress is blocked by
the two  jeeps that  had  been carrying all the brass up  from the airfield.
They  now sit  empty  on  the road, their doors hanging  open, engines still
running. The General reaches across in front of Shaftoe and honks the horn.
     Colonels and brigadier generals begin to emerge from the shadows of the
jungle,  like some especially bizarre native tribe, clutching their  attache
cases talismanically. They  salute The General,  who  ignores  them testily.
"Move my vehicles!" he  intones, jabbing at them with the stem of  his pipe.
"This is the <I>road.</I> The <I>parking lot</I> is <I>that</I> way."
     The Zeroes come back for a third pass. Shaftoe now realizes (as perhaps
The General has) that  these pilots are not the best; it is late  in the war
and  all  the  good  pilots  are  dead. Consequently they do  not line their
trajectories up properly with the road; the  strafing trails cut  across  it
diagonally. Still, a bullet  bores  through  the engine block of one  of the
jeeps. Hot oil and steam spray out of it.
     "Come  on,  push  it  out  of  the  way!"  The  General  says.  Shaftoe
instinctively begins to  climb out of  the jeep,  but The  General yanks him
back with a word: "Shaftoe! I need you to drive this vehicle."
     Wielding his pipestem  like a  conductor's baton, The General gets  his
staff back  out on the road and they begin shoving the  ruined jeep into the
jungle. Shaftoe makes the  mistake of  inhaling through his  nose and gets a
strong diarrheal  whiff at  least one of these  officers has shit his pants.
Shaftoe's still trying hard not to do  the same, and  probably would have if
he'd pushed the jeep. The Zeroes are trying to line up for  another strafing
run, but a few American fighter planes have now appeared on the scene, which
complicates matters.
     Shaftoe maneuvers them through a gap between the remaining jeep  and  a
huge tree,  then guns  it down the road.  The General hums to  himself for a
while, then says, "What's your wife's name?"
     "Gory."
     "I mean, Glory."
     "Ah.  Good. Good Filipina name. Filipinas  are the most beautiful women
in the world, don't you think?"
     Experienced world traveler Bobby Shaftoe screws up his  face and begins
to  review his experiences in  a systematic way. Then he  realizes  that The
General probably does not actually want his considered opinion.
     Of course, The General's wife  is American, so this could be tricky. "I
guess  the  woman  you love is  always the most beautiful," Shaftoe  finally
says.
     The General looks mildly pissed off. "Of course, but..."
     "But <I>if</I> you don't really give a  shit about them, the Filipinas are the
most beautiful, sir!" Shaftoe says.
     The General nods. "Now, your boy. What's his name, then?"
     Shaftoe swallows hard and thinks fast. He doesn't even know if he <I>has</I> a
kid he fabricated  that to make his line  sound better and even <I>if</I> he  does,
the chances are only fifty fifty that it's a boy. But if he does have a boy,
he knows already what the name will be. "His name well, sir,  his name and I
hope  you don't mind  this  but  his  name  is  Douglas." The General  grins
delightedly  and cackles, slapping the  antiaircraft shell  in  his lap  for
emphasis. Shaftoe flinches.
     When they  arrive  at  the  airfield,  a  full  fledged dogfight  is in
progress  overhead. The  place is  deserted because everyone except  them is
hiding behind sandbags. The General has Shaftoe drive up and down the length
of the field, stopping at each gun emplacement so that  he can peer over the
barrier.
     "There's the fellow!" The General  finally  says, pointing  his swagger
stick  at a gun on the opposite side of the  runway. "I  just saw him poking
his head out, yammering on the telephone."
     Shaftoe guns it  across the  runway. A flaming Zero, traveling at about
half  the speed of  sound,  impacts  the runway  a few hundred feet away and
disintegrates  into  a  howling  cloud of  burning  spare parts  that  comes
skittering and  rolling and  bounding  across  the  runway  in their general
direction.  Shaftoe  falters. The General yells  at him.  Reckoning that  he
can't avoid  what he  can't see, Shaftoe turns  into the storm.  Having seen
this  kind of  thing happen before, he  knows  that the  first thing to come
their  way will be the engine  block, a red hot tombstone of fine Mitsubishi
iron. And indeed there it  is,  one of its exhaust  manifolds still dangling
from it like  a  broken wing,  spinning end over end and spading huge divots
out of the  runway with  each  bounce.  Shaftoe swings  wide around  it.  He
identifies the fuselage  and sees that  it has plowed to a  stop already. He
looks for the wings; they broke up into  a few large pieces that are slowing
down rapidly,  but the tires  broke  loose from  the  landing  gear  and are
bounding along towards them, burning wheels  of  red fire. Shaftoe maneuvers
the  jeep  between them, guns it  across a small patch of flaming  oil, then
makes another hard turn and continues towards their objective.
     The  explosion  of  the  Zero  sent  everyone  back down  behind  their
sandbags. The General has to climb out of the jeep and peer over the top  of
the  barrier.  He holds the  antiaircraft  shell  up  above his head.  "Say,
Captain," he says in his  perfect radio announcer voice, "this arrived on my
end table with no return address, but I believe it came from your unit." The
captain's  helmeted head pops  into view over the top of the sandbags as  he
jumps to attention. He is gaping at the shell. "Would you please look  after
it, and make sure that it has been properly defused?" The General tosses the
shell  at  him  sideways, like  a watermelon, and the captain barely has the
presence of mind to catch it. "Carry on," The General says, "let's see if we
can actually shoot down some Nips next time." He waves disparagingly at  the
burning wreckage of the Zero and climbs into  the  jeep with  Shaftoe.  "All
right, back up the hill, Shaftoe!"
     "Yes, sir!"
     "Now, I know that you hate me because you are a Marine."
     Officers like it  when you pretend to be straight with them. "Yes, sir,
I do hate you, sir, but I do not feel that this need be an impediment to our
killing some Nips together, sir!"
     "We agree. But in the mission  I have in mind for you, Shaftoe, killing
Nips will not be the primary objective."
     Shaftoe's a bit off balance now. "Sir, with  all due respect, I believe
that killing Nips is my strong point."
     "I  don't doubt it.  And  that is a fine skill for a Marine. Because in
this  war,  a  Marine  is  a first  rate fighting  man  under the command of
admirals who don't know the first thing about ground  warfare, and who think
that the way to  win an  island is to hurl their men directly into the teeth
of the Nips' prepared defenses."
     The  General  pauses  here,  as  if  giving  Shaftoe  an opportunity to
respond.  But Shaftoe says nothing. He  is  remembering the stories that his
brothers told  him on  Kwajalein, about  all the battles  they had fought on
small Pacific islands, precisely as The General describes.
     "Consequently, a Marine must be very good at killing Nips, as I have no
doubt  you  are.  But now, Shaftoe, you are in  the Army, and in the Army we
actually have certain wonderful innovations, such as  strategy  and tactics,
which certain  admirals  would be well advised to acquaint  themselves with.
And so  your new  job, Shaftoe,  is not simply to kill Nips, but to use your
head."
     "Well, I know  that you probably  think I am a stupid jarhead, General,
but I do think that I have a good head on my shoulders."
     "And on  your shoulders is exactly where I would like it  to stay!" The
General says, slapping him  heartily on the back. "What  we are trying to do
now is to create a tactical situation that is favorable to us. Once  that is
accomplished, the actual  killing of Nips can be  handled by more  efficient
means such as aerial bombardment, mass starvation, and the like. It will not
be necessary for you to personally cut the throat of every Nip you run into,
as eminently qualified as you might be for such an operation."
     "Thank you, General, sir."
     "We  have millions of Filipino guerillas, and hundreds of thousands  of
troops, to handle the  essentially quotidian  business of turning live  Nips
into dead,  or  at  least captive,  Nips. But in order  to coordinate  their
activities, I need intelligence. That will be one of your  missions. But the
country  is  already crawling with my spies, and so  it will be a  secondary
mission.
     "And the primary mission, sir?"
     "Those Filipinos need leadership.  They need coordination.  And perhaps
most of all, they need fighting spirit."
     "Fighting spirit, sir?"
     "There are many reasons for the Filipinos to  be down in the dumps. The
Nips have not been kind to them. And although I have been very busy, here in
New Guinea,  preparing  the springboard for my return,  the  Filipinos don't
know about  any of this, and  many  of them probably  think I have forgotten
about  them entirely. Now it  is time  to  let them know  I'm coming. That I
shall return but soon!"
     Shaftoe snickers,  thinking that The General  is engaging in some  self
mocking humor  here yes, a  bit of <I>irony but</I> then he notes  that The General
does not seem especially amused. "Stop the vehicle!" he shouts.
     Shaftoe parks the jeep at the apex of a switchback, where they can look
northwest across the  outermost reaches  of the  Philippine Sea. The General
extends  one  arm  toward Manila, hand slightly cupped, palm  canted upward,
gesturing like  a  Shakespearean  actor in a posed photo  graph. "Go  there,
Bobby Shaftoe!" says The General. "Go there and tell them that I am coming."
     Shaftoe knows his cue, and he knows his line. "Sir, yes sir!"


     <B>Chapter 70 ORIGIN</B>


     From the point of view of admittedly privileged  white male technocrats
such as  Randy Waterhouse and  his ancestors, the Palouse was like  one  big
live in laboratory for nonlinear aerodynamics and chaos theory. Not much was
alive  there,  and  so one's observations were not forever  being clouded by
trees, flowers,  fauna, and the ploddingly linear and  rational endeavors of
humans. The Cascades blocked any of those  warm, moist,  refreshing  Pacific
breezes, harvesting  their moisture to carpet ski  areas  for  dewy  skinned
Seattleites, and  diverting  what remained north  to  Vancouver or  south to
Portland. Consequently the  Palouse had to get its air shipped down  in bulk
from the Yukon and British Columbia. It flowed across  the  blasted volcanic
scab  land  of  central  Washington  in (Randy  supposed)  a  more  or  less
continuous  laminar sheet that,  when it hit  the  rolling  Palouse country,
ramified into a vast system of floods,  rivers and rivulets diverging around
the bald  swelling  hills  and recombining in  the  sere declivities. But it
never recombined exactly the way it was before. The hills had thrown entropy
into the system. Like  a handful  of nickels  in a batch of bread dough this
could be  kneaded  from  place  to  place  but  never removed.  The  entropy
manifested itself as swirls and violent gust