"Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon




Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
"There is a remarkably close parallel between the problems of the physicist and those of the
cryptographer. The system on which a message is enciphered corresponds to the laws of the universe,
the intercepted messages to the evidence available, the keys for a day or a message to important
constants which have to be determined. The correspondence is very close, but the subject matter of
cryptography is very easily dealt with by discrete machinery, physics not so easily."

--Alan Turing

This morning [Imelda Marcos] offered the latest in a series of explanations of the billions of dollars that
she and her husband, who died in 1989, are believed to have stolen during his presidency.

"It so coincided that Marcos had money," she said. "After the Bretton Woods agreement he started
buying gold from Fort Knox. Three thousand tons, then 4,000 tons. I have documents for these: 7,000
tons. Marcos was so smart. He had it all. It's funny; America didn't understand him."

--The New York Times, Monday, 4 March, 1996

Prologue
Two tires fly. Two wail.
A bamboo grove, all chopped down
From it, warring songs.

...is the best that Corporal Bobby Shaftoe can do on short notice--he's standing on the running board,
gripping his Springfield with one hand and the rearview mirror with the other, so counting the syllables
on his fingers is out of the question. Is "tires" one syllable or two? How about "wail?" The truck finally
makes up its mind not to tip over, and thuds back onto four wheels. The wail--and the moment--are lost.
Bobby can still hear the coolies singing, though, and now too there's the gunlike snicking of the truck's
clutch linkage as Private Wiley downshifts. Could Wiley be losing his nerve? And, in the back, under
the tarps, a ton and a half of file cabinets clanking, code books slaloming, fuel spanking the tanks of
Station Alpha's electrical generator. The modern world's hell on haiku writers: "Electrical generator" is,
what, eight syllables? You couldn't even fit that onto the second line!

"Are we allowed to run over people?" Private Wiley inquires, and then mashes the horn button before
Bobby Shaftoe can answer. A Sikh policeman hurdles a night soil cart. Shaftoe's gut reaction is: Sure,
what're they going to do, declare war on us? but as the highest-ranking man on this truck he's probably
supposed to be using his head or something, so he doesn't blurt it out just yet. He takes stock of the
situation:

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 Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon