Snow Crash, Page 22

  Juanita shrugs. “What's the difference?”

  That Juanita is talking this way does not make it any easier for Hiro to get back on his feet in this conversation. “How can you say that? You're a religious person yourself.”

  “Don't lump all religion together.”

  “Sorry.”

  “All people have religions. It's like we have religion receptors built into our brain cells, or something, and we'll latch onto anything that'll fill that niche for us. Now, religion used to be essentially viral—a piece of information that replicated inside the human mind, jumping from one person to the next. That's the way it used to be, and unfortunately, that's the way it's headed right now. But there have been several efforts to deliver us from the hands of primitive, irrational religion. The first was made by someone named Enki about four thousand years ago. The second was made by Hebrew scholars in the eighth century B.C., driven out of their homeland by the invasion of Sargon II, but eventually it just devolved into empty legalism. Another attempt was made by Jesus—that one was hijacked by viral influences within fifty days of his death. The virus was suppressed by the Catholic Church, but we're in the middle of a big epidemic that started in Kansas in 1900 and has been gathering momentum ever since.”

  “Do you believe in God or not?” Hiro says. First things first.

  “Definitely.”

  “Do you believe in Jesus?”

  “Yes. But not in the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus.”

  “How can you be a Christian without believing in that?”

  “I would say,” Juanita says, “how can you be a Christian with it? Anyone who takes the trouble to study the gospels can see that the bodily resurrection is a myth that was tacked onto the real story several years after the real histories were written. It's so National Enquirer-esque, don't you think?”

  Beyond that, Juanita doesn't have much to say. She doesn't want to get into it now, she says. She doesn't want to prejudice Hiro's thinking “at this point.”

  “Does that imply that there's going to be some other point? Is this a continuing relationship?” Hiro says.

  “Do you want to find the people who infected Da5id?”

  “Yes. Hell, Juanita, even if it weren't for the fact that he is my friend, I'd want to find them before they infect me.”

  “Look at the Babel stack, Hiro, and then visit me if I get back from Astoria.”

  “If you get back? What are you doing there?”

  “Research.”

  She's been putting on a businesslike front through this whole talk, spitting out information, telling Hiro the way it is. But she's tired and anxious, and Hiro gets the idea that she's deeply afraid.

  “Good luck,” he says. He was all ready to do some flirting with her during this meeting, picking up where they left off last night. But something has changed in Juanita's mind between then and now. Flirting is the last thing on her mind.

  Juanita's going to do something dangerous in Oregon. She doesn't want Hiro to know about it so that he won't worry.

  “There's some good stuff in the Babel stack about someone named Inanna,” she says.

  “Who's Inanna?”

  “A Sumerian goddess. I'm sort of in love with her. Anyway, you can't understand what I'm about to do until you understand Inanna.”

  “Well, good luck,” Hiro says. “Say hi to Inanna for me.”

  “Thanks.”

  “When you get back, I want to spend some time with you.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” she says. “But we have to get out of this first.”

  “Oh. I didn't realize I was in something.”

  “Don't be a sap. We're all in it.”

  Hiro leaves, exiting into The Black Sun.

  There is one guy wandering around the Hacker Quadrant who really stands out. His avatar doesn't look so hot. And he's having trouble controlling it. He looks like a guy who's just goggled into the Metaverse for the first time and doesn't know how to move around. He keeps bumping into tables, and when he wants to turn around, he spins around several times, not knowing how to stop himself.

  Hiro walks toward him, because his face seems a little familiar. When the guy finally stops moving long enough for Hiro to resolve him clearly, he recognizes the avatar. It's a Clint. Most often seen in the company of a Brandy.

  The Clint recognizes Hiro, and his surprised face comes on for a second, is then replaced by his usual stern, stiff-lipped, craggy appearance. He holds up his hands together in front of him, and Hiro sees that he is holding a scroll, just like Brandy's.

  Hiro reaches for his katana, but the scroll is already up in his face, spreading open to reveal the blue glare of the bitmap inside. He sidesteps, gets over to one side of the Clint, raising the katana overhead, snaps the katana straight down and cuts the Clint's arms off.

  As the scroll falls, it spreads open even wider. Hiro doesn't dare look at it now. The Clint has turned around and is awkwardly trying to escape from The Black Sun, bouncing from table to table like a pinball.

  If Hiro could kill the guy—cut his head off—then his avatar would stay in The Black Sun, be carried away by the Graveyard Daemons. Hiro could do some hacking and maybe figure out who he is, where he's coming in from.

  But a few dozen hackers are lounging around the bar, watching all of this, and if they come over and look at the scroll, they'll all end up like Da5id.

  Hiro squats down, looking away from the scroll, and pulls up one of the hidden trapdoors that lead down into the tunnel system. He's the one who coded those tunnels into The Black Sun to begin with; he's the only person in the whole bar who can use them. He sweeps the scroll into the tunnel with one hand, then closes the door.

  Hiro can see the Clint, way over near the exit, trying to get his avatar aimed out through the door. Hiro runs after him. If the guy reaches the Street, he's gone—he'll turn into a translucent ghost. With a fifty-foot head start in a crowd of a million other translucent ghosts, there's just no way. As usual, there's a crowd of wannabes gathered on the Street out front. Hiro can see the usual assortment, including a few black-and-white people.

  One of those black-and-whites is Y.T. She's loitering out there waiting for Hiro to come out.

  “Y.T.!” he shouts. “Chase that guy with no arms!”

  Hiro gets out the door just a few seconds after the Clint does. Both the Clint and Y.T. are already gone.

  He turns back into The Black Sun, pulls up a trapdoor, and drops down into the tunnel system, the realm of the Graveyard Daemons. One of them has already picked up the scroll and is trudging in toward the center to throw it on the fire.

  “Hey, bud,” Hiro says, “take a right turn at the next tunnel and leave that thing in my office, okay? But do me a favor and roll it up first.”

  He follows the Graveyard Daemon down the tunnel, under the Street, until they're under the neighborhood where Hiro and the other hackers have their houses. Hiro has the Graveyard Daemon deposit the rolled-up scroll in his workshop, down in the basement—the room where Hiro does his hacking. Then Hiro continues upstairs to his office.

  27

  His voice phone is ringing. Hiro picks it up.

  “Pod,” Y.T. says, “I was beginning to think you'd never come out of there.”

  “Where are you?” Hiro says.

  “In Reality or the Metaverse?”

  “Both.”

  “In the Metaverse, I'm on a plusbound monorail train. Just passed by Port 35.”

  “Already? It must be an express.”

  “Good thinking. That Clint you cut the arms off of is two cars ahead of me. I don't think he knows I'm following him.”

  “Where are you in Reality?”

  “Public terminal across the street from a Reverend Wayne's,” she says.

  “Oh, yeah? How interesting.”

  “Just made a delivery there.”

  “What kind of delivery?”

  “An aluminum suitcase.”

  He gets the whole story out
of her, or what he thinks is the whole story—there's no real way to tell.

  “You're sure that the babbling that the people did in the park was the same as the babbling that the woman did at the Reverend Wayne's?”

  “Sure,” she says. “I know a bunch of people who go there. Or their parents go there and drag them along, you know.”

  “To the Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates?”

  “Yeah. And they all do that speaking in tongues. So I've heard it before.”

  “I'll talk to you later, pod,” Hiro says. “I've got some serious research to do.”

  “Later.”

  The Babel/Infocalypse card is resting in the middle of his desk. Hiro picks it up. The Librarian comes in.

  Hiro is about to ask the Librarian whether he knows that Lagos is dead. But it's a pointless question. The Librarian knows it, but he doesn't. If he wanted to check the Library, he could find out in a few moments. But he wouldn't really retain the information. He doesn't have an independent memory. The Library is his memory, and he only uses small parts of it at once.

  “What can you tell me about speaking in tongues?” Hiro says.

  “The technical term is ‘glossolalia,' ” the Librarian says.

  “Technical term? Why bother to have a technical term for a religious ritual?”

  The Librarian raises his eyebrows. “Oh, there's a great deal of technical literature on the subject. It is a neurological phenomenon that is merely exploited in religious rituals.”

  “It's a Christian thing, right?”

  “Pentecostal Christians think so, but they are deluding themselves. Pagan Greeks did it—Plato called it theomania. The Oriental cults of the Roman Empire did it. Hudson Bay Eskimos, Chukchi shamans, Lapps, Yakuts, Semang pygmies, the North Borneo cults, the Trhi-speaking priests of Ghana. The Zulu Amandiki cult and the Chinese religious sect of Shang-ti-hui. Spirit mediums of Tonga and the Brazilian Umbanda cult. The Tungus tribesmen of Siberia say that when the shaman goes into his trance and raves incoherent syllables, he learns the entire language of Nature.”

  “The language of Nature.”

  “Yes, sir. The Sukuma people of Africa say that the language is kinaturu, the tongue of the ancestors of all magicians, who are thought to have descended from one particular tribe.”

  “What causes it?”

  “If mystical explanations are ruled out, then it seems that glossolalia comes from structures buried deep within the brain, common to all people.”

  “What does it look like? How do these people act?”

  “C. W. Shumway observed the Los Angeles revival of 1906 and noted six basic symptoms: complete loss of rational control; dominance of emotion that leads to hysteria; absence of thought or will; automatic functioning of the speech organs; amnesia; and occasional sporadic physical manifestations such as jerking or twitching. Eusebius observed similar phenomena around the year 300, saying that the false prophet begins by a deliberate suppression of conscious thought, and ends in a delirium over which he has no control.”

  “What's the Christian justification for this? Is there anything in the Bible that backs this up?”

  “Pentecost.”

  “You mentioned that word earlier—what is it?”

  “From the Greek pentekostos, meaning fiftieth. It refers to the fiftieth day after the Crucifixion.”

  “Juanita just told me that Christianity was hijacked by viral influences when it was only fifty days old. She must have been talking about this. What is it?”

  “‘And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. And they were amazed and wondered, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ' Acts 2:4–12.”

  “Damned if I know,” Hiro says. “Sounds like Babel in reverse.”

  “Yes, sir. Many Pentecostal Christians believe that the gift of tongues was given to them so that they could spread their religion to other peoples without having to actually learn their language. The word for that is ‘xenoglossy.' ”

  “That's what Rife was claiming in that piece of videotape, on top of the Enterprise. He said he could understand what those Bangladeshis were saying.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Does that really work?”

  “In the sixteenth century, Saint Louis Bertrand allegedly used the gift of tongues to convert somewhere between thirty thousand and three hundred thousand South American Indians to Christianity,” the Librarian says.

  “Wow. Spread through that population even faster than smallpox.”

  “What did the Jews think of this Pentecost thing?” Hiro says. “They were still running the country, right?”

  “The Romans were running the country,” the Librarian says, “but there were a number of Jewish religious authorities. At this time, there were three groups of Jews: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes.”

  “I remember the Pharisees from Jesus Christ, Superstar. They were the ones with the deep voices who were always hassling Christ.”

  “They were hassling him,” the Librarian says, “because they were religiously very strict. They adhered to a strong legalistic version of the religion; to them, the Law was everything. Clearly, Jesus was a threat to them because he was proposing, in effect, to do away with the Law.”

  “He wanted a contract renegotiation with God.”

  “This sounds like an analogy, which I am not very good at—but even if it is taken literally, it is true.”

  “Who were the other two groups?”

  “The Sadducees were materialists.”

  “Meaning what? They drove BMWs?”

  “No. Materialists in the philosophical sense. All philosophies are either monist or dualist. Monists believe that the material world is the only world—hence, materialists. Dualists believe in a binary universe, that there is a spiritual world in addition to the material world.”

  “Well, as a computer geek, I have to believe in the binary universe.”

  The Librarian raises his eyebrows. “How does that follow?”

  “Sorry. It's a joke. A bad pun. See, computers use binary code to represent information. So I was joking that I have to believe in the binary universe, that I have to be a dualist.”

  “How droll,” the Librarian says, not sounding very amused. “Your joke may not be without genuine merit, however.”

  “How's that? I was just kidding, really.”

  “Computers rely on the one and the zero to represent all things. This distinction between something and nothing—this pivotal separation between being and nonbeing—is quite fundamental and underlies many Creation myths.”

  Hiro feels his face getting slightly warm, feels himself getting annoyed. He suspects that the Librarian may be pulling his leg, playing him for a fool. But he knows that the Librarian, however convincingly rendered he may be, is just a piece of software and cannot actually do such things.

  “Even the word ‘science' comes from an Indo-European root meaning ‘to cut' or ‘to separate.' The same root led to the word ‘shit,' which of course means to separate living flesh from nonliving waste. The same root gave us ‘scythe' and ‘scissors' and ‘schism,' which have obvious connections to the concept of separation.”

  “How about ‘sword'?”

  “From a root with several meanings. One of those meanings is ‘to cut or pierce.' One of them is ‘pos
t' or ‘rod.' And the other is, simply, ‘to speak.' ”

  “Let's stay on track,” Hiro says.

  “Fine. I can return to this potential conversation fork at a later time, if you desire.”

  “I don't want to get all forked up at this point. Tell me about the third group—the Essenes.”

  “They lived communally and believed that physical and spiritual cleanliness were intimately connected. They were constantly bathing themselves, lying naked under the sun, purging themselves with enemas, and going to extreme lengths to make sure that their food was pure and uncontaminated. They even had their own version of the Gospels in which Jesus healed possessed people, not with miracles, but by driving parasites, such as tapeworm, out of their body. These parasites are considered to be synonymous with demons.”

  “They sound kind of like hippies.”

  “The connection has been made before, but it is faulty in many ways. The Essenes were strictly religious and would never have taken drugs.”

  “So to them there was no difference between infection with a parasite, like tapeworm, and demonic possession.”

  “Correct.”

  “Interesting. I wonder what they would have thought about computer viruses?”

  “Speculation is not in my ambit.”

  “Speaking of which—Lagos was babbling to me about viruses and infection and something called a namshub. What does that mean?”

  “Nam-shub is a word from Sumerian.”

  “Sumerian?”

  “Yes, sir. Used in Mesopotamia until roughly 2000 B.C. The oldest of all written languages.”

  “Oh. So all the other languages are descended from it?”

  For a moment, the Librarian's eyes glance upward, as if he's thinking about something. This is a visual cue to inform Hiro that he's making a momentary raid on the Library.

  “Actually, no,” the Librarian says. “No languages whatsoever are descended from Sumerian. It is an agglutinative tongue, meaning that it is a collection of morphemes or syllables that are grouped into words—very unusual.”