The Cobweb

by Neal Stephenson

  “Do you realize that you’re the only American doing work for me?”

  “Well, no, but now that you mention it . . .”

  “The shithead high-school system in this country produces such wretched products that the universities have to spend all their time bringing them up to what used to be a senior in high school in Little Dixie.” After this burst of eloquence Larsen shut down for a minute or so, took another cryptic phone call, stood up, and looked out the window. “Kevin,” he said, “I want you to be my special assistant.”

  Kevin had no idea what that meant; he imagined fetching coffee, or running a copy machine. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Run the shop for me here when I’m in Washington, or go to Washington in my place when I’m running the shop.”

  Kevin laughed nervously. “Dr. Larsen. What do you mean, ‘run the shop’?”

  “Oh, come on, now. You sit here and you look at three things: milestones, challenges, and body uncount. You’ve got that down pat, it’s all right there!” He flicked his fingers at Kevin’s summary sheet. Then he took a step closer to Kevin and lowered his voice. “Look, let’s not bullshit around. My Asian kids are first-rate. They’re great scientists. But I can’t send them back to work the Hill, the NSF, Ag. But you—you’re young, personable, you know your science, you can make pretty graphs, and, not to put too fine a point on it, you’re a white man who speaks English. Will you do it?”

  “But I haven’t finished my dissertation.”

  Larsen blinked in surprise. He’d forgotten about this. Then he heaved a big sigh and rolled his eyes. He had deep-set farmer’s eyes surrounded by creases—such a pale shade of blue they were almost gray. Those eyes glanced up and to one side as he called upon his obstacle-dodging skills, which had never yet failed him.

  An inspiration struck. He walked back to his desk and picked up the thick document: Bovine Transmission of Heavy-Metals Pollution Through the Food Chain: Recent Progress. He flipped through it, pausing to look over some of the graphs and charts, and spent a minute or so scanning the bibliography.

  “This will do. It’s a contribution. Give it to Janie to put in dissertation form. We’ve got a software package to do that somewhere.”

  “Excuse me, Dr. Larsen?”

  “Submit it. I need you to be a Ph.D. We can have the grad school waive the deadline requirements. I need you now.”

  Three weeks later Dr. Kevin Vandeventer, Ph.D., stepped out of the Courthouse Metro Station in Arlington, Virginia, a garment bag slung over his back and a plastic Hy-Vee grocery sack dangling from one hand. He walked down Clarendon and arrived at the Bellevue Apartments a few minutes later. He dialed his sister’s apartment and got lucky: Cassie answered the phone; the surprise was preserved. She buzzed him in.

  In the elevator he pulled his Ph.D. robes, mortarboard, and hood from the grocery bag and put them on over his traveling clothes. Thus attired, he marched majestically down the hallway. Cassie was waiting for him by the door; when she got a load of his outfit, she let out a hoot and began giggling.

  “What’s going on?” Betsy asked.

  “Betsy, come here! You’ve got a distinguished visitor.”

  Betsy came out of the bedroom and flinched involuntarily when she saw the imposing creature in the robe. When she recognized her little brother’s face, she was delighted, and when she saw the cardinal, green, and harvest-gold Ph.D. hood, she was floored. She almost knocked him over with a hug. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He looked away awkwardly. “It happened pretty fast. How you doing, Bets?”

  Tears sprang out and trailed down her face, making him feel even more awkward. “When did this happen?” She let go of him, stepped away, and caught a deep breath. “I’m so proud. Have you told the folks?”

  “Thought we would call from here. They can come out for the formal hooding next month. Larsen takes about a half hour to process his people through.”

  Cassie stood back wide-eyed, like a kid at Halloween who had just seen a goblin costume for the first time. “Dr. Idaho,” she said, then dropped suddenly to the floor and crawled up under his robes.

  “Let me unzip this thing so you don’t suffocate,” Kevin said, awkward and unnerved. Cassie’s head popped out of the neck opening, next to Kevin’s, and the picture that Betsy saw was one that she’d remember for life.

  “Stay right there,” she shouted as she ran for her little camera.

  “My pleasure,” Kevin said, hugging Cassie.

  Betsy came back and snapped shots from various angles. “I’m gonna make sure Dad gets an eleven-by-sixteen of this.”

  Cassie began to note that Kevin was not letting go. “Well! Give a man a Ph.D. and suddenly he takes prerogatives!” she said. “Excuse me, Doc, but my people have got something about getting caught by people in robes.” Kevin let her go and she slipped out. Kevin was in a state of bliss.

  “Let’s pop that bottle of champagne we bought for Betsy’s promotion,” Cassie said.

  “Sounds good,” Kevin said.

  “I said, for Betsy’s promotion,” Cassie said, getting a little provoked.

  “Oh. You mean the fifth-year poly thing?”

  “My boss got transferred out,” Betsy said, “and Cassie’s making a big deal out of the fact that I’ve been made acting branch chief.”

  “Branch chief in the Company! Pretty good for a potato picker,” Kevin said tepidly. Betsy could tell her brother was a trifle deflated at losing the spotlight.

  Cassie aimed the bottle through the open balcony doors and launched the cork toward the Pentagon with a satisfying explosion. She poured the Sovetskoe Champanskoe Vino into the jelly glasses—everything else was still drying in the dishwasher. “A toast to Dr. Kevin and Officer Betsy.” They drank the sweet champagne down, agreed that it was just fine, and had another round instantly.

  “Take it easy, Doctor boy,” Cassie said in mock alarm, watching Kevin suck it down. “My dad told me there’s nothing so quick and fun as a champagne high or as quick and nasty as a champagne low.”

  The champagne high lasted for several hours, or maybe they had other reasons to be in a good mood. Cassie called Domino’s and ordered a pizza. Twenty-five minutes later the doorbell rang, and Cassie returned from the front door with two fresh, hot pizzas and a young woman—their neighbor from down the hallway. Betsy had made small talk with her in the elevator several times but never invited her in. “Look who’s hanging around in our hallway,” she said. “This is Margaret—sorry, I don’t even know your last name.”

  “Park-O’Neil,” she said. “Sorry to intrude,” she said to the others, “but this woman dragged me in here.”

  “You look lonely,” Cassie said, “and we got too much pizza and too much champagne.”

  Betsy couldn’t help noticing that Kevin was very quick to his feet to shake Margaret Park-O’Neil’s hand. She had to admit that her brother cut quite a figure in his Ph.D. robes, which, besides giving him great authority, seemed to put meat on his lanky bones.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know it was a formal,” Margaret said. “Should I go back and dig up mine?”

  “Ooh, excuse me! Dr. Park-O’Neil,” Cassie said. She looked at Betsy. “You and me, we just got to go out and get ourselves some damn education.”

  During the next couple of hours the neighbor came in for a lot of attention from Betsy’s brother. From spectating on their conversation Betsy learned that Margaret was half-Korean and half-American, an Army brat with a doctorate in East Asian history, working, naturally, for the CIA. She was a funny, down-to-earth, and likable woman who knew how to wear clothes.

  She reminded Betsy strongly of an Asian-American woman Kevin had been deeply in love with for two years during his college days, whom he’d brought back to Nampa several times to meet the family, and who had eventually broken up with him, throwing him into a year-long funk. She had no doubt that, whether or not Kevin was conscious of it, he had noticed the resemblance, too.

  Mar
garet stayed for a decent amount of time and then excused herself on the grounds that this was a school night. “Yeah. Time for all good little federal employees to go to bed,” Cassie said, carrying the pizza boxes into the kitchen and ramming them into the trash. Kevin went to the broom closet and got out the sleeping bag he always used when he was there; Betsy rolled it out on the couch and donated her spare pillow.

  She noticed him standing there looking at her with his eyes glistening. She stepped closer and gravely and formally shook his hand. “I’m proud of you, Kevin. Congratulations.”

  “Let’s go out on the balcony,” Kevin said.

  “I’ll need a wrap,” she said. “I don’t have a robe and hood.” She plucked Mom’s afghan off the back of the couch and threw it around herself, then followed her brother out. He was leaning against the railing looking out over the lights of D.C.

  “This still blows me away,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “D.C. We landed coming down the Potomac tonight. And like you told me, I sat on the left side of the plane, window seat. I can spot the beltway, and when the moon is out like tonight, I can even see the cathedral. But the view of the Mall toward the Capitol is so beautiful, I wanted to cry, and tonight I could see Lincoln’s head through the skylight and Jefferson’s hand. And then a cab ride and here I am with my sister, who I used to sit with on top of the house looking at the mountains through Dad’s old binoculars.”

  Betsy felt herself beginning to sober up. A lot of questions were swimming to the top of her mind. “Kevin. How did this happen so fast?” she asked gently.

  “You and me, winding up here?”

  “You getting your Ph.D.”

  Kevin was full of himself and champagne and the still palpable memory of Margaret Park-O’Neil. He told Betsy a remarkable story. He told her about Professor Arthur Larsen and his empire, how Kevin had, over the last year, been elevated to the point where he reported directly to the Rainmaker over the heads of tenured professors. He told a very odd story about a rogue W-2 form and how Larsen’s hotshot bookkeepers were now looking after his tax work. This was the point when Betsy’s alarm bells went off.

  Kevin was still close enough to his sister to sense her unease. “Don’t worry, Bets,” he said in a tone that was supposed to be reassuring but came off as condescending. “It all passes audit.”

  The champagne crash hit Betsy at that moment. That was one of Howard King’s lines. How many sleazebag feds had she heard say that after they bent rules? In how many budget meetings had she heard the phrase “pushing the envelope, but not so far that we do hard time”? She still remembered one contractor who had written himself in for forty percent more than had been allowed and said, “In private sector I wouldn’t do this, but here they’ll never catch it. Never forget, dearie, that the margin for profit is found in that zone beyond the written law and before the point where the enforcement system kicks in.”

  Betsy felt sick. Her brother was now one of them.

  “Don’t worry, there’s a good reason to do this. We are feeding the world.”

  And yourselves, too, Betsy almost said. But she did not. She did not want to spoil her brother’s triumph.

  “Oh, there’s a lot of hype with Dr. Larsen’s body uncount. No one really believes he’s saved that many lives—least of all Dr. Larsen. You have to understand that stunts like that are necessary—part of how you do business. But there’s some truth there underneath the hype, Bets. This research does a lot of good.”

  She was tired. She’d have to sleep on his news. She merely reached out, hugged her brother, and held him as she used to do when Dad would lose his temper and shout that he’d never amount to anything. “Watch your step, Kevin,” she whispered.

  “I will, sis. We’re a long way from Nampa, and sometimes it gets a little complicated.”

  They stayed for another few minutes, watching the MD-80’s and 757’s land at National, seeing the lights reflect on the blossoms that were still left on the trees, smelling the sweet air of D.C. Then Betsy suddenly sneezed so loud that an echo came off the apartment building across the way. “Time for bed, bro. Whatever you’re doing here for the Rainmaker, I’m sure you’ve got to be bright and sparky. You can use the bathroom after Cassie gets done. Don’t forget to hang up your suit.”

  They went in. Betsy kissed her brother on the cheek again, told him how proud of him she was, and then went to bed. But she did not fall asleep until long after the eastern sky had begun to brighten.

  fourteen

  ONE MORNING at 3:52, according to the station wagon’s dashboard clock, Clyde was cruising southward along the Interstate 45 portion of his circuit when he witnessed a one-car accident. A four-door was coming toward him in the northbound lanes, drawing attention to itself in more than one way. To begin with, it had its parking lights on, but not its headlights. Second, it was going so fast that Clyde could tell it was speeding from a mile away. It looked as if it must be doing about 120. Third, it was weaving lazily from lane to lane, straying well into the left and right shoulders when the driver felt like claiming a little extra elbow room.

  Finally it weaved just a bit too far to the left, all the way across the paved shoulder. The driver sensed something was wrong; even from the front Clyde could see its brake lights flare. Its tires bit dirt, yawing the car violently into the shoulder. The driver fought with the wheel for a few moments as the car plowed through the ditch, kicking up dirt and rocks, but finally it struck a boulder or something and veered sharply away from the road, erupted over the lip of the ditch, smashed through a wire fence and into a field of tall corn, which swallowed it up as if it were an actor vanishing through a curtain.

  Clyde slowed, pulled over into the right lane, eased the wagon into the median, and executed a perfect cop turn, rumbling up into the northbound lanes with enough turbulence to bounce Maggie around in her seat but not enough to wake her. He followed the skid marks on the pavement to the gouges in the ditch, and the gouges to the gap in the fence, parked the wagon on the shoulder, and set the emergency flashers. He took a flashlight and some flares out of the glove compartment, fired up the flares, and tossed them onto the road. He took Maggie, still in her child seat, out of the car, and set her up on a fence post well away from the highway, in case the Murder Car got rear-ended by a semi while he was investigating.

  The occupants of the car had been lucky that it had not flipped over and suffered much worse damage. Instead it had remained on its wheels and burned off kinetic energy by boring a surprisingly long tunnel through the corn. Along the way it deposited a trail of Marlboro cartons, like Hansel and Gretel dropping bread crumbs. Apparently the trunk had been full of them and had popped open as the car had been wrenched this way and that in the ditch. As Clyde followed the trail of white-and-red cartons glowing brilliantly in the beam of his flashlight, he could hear low voices conversing. The car’s wild trajectory had scared him half out of his wits, and he was irked to find that the actual occupants of the car were now laughing. He could not make out what they were saying, and as he drew closer, he realized that they were speaking in an unfamiliar language.

  “Hello!” he called.

  The voices became quiet for a moment. “Hyello?” someone answered carefully.

  Finally he could see the car. They had turned the headlights on, illuminating a solid wall of corn plants, shoved all four doors open, knocking down more corn in the process, and had gathered in the car’s wake, which was the only clear place they could stand. There were several of them. Clyde twisted the bezel of his flashlight to get a wide-angle beam and gave the scene a careful look before coming any closer. It was a big, new Buick LeSabre with a Hertz sticker.

  He counted five men. All of them were smoking, which struck him as poor judgment in the present circumstances.

  They all held their cigarettes between thumb and index finger, like darts. They stood there smoking and bleeding and looking ridiculously nonchalant. One of them stepped forward. H
e was tall and blond and had a very thin, hatchetlike face and gray-green eyes. At first glance he looked like a teenager, but as time went on, Clyde’s estimate of his age steadily climbed all the way up to about forty.

  “Sheriff,” Clyde said.

  “Zdraustvui,” the man answered. “This means ‘Greetings, friend!’ in Russian. I am Vitaly. God bless you for coming to save us, Mr. Sheriff.” He stepped forward and shook Clyde’s hand limply.

  “Clyde Banks,” Clyde said. He realized that the odor he’d been smelling wasn’t gasohol from their fuel tank. It was booze on their breaths.

  Another man came forward with a fresh Marlboro carton in each hand, holding them out as gifts. Clyde politely turned him down.

  “How ’bout if we get you guys to the hospital?” Clyde said.

  “Not important, my friend. We go to the airport.” Vitaly tapped his watch.

  “There’s plenty of time. The flight to Chicago leaves at eight A.M.”

  Vitaly seemed to find this funny and spoke to his cohorts in Russian. Clyde heard the word “Chicago” in there and realized that Vitaly was translating. The men all laughed.

  “My friend, the flight to Kazakhstan leaves as soon as we get to the airport,” Vitaly said.

  Clyde finally figured it out at that moment and felt stupid for not having figured it out before.

  The Forks County Airport served as home base for an Iowa Air National Guard unit that specialized in heavy transport. Its twelve-thousand-foot runway happened to be perfect for the unbelievably large Soviet-built transport planes known as Antonovs, and there were a couple of companies in Nishnabotna that occasionally used them. One was Nishnabotna Forge, ninety percent of which had gone out of business in the seventies, but which still operated a small production line in one corner of their empty, echoing plant. They made a type of steel tubing much prized by oil drillers in distant, godforsaken parts of the globe, who sporadically felt a frantic demand for the product. So the Forge would occasionally call in the Antonov, load it with steel tube, and send it off to the Brooks Range or to Central Asia. The Antonov would come larruping across the skies of eastern Iowa, triggering tornado sirens and spraying the corn with a fine mist of oily soot, kick out its giant landing gear—multiple long rows of fat black tires—and slam down on that big runway to pick up its load.