Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon

“Ventilation not good?” Goto Dengo says. Whorehouse Shanghainese has not equipped him with certain technical terms like “ventilation,” so Wing has taught him the vocabulary.

Wing grimaces. “I want to finish tunnel. I do not want to sink more ventilation shaft. Waste of time!”

The only way to keep the workers at the rock face from suffocating is by sinking vertical air shafts from the surface down to the diagonal shaft at intervals. They have devoted as much effort to these as they have to the diagonal itself, and were hoping they'd never have to dig another.

“How much farther?” Goto Dengo asks, as Wing finishes another paroxysm. Wing looks thoughtfully at the ceiling. He has Golgotha mapped out in his head better than its designer does. “Fifty meter.”

The designer cannot help grinning. “Is that all? Excellent.”

“We go fast now,” Wing says proudly, his teeth gleaming for a moment in the lamplight. Then he seems to remember that he is a slave laborer in a death camp and the teeth disappear. “We can go faster if we dig in straight line.”

Wing is alluding to the fact that the diagonal to Lake Yamamoto:

is laid out in the blueprints like this. But Goto Dengo, without changing the blueprints, has ordered that it actually be dug like this:

These bends increase the length of the tunnel by quite a bit. Furthermore the rubble tends to pile up in the flatter western section and must be raked along by hand. The only people who know about the existence of these bends are him, Wing, and Wing's crew. The only person who understands the true reason for their existence is Goto Dengo.

“Do not dig in a straight line. Keep digging as I said.”

“Yes.”

“Also, you will need a new ventilation shaft.”

“More ventilation shaft! No…” Wing protests.

The ventilation shafts shown on the plans, awkward zig-zags and all, are bad enough.

But Goto Dengo has several times told Wing and his crew to begin work on some additional “ventilation shafts,” before changing his mind and telling them to abandon the work—with this result:

“These new ventilation shafts will be dug from the top down,” says Goto Dengo.

“No!” says Wing, still completely flabbergasted. This is utter madness in that if you dig a vertical shaft from the top downwards, you have to haul the rubble up out of the hole. If you do it the other way, the rubble falls down and can be easily disposed of.

“You will get new helpers. Filipino workers.”

Wing looks stunned. He is even more cut off from the world than Goto Dengo. He must infer the progress of the war from maddeningly oblique hints. He and his workers fit the crazily scattered evidence at their disposal into elaborate theories. These theories are all so wildly wrong that Goto Dengo would laugh out loud at them, if not for the fact that he is sympathetic. Neither he nor Captain Noda knew that MacArthur had landed on Leyte, or that the Imperial Navy had been crushed, until the general told them.

One thing that Wing and his men have got right is that Bundok employs imported labor in order to ensure secrecy. If any of the Chinese workers do manage to escape, they will find themselves on an island, far from home, among people who do not speak their language, and who do not especially like them. The fact that Filipino workers will soon be arriving gives them a lot to think about. They will be up all night whispering to each other, trying to reconstruct their theories.

“We don't need new workers. We are almost done,” Wing says, his pride hurt again.

Goto Dengo taps himself on both shoulders with both index fingers, suggesting epaulets. It takes Wing only an instant to realize that he's talking about the general, and then a profoundly conspiratorial look comes over his face and he takes half a step closer. “Orders,” Goto Dengo says. “We dig lots of ventilation shafts now.”

Wing was not a miner when he arrived at Bundok, but he is now. He is baffled. As he should be. “Ventilation shafts? To where?”

“To nowhere,” Goto Dengo says.

Wing's face is still blank. He thinks Goto Dengo's bad Shanghainese is preventing understanding. But Goto Dengo knows that Wing will figure it out soon, some night during the bad fretful moments that always come just before sleep.

And then he will lead the rebellion, and Lieutenant Mori's men will be ready for it; they will open fire with their mortars, they will detonate the mines, use the machine guns, sweeping across their carefully plotted interlocking fields of fire. None of them will survive.

Goto Dengo doesn't want that. So he reaches out and slaps Wing on the shoulder. “I will give you instructions. We will make a special shaft.” Then he turns around and leaves; he has surveying to do. He knows that Wing will put it all together in time to save himself.

Filipino prisoners arrive, in columns that have degenerated into ragged skeins, shuffling on bare feet, leaving a wet red trail up the road. They are prodded onwards by the boots and bayonets of Nipponese Army troops, who look almost as wretched. When Goto Dengo sees them staggering into the camp, he realizes that they must have been on their feet continuously since the order was given by the general, two days ago. The general promised five hundred new workers; slightly fewer than three hundred actually arrive, and from the fact that none of them is being carried on stretchers—a statistical impossibility, given their average physical condition—Goto Dengo assumes that the other two hundred must have stumbled or passed out en route, and been executed where they hit the ground.

Bundok is eerily well stocked with fuel and rations, and he sees to it that the prisoners and the Army troops alike are well fed, and given a day of rest.

Then he puts them to work. Goto Dengo has been commanding men long enough, now, that he picks out the good ones right away. There is a toothless, pop-eyed character named Rodolfo with iron-grey hair and a big cyst on his cheek, arms that are too long, hands like grappling hooks, and splay-toed feet that remind him of the natives he lived with on New Guinea. His eyes are no particular color—they seem to have been put together from shards of other people's eyes, scintillas of grey, blue, hazel, and black all sintered together. Rodolfo is self-conscious about his lack of teeth and always holds one of his sprawling, prehensile paws over his mouth when he speaks. Whenever Goto Dengo or another authority figure comes nearby, all of the young Filipino men avert their gaze and look significantly at Rodolfo, who steps forward, covers his mouth, and fixes his weird, alarming stare upon the visitor.

“Form your men into half a dozen squads and give each squad a name and a leader. Make sure each man knows the name of his squad and of his leader,” Goto Dengo says rather loudly. At least some of the other Filipinos must speak English. Then he bends closer and says quietly, “Keep a few of the best and strongest men for yourself.”

Rodolfo blinks, stiffens, steps back, removes his hand from his mouth and uses it to snap out a salute. His hand is like an awning that throws a shadow over his entire face and chest. It is obvious that he learned to salute from Americans. He turns on his heel.