Neal Stephenson - Reamde

“What kind of money is this guy willing to accept?” Csongor asked Yuxia.

“He is willing to take our renminbi, ” Yuxia reassured him.

“Any other kind?” Csongor asked.

She asked the question and Csongor heard him say, “Dollars.”

The girl, seeing that there was nothing marvelous to look at in Csongor’s bag, had lost interest, pried the baby’s fingers loose from it, and backed away to make further observations. Ambling back toward Yuxia and the boatman, Csongor groped his way into one of the bag’s internal side pockets and pulled out the Ziploc bag containing Peter’s effects. He extracted and opened Peter’s wallet, which was made of ballistic nylon. Flipping it open, he observed what he took to be Peter’s state of Washington driver’s license, trapped beneath a window, and a number of cards and slips of paper stored in a fan of transparent plastic envelopes: some kind of insurance card, a voter’s registration card, a rectangle of white paper with several long strings of random letters, digits, and punctuation marks printed on it: passwords, probably. No photograph of Zula, which only confirmed certain uncharitable opinions that Csongor had been harboring about Peter since the moment they had met. Pockets with credit cards and debit cards. A billfold containing two American dollar bills and a great deal of some other, more colorful currency that Csongor did not immediately recognize: Canadian, he now saw. Very odd to be handling this carefully preserved relic of a dead man’s life in a completely different world, here on a beach in Luzon.

The conversation between Yuxia and the boatman had lapsed as the latter gazed into the billfold.

As long as he had the fellow’s attention, Csongor said to Yuxia, “We need to get to some kind of city where it would be possible to get a hotel room, get on the Internet, buy a bus ticket to Manila or something. How far away is the nearest city like that? Is it easier to go by boat or on land?” For they could hear occasional trucks storming down a road, a kilometer or two inland, raising clouds of brown dust that rose up from the jungle like heavy smoke.

“He’s not stupid,” Yuxia pointed out. “You know what he’s going to say.”

“Use any words you like,” Csongor returned, “as long as it gets us out of here.”

This at least gave Yuxia and the boatman something to talk about while Csongor opened the Ziploc bag that contained Zula’s stuff. Opening her wallet laid him open to a kind of shotgun blast of diverse emotions. Shame at his ungentlemanly behavior. Horror at the thought he might be rifling the possessions of a dead person. Intense curiosity about all aspects of Zula’s life. A piercing sense of loss followed by a resolve to get on with this and try to find her, supposing she was still alive. Trepidation that he wouldn’t find any money, then a ridiculous sense of gratitude when he discovered, commingled with Canadian bills in various denominations, several crisp new American twenties.

“There is a city south of here along the coast with a hotel where tourists go,” Yuxia announced.

“Internal Filipino tourists or—”

“He says they are all white men.”

“How long to get there?”

“On his boat, three hours in this weather. Or we can walk to the road and try to hitchhike.”

Marlon had rolled up to his feet and drawn closer to the conversation. He was covered with sand and grinning. Csongor exchanged looks with him and with Yuxia. There seemed to be a consensus that they should go by boat. So Csongor snapped a twenty out of Zula’s wallet, held it up in the air, and handed it to the boatman.

The boatman looked quite pleased, but: “He wants more,” Yuxia said, in a frozen voice that told Csongor he had already been outmaneuvered and outhaggled.

Csongor turned and looked back toward the wreck surrounded by boats, many of which were at least as seaworthy as this fellow’s. “Tell him he can have another when he gets us there,” he said. “And if he doesn’t like that, ask him what is going to happen if I wade out there waving twenties over my head.”

“Why are you paying with American money?” Marlon asked.

While Yuxia was translating, Csongor showed Marlon the empty bag. In response to Marlon’s shocked look, he nodded in the direction of Szélanya . “One of those people was a little too clever for me,” he admitted.

The boatman put up enough of an argument to save some face, then moved toward his vessel, making gestures to indicate that they were welcome to step aboard.

This boat was of appreciable size, the hull perhaps twelve meters long and a meter in breadth at its widest place, deeply vee-shaped in cross section, so that the planks that made up its hull rose up to either side of them like walls. It seemed an absolute rule in these parts that all watercraft, no matter what their size or purpose, must have double outriggers, and this was no exception; its outriggers were nothing more than skinny logs that, like most of the rest of the boat, were painted blue. Three more blue logs of comparable dimensions had been thrown crosswise athwart the hull, reaching far out to either side to support the outriggers. The boatman’s crew, consisting of a boy of perhaps twenty and another half that age, scampered around on the outriggers and the thwarts with the aplomb of tightrope walkers, smiling all the time; it was difficult to know whether this was their normal level of cheerfulness or a reaction to having been hired on favorable terms. They tended to various chores while the patriarch sat in the back and operated the motor. Marlon, Yuxia, and Csongor made themselves at home beneath a blue tarp awning stretched over the middle part. Now that the hard bargaining was in the past, their hosts became almost embarrassingly hospitable, the younger plying them with bottled water and brightly colored sugary drinks in flimsy plastic bottles, the older stoking up a small concrete brazier and using it to cook up a pot of rice.

The journey took closer to two hours than the projected three, in spite of the fact that most of it was done under sail. For as soon as they had motored clear of the shallows and of the crowd of boat surrounding Szélanya, the skipper killed the engine, and he and the boys raised some canvas. These were only a little more polished-looking than the ones that Csongor, Marlon, and Yuxia had improvised, but they seemed to work a good deal better and they soon had the boat skimming efficiently down the coast.

Csongor spent most of the journey replaying in his mind the encounter with the young man in the Celtics shirt, savoring all the different ways in which he had been stupid and cataloging the opportunities he had missed to turn the situation around and get their money back.

Marlon seemed to read his mind. Finally he grinned, reached out, and chucked Csongor on the shoulder. “It’s cool,” he said.

Csongor ought to have been old enough by now not to be affected by cool kids telling him that he was cool, but even so this had a powerful effect on his mood. “Really?” he said. He glanced at Yuxia, but she had slipped into sleep during the journey and was slumbering deeply, her lips slightly parted. She was, he realized, very beautiful, like a madonna in a church. When she was awake, her energy and the force of her personality shone through her face and made it difficult to know anything about what she really looked like, somewhat in the same way that you couldn’t see the glass envelope of a lightbulb when it was turned on. In some other universe he might have been attracted to her, but in this one she would forever be his kid sister.

He glanced back up to find Marlon watching him. During the voyage of Szélanya, Csongor thought he had observed some tender moments between Marlon and Yuxia; and he had wondered whether the two of them might end up involved romantically. But the ruthless environment in which they had been living had ruled out anything actually happening. Was Marlon hoping, now, that this would change? And if so, might he feel jealous when he saw Csongor gazing for a long time at the sleeping Yuxia? Csongor didn’t see anything of the sort in Marlon’s face. He, Csongor, had never been especially good at hiding his emotions, and he hoped that Marlon would be able to read him correctly.