“Yeah, that’s the guy who killed Fisheye. I might have to tangle with him, too.”
Ng laughs. “What is your ultimate objective? As you know, we are all in this together, so you may share your thoughts with me.”
“I’d prefer a little more discretion in this case…”
“Too late for that, Hiro,” says another voice. Hiro turns around; it is Uncle Enzo, being ushered through the door by the receptionist—a striking Italian woman. Just a few paces behind him is a small Asian businessman and an Asian receptionist.
“I took the liberty of calling them in when you arrived,” Ng says, “so that we could have a powwow.”
“Pleasure,” Uncle Enzo says, bowing slightly to Hiro.
Hiro bows back. “I’m really sorry about the car, sir.”
“It’s forgotten,” Uncle Enzo says.
The small Asian man has now come into the room. Hiro finally recognizes him. It is the photo that is on the wall of every Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong in the world.
Introductions and bows all around. Suddenly, a number of extra chairs have materialized in the office, so everyone pulls one up. Ng comes out from behind his desk, and they sit in a circle.
“Let us cut to the chase, since I assume that your situation, Hiro, may be more precarious than ours,” Uncle Enzo says.
“You got that right, sir.”
“We would all like to know what the hell is going on,” Mr. Lee says. His English is almost devoid of a Chinese accent; clearly his cute, daffy public image is just a front.
“How much of this have you guys figured out so far?”
“Bits and pieces,” Uncle Enzo says. “How much have you figured out?”
“Almost all of it,” Hiro says. “Once I talk to Juanita, I’ll have the rest.”
“In that case, you are in possession of some very valuable intel,” Uncle Enzo says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a hypercard and hands it toward Hiro. It says
Hiro reaches out and takes the card.
Somewhere on earth, two computers swap bursts of electronic noise and the money gets transferred from the Mafia’s account to Hiro’s.
“You’ll take care of the split with Y.T.,” Uncle Enzo says.
Hiro nods. You bet I will.
Chapter Fifty-Six
“I’m here on the Raft looking for a piece of software—a piece of medicine to be specific—that was written five thousand years ago by a Sumerian personage named Enki, a neurolinguistic hacker.”
“What does that mean?” Mr. Lee says.
“It means a person who was capable of programming other people’s minds with verbal streams of data, known as namshubs.”
Ng is totally expressionless. He takes another drag on his cigarette, spouts the smoke up above his head in a geyser, watches it spread out against the ceiling. “What is the mechanism?”
“We’ve got two kinds of language in our heads. The kind we’re using now is acquired. It patterns our brains as we’re learning it. But there’s also a tongue that’s based in the deep structures of the brain, that everyone shares. These structures consist of basic neural circuits that have to exist in order to allow our brains to acquire higher languages.”
“Linguistic infrastructure,” Uncle Enzo says.
“Yeah. I guess ‘deep structure’ and ‘infrastructure’ mean the same thing. Anyway, we can access those parts of the brain under the right conditions. Glossolalia—speaking in tongues—is the output side of it, where the deep linguistic structures hook into our tongues and speak, bypassing all the higher, acquired languages. Everyone’s known that for some time.”
“You’re saying there’s an input side, too?” Ng says.
“Exactly. It works in reverse. Under the right conditions, your ears—or eyes—can tie into the deep structures, bypassing the higher language functions. Which is to say, someone who knows the right words can speak words, or show you visual symbols, that go past all your defenses and sink right into your brainstem. Like a cracker who breaks into a computer system, bypasses all the security precautions, and plugs himself into the core, enabling him to exert absolute control over the machine.”
“In that situation, the people who own the computer are helpless,” Ng says.
“Right. Because they access the machine at a higher level, which has now been overridden. In the same sense, once a neurolinguistic hacker plugs into the deep structures of our brain, we can’t get him out—because we can’t even control our own brain at such a basic level.”
“What does this have to do with a clay tablet on the Enterprise?” Mr. Lee says.