"This is a source of much scholarly argument."
"What did Lagos think? More to the point, what did Juanita think?"
"Nicolas Wyatt's radical interpretation of the Adam and Eve story supposes that it was, in fact, written as a political allegory by the deuteronomists."
"I thought they wrote the later books, not Genesis."
"True. But they were involved in compiling and editing the earlier books as well. For many years, it was assumed that Genesis was written sometime around 900 B.C. or even earlier - long before the advent of the deuteronomists. But more recent analysis of the vocabulary and content suggests that a great deal of editorial work - possibly even authorial work
- took place around the time of the Exile, when the deuteronomists held sway."
"So they may have rewritten an earlier Adam and Eve myth."
"They appear to have had ample opportunity. According to the interpretation of Hvidberg and, later, Wyatt, Adam in his garden is a parable for the king in his sanctuary, specifically King Hosea, who ruled the northern kingdom until it was conquered by Sargon II in 722 B.C."
"That's the conquest you mentioned earlier - the one that drove the deuteronomists southward toward Jerusalem."
"Exactly. Now 'Eden,' which can be understood simply as the Hebrew word for 'delight,' stands for the happy state in which the king existed prior to the conquest. The expulsion from Eden to the bitter lands to the east is a parable for the massive deportation of Israelites to Assyria following Sargon II's victory. According to this interpretation, the king was enticed away from the path, of righteousness by the cult of El, with its associated worship of Asherah - who is commonly associated with serpents, and whose symbol is a tree."
"And his association with Asherah somehow caused him to be conquered - so when the deuteronomists reached Jerusalem, they recast the Adam and Eve story as a warning to the leaders of the southern kingdom."
"Yes."
"And perhaps, because no one was listening to them, perhaps they invented the concept of good and evil in the process, as a hook."
"Hook?"
"Industry term. Then what happened? Did Sargon II try to conquer the southern kingdom also?"
"His successor, Sennacherib, did. King Hezekiah, who ruled the southern kingdom, prepared for the attack feverishly, making great improvements in the fortifications of Jerusalem, improving its supply of drinking water. He was also responsible for a far-reaching series of religious reforms, which he undertook under the direction of the deuteronomists."
"How did it work out?"
"The forces of Sennacherib surrounded Jerusalem. 'And that night the angel of the LORD went forth, and slew a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed…' 2 Kings 19:35-36."
"I'll bet he did. So let me get this straight: the deuteronomists, through Hezekiah, impose a policy of informational hygiene on Jerusalem and do some civil-engineering work - you said they worked on the water supply?"
"'They stopped all the springs and the brook that flowed through the land, saying, "'Why should the kings of Assyria come and find much water?"' 2 Chronicles 32:4. Then the Hebrews carved a tunnel seventeen hundred feet through solid rock to carry that water inside city walls."
"And then as soon as Sennacherib's soldiers came on the scene, they all dropped dead of what can only be understood as an extremely virulent disease, to which the people of Jerusalem were apparently immune. Hmm, interesting - I wonder what got into their water?"
Y.T. doesn't get down to Long Beach very much, but when she does, she will do just about anything to avoid the Sacrifice Zone. It's an abandoned shipyard the size of a small town. It sticks out into San Pedro Bay, where the older, nastier Burbclaves of the Basin - unplanned Burbclaves of tiny asbestos-shingled houses patrolled by beetle-browed Kampuchean men with pump shotguns - fade off into the foam-kissed beaches. Most of it's on the appropriately named Terminal Island, and since her plank doesn't run on the water, that means she can only get in or out by one access road.
Like all Sacrifice Zones, this one has a fence around it, with yellow metal signs wired to it every few yards. SACRIFICE ZONE
WARNING. The National Parks Service has
declared this area to be a National Sacrifice Zone.
The Sacrifice Zone Program was developed to
manage parcels of land whose clean-up cost
exceeds their total future economic value.
And like all Sacrifice Zone fences, this one has holes in it and is partially torn down in places. Young men blasted out of their minds on natural and artificial male hormones must have some place to do their idiotic coming-of-age rituals. They come in from Burbclaves all over the area in their four-wheel-drive trucks and tear across the open ground, slicing long curling gashes into the clay cap that was placed on the really bad parts to prevent windblown asbestos from blizzarding down over Disneyland.
Y.T. is oddly satisfied to know that these boys have never even dreamed of an all-terrain vehicle like Ng's motorized wheelchair. It veers off the paved road with no loss in speed -ride gets a little bumpy - and hits the chain-link fence as if it were a fog bank, plowing a hundred-foot section into the ground.
It is a clear night, and so the Sacrifice Zone glitters, an immense carpet of broken glass and shredded asbestos. A hundred feet away, some seagulls are tearing at the belly of a dead German shepherd lying on its back. There is a constant undulation of the ground that makes the shattered glass flash and twinkle; this is caused by vast, sparse migrations of rats. The deep computer-designed imprints of suburban boys' fat knobby tires paint giant runes on the clay, like the mystery figures in Peru that Y.T.'s mom learned about at the NeoAquarian Temple. Through the windows, Y.T. can hear occasional bursts of either firecrackers or gunfire.
She can also hear Ng making new, even stranger sounds with his mouth.
There is a built-in speaker system in this van - a stereo, though far be it from Ng to actually listen to any tunes. Y.T. can feel it turning on, can sense a nearly inaudible hiss coming from the speakers.
The van begins to creep forward across the Zone.
The inaudible hiss gathers itself up into a low electronic hum. It's not steady, it wavers up and down, staying pretty low, like Roadkill fooling around with his electric bass. Ng keeps changing the direction of the van, as though he's searching for something, and Y.T. gets the sense that the pitch of the hum is rising.
It's definitely rising, building up in the direction of a squeal. Ng snarls a command and the volume is reduced. He's driving very slowly now.
"It is possible that you might not have to buy any Snow Crash at all," he mumbles. "We may have found an unprotected stash."
"What is this totally irritating noise?"
"Bioelectronic sensor. Human cell membranes. Grown in vitro, which means in glass - in a test tube. One side is exposed to outside air, the other side is clean. When a foreign substance penetrates the cell membrane to the clean side, it's detected. The more foreign molecules penetrate, the higher the pitch of the sound."
"Like a Geiger counter?"
"Very much like a Geiger counter for cell-penetrating compounds," Ng says.
Like what? Y.T. wants to ask. But she doesn't.
Ng stops the van. He turns on some lights - very dim lights. That's how anal this guy is - he has gone to the trouble to install special dim lights in addition to all the bright ones.
They are looking into a sort of bowl, right at the foot of a major drum heap, that is strewn with litter. Most of the litter is empty beer cans. In the middle is a fire pit. Many tire tracks converge here.
"Ah, this is good," Ng says. "A place where the young men gather to take drugs."
Y.T. rolls her eyes at this display of tubularity. This must be the guy who writes all those antidrug pamphlets they get at school.
Like he's not getting a million gallons of drugs every second through all of those gross tubes.
"I don't see any signs of booby traps," Ng says. "Why don't you go out and see what kind of drug paraphernalia is out there."
She looks at him like, what did you say?