"Of course, Eugene, of course. Just give me some good sales copy so that we'll know what we are talking about when we talk to people about what you've been talking about to us today. Not much detail, or we might have trouble. Just a few glowing paragraphs of very hard sell, and maybe some drawings in color to give us an idea of what it's going to look like. They don't have to be accurate, just impressive. And we'll all move along as fast as we can. As fast as light, eh? And, Milo, there's one more troubling question I have to ask."
"Me too," said the fat man.
"I have one also," said Skinny.
"It's touchy, so I apologize beforehand. Will your planes work? Will they do the job you say they will? The future of the world may depend on it."
"Would I lie to you?" said Milo Minderbinder.
"When the future of the world may depend on it?" said ex-PFC Wintergreen. "I would sooner lie to my ex-wife."
"You've given me the assurances I need."
"General Bingam," said Wintergreen, with the pained solemnity of a man taking umbrage, "I understand what war is like. In World War II, I dug ditches in Colorado. I served overseas as a PFC. I sorted mail in the Mediterranean during the Normandy invasion. I was right there on D day, in my mailroom, I mean, and it was not much bigger than this room we're in today. I stuck my neck out with stolen Zippo cigarette lighters for our fighting men in Italy."
"I did that with eggs," said Milo.
"We don't have to be reminded of all that's at stake. No one in this room has a stronger awareness of my responsibilities or a deeper commitment to fulfill them."
"I'm sorry, sir," said General Bingam humbly.
"Unless it's you, General, or Mr. Minderbinder here. Or your colleagues at the table with you, sir. Jesus Christ, I knew those fucking bastards were going to want something," Wintergreen complained, when the two of them were out of the conference room.
Together they moved through the convoluted basement complex that teemed with men and women of ebullient demeanor hurrying briskly along on official business in mufti and uniform. The whole fucking bunch of them, Wintergreen noted in a subdued growl, seemed affluent and clean, aseptic, and too fucking self-assured. The women in uniform all seemed petite, except for those who were commissioned officers, and they loomed larger than life. And every fucking one of them, Wintergreen muttered with his eyes down guiltily, looked fishy, fishy.
Continuing toward the elevators, they passed a sign pointing off to the Department of Justice. In the next passageway was another directional arrow, this one black, leading to a shortcut to: he new National Military Cemetery. The public area of the new MASSPOB building, with its scintillating shopping center in the soaring atrium, was already the second most popular tourist attraction in the nation's capital; the first most popular was the newest war memorial. One needed special top-secret MASSPOB credentials to go higher and lower than the stacked-up promenades and open mezzanines with their plenitude of nouveau art deco newsstands, food counters, and souvenir shops and their celebrated sideshows, dioramas, and "virtual reality" shooting galleries, which had already excelled in international architectural competitions.
On their right in the basement, an iridescent red arrow like a flaming missile carried their eyes to a directional sign announcing: Sub-Basements A-Z The arrow angled downward suddenly to a closed metal door marked: EMERGENCY ENTRANCE KEEP OUT VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT This was guarded by two uniformed sentinels, who seemed stationed at the emergency entrance to keep people away. A large yellow letter S against a glossy background of black gave comforting reminder that a new old-fashioned bomb shelter had been installed for the convenience and protection of visitors and employees.
At the elevators were other guards, who would not talk even to each other. Inside the elevator was a TV monitor. Milo and Wintergreen did not speak or move, even when back upstairs in the main lobby of the real world, where tour guides were leading tour groups from tour buses parked beyond the revolving doors in the area reserved at the front entrance. They did not converse again until they were outside in a light spring drizzle and walking away from the august special-secret-projects building in which their meeting had just taken place.
"Wintergreen," whispered Milo finally, "will these planes of ours really work?"
"How the fuck should I know?"
"What will they look like?"
"I guess we have to find that out too."
"If the future of the world is going to depend on it," reasoned Milo, "I believe we ought to make this deal while the world is still here. Otherwise we might never get paid."
"We'll need some drawings. That fucking Strangelove."
"And some copy for a leaflet. Who can we get?"
"Yossarian?"
"He might object."
"Then fuck him," said Wintergreen. "Let him object. We'll ignore the fuck again. What the fuck! What the fuck fucking difference does it make if the fuck objects or not? We can ignore the fucking fuck again, can't we? Shit."
"I wish," said Milo, "you wouldn't swear so much in the nation's capital."
"Nobody but you can hear me."
Milo looked hesitant. The gentle sun shower sprinkled raindrops around him through a prismatic haze that circled his brow like a wreath. "Yossarian has been objecting too much again lately. I could murder my son for telling him it was a bomber."
"Don't murder your son."
"I'd like to get some second-rate hack with a good position in government who's not too scrupulous when it comes to making money."
"Noodles Cook?"
"Noodles Cook is who I had in mind."
"Noodles Cook is much too big for that stuff now. And we'd need Yossarian to make the contact."
"I worry about Yossarian." Milo was brooding. "I'm not sure I trust him. I'm afraid he's still honest."
BOOK THREE
7 ACACAMMA
Yossarian went crosstown by taxi to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the monthly meeting of ACACAMMA, arriving in time for the reading of an anonymous proposal for the creation of a deconstruction fund to reduce the museum from the farcical dimensions to which it had now grown preposterously. He heard the motion ruled out of order, seeing Olivia Maxon turn to fix her glowing black eyes upon him severely while he was turning to gaze with a suppressed smile at Frances Beach, who raised her eyebrows with admiring inquiry at Patrick Beach, who was looking down at his fingernails and paying no attention to Christopher Maxon, who, all jowls and chortles beside him, rolled an imaginary cigar between his fingers, wet its imaginary tip, relished the imagined fragrance he inhaled, inserted the imaginary cigar into a mouth that was real, and puffed himself deeply into a soporific delirium.
ACACAMMA, the select Adjunct Committee for the Advancement of Cultural Activities at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was an exclusive body of which only thirty or forty of the seventy or eighty members had come that day to deal with the same thorny question: if and how to increase revenues from the utilization of the premises for social events like weddings, bridal showers, bridge classes, fashion shows, and birthday parties, or whether to discontinue those incongruous ceremonies altogether as crass.
The potent need as always was for money.
Introduced and tabled for more comprehensive discussion at future meetings were such topics as the art of fund-raising, the art of the deal, the artistry of publicity, the art of social climbing, the art of fashion designing, the art of the costume, the art of catering, and the art of conducting without dissension and bringing to a close on time a meeting lasting two hours that was pleasant, uneventful, unsurprising, and unnecessary.
What dissonance appeared was managed neatly.