“I’m not.” He must be tired, to speak out like this! “You asked me how much the system will cost. I’ve told you. I’m not telling you how much our bid should be. That’s your decision. You can order us to make the system cheaper by downgrading the product, or you can keep the system the same and adjust the bid anyway. That’s your decision. But you can’t get me to tell you this system as designed will cost less than it does, because I won’t do it. My job is to tell you how much this system costs. I’ve done that. You can take it from there.”

So he has finally gotten McPherson to speak up! But it doesn’t make him any less angry, as he always imagined it would. In fact, he’s stung to the point that he forgets his persona. “Take that stuff and leave,” he says violently, and abruptly he goes to the window so that McPherson won’t see his face. Something—something in what McPherson has just said, perhaps—has given Lemon a fright, somehow, and it’s made him unaccountably furious. “Get out of here!”

McPherson leaves. Lemon heaves a sigh of relief, sits down and regains control of himself. That arrogant son of a bitch has put him on the spot again. The bid is too high, the system over-designed. But he can’t change that without endangering the bid from the technical point of view. You’ve got to balance quality and cost, but how to do that with a man like McPherson designing the thing? The man is crazy!

When he’s completely calm again he calls Hereford on the video link.

Hereford comes onscreen; he’s at his desk, before the window. Behind him is a fine view of New York harbor. They express pleasure at each other’s views, the usual opening between them.

Lemon hesitates, clears his throat nervously. He’s more than a little in awe of Donald Hereford, and he can’t help it. Lemon has driven himself all his life, and he’s risen at LSR very quickly indeed—about as fast as one can, he thinks. And yet Hereford is about his age, perhaps even a year or two younger, and there he is high in the complex power structure of Argo/Blessman, one of the biggest corporations in the world, sixtieth in the Fortune 500 the year before.… Lemon can’t really imagine how the man did it. Especially since he is by no means a monomaniac; on the contrary, he is very urbane, very cultured; he has Manhattan’s cultural world, perhaps the richest anywhere, at his fingertips, as he proves every time Lemon comes for a visit. Small galleries, the Met, theater on Broadway and off, the Philharmonic, dance … it’s admirable. In fact, Lemon finds it incredibly impressive.