How did it happen, then? He’s never been too sure. (Into the day’s clothes: colorless conservative dress, appropriate for Pentagon dealings.) He can explain technical matters to people who don’t know enough to fully understand them. Administrators in LSR’s parent company, Pentagon people, congressional aides … people who need to have a clear idea of technical problems before they can make their own decisions. McPherson can do that. He’s not sure why, but it happens. He tries to explain, and they usually get it. Strange. His wife Lucy would laugh, perhaps angrily; she considers him awful at “communicating.” But that’s what’s gotten him where he is, and really it’s not funny; it means that he has somehow strayed out of the line of work where he might have enjoyed himself, been comfortable.

Half an hour to kill. He turns on the video wall’s news program. The war in Arabia is heating up; Bahrain is embroiled now, with U.S. Marines fighting the insurgents, which shows it’s serious. They’re finding the Hewlett-Packard IRHUD helmets are giving them a big advantage in night fighting, but the insurgents have some old Norwegian Kongsberg Vaapenfabrikk Penguin missiles that are wreaking havoc on the U.S. fleet offshore, all the aluminum in those old destroyers melting like plastic. And some Hughes Mavericks left over from the war in Thailand, still doing yeoman service in the desert hills … seems like most of the forty odd wars currently being fought are employing obsolete equipment, and the results, for democratic forces, are a real mess.

McPherson wanders past the bold rainbow of the immense bedspread to the window of his room. There before him stands the Hughes Tower, a hotel/restaurant/office complex, one of Crystal City’s newest. Crystal City is getting bigger every year, the defense industry towers looking like an architectural rendering of their business, steel and glass ICBMs densepacked and pointed at the sky. All the money that leaves the Pentagon is funneled through these towers, through the crystal city of weapons procurement.

It’s time to get over to the Pentagon. McPherson feels himself coming out of automatic pilot. Tuesday morning, Crystal City, USA: time to go offtrack, onto manual, into action.

Short taxi ride to the Pentagon. Into the security complex, out with his lapel badge. A lieutenant picks him up and they drive down the endless giant white corridors in a cart, dodging all the motor and foot traffic. They might as well be on a street. McPherson always gets a kick out of this blatant attempt to impress people. And it works, too, sure. The Pentagon may be old, but it’s still immense. Seems to him that the latest reorganization has taken notice of current fashion; service and division markers are painted in bright spectrum-bend colors that pulsate under the xenon bulbs, against all the white walls.