Closing Time (Catch-22 2)

"And our first operational plane can go on alert in the year 2000 and give you something really to celebrate."

"What happens if we get in a nuclear war before then?"

"You won't have our product. You have to wait."

"Your bomber, then, is an instrument for peace?"

"Yes. And we also have a man we'll throw in," confided Milo, "who can produce heavy water for you internally."

"I want that man! At any price!"

"Absolutely, Dr. Teller?"

"Positively, Admiral Rickover."

"And our instrument for peace can be used to dump heavy bomb loads on cities too."

"We don't like to bomb civilians."

"Yes, we do. It's cost-effective. You can also arm our Shhhhh! with conventional bombs, for surprise attacks too. The big surprise will come when there's no nuclear explosion. You can use these against friendly nations, with no lasting radiation aftereffects. Will Strangelove do that?"

"What does Porter Lovejoy say?"

"Not guilty."

"I mean before his indictment."

"Buy both planes."

"Is there money for both?"

"It doesn't matter."

"I wouldn't want to tell the President that."

"We have a man wh

o will talk to the President," volunteered Milo. "His name is Yossarian."

"Yossarian? I've heard that name."

"He's a very famous artist, Bernie."

"Sure, I know his work," said General Bingam.

"This is a different Yossarian."

"Isn't it time for another recess?"

"I may need Yossarian," muttered Milo, with his palm sheltering his mouth, "to talk to Noodles Cook. And where the fuck is that chaplain?"

"They keep moving him around, sir," whispered Colonel Pickering. "We don't know where the fuck he is."

This ten-minute recess turned out to be a five-minute recess in which six MASSPOB guards paraded in with a mulberry birthday cake for General Bernard Bingam and the papers promoting him from a brigadier general to a major general. Bingam blew out the candles on his first try and asked jovially: "Is there anything more?"

"Yes! Definitely yes!" cried the stout man from the State Department.

"I'll say there is!" cried just as loudly the slim one from National Security.