Document Ends.
Chapter 6
How You Keep A Secret
Hopper had announced on the flight down from Moffett that she would need to use a secure phone line, for reasons she did not disclose. Mackey felt a wave of suspicion rising at the suggestion, but Parsons and Ross took the request in stride, as if such a thing happened all the time. Parsons suggested since they were going to pass through the San Fernando Valley anyway, that they stop off at the Thermosphere Club for lunch. Mackey did his best to hide his excitement. Although he had failed to meet James Webb, lunch at the Thermosphere Club would be an experience no less incredible for a young engineer from the Electromagnetic Bureau.
Parsons took them west across the San Fernando Valley, towards the Postal Bureau Tower in the Simi Hills. Mackey had seen the tower from the instant they had entered the valley, its iconic structure visible in the haze like a painting. The columnar structure rose over 1,500 feet from the arid hills above Brandeis, like a beacon above the other office complexes scattered throughout the hills below. Once, the area had been a remote rocket test facility. But with the increase in manufacturing plants down in the lower valley, administrative offices had been moved up to the isolated hills where there was still room to build. The tower was positioned at the top of a massive, single-serving band of P-car tracks that extended from the valley up to the center of the West Coast offices for the Postal Bureau and many other Transportation agencies.
When the Postal Administration had decided they needed a Los Angeles office tower, they built one befitting the stature of the Administration at the height of its power. It had been the tallest building in the world when completed in 1955, and was the textbook example of the mid-1950s Federal style in every architecture classroom in the world. Some called it ‘the rocket,' others called it ‘the control tower,' but its iconic power derived not from its name, or even its world-record status, but from the fact it was the most visible seat of power for Technocratic Administrationism. Even after the end of the Postal Administration and the formation of the Department of Transportation, the building's power as hub of technological activity, and as symbol, remained.
The titular headquarters of the Postal Bureau and the Department of Transportation were in DC, and everyone knew that. But the offices of the Postmaster in DC were in a fairly nondescript office building in Federal Center, two buildings down from Mackey's own office. That was no tourist attraction. On the other hand, people all around the world knew the Southern California Postal Bureau Tower by sight.
It was not just a tower, but a complex, with an outer ring of offices rising about one-third of the total height of the central spire. Separated from the ring by a circular air shaft allowing light down into the interior of that outer ring was that central form, like a Technocratic scepter, extending upward into the blue. On the very top was a thick antenna mast, with colored lights that could be seen at night as far away as Pomona, and radio transmitters to which most of Southern California could tune, in order to receive a range of Postal programming and other relay electronic mail channels. The building was a shrouded dark blue, from the reflection of the sky upon the curved facades of window glass plating the construction's exterior circumference.
But while the visible portion was certainly most impressive, Mackey knew that the building also extended several hundred feet below the ground. The space below ground contained internal Bureau communication offices, with internal addresses prefixed with S. It was covered in one of Mackey's first Bureaucratic Literacy courses. If there was a Postal Bureau Section or Lab with an office in California, they more likely than not had a mailing address that's correspondence passed through the underside of that structure.
Parsons slowed the Vail-22 into a hover and brought it down onto the landing platform that doubled as the roof of the outer, lower ring level. It might have been the lower level by comparison to the tower, but the semi-circular ring of offices still rose nearly five hundred feet off the hills in its own right, before giving way and allowing the central tower to break skyward, free of all shackles and supports.
Exiting the aircraft, Mackey was delighted to once again be on solid ground, five hundred feet in the air or not. Thermal breezes swept across the open landing platform, bearing the warm scent of the California hills. The group crossed the skybridge into the tower, over the height of the air shaft between the structures. Down below, at the bottom of the glass and steel canyon, Mackey could make out a lush shaded garden, with a stream flowing through the architecturally oriented rocks.
The level into which they entered the tower was an open gallery several stories high—a second lobby, high in the air. The five ascended the escalators along the outer wall, eyeing the murals painted on the round outer walls segmented by curved plate glass windows looking out across the air shaft onto the landing platform. The pattern continued, murals and windows, the entire circumference of the three-hundred-foot-diameter tower.
"I knew this building was supposed to be big, but it's like nothing I ever imagined!" Thompson spoke in very genuine awe. Mackey could only nod in agreement.
The walls depicted various moments in the history of the Postal Bureau. The founding of Ben Franklin's Post Service in 1775 was there, as well as the formation of the Postal Administration in 1924. A mural in an Administrationist-Realist style depicted a squadron of Postal aircraft flying in the Second World War—PB-82 Double Mustangs, the same that Fred Mackey Sr. piloted. The most recent painting was of the Lunar Post Office landing in 1968, completed in a modern, abstract style.
In the center of the gallery was an interior column, half the diameter of the tower, that contained the elevators and other building systems. It too was painted in murals ringing this center structure. These depicted the various activities of the other Technological Administrations. Mackey caught sight of the Electromagnetic Bureau mural, painted in a 1950s Federal style, depicting a combination scene with era-appropriate Postal Administration aircraft conducting electronic warfare runs, and P-cars speeding to their destinations along the first autonomous tracks connecting Washington and New York. There was a smaller version of the same mural in Mackey's own office building back in DC, but he had to admit a small swell of pride seeing it rendered in full size here, in the actual Postal Bureau Tower.
At the top of the escalator, they walked onto the upper mezzanine to get to the elevators at the center of the tower. At the mezzanine level above the gallery, they could see into windows where Postal employees were working in their offices along the outside edge of the building at the top of the gallery. Like any other bureaucratic office, no doubt—but with the added pomp and circumstance that came with the fact that these workers knew they were part of the display. Their motions were just a bit more formal, the boxes of forms on the corners of desks stacked a bit more neatly, the chairs at a slightly more erect angle. Who knows what it was that those employees were working on in there. It might be no more than a lost property form processing office. But it looked magnificent, spotless, the very image of bureaucracy. It looked like the invisible gears, humming smoothly, each piece of the machine guided by the skilled hands of the bureaucrats sitting at these solid, steel desks within an edifice of technological progress.
They arrived at the express elevator to the Thermosphere Club, marked only with a small discreet sign, and a slightly less discreet security officer, his strong frame barely disguised by the uniform of an elevator attendant. The Club was, naturally, at the very top of the tower. Hopper, Ross, and Parsons all showed their passes, and with only a moment's murmured discussion between the attendant and the Assistant Secretary, received guest passes for Mackey and Thompson. The attendant called the elevator for them, they entered, and it immediately departed without needing any direction from its occupants.
If he had been excited before, now Mackey was a bit solemn, overwhelmed by his surroundings. The elevator was decorated in a much more subtle fashion, screened in wood
en lattice work, using a tessellation of geometric shapes that he guessed must have been from the insignia of various space missions. This elevator was, he reminded himself over and over, the private boundary of the Thermosphere Club. To join the Thermosphere Club, one had to have crossed the Karman Line: the official border to space. Hopper, Ross, and Parsons were members. Apparently at least a portion of the rumors about Hopper were true. Mackey thought about how to inquire in the most subtle way possible.
"Has it been long since you all were . . . up? In space?"
Parsons smiled, clearly glad to have the opportunity to brag. "Last was a proving test of micro-jets for orbital maneuvers. Three weeks in LEO, and a few days in lunar. How about you, Mary?"
"Couldn't tell you the number of trips, but it's been a year since my last time up. Just LEO, on a hardware test run, for inter-orbit telemetry navigation computers."
Thompson was still a bit overwhelmed by the luxurious design of the elevator, but Mackey was genuinely curious, as he looked to Hopper for her answer. She spoke quickly. "However long it's been since my last time up is never long enough, frankly. Once you've seen someone bleed out in micro-gravity, the whole excursion seems much less fantastic." She brushed the ornate wood screen with her fingers. "Luckily they grill a fantastic steak here, or I might not even come this close to the orbital fan club of my own volition."
"It's the flavor enhancers they developed for orbital cuisine that make it so good," Parsons enthused. "Flavors of soy, earthy tones—synthesized from seaweed, if I recall. Have you been to the Bathyal Club, Grace? I know it's mostly Coast Guard types, kind of a poor crowd. But whatever they do to the breathable atmosphere down there, it makes absinthe go wild in the veins. Highly recommended."
The elevator opened onto a small antechamber, a tall room with a square floor plan, walls rising nearly twenty feet to the ceiling. Inlaid into the wall was abstract technological art depicting arcing contrails, orbital insertion diagrams, the parabolas of ballistic trajectories, and the electrical hieroglyphics of circuit diagrams. Wall sconces of molded brass, shaped like the bells of rocket engines, illuminated the walls up and down. Depicted in intricate mosaics of tile and glass slivers, the images rose into the darkened heights of the chamber, transitioning from an almost classical blue and gold to a deep purple, and finally, in the shadows above, thin traces of white and red on black.
Seeing Mackey and Thompson gawking at the walls, Parsons pointed at a section three-fifths of the way to the ceiling, deep purple whorls with silver accents. "See that there? That's Mary's work. That's the ballistics equations for stage-separation of the first multiple-warhead, indirectly targetable ICBM."
They looked at Ross, who pointed at the opposite corner. "Actually that's it, over there—northeast corner. It was Top Secret at the time, but I guess it's just a piece of art now."
An attendant stood by a pair of bronze doors cast with relief sculptures of various space capsules and vehicles rising the full height of the chamber, wearing a suit of ultra-black astronautical polymer. Seeing their passes, the attendant opened the door immediately. Although the solid metal construction must have weighed multiple tons, it appeared to be hydraulically assisted, and swung open with the attendant's slightest touch.
"Assistant Secretary, Dr. Parsons, Miss Ross, gentlemen—lovely to have you all with us this afternoon."
Hopper and Ross nodded, and Parsons returned the greeting with his flashing smile. "David! Lovely to see you as well."
From the opened door sunlight flooded into the chamber, involuntarily narrowing Mackey's eyes. When his pupils adjusted, he was confronted with a massive dining room. Round tables covered in white linen stretched out to windows on three sides. Polished chrome accents embellished the ceiling light fixtures, the columns, and other fittings. The ceiling mosaic was composed of pure white tile, a slightly grey grout giving the only indication of the patterns contained within, like the plot of logarithmic graph paper, but twisted around the points of the lights recessed into the distant surface. To the left side of the entrance was the expansive bar, cabinets featuring detailed cedar scroll work, cut crystal glass doors showcasing the library of liquors within. The staff wore immaculate matte white uniforms of astronautical-grade material, cut to look like extravehicular space activity undersuits.
But all of this finery was overshadowed by the views to the south, east, and west, outside the wall-to-wall windows—the Los Angeles area in all of its expansive glory, from the factories of San Fernando to the downtown Administration Deco skyscrapers of Century City and Los Angeles across the Santa Monica Mountains, bookended by the Pacific Ocean to the right and the San Gabriel Mountains to the left. And throughout it all, the geographic features were overgrown with the vines of the expansive Southern California P-car arterial system, running from here to all the borders of the United States.
Mackey studied some sort of red light projections cast on the windows, that moved and changed by the second. They highlighted particular aircraft and ground vehicles moving through the vast metropolis. He had never seen a projection system like it. He watched as a red ring of light solidified around the Los Angeles Airport, quickly narrowing to a small oval. And, as if caused by the projection and not the other way around, a sub-orbital lifted off from the runway within the oval, quickly accelerating upwards as it made its way out to sea, tracked continuously on the window surface with the light. "Air Mail 6478," the indicator system printed on the glass in large computerized type, "LAX - ICN, ON TIME."
By the time Mackey gathered his wits, he noticed Parsons waving him over to a table near the window, as Ross and Thompson selected chairs. Hopper had disappeared, no doubt to use the secure phone. Mackey fell into the chair next to Thompson, across from Parsons and Ross, and accepted the gin that the waiter brought him at Parsons' request. He sipped the drink, looking around the room.
He knew a number of faces here, having seen their images on the television, let alone governmental circulars. There was Roger Mangrove, Secretary of the Mass Transit Bureau, eating a club sandwich. That man might well have the entire plan for every P-car track on the continent in his briefcase. On the other side of the room, Mackey saw Norbert Partridge and Herman Duncaster laughing over drinks. They were both Assistant Secretaries of the National Airspace Transit Bureau, in head of Investigations Section and Air Traffic Control Section, respectively. The safety of anyone who flew in an aircraft within the United States were in those men's hands, and they both appeared to be several cocktails in. If he had seen Secretary of Transportation Dreyer at the next table eating corn on the cob, Mackey couldn't have been surprised. It was a bit much to take in. Instead, he let his eyes return to the southern view out the window, the shock of being some 1,500 feet off the ground and watching the midday sun glint over the Pacific being somehow easier to comprehend.
"You all right there, Fred?" Parsons tasted his martini, amply. "You seem a bit piqued."
Mackey straightened his glasses. "It is a bit—" He stopped, and started again. "Bureaucracy, to me, has always been something that I've read about in an organizational chart and committed to memory, or dealt with by form or by phone. Even the great days of the Administrations, stories my dad told me from when he was flying with the Postal Bureau, it all seemed somehow…distant. I know the day to day, forms and procedure, paperwork, and process. I guess I had it in my head that all the mythos, all the pomp and circumstance, was just a story for history books."
Thompson and Ross were listening to him, seemingly quite interested in what he had to say, their own drinks in hand—Gene with a gin, and Mary now happy to accept a Manhattan. Mackey sipped his own drink, realizing how his words must sound to someone who had been within a stone's throw of the moon. "I know, I sound foolish. But I've been traveling with the Assistant Secretary since yesterday morning. You know what happened yesterday. And today I'm in the Thermosphere Club having drinks next to the people who make this country run.
It is startling to realize that it all really exists, when often it all just seems like a story made up so that there can be news on the radio in the morning."
Thompson nodded. "I never thought I would be here. A man like me, and in the Forest Service besides? Never in a million years."
Ross shook her head. "Don't let the fine china get to you. None of these people could wash a dish if they tried."
Parsons nodded, looking out over Los Angeles. "It's a touch of both, I suppose. It's both real and not real. It's superficial, and deep. You have to accept it as fact, and at the same time forget about it."
He held up his half-empty martini glass, by way of example. "All of this—our homes, our cars, the aircraft and the rockets, our telephones and electricity, and even a delicious orbital steak—we forget that it all comes from somewhere. There's a system behind it. That system is distant, remote, obscured, invisible perhaps. They are the systems behind the systems. We could dig into them, turn over the rocks, and go back through the service door. We just don't bother, because someone else does that for us. We stay comfortable. We focus on the plate, and ignore the kitchen. And thank goodness, because if we had to build every building we ever entered from scratch, produce every garment we ever wore, invent every idea we ever thought, we'd spend our entire existence in an exhausted state of shock.
"And frankly, a lot of it is not that interesting. You may love your P-car sensors, Fred. Just as I could spend all day fooling around with rockets, and I do. But to most people, it isn't important. And there's little reason it should be. We leave each task to the requisite expert, whether it is generating orbital insertions, or preparing a steak. There's just too much reality to take in, and so we have to reduce it to a flat image. But after staring at it for long enough, we forget it's an image. We think the image is reality. We forget how deep reality actually goes."
Orthogonal Procedures Page 11
