A million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death and some of them even know it. — Thomas Pynchon

"The edge of evening … the long curve of people all wishing on the first star.... Always remember those men and women along the thousands of miles of land and sea. The true moment of shadow is the moment in which you see the point of light in the sky. The single point, and the Shadow that has just gathered you in its sweep ..."

Always remember.

The first star hangs between his feet.

Now —

It's a giant factory-state here, a City of the Future full of extrapolated 1930's swoop-facaded and balconied skyscrapers, lean chrome caryatids with bobbed hairdos, classy airships of all descriptions drifting in the boom and hush of the city abysses, golden lovelies sunning in roof gardens and turning to wave as you pass.

"You." A finger the size of a corncob, an inch from Slothrop's nose.

...

"Look," Slothrop's friend producing a kraft-paper envelope that even in the gloom Slothrop can tell is fat with American Army yellow-seal scrip, "I want you to hold this for me, till I ask for it back. It looks like Italo is going to get here before Tamara, and I'm not sure which one"

"At this rate, Tamara's gonna get here before tonight," Slothrop interjects in a Groucho Marx voice.

"Don't try to undermine my confidence in you," advises the Large One. "You're the man."