A Century of Progress Read Online Free PDF Page A

couldn’t puzzle the picture out.
    Norlund glanced around at the empty room at the couple of silent typewriters. “Is your organization somewhat undermanned? Or aren’t they back from lunch yet?” Suddenly he was a skeptic again, feeling an urge to needle, to demonstrate independence. Any moment now, he thought, the fanatics are going to burst out of concealment and start teaching me the true path to salvation.
    Ginny had removed her raincoat and hung it in a small closet. Now she was busying herself around the coffee-maker. “We come and go. You’ll meet some of your co-workers later.” She turned her head to Norlund briefly. “I expect you’ll be able to recognize one of them.”
    “Oh?” But it appeared that no details were going to be provided just now. “All right, lady, you know how to keep me interested.” Norlund found his eyes kept coming back to the huge picture. Something about it nagged him, as if the scene it showed ought to have been familiar.
    He gave up on it for the time being and looked around at the room again, at the papers on a small nearby table. The top one looked like some kind of printout, with columns of incomprehensible numbers. In through the windows came the genteel murmur of traffic from the suburban residential street, invisible behind the summer screen of trees.
    “Inconspicuous,” Norlund pronounced. “Though not really secret. Is that the note you guys are striving for?”
    “All organizations have certain secrets.” Ginny came to set down a steaming styrofoam cup on the big table near his hand. “We do have some we consider vitally important, but we try not to work at it unnecessarily.”
    Then, with her other hand, she placed another object on the table for his inspection. Somewhat smaller than a banana, it was vaguely the same shape, dark, smooth, hard-looking, a near-cylinder with tapering ends and a light curve. On each end there were a couple of small flanges with holes in them, evidently for mounting. “These will be a part of the job you do for us—a large part. Go ahead, pick it up and look it over.”
    Norlund first took a sip of his coffee, which was hot and good. Then he picked up the so-far unnamed object. It was indeed hard and smooth, and moderately heavy. Metal? No, he decided, some unusual ceramic.
    He asked: “What is it?”
    Ginny had perched sideways on the big table now, swinging one foot lightly and sipping from her own styrofoam cup. The jeans and sweater showed her figure to good advantage. “It’s a kind of recording device. Think of what we’re doing as taking a kind of survey; your part of the job will be to distribute a number of objects, twenty or so, similar to this one, according to a plan that you’ll be given.”
    “A survey of what? What do they record?”
    “You don’t have to worry about that.”
    “Huh. So I’ll be driving around in that truck downstairs, distributing these?”
    “Yes.”
    He shook his head. “Forget what I just said about you guys trying to be inconspicuous.”
    “To distribute the devices properly, you’re going to need help. Either you or your partner will have to take certain readings on the truck’s electronic equipment, while the other person puts the devices in place.”
    Norlund drank coffee again. “First I’ve heard about a partner.”
    “You’re going to need one. It could be someone from here—it could, as a remote possibility, even be me. More likely it’ll be some local man that you hire when you get where you’re going.”
    “Or woman, I suppose?”
    Ginny’s smile returned faintly. “Anyone you hire locally for this particular job will almost certainly be a man.”
    “Let me guess. Saudi Arabia?”
    “Oh no.” She turned, directing his attention to the huge photo on the wall. “You’re going there, in among those buildings—you’ve been there before, actually. You used to live in that city.”
    “Mystery, mystery. Is it all right if I have another cup of this? You make