A Century of Progress Read Online Free PDF

good coffee.”
    “Sure, help yourself. I don’t want to be mysterious, really, Alan. I want to get on with the job. It’s just that there’s a right way and a wrong way to explain things.”
    “Sounds like I’m being prepared for a shocker.” He poured himself coffee, then judiciously measured in a little sugar. He’d go without cream this time. “Sounds foreign. Not that I’d necessarily mind. I’ve lived in a fair number of countries at one time and another.”
    “To me it would be foreign. But I think you’ll fit right in, Alan, with just a little preparation before you go.” A light tap sounded on one of the closed doors at the far end of the room, and Ginny hopped briskly off the table. “Excuse me, be right back.” Opening the door, she put her head out and murmured something to whoever was out there. Norlund couldn’t make out any of the words.
    Gazing at Ginny Butler’s back, he thought momentarily of shifting his position to where he might be able to see past her, discover who she was talking with. He decided not. Let them play their games. Instead he went back to drinking coffee, and studying the naggingly half-familiar photomural, while in the background he was aware of the tones of a male voice that spoke to Ginny from just outside the door. Again Norlund was haunted by a sense of cognition; deep in his memory a search was going on, some connection fell just short of being made . . .
    He heard the door close. In a moment Ginny was back at his side, gazing at him as if she expected something of him.
    He said: “You were going to tell me what country this is in.”
    She said decisively: “A far country indeed. But the city is Chicago.”
    He looked at her; he couldn’t believe that she had suddenly started talking total nonsense. But if it was logic that she was talking, it had to be the logic of a dream. Norlund cleared his throat. “I still don’t get it. I live in Chicago now. Whereabouts are these buildings in Chicago?”
    Ginny moved to stand beside the picture. “They were put up on Northerly Island, for the World’s Fair in the early Thirties. Maybe you can remember going to it as a boy. They called it A Century of Progress.”
    “Where they’re talking about having the new fair in Ninety-two.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Oh.” He shook his head. “But those buildings aren’t there now . On Northerly Island there’s the Planetarium, and a beach, and a small airfield. You said I was going in among them—?”
    “You are.”
    It was quiet in the room, except for the faint murmur of traffic from outside. “I repeat, I still don’t get it. You mean they’ve been—reconstructed somewhere? Or what?”
    “No, I don’t mean that.” Ginny was standing now at the huge photo’s right-hand edge. Her hand reached down, pointing. “I said ‘a far country’, remember, Alan? The name of it is printed down here.”
    Her voice was encouraging, but still Norlund knew fear, or something very like it. It was not an overpowering feeling, but it was deep. The woman who faced him was not playing games; she was as deeply serious as anyone Norlund had ever seen. This was no cultist’s pitch—or, if it was, there was a frightening intensity behind it.
    He leaned forward in his chair, trying to see what she was pointing to. There were symbols on the photo at her fingertip. The lettering must have been very small to start with, because even enlarged as it was now, Norlund had trouble reading the dark shapes against the poorly contrasting background of foliage in the picture.
    Norlund got up from his chair and moved closer. ” ‘A Century of Progress’ “, he read aloud, and once more knew the feeling of recognition. ” ‘Chicago, Summer—’ “
    Ginny’s fingernail, a youthful, red-polished instrument of fate, tapped inexorably at the photo-board. “Here, Alan. Here. You’re going here.”
    And just at her fingertip were four more symbols. Norlund was never sure, afterward, if he