"Depends on the wind," said his guide, extending his thumb and forefinger and rubbing them together delicately. "Air's slippery stuff. It fades. I'll have to concentrate."
Rains sighed. He'd learned that when Gowru concentrated he had to be diluted. He set out a bottle....
Rains walked along the bank of the Ganges and glanced at his watch. An hour to sunset. The fog was due at any moment. The Institute was a few blocks away, but he had memorized a map of the area and would be able to get there no matter what happened.
He adjusted his tie in a mirror. No one behind him, but he didn't think they'd be that crude about it here. He practised shutting off his thoughts. His defense was adequate in America, but he wasn't sure how effective it would be against a first rate Indian mentalist.
He went into a curio shop and picked up a small bronze statue of a four-armed god. He was about to pay for it when the woman behind the counter shrieked. He glanced up at her. She was merely a few feet away, but he could scarcely see her through the thick black smoke that curled through the room.
"Fire!" screamed the woman and ran out.
He hurried to the door and then thought of the statue in his hands. It wouldn't do to get involved in a petty theft charge. He ran back to the counter and laid the money down. On second thought he left the statue there too and stumbled out of the shop.
The street was jammed. Storekeepers stood on the curb and shouted, and out of the buildings thick smoke came pouring. Rains sniffed. It looked like smoke but had no smell. He thought he knew what it was. This was the fog Gowru had said he would create.
It was a good fog but it was placed wrong—inside buildings instead of filling the free air overhead. It had the opposite effect from what he wanted. He had expected to approach the Institute through dim and shrouded streets. As it was, he had to elbow people into the gutter in order to move. Fire sirens wailed in a dozen directions and spotting copters took to the air and started circling around.
"Gowru!" he thought sharply, but either the distance was too great or his thoughts were swallowed up by the multitude around him. Contact was impossible.