He stopped at a doorway, pressing his face close to the glass to read the sign on it. It was the Institute, but he didn't intend to enter.
He stepped back from the door and squeezed behind a statue. He was as close to the director as he could expect to get without being observed by the spies on the staff. Telepathically he located the director's office and whispered, also telepathically. There was no reply.
It took him a minute to determine why—the director was asleep. It was better that way. The man wouldn't know he had come, taken the information and left. He stirred around in the sleeping mind, delicately so as not to awaken him. Then he had the information.
Gommaf was the man he wanted. Rains grinned to himself. Gommaf was the teleport, or knew who the teleport was—he couldn't be sure which. That was all he needed.
He wriggled out from behind the statue and walked quickly away. The fog wasn't as intense as it had been, though it slowed him considerably. Gowru must be getting tired. Streetlights were burning faintly overhead.
The fog changed color as he went along, an indiscreet slip. There was a slight brown tinge to it that wasn't altogether pleasant. He walked faster and his stomach felt upset.
Gowru was playing with the fog; that was the only interpretation Rains could place on it. Colors shifted through the spectrum. He wished the Hindu would stop it. A queasy, dirty violet didn't inspire confidence in his own digestive system.
In the midst of all that violet, a low-flying biliously pink cloud came toward him. He turned his head and gulped, but it didn't help appreciably. In the direction he now faced there was a vile green fog shape. It looked something like an appendix, but it was much larger.
He was wrong. Gowru Chandit was not playing—this was for keeps. A valuable man, no doubt of it, but he drank too fast and couldn't control his reactions.
As he looked, the appendix shape writhed slowly and glowed. Other fog forms began materializing convulsively around him, not all of them bearing morphological resemblance to human organs, but not necessarily of more pleasing appearance because of that. And the colors—Rains closed his eyes but the damnable fluorescence seemed to penetrate.