“Immediately, Comrade Chairman,” his principal deputy replied for the rest of the meeting. At least that hadn’t changed!
CONDITIONS. HE THOUGHT, were excellent. Not too hot, not too cold. The Javits Center was right on the river, and that made for relatively high local humidity, and that was good also. He’d be inside, and so there was no concern about ultraviolet radiation harming the contents of his container. For the rest, the theory of what he was doing was not his concern; he’d been briefed on it and would do exactly what he’d been told. Whether or not it worked, well, that was in Allah’s hands, wasn’t it? The traveler got out of his cab and walked in.
He’d never been in so capacious a building, and there was a little disorientation after he got his visitor’s badge and program book, which showed a map of the interior. With that came an index that allowed him to see the location of various exhibits, and with a muted smile he decided that he had hours to accomplish his goal, and would spend the time looking at cars, just like everybody else.
There were lots of them, sparkling like jewels, some on turntables for those too lazy to walk around them, many with scantily clad women gesturing at them as though one might have sexual relations with them–the cars, that is, though some of the women might be possibilities, he thought, watching their faces with concealed amusement. He’d known intellectually that America made millions of cars, and in almost that many shapes and colors. It seemed hugely wasteful–what was a car, after all, except for a method of moving from one place to another, and in the
784
course of use they got damaged and dirty, and the show here was a lie in that it showed them as they would be for less time than it took to drive one home–even in America, as he’d seen in the drive here from his hotel–
But it was a pleasant experience even so. He would have thought of it as shopping, but this was not the souk which he connected with the process, not an alley full of small shops operated by merchants for whom bargaining was as important as the air. No, America was different. Here they prostituted women to sell things for a predetermined price. It wasn’t that he was personally against such use of women; the traveler was not married and had the usual carnal desires, but to proclaim it in this way attacked the puritanical modesty of his culture, and so while he never once looked away from the women standing by the cars, he was glad that none of them was from his part of the world.
All the makes and models. Cadillac had a huge display in the General Motors section. Ford had another area of its own for all of its trademark products. He wandered through the Chrysler section, and then off to the foreign makers. The Japanese section, he saw, was being avoided, doubtless as a result of the American conflict with that country–though above many of the displays were signs proclaiming MADE IN AMERICA BY AMERICANS! in three-meter letters to those few who seemed to care. Toyota, Nissan, and the rest would have a bad year, even the sporty Cressida, regardless of where they might be assembled. You could tell that by the lack of people in the area, and with that realization, his interest in Asian cars died. No, he decided, not around here.
European cars were profiting from Japan’s misfortune, he saw. Mercedes especially was drawing a huge crowd, especially a new model of their most expensive sports car, painted a glossy midnight black that reflected the overhead lighting like a piece of the clear desert sky. Along the way, the traveler picked up a brochure at every booth from a friendly manufacturer’s representative. These he tucked into his carry-on bag so as to make himself look like every other visitor. He found a food booth and got something to eat–it was a hot dog, and he didn’t worry
785
if it had pork in it or not; America wasn’t an Islamic country, after all, and he didn’t have to worry about such things. He spent a good deal of time looking at all-terrain vehicles, first wondering if they’d survive the primitive roads of Lebanon and Iran, and deciding that they probably would. One was based on a military type he’d seen before, and if he’d had a choice, it would have been that one, wide and powerful. He got the entire publicity package for that one, then leaned against a post so that he might read it. Sports cars were for the effete. This was something of substance. What a pity he’d never own one. He checked his watch. Early evening. More visitors were crowding in as work let out and people took the evening to indulge their fantasies. Perfect.
Along the way he’d noted the air conditioning. It would have been better to set his canister in the system itself, but he’d been briefed on that, too. The Legionnaire’s disease outbreak years before in Philadelphia had taught Americans about the need for keeping such systems clean; they often used chlorine to treat the condensate water which humidified the recirculating air, and chlorine would kill the virus as surely as a bullet killed a man. Looking up from the color-printed brochure, he noted the huge circular vents. Cool air descended from them, and washed invisibly along the floor. On being heated by the bodies in the room, the warm air would rise back into the returns and go through the system for cooling–and some degree of disinfection. So he had to pick a spot where the air flow would be his ally, not his enemy, and he considered that, standing there like an interested car shopper. He started wandering more, walking under some of the vents, feeling the gentle, cooling breeze with his skin, evaluating one and another and looking for a good spot to leave his canister. The latter was equally important. The spray period would last for about fifteen seconds. There would be a hissing sound–probably lost in the noise of the crowded building–and a brief fog. The cloud would turn invisible in just a few more seconds; the particulate matter was so small and, being as dense as the surrounding air, would become part of the ambient atmosphere and spread around randomly for at least thirty minutes, perhaps more, depend-
786
ing on the efficiency of the environmental systems in the center. He wanted to expose as many people as possible, consistent with those parameters, and with that renewed thought in his mind, he started wandering again.
It helped that, vast as the auto show was, it did not fill the Javits Center. Every exhibit was constructed of prefabricated parts like those in a business office, and behind many of those were large swatches of cloth, like vertical banners, whose only purpose was to break up the line of sight to empty portions of the building. They were easily accessible, the traveler saw. Nothing was fenced off. You simply ducked around an exhibit. He saw some people holding mini-meetings there, and some circulating maintenance personnel, but little else. The maintenance personnel were a potential problem, though. It wouldn’t do to have his canister picked up before it discharged. But such people would be on regular routines, wouldn’t they? It was just a matter of discerning the patterns of their movement. Of course. So, he thought, where is the best spot? The show would be open for several more hours. He wanted to pick a perfect place and time, but he’d been briefed not to worry too greatly about that. He took that advice to heart. Better to be covert. That was his primary mission.
The main entrance is. . . there. People entered and left through the same side of the building. Emergency exits were everywhere, all of them properly marked, but with alarm buzzers on them. At the entrance was a bank of air-conditioning vents to form a thermal barrier of sorts, and the returns were mainly in the center of the exhibit hall. So the air flow was designed to move inward from the periphery … and everyone had to come in and out the same way . . . how to make that work for him . . . ? A bank of rest rooms was on that side, with regular traffic back and forth–too dangerous; someone might see the can and pick it up and put it in a trash can. He walked lo the other side, fumbling with his program as he did so, bumping into people, and finding himself again at the edge of the General Motors section. Beyond that were Mercedes and BMW, all on the way to the returns, and there were lots of people in all three areas–plus the downward bloom of