A Talent For The Invisible (v1.1)

by Ron Goulart

  “Oh, you mean Big Mac and his sidekicks,” said Angelica. “No, they can only see you when you’re visible. So far as we know, and NSO has a pretty good infallibility record, we’re the only ones so far who’ve got a way of seeing you invisible agents. Big Mac dropped something on you, didn’t he?”

  “A plastic gargoyle.”

  “What an age we live in. Gargoyles used to be made of stone.”

  “Stone ones do a better job of flattening you all right,” said Conger. “Do you know how Big Mac got on to me?”

  “AEF has tagged a couple of your RFA people in New Lisbon and vicinity. There could be a leak there, or they may have picked you up when you talked to Captain Delgado at the boxing matches.”

  “NSO has been tailing me, too?”

  “Now and again,” admitted the dark girl agent. “I didn’t follow you here, though. I arrived independently, pretending to be on the US embassy staff.” She tried a tentative smile on him. “Would you want to co-operate with me?”

  “On what?”

  Angelica laughed. “On this job, on the Sandman business,” she said.

  “NSO doesn’t care what sort of concessions we agents make, as long as we get results. I thought, since we’re probably going to keep on bumping into each other, we might as well pool information. It would be more efficient.” Conger asked, “Do you know who Sandman is?”

  “No. I imagine you don’t either.”

  “I was on my way to try a truth shot on the duke.”

  “Oh, he shouldn’t have more than one every four hours, at his age.”

  “You used something on him?”

  “An hour or so ago, while you were searching the villa. The duke wanted to pinch me and I led him to a secluded spot.”

  “Did he pinch you?”

  “Once before I got the truth stuff into him.”

  “What does he know?”

  “Nothing much,” said Angelica. “He loaned out his house on the night Sandman did the resurrection, loaned it for a fee. The duke is not politically involved in this. He wasn’t even here when the lab was set up.”

  “Where’s the lab now?”

  “They teleported everything in and out, by way of a bootleg system,” she said. “We’re trying to trace the progress of the stuff.”

  “Who paid the duke for the use of his upstairs?”

  “In this particular resurrection most of the money came from the Chinese, from the Agrarian Espionage Force. From them and a few of Colonel Cavala’s old army buddies who passed the hat.”

  “In this case,” repeated Conger. “Do you know of others?”

  “We know of five other Sandman revivals. Four of them radical political figures and one a liberal Norwegian poet.” The pretty girl smiled again at him. “Okay, I’ve shared some confidences with you. Do you want to co-operate and tell me what you know?” The pathways between the rows of tropical plants were paved with sea-colored mosaic tiles. Conger watched the tile, pacing a few yards away from the girl. “I don’t know any more than you do about Sandman,” he said finally. “As to working together, no. I like to work alone.”

  “Do you? That’ll please your boss, Geer.” Conger didn’t reply.

  Angelica walked on by him, halting beside a dwarf palm. “We’ll probably be meeting again in Rio. Think about my offer.”

  “Why Rio?”

  “Late yesterday a leftist guerrilla leader known as Machado was gunned down while on a supposedly secret visit to Rio,” replied the girl. “There are indications Sandman will be hired to resurrect Machado. So as soon as I finish up here I’m going to teleport over to Brazil. Want a lift to the teleport station?”

  “I don’t know where I’ll be going next.”

  “Probably Rio.” Angelica went to the glass door. “Well, be seeing you.”

  CHAPTER 7

  On the phone screen Geer, the boss of the Wild Talent Division, was eating jelly donuts and craning his neck. “Move aside, Jack. I haven’t been in Rio in five years and I want to get a good look.”

  Conger stepped away from the pixphone, leaned against the force screen guarding his 20th floor balcony. Rio de Janeiro was a blur of white marble, green foliage and mosaic tile far below. The afternoon air had a faintly chocolate color. “What meal are you supposed to be eating now?”

  “Lunch of course,” said Conger on the pix screen. “It’s high noon in Manhattan. I make it a practice always to dine right on time so as not to upset the delicate balance of my body.”

  Conger lifted a glass of fortified orange juice off the servotable nearby.

  “Anything more on this resurrected guerrilla?”

  Rubbing a gob of grape jelly back into his mouth from his cheek, Geer said, “I’ve hired that little yoohoo to do some more digging for you.”

  “Which little yoohoo?”

  “The little curly locked Portuguese yoohoo.”

  “Canguru. Is he in Brazil?”

  “He’d better be. I just vouchered his teleport bill,” said the boss. “He was due to hit Rio last night. I figure you can use somebody who knows the language, and he seems to be good at sniffing out these resurrected yoohoos. He should be reporting in to you shortly, Jake.”

  “Did you check on the man Cavala said Sandman reminded him of, Sir Thomas Anstey-Guthrie?”

  “He certainly would be qualified to be Sandman. Exceptionally gifted neobiologist, longtime head of the Limehouse Life Extension Research Center in England and onetime Whip MP,” said Geer. “Except …”

  “Except what?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “A lot of people who’re supposed to be dead are walking around these days.”

  “Actually,” said Geer, “Anstey-Guthrie is believed to be dead. What happened, he stepped into a teleport booth in Livermore, California, nearly two years ago and never showed up at the other end, which in this case was to be Barchester, England.”

  “So he could still be alive someplace.”

  “He could,” admitted the boss. “I’ve put a man to nose around further.”

  “Anything else out of New Lisbon?” Conger sat on an air float hassock near the phone stand.

  “We may have a lead on one of the yoohoos who dug up Colonel Cavala’s body,” said Geer, starting in on a fresh jelly donut. “We’ve got the monastery staked out, but so far no one suspicious looking has tried to contact Cavala. The sound monitors we’ve planted haven’t overheard anything much out of him except prayers and some opinions on liqueur making.”

  “What about the China II agents who tried to squash me with the gargoyle?”

  Geer make a growling sound, then waved a pink fax sheet at him. “Do you know what it costs to put a yoohoo plastic gargoyle back in place?”

  “No.”

  “$290,” said Geer. “In cash.”

  “How come we got stuck with the bill?”

  “My field man wasn’t discreet enough and the yoohoo US ambassador suggested RFA pick up the tab as a good will gesture,” said Geer. “I’ve got a gesture for him.”

  “What about Big Mac?”

  “He, and a partner or two, was in New Lisbon the same time as you,” said Geer, consulting a yellow memo. “There are still some AEF agents moping around New Lisbon, eyeing the monastery and so on. But Big Mac appears to have departed. I guess he may turn up in Rio de Janeiro, too.”

  After finishing his orange juice, Conger asked, “What does our National Security Office say?”

  “Nothing,” answered the boss.

  “Their girl seemed to be co-operative.”

  “The field is one thing. Around Washington and Manhattan it’s the code of the yoohoo which prevails.”

  “So NSO won’t even admit they have a way of beating our invisibility process.”

  Geer shook his wrinkled head. “I’ve been dictating memos and plaguing officials ever since you told me the girl agent could see you, Jake. NSO won’t officially admit anything,” he said. “We’ll probably have to hold a whole pot of h
earings and conferences to get anything out in the open.”

  “NSO people being able to see me is annoying,” said Conger. “I’m worried, though, about China II getting hold of a way to spot me.”

  “They haven’t,” the boss assured him. “There’s nothing to indicate that.”

  “Three days ago there was nothing to indicate NSO had a way either.”

  Geer poked the last bite of the last jelly donut into his mouth. “It’s not going to help your morale if you start having doubts about the fallibility of the Wild Talents Division, Jake. Remember, if you will, that within the bosom of WTD beats the intricate credo of all the brave and courageous generations of Yankee knowhow mingled with the blood shed in the hallowed …”

  “How about the pill I found where the lab had been?”

  Geer scowled, picking a small plyo envelope between his thumb and forefinger. “Are you sure you’re not getting balmy? It cost us $27 to teleport this here and it turns out to be one of those kelp pills you’re always chewing on.”

  “It is, huh?”

  “You must have a hole in your pocket,” said Geer, letting the pill envelope drop. “You ought …”

  Conger looked up and noticed two tiny feet coming down through a trap door in the floor of the balcony above. “Hold on a second,” he told the boss. His right hand went to the kit strapped to his side, where there was a small pistol. “I think my freelance spy is arriving. I’ll call you later.”

  As he dropped through the slightly muggy air Canguru said, “The elevators in this hotel are set for Brazilian Portuguese and not the real thing. The nitwit robot took me two floors up beyond you, senhor.” He landed wide-legged and grinning. “Como vai?”

  “Okay.” Conger went back into his suite. “Found out anything?”

  “NSO has some very lovely agents.” Canguru followed him, stopping in the middle of the large pale living room. “I see they’ve arranged your furniture all wrong.”

  “What lovely agent are you talking about?”

  “This girl was over in New Lisbon, too.” After frowning a few seconds Canguru decided to seat himself on a see-through sofa filled with turquoise water and bright tropical fish. “She’s staying at the Intellectual Ritz Hotel, using the name Angelica Abril.”

  Conger wandered around on the grass-green rug. “How about Machado the guerrilla?”

  The little blond spy was sitting with his knees wide apart, watching the tiny flickering fish beneath him. “Machado is alive again.”

  “Where did Sandman do it this time?”

  “I haven’t been able to learn that as yet,” said Canguru. “The way they run bribery in this country, it costs a lot more than in Portugal. I’ve spent almost $500 already.”

  “Where is Machado?”

  “Submitting these vouchers in code is a nitwit procedure,” said Canguru. “I risk life and limb and then RFA only pays on the 1st and 15th. The good thing about NSO, they pay every Tuesday and Thursday.” He watched a zebra-striped fish disappear beneath his crotch. “Of Machado’s whereabouts at this moment I’m not certain. However, I learned where he will be tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “Here in Rio,” replied the little spy. “At the inaugural ball.”

  Conger stopped pacing. “Who’s being inaugurated?”

  “No one. President Barco de Pesca is throwing the dance. Actually he was inaugurated over a year ago and it simply hasn’t been safe to hold a big formal affair until now. With Machado dead they figured some of the urban terror would slow.”

  “Machado’s not showing up simply to waltz.”

  Canguru dropped off the see-through sofa to kneel beside it. “They shouldn’t put this kind of fish—those orange spotted ones—in with these nitwits here. They’re natural born enemies,” he said. “As I gather it, Machado intends to pass his return to life off as a religious miracle. He intends to make a flamboyant public appearance and grab control of the government away from Barco de Pesca.”

  “Okay, I’ll attend the ball, invisible, and get to Machado before he can try anything. He may be able to lead us to Sandman.” Conger slumped into a pseudoglass chair filled with shooter-size gold marbles. He took two kelp pills. “NSO suspected Sandman would resurrect Machado. Didn’t they have agents watching the damn body?”

  After poking a tiny forefinger at a double-tailed fish, Canguru rose to face the WTD agent. “I’m glad you reminded me, senhor,” he said. “I learned all the NSO men on the around the clock watch of the disreputable funeral parlor swear no one came near the body, except a few courageous leftwing mourners. All the agents, and the secret police to boot, further swear that at no time did Machado’s corpse leave the simple pine box in which it reposed. Yet when rumors of his resurrection reached them late last night and they pried off the simple pine lid Machado was gone.”

  “I know that part,” said Conger. “RFA got an agent on to it about the time everybody realized Machado had come back to life.”

  “To my way of thinking,” observed Canguru, “Sandman has come up with a new and improved way to cloud men’s minds and flummox them. Obviously NSO agents are immunized against the more obvious hypnotics and reason-depressants. This Sandman, whoever he is, is very gifted.”

  “He’s tricky anyway.”

  Canguru asked him, “You sure you don’t want to attend the dance as your visible self?”

  “Yeah, I’m going unseen.”

  “I was going to offer you a few tips on ballroom dancing,” said Canguru.

  “Free of charge.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The presidential palace floated three hundred feet above the ground, held by columns of air. It was a circular building, an enormous silver donut, glistening up there in the dark.

  On the ground palace troops made an arm to arm circle around the area immediately beneath the floating palace. Guests were being scrutinized at three entry spots in the ring of troops. Butlers in crimson realsilk suits were requesting invitations, then inserting them in squat clearance machines to make sure they were authentic. From the butlers guests went up temporary ramps to a platform where they were frisked and scoped by special security robots.

  Conger had prepared himself in a public flower garden near President Barca de Pesca’s floating palace. He was now invisible. Invisible to everyone except National Security Office agents.

  He’d left Canguru crouched behind early tulips to watch approaching guests, through night binoculars, for the resurrected Machado.

  The fragile white-haired butler at the ramp Conger chose rubbed at his small pinkish eyes as Conger went by him. The gunmetal security robot paid him no heed. Conger had anticipated that. These were discarded US robots, used in Washington back at the end of the 20th Century. They weren’t sophisticated enough to detect him.

  All three guest ramps converged on an ascension chute of clear rose-tinted plastic. A high-ranking Martian cat man elbowed into Conger, blinked his narrow green eyes, and stepped into the chute. He went wooshing up toward the presidential ball, his orange fur standing on end.

  After him a lovely black princess from Third World Temporary Country #6 went shooting upward, holding down the short skirt of her formal gown.

  Conger waited at the arched chute entrance. When a lizard dowager turned on the threshold to disentangle her pearls from the sword handle of an Urbanian general, Conger leaped around her and made his ascent.

  Two hundred guests were already dancing to the music of a 19-piece silk-suited robot orchestra. The waltz was a craze in Rio at the moment and the robots were playing Strauss.

  Angelica Abril, the pretty NSO secret agent, came whirling by in the arms of a burly black man. It was Big Mac, the agent from China II who’d tried to hit Conger with a gargoyle.

  Noticing Conger, Angelica gave a brief wink.

  Conger thumbed his nose. He wished the girl wasn’t able to see him.

  And he didn’t much like the idea of her dancing with the AEF agent.

  Still, if y
ou were a visible spy you had to work under different rules, Angelica was wearing a short-skirted off the shoulder gown, looking very tan and smooth.

  Conger stopped watching her and worked his way invisibly around the ballroom. Being an invisible man in crowds was especially difficult. If more than a couple of people bumped into nothing it could cause surprise and screw you up.

  He leaped back suddenly to avoid a robot cart of champagne which was heading for one of the air palace’s balconies.

  The US ambassador to Brazil began to run alongside the low wheeled cart. He snatched two glasses and returned to the lizard duchess he’d been waltzing with. The ambassador toasted the scaly green woman in fluent Venusian. She grinned widely and replied, “God bless America!”

  Toward the center of the vast black dance floor a tight circle of eight people were waltzing. That would be President Barca de Pesca and his plainclothes security people.

  Conger noticed an obvious wig and false moustache waltz by. He followed, but it was only an aging Peruvian diplomat and not Machado in disguise.

  Something booted him in the knee and he spun to see Angelica pass again.

  When the waltz ended the robot orchestra leader, tugging at his white waistcoat, announced, “Now we will favor you with a medley of Brazilian folk dances.” He tapped his baton in the palm of his realistic hand and the mechanical orchestra began playing When The Saints Go Marching In.

  “Que! Quern! Por que!” shouted someone in the heart of the presidential cluster.

  “Take it easy, Senhor Presidente,” called the American ambassador. “I gimmicked your orchestra to give out with a little downhome American music. Didn’t think you’d mind. The duchess here has never heard any American jazz.”

  “Oh, of course,” said President Barco de Pesca. He was a man about the same height as Canguru, though substantially wider. He had chosen to wear his full uniform as Commander-in-Chief to his ball, including the high-peaked gold-trimmed hat. “I only cried out in surprise because I was prepared to indulge in some of my favorite dances, the rhythms of my people. The old venerable beat which is the true pulse of the humble but proud man in the street and …”