A Talent For The Invisible (v1.1)

by Ron Goulart

  “How’d you get in?”

  Canguru grinned. “I have my ways,” he answered. “I hope I didn’t upset some far-ranging plan you had. It looked to me as though this nitwit commando was going to kill you.”

  “That he was,” said Conger. “Thanks for distracting him.” The little spy poked a toe into the slumbering lieutenant. “You want to question him?”

  “Yeah, he says he knows who Sandman is.” Conger reached for his kit.

  “Allow me,” offered Canguru. “I boosted this from an Armenian secret agent. I want to see how it works.” He stooped, tapping a tiny licorice-colored button to Krist’s temple. “Go ahead, ask him something.” Conger squatted beside the big man. “Give me your name.”

  “Krist, Klaus N.,” replied Krist, his eyes tight shut.

  “You’re working for Sandman.”

  “Yessir, I am.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Why, his name is Sir Thomas Anstey-Guthrie,” said Krist.

  Conger made an O with his mouth, grunting. “You sure?”

  “Yessir, I’m sure, bo. I work for the darn guy, don’t I? Krist is what they call an important liaison man between Sandman and his potential customers.”

  “Guthrie’s supposed to be dead.”

  “That there was merely a fakeout, bo. To leave him free to set up in business as Sandman.” Conger asked, “Where is he?”

  “Hard to say. He flits around a whole lot doing jobs. There have been mighty near seventeen resurrections, you know, since Sandman hung out his sign.”

  “Where’s his home base?”

  “You mean where is he when he’s not out working in the field?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Mexico,” said Lt. Krist.

  CHAPTER 16

  A simple cleanup mechanism was humming around the hotel room.

  Conger stepped around the squat mechanism, calling, “Angelica.”

  “Grump, grump,” said the cleanup robot.

  “Angelica,” repeated Conger.

  “Grump,” said the squat machine. It tapped the top of a pseudomarble coffee table with one of its several arms.

  There was a note on the table.

  The note said: Jake, I have the notion I’m fouling up your life and your career. Especially after hearing your boss go at you last night. Maybe I’m even fouling up my own life some. I want to think about things for awhile.

  So let’s go back to working solo. When this job is done we can get together again, if you want to. Maybe we’ll cross paths before then even. I love you I think. Be seeing you. Angelica.

  “Grump,” said the small robot, pointing at the note and then at the paper shredding hole on its top.

  “No, I’ll keep the letter,” said Conger. “I’m sentimental about things like this.” He folded the letter into a pocket, went scuffling around the suite.

  Angelica really was gone, though a trace of the scent she used still hung in the air of the bedroom.

  Conger sat on the newly made bed, listened to the robot humming and grumping out in the living room. “Damn,” he said.

  After a time Canguru’s voice sounded out there. “Why are you using this kind of mopup machine? They’re not nearly as efficient as they could be.”

  Conger returned to the living room. “Find out anything?”

  “Your door was standing open,” said the little blond spy. “Would you like me to fuss with the lock? They probably installed the wrong sort.”

  “I left it open,” said Conger, crossing over to close the door.

  “I’m sorry to hear Miss Abril has left,” said Canguru. “She seemed to have fewer flaws than most women.”

  “How did you know she’d left?”

  “Well, senhor,” said Canguru, “just as you have me working under you, I have people working under me. One of them reported Miss Abril departed four hours ago.”

  “Does your man know where she went?”

  “To the teleport station. He didn’t pursue the matter further. I can find out perhaps.”

  Conger shook his head. “Never mind,” he said. “Have you checked out the information we got from Klaus Krist?”

  “The health spa the lieutenant alluded to is called the Mentex Institute. It is located, as he told us, in Olvidados, Mexico. That’s a town roughly ten miles inland from Guaymas on the Gulf of California,” said Canguru.

  “Their motto is ‘Think yourself young!’ The clientele consists, as you might imagine, mostly of wealthy old nitwits.”

  “Who runs the place and who’s behind it?”

  “The man who fronts the Mentex operation is a Dr. Cazedessus. As to the owners, I still have an accountant tracing that down. Let’s say the ownership of the Mentex Institute is complicated. Meaning Sandman may well have a piece of it.”

  “Could this Cazedessus guy be Sir Thomas Anstey-Guthrie?”

  “Not unless Guthrie has thought himself old and fat. Dr. Cazedessus is nearly sixty and weighs two hundred pounds,” said Canguru. “However, the nitwit spa covers a good piece of land in a rural area and there are enough large buildings on the grounds to hide Guthrie and a laboratory or two.”

  “Okay,” said Conger. “We’ll go to Mexico now.”

  “You’re sure,” asked the little blond spy, “you don’t want to wait a little in case Miss Abril changes her mind, as women often do, and returns here?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The top of the laughing robot’s head exploded and a plume of sparkling flame shot up. “Welcome to Guaymas! Welcome to Mexico!” The multi-colored machine laughed again, went dancing around Conger on the twilight steps of the Guaymas teleport station. “Welcome to the fiesta!”

  Conger turned to Canguru. “I hadn’t expected a fiesta.”

  Taking a whack at a ceramic pig a second fire-spouting robot was dangling in front of him, the little spy said, “I just remembered. It’s the feast of St. Norbert. He’s the patron saint of …”

  “… of taste. I know.” Conger headed down the steps toward the pseudocobblestone street. “I visited his shrine, remember?”

  The street was lined with synthetic olive trees, each one strung with twists of light strip. A good hundred festively decorated robots danced and tumbled on the crowded walkways and in the streets, some giving off fireworks, some spewing out tinted water. Mariachi bands, both real and android, paraded through the crowds of tourists and locals. Far down the street a string of huge floral floats, one depicting St. Norbert in the act of sampling a keg of wine, rolled by slowly through the thickly peopled crossway.

  “Not enough cumin,” said Canguru. He’d bought a tamale on a stick from a vendor robot with a steaming chest full of them. The curly-haired spy took another bite of tamale. “And you boiled your soybeans too long. The best way to …”

  Conger caught him by the elbow, pulling him along. “Where can we rent a landcar to drive out to Olvidados?”

  “Around this next corner,” said the little spy. Then he suddenly stopped.

  “Come on, no more chatting with robots.”

  “Excuse me, I thought I recognized someone over beyond those girls doing the Mexican hat dance.”

  Conger looked, hoping to see Angelica. “Who?”

  “An AEF agent I ran into once in Greater Singapore, a nitwit named Pronzini. No, I don’t see him now.”

  “Angelica doesn’t seem to be in the area,” said Conger. “Neither do Big Mac and Jerry Ting.”

  “Remember, senhor, the best agents are the ones you don’t notice. Besides, we have an exclusive on this lead to the Mentex setup.”

  “Angelica went someplace, though.”

  “Perhaps on a false trail, a wild goose chase.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Though she’s too smart to be much conned.”

  Canguru pushed through the space between an overweight tourist and a maraca-shaking android street musician. “Down this way, senhor. There lies the place to rent a landcar.”

&nbs
p; Conger checked the rearview monitor and the sideview monitor on the car’s dash. “Nobody’s following us.”

  “We got a very good deal on this automobile,” said Canguru, his right hand out the window toying with the floral decorations.

  “It’s unobtrusive.”

  “Even though it is decked with nitwit flowers,” said Canguru. “We were lucky to get it at the height of the fiesta. As it is, if the bishop hadn’t stubbed his knee, we …”

  “You don’t stub your knee, you stub your toe.”

  “But he was walking about on his knees at the time, as a part of … turn off the road here.”

  Conger swung the car the bishop had intended to rent and drive in the parade that night.

  A half mile along the road to the town of Olvidados a huge float rumbled out of a field. It stopped a hundred feet in front of them and blocked their progress, a flatbed truck decorated with great piles of plyoflowers which spelled out Guaymas Chamber of Commerce.

  Conger fisted the brake button on the dash. The landcar swayed, squealed, shedding blossoms and streamers. “There’s another one behind us,” he said.

  A second large fiesta float, this one with a tableau of peons struggling against tyranny, had run out of the field to box in their car.

  Conger, rubbing on his invisibility lotion, said, “Stay here and try to stall them.” After a moment he became invisible. He opened his door, as narrowly as possible, and dived out into the roadway.

  “You nitwits have your parade in the wrong place,” called Canguru as he slid into the control seat.

  From under the front float crawled two men in one-piece worksuits.

  Each carried a stungun. Side by side, and in step, they approached the decorated landcar. The last of the day was fading away and a warm darkness filled the road and the sloping fields.

  “The bishop isn’t going to fancy this,” Canguru yelled to the approaching men. “He’s already blessed this vehicle. So if you nitwits fool around with it, you’re committing a mortal sin.”

  The two agents, one of whom was a lanky Chinese, walked by Conger, not noticing him at all.

  Conger went to the cab end of the float. Another man was sitting in there, drinking Mexican beer out of a plastic bubble. Conger swung silently up on the running board and stuck a stunbug against the man’s fat neck. The driver fell back, then over sideways.

  When Conger passed the landcar the two men were ordering Canguru out, the thin Chinese asking, “Where’s your sidekick?”

  “I’m alone,” insisted Canguru. “Except for the strong spiritual protection of the bishop of Guaymas.”

  “Stun him a little bit,” suggested the second agent.

  Conger found only one other man, a small bald black, in the vicinity of the peon float. He used a second stunbug from his kit on him, left him stretched out at the side of the road.

  He went back toward the landcar.

  The Chinese had Canguru out on the roadway, clutching at his cocoa-brown suit front. “I can keep stunning you and reviving you until you talk. How’d your friend get out of the car and away from us.”

  “Say, Benson,” suggested his companion, “do you think the other fellow might be that invisible agent Big Mac warned us to …” He raised a hand toward the spot on his neck where Conger had slapped the stunbug before he went tumbling down.

  The Chinese spun, firing his stungun in a circle. “It must be the invisible man.”

  Conger had ducked as the other man fell. He put a stunbug against the Chinese agent’s ankle.

  Becoming visible as soon as the second man hit the ground, Conger said, “These guys are AEF, huh?”

  “Look at the way they stitched the lapels on this nitwit suit,” said Canguru. “One of them is ripped nearly off after only a small amount of mild pummeling and tugging.” He sighed. “Yes, that Chinese there is the partner of the fellow I noticed back in Guaymas.”

  “He must have noticed you, too, and alerted these guys. They must be here to keep people away from Mentex and Sandman,” said Conger. “But apparently Big Mac and Ting aren’t in this part of Mexico.”

  “Nor Miss Abril,” added Canguru.

  Conger nodded, went to move the float which blocked their path.

  CHAPTER 18

  The old people sat cross-legged in the field, twenty scattered across the flat dusty half acre, illuminated by floating white light balls. Some were thin and sinewy and dry, others fat and blotchy pink. At the edge of the bright-lit field a huge chubby man in a pullover white robe lounged in a water-filled chair. He was a cyborg, his screwin right hand at the moment was a public address mike. “Once the thinking process contracts sufficiently into the self,” he was saying in a tinny voice, “the control of the body’s aging process is more nearly attainable. Let us therefore think inward, always inward.”

  Near the fat cyborg, who must be Dr. Cazedessus, a dark brittle old man giggled.

  “You’re not thinking in, Mr. Feldman,” warned the Mentex head.

  “Most sorry,” apologized old Feldman. “I keep thinking of bawdy stories I read in the college humor magazines of my youth.”

  “That will not make you one whit younger.”

  Conger, invisible once more, walked along the edge of the field. It was now growing on toward eleven PM and he’d been prowling the Mentex Institute grounds for over two hours. Passing by the young-thinking outdoor session, he entered one of the large warehouses at the far edge of the field.

  The air inside the giant room was chill, the light a dim grey. Cartons of food pouches, mountain spring water, dehydrated meat and instant brown gravy were stacked high throughout the warehouse.

  Near a tower of nearbeer cases Conger slowed and sniffed. For a second or two he thought it was the scent Angelica used. No, this was a stronger, more musky smell. Conger knelt, noticed a hairline crack running under the stacked cartons.

  “It’s funny Angelica doesn’t seem to be around at all,” he said to himself as he moved the cartons. Conger had expected to encounter the lovely dark girl again before now. “She always turned up before. In Portugal, in Brazil. Damn.”

  There was a trapdoor here in the floor. Taking an amplifier-bug out of his kit, Conger listened to the floor. Some distance off he heard conversation, but there was no one down there in the vicinity of the trapdoor. And there was no evidence of an alarm system.

  With careful invisible fingers Conger lifted the door. Below it dropped a ten foot flight of noryl plastic steps. The steps led to a palely illuminated tan corridor. Conger went down, closing the lid after him.

  The musk and flowers scent was stronger in the twisting corridor.

  From off to his right, a good two hundred feet away and around a bend, a girl said, “Ho hum.”

  “Stop your bloody nagging, Rose,” complained a thin British voice, slightly nasal.

  “How can I stop yawning?” asked Rose. “Yawning is a side effect of boredom.”

  “I told you to remain home in Barchester, did I not, Rose?”

  “Ho hum,” said Rose.

  The corridor led to a doorless underground apartment. The room Conger entered was big, a living room, and decorated in the late Victorian style of a century and a half ago. Thick brown draperies, heavy claw-footed furniture, a gleaming grand piano, many thick-set flower vases, bell jars and a dozen sad-faced ancestral paintings in intricate gold frames.

  Rose was a plump, pale white woman in her late twenties. She sat, wearing a floor-length lounging robe, at the grand piano. Up on the piano top rested a plate containing a slice of reconstituted cheesecake. She was poking at the cheesecake with a fork while noodling at the bass keys with her other hand.

  “Stop that bloody doodling,” suggested the tall thin man seated on a tufted loveseat.

  “You mean noodling,” corrected Rose. “Doodling is what I do afternoons in my studio instead of painting.”

  The tall thin man was Sir Thomas Anstey-Guthrie. He wore a suit of candy stripe pajamas. “You wouldn’t
be bored if you made some sort of an effort not to be, Rose.”

  “I don’t like the view here at all, Tommy,” said the chubby Rose. “I mean, I throw open my boudoir windows of a morning and am confronted with a vista of solid earth. It’s unsettling.”

  “I’m not all that keen on underground living myself, Rose,” admitted the scientist. “The pay is so awfully good, though. $300,000 a year plus a travel allowance. A good deal better than what I was pulling down with the Limehouse Center and I don’t have to make any bloody trips to Livermore and Cleveland.”

  “Livermore would be a relief after a year underground.” Rose brushed cheesecake crumbs off the white keys. “How much is $300,000 in pounds?”

  “About 120,000 at the current rate of exchange.”

  “For what you have to do, Tommy, I should think he’d pay you better. A lousy 120,000 pounds isn’t all that terrific.”

  Conger walked quietly closer to the loveseat.

  “The job itself is a breeze,” said Guthrie. “It’s your continuous bloody nagging which makes it unpleasant, Rose.”

  “I have the feeling,” said Rose, touching the tines of the fork to her large left breast, “that Sandman is going to leave you holding the bag one fine day.”

  Conger stopped still.

  “No, he won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Sandman gave me his word.”

  Conger’s unseen eyebrows lifted. Lt. Klaus Krist had told them Sir Thomas Anstey-Guthrie was Sandman.

  Rose said, “He didn’t put it in writing I’ll wager.”

  “Obviously not. You don’t have written documents in a business like ours.”

  “You don’t even know who he is, Tommy.”

  “No, not specifically,” said Guthrie. “However, I’ve had many conversations with Sandman via the phone and …”

  “He blacks out his side of the conversation.”

  “To protect his identity, yes.”

  “He has you running this clandestine resurrection way station, makes you do well over 60% of the resurrections in the field,” said Rose. “You take most of the risks and he pays you a mere 120,000 pounds.”