A Talent For The Invisible (v1.1) (3 page)

“No, senhor. The monastery is heavily guarded and well nigh impregnable. The thing is, being a religious order, the brothers don’t go in much for electronic guard stuff. Which is why I told RFA to get me an invisible man,” said Canguru. “In a while, when I find my nitwit electric pencil, I’ll draw you a map of all their fortifications.”

“How did you get in?”

“I had the assistance of a Mother Superior of my acquaintance,” said the curly headed little spy. “However, we can’t work the same dodge twice. Wait, I’m going to find that nitwit pencil right now.” He left the imitation rubber divan and began hobbling around the long wide suite. “Boy, fencing didn’t do me much good. Now I’ve developed a terrible limp.”

“Probably because you only have one shoe on,” suggested Conger. “Now what about the colonel, did you see him at the monastery?”

“You’re anticipating the punchline. Let me track down my shoe.”

“You set it on the aluminum table out in the foyer.”

“You’re very perceptive, senhor. Have you been an invisible man long?”

“What about the colonel?”

“It was there at the monastery of the San Joaquim Brothers that I saw him.” Canguru located his other shoe. “He was in the chapel, dressed as a brother himself and lighting a candle at the shrine of St. Norbert the Divine.”

“You certain?”

“Would I sell the RFA a false yarn for 1000 escudos? No. I’m absolutely sure I saw Cavala alive and well several days after his funeral.”

“Speaking of selling information,” said Conger. “Have you told anyone else about this?”

“You think I got my reputation as a master spy by double dealing?” He got his shoe back on his tiny foot, then stomped back toward Conger. “I told no one save your local RFA rep.”

“An AEF agent tried to drop a gargoyle on me on my way over here,” said Conger.

“A gargoyle?” Canguru blinked. “That’s very imaginative. Those Agrarian Espionage Force agents aren’t all nitwits.”

“If AEF wants to kill me,” said Conger, “it means China II must know something about why I’m here.”

“Sim, sim,”
muttered the little spy. “Yes. China II is cooling toward your country and they hate our dictator here. They supported Cavala, may even have been prepared to finance a coup. It would be to their advantage to have Cavala alive. Which gargoyle did they drop on you?”

“The one on the left hand parapet of the New Relocated Church of Our Lady of Fatima,” replied Conger. “It’s a homed scaly bastard with a face like this.” He made a brief gargoyle face.

Canguru chuckled. “I know which one you mean. It must weigh five hundred pounds.” He returned to the divan, bounced down on it. “You have a genuine gift for mimickry. A shame you have to spend so much of your time being invisible. How is that done exactly?”

“With a secret process.”

“Actually you don’t become truly invisible, do you?”

“It’s mostly an illusion, but it works. Within a range of a quarter mile or so,” said Conger. “Now you’d better draw me that floor plan of the Mizinga works.”

“If Cavala was really dead,” said Canguru, rising again to hunt for his pencil, “then it means we’re dealing with something fairly awesome. To raise the dead is no mean feat.”

“It’s a first rate stunt,” agreed Conger.

The black android bellhops were tap dancing in the lobby. One of them did a series of splits, while his associates clapped and chuckled. The android’s highly-polished right shoe pointed at a man Conger recognized.

It was the man with half a head of hair who’d teleported from New York to New Lisbon with him yesterday. The man was hunched in a yellow celluloid chair, pretending to read loose random pages of
Moby Dick
.

When he realized Conger had noticed him he blushed.

Conger had been striding toward the front exit. He was heading for the monastery of the San Joaquim Brothers this morning. “I wonder who this guy’s with,” Conger said to himself. “AEF, NSO or maybe even RFA.” He pivoted, walked into the hotel barbershop&gym.

Back in the lobby the bellhops were tap dancing up a stairway of piled luggage.

The robot head barber had been painted a glistening red and white. He looked like a fat barber pole. “
Bom dia,
senhor,” he said as he took hold of Conger by the arm. “Which means
dobry ráno
in your language.”

“That’s not my language.” Conger pulled free of the sweet-smelling machine.

“You’re not Czech? Then I’ll bet it’s Hungarian. Well,
jó reggel.
“

“And the same to you.” Conger walked on by a row of manicuring machines. “I’m in the mood for a steam bath.”

“Ah, yes,
fürdo
as you Hungarians say.”

“Exactly.” Conger kept moving toward the steamroom door.

“I pride myself, you see, on being able to spot a man’s native country at a glance,” continued the candy-striped robot. “New Lisbon is, as you may know, something of an international crossroads, senhor. So one has to . . .”

The half-bald man had cautiously crossed the barbershop threshold.

Pushing his fragments of
Moby Dick
down into the slash pockets of his tourist smock he sat down in front of the first manicure machine he came to. “Ouch,” he said after a few seconds.

The foyer of the steamroom was misty. A small android, speckled with beads of condensation, sat at a round rubber desk near the entrance doors to the dressing rooms. “
Bom dia,
senhor,” said the android. “Which means …”

“Jó reggel. I know.” He went by the seated android into the dressing rooms.

“Um momento,”
called the android. “There’s a fee of twenty escudos.”

Conger jogged down a row of unused lockers, stopped at a deserted spot, and became invisible. Unseen now, he went back the way he had come. The damp-skinned android, who’d left his desk to search for him, didn’t notice Conger at all.

Conger stopped just inside the foyer door. In about three minutes the door was opened by the chunky semi-bald man.

While the man was squinting into the blurred room Conger eased by him and went, invisibly, on his way.

The squirrel stopped watching him. It eased out of the hole in the oak tree and skittered, head down, along the trunk to the leafy ground of the forest. In chasing a twig, the dust-colored squirrel hopped over Conger’s right foot.

Conger nodded to himself. He was invisible now. He could still see himself but no one else, including animals, could. It had taken him nineteen months, working in the Wild Talent Division’s New England training school to acquire the knack. It was partially a mental control trick, adapted from an ancient Tibetan ritual by the late Vincent X.

Worth. The rest of it depended on the careful use of a complex body lotion which, among other things, gave off highly pervasive mind-clouding fumes.

Prepared now to assault the monastery, Conger left the wooded hills above the home of the San Joaquim Brothers. The monastery resembled a walled town. Covering something like twenty acres, it was surrounded by a high many-turreted wall of yellowish brown stone.

The main entrance was equipped with electronic sensors, which would probably note his passing through. According to the map Canguru had penciled for him, the rear entrances to the monastery grounds relied entirely on armed brothers.

Conger strode clear of the woods, cutting down through ankle-high grass. He moved along through a flat field which skirted one wall of the place, headed for the back side of the monastery. A bell in the chapel inside bonged out eleven, white doves flickered up into the clear blue morning.

In the orchards beyond the monastery walls tan-colored robots, about a dozen of them, were spraying the peach and apricot trees with nozzle guns fitted to their wrists. A wooden wagon, pulled by a cyborg mare, came rolling across the orchard. A long-armed robot on the flatbed truck was snaking up the empty spray containers the robot tree dusters discarded.

The invisibility process worked on mechanical men, too. Conger, unseen and unnoticed, walked to the slow rolling wagon and boosted himself up.

He sat in a spot where he was clear of the container gatherer.

Over at the nearest wooden gate a San Joaquim brother in a rough earth-brown cassock was pacing in the dust. He had a gleaming snubnose blaster rifle resting on his hip. He halted now, raised his cowl far back and stared at the bright orchards while he wiped the back of his hand across his forehead.

“Full load, full load,” the long-armed robot told himself. He stretched an arm toward the partially mechanical horse, flicked the animal’s tin ear.

The horse headed for the rear gate.

The monk scuffled over and swung the heavy wooden gate out and open.

The wagon, with Conger sitting invisibly on it, entered the monastery grounds. As the gate slammed shut Conger dropped to the roadway. The road cut through formal gardens, leading to several concentric circles of buildings a thousand feet away.

Off to Conger’s right three San Joaquim brothers were seated round a raw wood table among blossoming scarlet and gold flowers. None of the three was Colonel Cavala.

The eldest monk poured something from a beaker into a thimble-size glass, handing it to the brother next to him. “Well, what do you think, Brother Guilherme?”

Brother Guilherme, who was about forty three, took a careful sip.

“Yum,” he said, after sloshing the dark brown liquid in his mouth. “Yessir, Brother Joao, that’s the old original incomparable Mizinga flavor sure enough.”

Brother Joao tapped a ladle against the younger monk’s temple. “
Tonto,
that’s Coca Cola.”

“You could have fooled me.”

The third brother, a chubby red haired man, said, “He’s never going to make it as a tester, Brother Joao. He’s a loser in the tastebud department.”

“What about you, Brother Jorge,” demanded Guilherme. “You thought the lemonade left over from Brother Pedro’s mop party was Mizinga. Don’t go casting the first stone.”

“Brothers, brothers,” cautioned the old monk. “You both must pray for guidance. You must ask St. Norbert, the patron saint of taste, to send you more ability. Especially you, Brother Guilherme, who can’t tell Mizinga from Coca Cola.”

Brother Guilherme finished off his thimble of Coke. “How can one light candles, to St. Norbert, with that spurious monk Cavala always hanging around in the chapel. He gives me the heebie jeebies.”

“Now, now, brother. We must all of us learn to relate to the newly risen. For does not our blessed Lord promise that on a day not too distant all the dead will rise up and walk again?”

Giving a shiver, Brother Guilherme said, “I’m going to have one gigantic case of heebie jeebies when that day comes. Ugh.”

“Hey,” suggested the red haired brother, “let’s have a shot of the real Mizinga, Brother Joao. All this spooky talk makes my stomach feel funny.”

Leaving the taste testing group, Conger walked toward the monastery buildings. They were all of the same brindly stone as the walls, tile roofed with wrought iron bars guarding all the windows.

The chapel lay in the second ring of buildings. A robot gardener was crouched in the flower beds in front of it, touching up the imitation roses with a small bottle of red enamel.

There seemed to be no one in the cool shadowy chapel. Up at the front was a wide altar with religious statues at each side. To the right of St.

Joseph Conger noticed a door with a plaque. When he was nearer he read: Shrine of St. Norbert, Patron Saint of Taste & Author of “Quick Cooking With Wine,” “The Fun With Liqueur Cook Book,”
etc.

The thick door stood inches open. Conger gave it a slow push.

Kneeling in the small alcove room before another altar was a husky man of fifty, wearing the rough brown San Joaquim robe. It was Colonel Macaco Cavala. “How about the new mattress I’ve been praying for?” he was asking the mansize statue of the saint. “A fellow who’s been dead has to take especial care of himself.”

Conger put a hand into the kit strapped to his side. He drew out what he thought was truth serum, then noticed he’d gotten vitamin A&D capsules instead. He swallowed a couple, before getting out the serum and a silver injection bug from his kit.

He made his way invisibly across the shrine, slapped the serum-loaded bug against the back of Cavala’s thick neck.

“What kind of shrine are you running anyway, you let insects nibble on . . .” The resurrected colonel stopped, stiffened.

“Give me your name,” ordered Conger. He rested his invisible buttocks against the rail guarding the statue of the patron saint of taste.

Cavala’s dark eyes grew cloudy. “I am Macaco Jose Cavala, former colonel in the People’s Army of Portugal, an unfortunate recent victim of . . .”

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

The husky Cavala gave a dazed grin. “I was, I was, unseen senhor. What an experience that was, let me tell you. I’m sure you, whoever you might be, have preconceptions as to what death will actually be like. I know I surely did. Well, in the first place you don’t …”

“Who brought you back to life?”

“The Agrarian Espionage Force financed it, bless them,” answered the truth-drugged colonel. “After which, they saw to it I was brought here to bide my time in safety, relative safety. We don’t want to attempt a coup yet, or at least AEF doesn’t. They feel this isn’t the proper season for it. In Portugal summer is a better time for a coup d’état. I have to admit the coup attempted in New Lisbon a few weeks ago by some of my misguided rivals was a complete flopola. However, it seems to me what I have going for me is the miraculous …”

“Okay, the secret agents from China II picked up the bill,” cut in Conger. “Who did the actual job of bringing you back to life?”

“They call him Sandman.”

“Sandman?”

Cavala, becoming more lax, tipped over into the altar rail. His head bonged against the old dark wood twice before he slid down to lie on his face on the bottom most altar step. “I assume Sandman is a nickname, an ironic nickname,” he murmured. “Since, unlike the sandman of legend and lore, he brings not sleep but awakening. At least, so far …”

“Who is he?”