A Talent For The Invisible (v1.1) (7 page)

“How did Geer find out about it?”

“
Sinto muito,
senhor.” The little spy locked his tiny hands over his waist, watching them. “I’m afraid I told him when I answered your phone this morning.”

Conger’s left eye narrowed. “How did you come to answer my phone?”

“It kept ringing,” said Canguru. “Your shower stall is equipped with a phone, you know. All that buzzing began to interfere with my singing, so I answered.”

“You took a shower in my shower?”

“The one in my room at the Ultimo Splendido Hotel doesn’t work right,” explained Canguru. “I can get only tepid water and maple syrup. What they must have done when they connected the …”

“You mentioned two messages. What’s the other one?”

In a much quieter voice than he had been using Canguru said, “I know where they revived Machado.”

“Sandman’s lab?”

“At least one of his temporary labs. I think you should be able to find out something by visiting the site.”

“Okay,” said Conger. “Wait for me down in the lobby.”

“I prefer the street. They keep the lobby way too chilly here,” said Canguru. “How long will you be?”

Conger said, “I don’t know.” He walked toward the door of Angelica’s bedroom.

The jungle was creeping higher up the giant dome which covered the town. Shaggy ropey vines, dark green, had crawled thirty feet up the curve of the pale yellow dome. Thin tendrils, rich with spadelike leaves, snaked and snarled among the vines. Wide flat scarlet flowers seemed splashed against the clear wall which protected The American Colony from the Brazilian jungle. Fist-size spiders jittered in and out of the intricacies of foliage. Multi-color birds fluttered down and then away, down and away.

The midday sun burned a crisp gold straight up. Under the dome the air was cool, smelling faintly of Midwest prairies and farmhouse kitchens.

Conger tossed one of his robot cameras on its feet, gave it an encouraging pat. “Go get a picture of that statue.”

The camera hopped to the statue, which consisted of three late 20th Century landcars mangled together and sprayed with puffed rice.

While the robot camera snapped, Conger looked around the Colony. He was visible, dressed in a three-piece tourist suit and a narrow brim pseudo-straw tourist hat. This town was several hundred miles inland from Rio, made up chiefly of the houses and shops of expatriate artists, writers and communicators from the United States.

According to Canguru, who had stayed behind in Rio de Janeiro, the lab used to revive Machado had been set up here. Nearly a hundred tourists were roaming the streets with Conger.

As far as he knew Angelica was in Rio, too. She hadn’t been angry when he told her he’d better start working alone again. She’d smiled quietly, said something about love and duty. The thing was, Conger missed the slim pretty girl. He was thinking about her now, when his mind should be on … what’s his name. Machado. On Machado and Sandman.

Whistling to his camera, Conger started walking for the studio of the artist he wanted to see.

At the corner a man with a thin dark moustache smiled at him. “You’re going to be very interested in my work,” he said. Behind him were a row of pleasant white cottages.

“Oh, so?” Conger bent to allow his camera to jump into his arms.

“I’ll save you a lot of time by explaining I’m the finest artist in the colony.”

From the opposite direction two middle-aged women in flowered tourist suits were approaching.

Conger halted beside the artist. “Well sir,” he said, “I want to get a look at everything, but I might as well start off with the best.”

The two women turned onto the path leading to one of the cottages.

When one of them reached out to turn the doorknob, the moustachioed artist called out, “Don’t touch, ladies.”

Freezing, the women both asked, “Are you Mr. Hovarth?”

“Yes, I am ladies. The one and only Hovarth.”

“Isn’t this your shop?”

“Nono, ladies,” explained Hovarth, “that’s one of my works of art. I’m the leading house artist in the Western Hemisphere. In fact, the only other rival I have in the whole world is Mok of China I and he works mainly in pagodas.” To Conger he said, “I smell a cash transaction here. See you later.”

Conger continued on. The first gallery in the next block was devoted to living tableaux. The leading man in the biggest pastoral was suffering from hay fever and kept dropping his sheep. Next came a shop devoted to laminated garbage, then a gallery offering giant gag cartoons and miniature billboards.

“See the invisible man!” shouted someone around the corner.

Slowing his pace, Conger turned the corner and discovered a gallery called Orlando’s Invisible Art Boutique. The shop looked to be empty of artworks, though fifteen tourists were inside browsing.

In the middle of this block was the place Canguru had told him about. It was a long thin two story building, with a gallery below and a loft studio above. On the one small ground level window was printed
Inza’s/Gadget
Art
.

The first small room of Inza Day-Lewis’ gallery was given over to what a dangling sign described as Responsive Paintings. The paintings were large oils. About a dozen of them hung round the egg-colored room.

“Hello, boob,” said a large portrait of a 19th Century American Cavalry officer. “What can I do you for?”

Conger ignored the painting, strolling on through the room. Most of the other paintings were Western scenes, roundups, buffalo hunts, roping contests.

“Oh, I get it,” said the responsive oil. “The old cold shoulder, huh. You probably go in for garbage art or maybe those godawful houses of Hovarth’s.”

The next room was filled with hand-painted appliances. There was no one here either. Stopping beside a Hawaiian scene vacuum cleaner, Conger, turned to look at the general. “Where’s Miss Day-Lewis?”

“How’s that again, jerko?”

Conger approached the painting again. “I’m looking for the girl who runs the place.”

A stream of salty liquid squirted out of the general’s decorations and into Conger’s right eye. “Ho ho,” responded the painting. “Right in the puss.”

Stepping back out of range, Conger said, “I like a picture with a sense of humor. How much?”

“You couldn’t afford it, clunk. I’m out of your class. Why don’t you settle for a waffle iron with views of Vermont in winter painted on it.”

“I’d like to talk it over with Miss Day-Lewis. Where is she?”

“Upwards,” said the general. “Mucking around in her atelier. She’s built like a couple of sacks of modeling compound that have been left out in the rain. Your best bet is to stick around down here and chew the fat with me, dumbo.”

Conger found the stairs and climbed up to the loft.

Inza Day-Lewis’ studio was bright and cluttered. Responsive paintings, with their inner workings in various stages of completion, leaned on easels and against walls, gutted appliances sprawled all over the realwood flooring, random gadgets were heaped in three separate mounds.

Spread out on the floor at the foot of the nearest easel was a fat girl in her late twenties. She lay on her back, breathing in slow dry breaths. A bright stain that wasn’t paint was spreading on the chest of her smock.

Conger knelt beside the dying girl. “Who?”

“You can’t,” rasped Inza, “you can’t … trust a Chinaman … I promised to keep quiet … but … some bastard from Am … America is coming … couldn’t trust … me …”

“Do you know where Sandman is?”

Now there was a pause between each breath in and each breath out “I know … I know where the Chinaman is going … I know …”

“Where?”

“They… theydon’t know I know… I wasn’t there … whentheytalked . . . but … butthey told the Indian … they …” The pause after the last breath out grew longer and longer. The girl sank into herself as her life faded out.

Conger stepped up and back.

The detatched handle of a heavy vacuum came swishing down to crack against the side of his head.

He answered one more question before he awoke. “I don’t know what she meant by the Indian,” Conger said as he opened his eyes. He was still in the dead girl’s studio, but the day had lengthened.

Jerry Ting, the China II agent, was crouched a few feet in front of him, smiling, his chubby fingers flicking over the contents of Conger’s kit.

“You’ve got to hand it to American ingenuity,” he said. “This truth stuff of yours works better than ours.”

From a flat on his back position Conger elbowed up until he was face to face with the smiling Chinese. Immediately behind Conger rose a man-high pile of discarded appliances. Far across the room sat Big Mac, a stungun resting on his knee and a blaster pistol further up on his lap.

“Next time I’ll leave you teetering,” Conger said to Ting.

“Oh, listen, Jake,” said the smiling Chinese, “I appreciate that. I admire a guy who can save a sworn enemy even after he’s tried to do away with his girl. You American spies tend to be sentimental. If you rated spies on a scale of 1 to 10 for sentimentality I’d have to …”

“Stop the horsecrap,” put in Big Mac. He had a deep voice which rattled in his throat as he spoke. “Give him another truth shot and let’s find out what else he knows before we skrag him.”

“The Agrarian Espionage Forces has its best people on this,” said Conger as he sat up and inched back toward the pile of undecorated appliances. “Does Sandman work exclusively for AEF?”

“He’s in it as a business,” replied Ting, smiling still. “AEF pays good, so he does a few jobs for us. But as I understand it he’s also worked for 1/2 Ethiopia, New Newfoundland …”

“Shut up, peckerhead,” said Big Mac from his wing chair. “He’s supposed to tell us things. That’s how an interrogation works.”

“You’ve met Sandman, huh?” Conger asked the Chinese.

Ting smiled more broadly, pressed a finger to his lips. “He gets cranky if I talk too much.”

“Jesus,” said the black agent. “Do I have to give this jerkoff his next shot myself?” He rose up out of his pseudowicker seat.

Conger went straight back on his buttocks into the pile of appliances.

The junk—robot waffle irons, singing tea kettles, automatic bread boxes, 10-speed bun warmers, etc.—came toppling forward onto him and the smiling AEF agent.

Diving, Conger grabbed his kit away from the Chinese. He sent himself rolling away from the tangle of mechanisms.

“Don’t move, wiseass,” ordered Big Mac.

Conger moved, caught up an easel and hurled it.

Big Mac’s blaster sizzled and an unfinished responsive painting, after crying “By jingo!”, crackled into ashes.

“Don’t kill him yet,” said Ting from under the scatter of metallic junk.

“I forgot what hand I had the stungun in.”

Conger was behind a high bookcase now, rubbing on the special lotion he needed to turn invisible.

“Get out from under that crud,” Big Mac told his Chinese partner, “so we can stalk that whackoff.”

In the nearest corner of the room was a kitchen area, partially screened by canvas flats with incomplete buffalo hunts painted on them. Conger ran for there.

Big Mac shot again.

The robot stove yelped and turned red hot, then sooty black.

“Mac, be careful,” cautioned Ting. “You used your blaster once again.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. Let me see. Left hand, stungun. Right hand, blaster. Okay, I got it straight,” said Big Mac. “Hey, asswipe, come out before I make another error and fry your jelly.”

Conger, probably because of the truth drug they’d shot into him, was having trouble bringing off the invisibility illusion. He gritted his teeth, made another try. “There,” he said to himself, “that’s got it.” He moved away from the kitchen area, then reached back and tipped over one of the buffalo screens.

Big Mac fired the stungun this time. It made a low ponging sound. The other buffalo canvas toppled.

By then Conger, unseen, was at the clutter of discarded appliances closest to the black agent. He selected a heavy stew pot, lifted it up and swung it at Big Mac’s skull.

“Hey, poltergeists,” said Ting, getting to his feet in time to see the pot three inches short of Big Mac’s head.

There was a thunk and Big Mac said, “Diddlysquat,” before slumping to his knees.

Conger bicycled backwards to avoid the toppling agent. Suddenly he fell over. He’d tripped on the body of the dead girl. When his spine hit the floor Conger had an odd dizzy feeling.

“Hey, there he is,” cried Ting. He scurried toward the collapsing Big Mac to borrow one of his guns.

Conger had turned visible. He didn’t wait to try for invisibility again.

Hopping up, he turned and ran.

He went down the loft stairs, jogged through the gallery.

Just short of the general he slowed, halted. There on the right hand wall was a responsive painting of a glum-looking Indian chief. “The Indian,” said Conger. He jerked the large portrait free of the wall, stowed it under his arm.

“If you’re going to thieve something,” remarked the general, “you ought to grab a picture with some class. Now I’ve never had anything against our red-skinned brothers. However …”

Conger was out and on the walkway. He slowed, trying to look relaxed, give the impression he’d bought the huge unwrapped Indian.

He was nearly to the next corner before Ting hit the street. The Chinese agent ran about ten feet, became aware of the twenty or so people sharing the walk and decelerated to a brisk stride. His smile returned and he even paused an instant to pat a little golden-haired boy in a guerilla suit.

At the corner Conger turned right and ran for half a block. No one had paid him much attention so far. There was a throbbing light strip immediately above him.
Artists & Writers’ Pub
the sign said, pointing into an alley. Conger went that way.

Overhead he heard a new sound, a hovering whine. He glanced up to see an aircruiser dropping down ahead of him, almost scrapping the plastic bricks on each side of the narrow alley.

A lyric poet and a muralist emerged from the pub. “Holy moley!” said the poet when he noticed the descending hopper.

Conger heard steps behind him and knew, without turning, that Ting had found the alley. The cruiser blocked him from going ahead.