A Talent For The Invisible (v1.1) (8 page)

“She has nice bone structure,” said the painter.

“No, no, much too thin,” said the poet. “I say, give me a Rubensesque woman every time. A Rubensesque woman, a loaf of sprouted-wheat bread, a flask of …”

“Come on and get in,” Angelica suggested to Conger. She had opened the left hand boarding door.

Conger waved goodbye to the hesitant Ting and squeezed around the ship to climb in. “Nice seeing you again.”

The hopper began rising. “I was going to come in after you in another few minutes. I figured you’d come up with a way to get out of the studio on your own, though. I don’t like to be too intrusive.”

On the control panel of the ship a monitor screen was mounted. It showed now Big Mac stumbling around the loft, rubbing at his head.

“NSO knew about Inza, too,” said Conger.

“Since about the time you did. One of our field men planted that scan bug in there early this morning. I got here after they’d killed her, too late to stop them,” said Angelica. “By the way, why are you carrying that big picture of a Navajo Indian?”

“I’m hoping he can tell us where to go next,” said Conger.

As the hopper skimmed the twilight jungle Conger fiddled with the huge painting he had swiped.

Angelica, who had set her aircruiser on an automatic course back to Rio, sat turned toward him with one slender hand resting on his shoulder.

“When I was watching that poor girl’s studio on the monitor, Jake; I could see you,” she said. “But that couldn’t be, at that distance, because I’m immune.”

“A good part of the time the invisibility trick doesn’t fool television gear,” said Conger, “or an assortment of other electronic devices. As the 21st Century progresses it gets tougher and tougher to be an invisible man.”

“Did you volunteer?”

Conger poked another section of the Indian painting’s frame. “Yeah, at the time it seemed like more fun than a desk job. You know how things look to you when you’re still in your twenties. And then I’d gotten to know Vince Worth.”

“He was killed, wasn’t he?”

After several seconds Conger answered, “I guess he was.”

“You’re not sure Worth is dead?”

“Well …” The ornate picture frame made a low clicking sound, the speech box behind the canvas began to talk.

“… seems like that’s redundant, Mac,” said the recorded voice of Jerry Ting.

“You’d get along a lot better in life, slopehead, if you didn’t always question orders,” said the black AEF agent.

“Still, Mac, AEF paid Sandman all that dough to bring Enzerto back to life. That wasn’t— what?—not more than five months ago. Now they want him dead again.”

“There’s always a lot of fluctuation in politics, clutchbutt. As of today they want him knocked off.”

“We could have saved a lot of money …”

“Soon as we finish up here in the colony we got orders to travel up to Central America, to Urbania, and finish off Enzerto,” said Big Mac. “Seems he’s become real friendly with the junta there, which is not good.”

“Okay by me, Mac. I was only …”

“Come on, buttwipe, we got to make another check of the streets. In case our invisible man or that beanpole broad show up.”

“She’s not so skinny, Mac. She’s sort of cute in an odd sort of way,” said Ting. “How are we going to see the …” The gallery door opened and closed. Only silence came out of the painting.

Setting it away behind him, Conger said, “That would be Avo Enzerto, the old agronomy professor who led the opposition to the junta. I didn’t know he was alive again.”

“Why do men keep saying I’m skinny?”

“I haven’t said that,” Conger told her. “They have different tastes in China II.”

“For my height I’m about the average weight. I don’t want to be any heavier.”

“Nobody wants a fat secret agent.”

After frowning a while longer, the pretty girl smiled. “Yes, NSO knew Enzerto was alive, although we didn’t hear about it until a week or so ago.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“Enzerto has sided in with the junta,” answered Angelica. “At least to the extent of working on an experimental food set up the junta is running. Running with considerable aid from us, from the United States government. If only those money people would be a little more curious. We might have been onto this Sandman thing months ago.”

“Whereabouts are the food experiments going on?”

“In northern Urbania, I think. They’ve got a series of dome farms out in a stretch of reclaimed swamp. The whole complex is known as Pharmz.”

“Catchy,” he said. A large dusk-colored bird flew across their path.

Conger watched it flap safely away into the oncoming night. “There should be a teleport station around here someplace. We can land there and get on to Urbania.”

“We?”

His eyes still on the diminishing bird, Conger said, “I’ve decided I like working with you.”

“It’s those hairbreadth rescues that impress you.” She leaned, kissed him once on the cheek.

“Why do you think Worth may not be dead?”

“He’s probably dead. The description of Sandman I got …”

“A tall gaunt man in his middle thirties. That would fit Vincent X. Worth, wouldn’t it?”

“Or Sir Thomas Anstey-Guthrie.”

“Or Omar Kavak.”

“Who added him to the list?”

“NSO. Kavak is another tall thin—in fact, some of his former colleagues at the Prague Life Cycle Study Center call him downright skinny—tall thin biologist. He disappeared during a foxhunt in Free Ireland #2, while chasing a robot fox. He could very well be Sandman, since his politics and abilities fit. He’s a better bet than Sir Thomas, we think.”

“Why?”

“There’s a pretty good possibility Sir Thomas is living in the Bahamas someplace under the name of Juan Tizol with a very zoftig ex-lab assistant of his. We’re investigating further.” Conger took the girl’s hand. “Vince was a health nut. He’s the one who got me started on jogging and health foods. This is a very small point, but when I searched the villa, the room Sandman has used as a lab, I found a kelp pill.” The pretty girl laughed. “A lot of people use those, Jake. Why at the New Lisbon teleport station you can get them out of a vending machine. A packet of kelp pills and a Portuguese fado all for one escudo.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” admitted Conger.

“Maybe,” suggested Angelica, “you’re hoping Worth is alive because you miss him.”

“I am awfully sentimental,” he said. “According to Jerry Ting.”

“He’s perceptive. When I first met you I thought you were cold and aloof.” She reached out and made adjustments to the controls. “There. That’ll get us to the closest teleport station.” Putting both her hands on his shoulders, she said, “But I think of you differently now.”

Conger took hold of her as the hopper banked gently to the left.

Conger wasn’t sure if the gnats and mosquitoes could see him or not.

Usually the complex body lotion which rendered him invisible also served as an insect repellent. The insects who inhabited the lush swamp surrounding the Pharmz complex seemed able to seek him out with no trouble.

He and Angelica had arrived in Urbania on the previous night. Urbania was a narrow, relatively new, country wedged between Nicaragua and Costa Rica and named after Pope Urban III.

Conger approached Pharmz invisible and alone. The dark girl National Security Office agent waited for him in a landcar at the edge of the swamp. It was midday, the air was hot and streaky.

Mammoth frogs, the size of bowling balls, harumphed in scummy ponds of green mossy algae. Two foot long orange lizards slithered over fallen logs. Insects hovered round Conger.

From ahead now came sound. A great chuffing, a low persistent binging, mismatched rattlings and scrapings.

Climbing over a rise, he saw the Pharmz complex bubbling up in front of him. Fifty or more large domes spread over a hundred acre clearing.

Each dome was as large as a two story building, each was tinted a different shade of blue or green. Two dozen human guards in one-piece all-purpose repellent suits patrolled the clear strip of land around the dome city, a few of them accompanied by cyborg police dogs.

Conger avoided the dogs, crossed onto the experimental farm ground near a lean drowsy guard.

Immediately to his right were the domes making the chuffing.

Stencilled on the walls, in both English and Spanish, was the designation
Leaf Protein Extraction Station
and then a number. After these domes came a row of them devoted to Intercropping. Then one, a quiet shade of underwater green, given over to Gossypol Extraction and a dome where anatoxin was removed from peanut oil.

Having obtained some background information on Avo Enzerto from Angelica, Conger knew the old scientist lived and worked in a dome set aside for Advanced Protein Research. After searching the Pharmz grounds for ten minutes, Conger located the APR dome. It sat almost in the swamp, with one of its covered ramps extending, like a giant drinking straw, out into a wide slimy swamp pool.

Enzerto was wandering around by himself in his lab apartment up under the ceiling of the big dome. He was a large hefty old man with prickly white whiskers. He wore a loose white lab smock over all-season pajamas and a flapping pair of Japanese slippers. He was clutching a bundle of large dark green leaves to his chest, muttering happily to himself. “A great day for science,” he said in Spanish. “A giant step ahead for protein, not to mention gourmet cooking. Ah, the junta’s going to love this!”

Conger sat in a tin bucket chair. “Professor Enzerto,” he said and became visible.

The large old scientist nodded at him. “Buenos dias, señor,” he said. “Do you realize what I’ve done this day?”

“Nope.”

“I’ve discovered a way to make skunk cabbage not only palatable but sweet-smelling,” Enzerto told him. “Wait until they get wind of this over in the leaf protein extraction crowd. You see, they have the notion, now that I’m fast approaching ninety, that the brain is going blooey. Not so! A man who’s devoted most of his life to protein—well, to protein and politics—such a man is not likely to have his brain go on the fritz, señor. Can I fix you a dish of skunk cabbage?”

“I just had lunch,” said Conger. “Professor, I’m from the United States. I’ve come to warn you.”

“Warn me? That’s a laugh, señor, the way you Americans insist on eating. It’s I who should warn you. Waffleburgers, jelly donuts …”

“The Agrarian Espionage Force is sending agents here to kill you.”

“Again?”

“It was the junta who did you in last time.”

“Quien sabe?”
sighed the old professor. He dropped the skunk cabbage on a long white table which had several chutes and tubes suspended over it. “When I was engaged with political matters somebody was always trying to assassinate me. I’ll tell you something. At your age a man thinks he can dabble in this and dabble in that. Time is not important to you yet. Dying taught me a great lesson. A man must have priorities. Once I came back to life I said to myself, ‘Avo, phooey on politics! You belong in a laboratory working among your leaves and weeds.’ So here I am and a great deal happier, though I know I let down the AEF and some of my other supporters.”

“The China II people think you’re too friendly with the junta,” Conger told him. “That you’ll give away information about Sandman.”

The old man chuckled. “I already have. What little I knew I told the junta long ago. Oh, except for a few particular facts.”

“Such as?”

“I felt obliged to keep to myself the name of the double agent who set up the resurrection originally. Things like that, which I also do not intend to pass on to you,” said Enzerto. “Who did you say you worked for?”

“I’m with the Wild Talent Division of the Remedial Functions Agency.”

“Ah, Wild Talents, yes. Which would explain your materializing out of nowhere. Invisibility must be fun. If I wasn’t single-mindedly dedicated to protein I might give invisibility a whirl. In my youth I was something of a voyeur and it’s always seemed to be invisibility would be exceptionally handy for …”

One of the chutes over the work table made a blipping sound. A clear plastic container dropped onto the table. “Hey, Avo,” said a metallic voice out of the chute, “wait until you taste this.”

Conger sat up. There was something familiar about the voice, distorted as it was.

Enzerto read the label on the container lid. “Jute Brittle Protein Candy. Ah, this is indeed a day for breakthroughs. We’ve been trying for this for months.” He thumbed the lid off, selected a chunk of the brown-green candy.

“Wait a second,” said Conger, rising.

The old professor bit into the chunk, chewing thoughtfully for a few seconds. “No, no, this still doesn’t make it. What can they be …” He pitched face forward to the floor.

“Big Mac,” said Conger, realizing finally whose voice had come out of the chute. He turned the professor over, put one arm behind his shoulders.

“Krist,” gasped Enzerto. “Krist with a K.”

“What?”

“The double …” The old man was dead.

Conger let Enzerto sink back to the lab floor.

From out of the food chute came a deep metallic laugh. “Hey, prof. How’d you like your candy?” It was Big Mac again.

Conger watched the chute for a few seconds. Then he made himself invisible and left the dome.

Geer bit a large chunk off the end of his beer-flavored popsicle. “Well, well, the prodigal agent,” he said, crunching ice. “Where the yoohoo are you?”

“St. Norbert,” said Conger. “The capital of Urbania.” Beyond and behind the pixphone table Angelica stood in front of a semi-automatic wardrobe cabinet undressing. Conger looked from her to the phone screen.

“I want some information.”

“You’re not the only one,” said the boss of the Wild Talent Division.

After another angry bite of popsicle he snatched up a sheaf of yellow and blue fax memos. “Tiefenbacher isn’t happy.”

“Tiefenbacher?”

“He’s the acting chief of RFA,” said Geer, “and hence my immediate superior.”

“I thought that was Sinkovec.”

“You’re losing touch with reality out there in yoohoo land, Jake. The senate rejected Sinkovec last week when they found out he’d been sending obscene code messages to some of the lady agents in RFA. Speaking of which, are you still shacked up with that NSO girl?” His gnarled hand rattled memos.