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A Talent For The
Invisible
Ron Goulart
COPYRIGHT © 1973, BY RON GOULART
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
CHAPTER 1
Robots were chasing him.
It was a clean warm morning, about 6:30 AM, in the late spring of the
year 2020 and Jake Conger was jogging along one of the high, wide,
plastic ramps which connected the towers of Manhattan. Conger was a
lean tan man of thirty one, wearing a one-piece running suit. The robots, a
pair of them, were roughly humanoid, cocoa-colored, and about fifty yards
behind him.
One of the brown robots had a pixphone screen mounted in his chest.
"Assignment," he called to Conger, narrowing the distance between them
to fifty feet.
Conger continued jogging along the lemon-yellow noryl plastic ramp.
He was over a thousand feet above the ground level of the city. The dozens
of other pastel-tinted pedestrian ramps above and below him made bright
cat's cradles in the warming May morning.
"Assignment," repeated the pixphone robot as he and his partner
caught up.
"So tell me," said Conger, still running.
The cocoa-brown robot gestured at a tufted air-float bench they were
passing. "Wouldn't you like to stop by the side of the ramp while we
confab."
"No," Conger told him. "I still have five miles to do."
 "How many miles do you run every day?"
"Ten."
The brown robot nodded. "That sounds very good. Running is supposed
to be splendid for your inner workings. Heart, lungs and similar mec . . ."
"What about the assignment?"
"Well, yes, all right." The robot matched his stride to Conger's. His
partner dropped a few yards behind, being full of data he couldn't run as
fast. "The Wild Talent Division of the United States Remedial Functions
Agency sent us to fetch you, Agent Conger. They have a highly secret and
vastly important job for you."
"This is supposed to be my layoff month."
"The boss specifically requested you."
"Why me?"
"You're the only invisible agent RFA has free and unassigned at the
moment."
"I was planning to take a hopper tour of Connecticut today. There's a
new seaweed restaurant in
Mystic I want to try." He ran silently for a few seconds. "Okay. I'll take
the job. What's the problem?"
"People are coming back to life."
Conger slowed his jogging pace some. "Huh?"
"Be better if I let the boss explain." He poked two cocoa fingers into the
finger holes in his side and the plate-size phone screen in his chest came
alive.
A little rumpled frazzled man of fifty showed on the picture screen. He
was wrapped in a tacky synth-fur bathrobe, slumped in the breakfast nook
of his Wild Talents Division office. He blinked at Conger with his faded
little eyes. "Yark," he said. "Why are you bouncing up and down, Jake?"
"I'm running," answered Conger. "Why are you spinning around and
around?"
Blinking again Geer, the WTD boss, replied, "I had my breakfast nook
designed to rotate so I'd always be facing a sunny window, remember?" He
made a yawning face, biting at air. "The dingus is a little out of whack and
keeps mistaking any bright object for the sun. Right now it's fascinated
with the silver pendulum on my wall clock across the office."
 Nodding, Conger asked, "Who's coming back to life?"
Geer ripped plyofilm off a self-heating waffleburger. "People who are
supposed to be dead."
"Speaking of that," said Conger. "Didn't you read the Surgeon General's
report on waffleburgers?"
"What's that yoohoo computer know about what it takes to wake me up
in the morning," said the rumpled Geer as he bit into his breakfast
sandwich. "Especially when I sleep in the office. I suppose I should give up
soyjava, too?"
"It won't kill you," said Conger. "What dead people?"
Geer sipped his cup of soyjava with an exaggerated slurp. The rotation
of his circular nook floor caused some of the grey-brown liquid to splash
up against his sunken cheeks. "This is a spooky one, Jake." He took
another slurp of the imitation coffee. "Even for the Wild Talents Division,
where everything tends to be spooky, this is extra odd. These dead people
seem to be coming back to life." He set aside his waffleburger to pick up a
tri-op photo. "You know who this yoohoo is?"
"It's hard to recognize him with syrup on his face."
Geer squinted at the portrait, moistened his thumb and wiped at it. "I
wish this was my layoff month. I'm tired of these business breakfasts. I've
already had a go-round with Agent Katzman this morning. He's the one
with the ability to walk through walls. Now he's developed a quirk."
"A quirk?" The lemon-yellow ramp made a sharp turn around the side
of a blue pseudoconcrete tower and Conger slowed a little.
"Lately he only gets halfway through the walls and then gets stuck," said
Geer. "He says it's because he has domestic troubles."
Conger leaned his head closer to the screen on the running robot's
chest. "That's Colonel Macaco Cavala, isn't it?"
"Who?"
"In the photo."
Geer scowled at the tri-op picture he was holding up. "Yes. Colonel
Macaco Cavala, the late Portuguese strongman."
"He's the guy who was going to overthrow the current dictator of
Portugal," said Conger.
"Yeah, that's why they killed him last month," said Geer, letting the
photo drop. It landed in his soyjava saucer.
 "I remember seeing it on the news. He was shot down on the streets of
New Lisbon by an unidentified sniper."
"Right," replied the boss. "You'll be talking to him."
"The unidentified sniper?"
"We'll give you his name and address," said Geer. "The data robot has
it. The yoohoo lives in New Lisbon someplace."
Conger glanced sideways at the pixphone screen. "Wait now, boss. Did
our Remedial Functions Agency have something to do with knocking off
the colonel?"
"No." Geer shook his frazzled head. "I checked with the yoohoos in the
head office in Washington. RFA is clean, for a change, in this one. But it is
not impossible that National Security Office knows something about it.
They never confide in us, those NSO bastards." The boss lifted the photo
out of his saucer. "Jake, somebody has seen Colonel Macaco Cavala alive
and walking around."
"CBS-NBC, Inc. saw him flat on his back in his coffin."
"It's perplexing," admitted the boss. "I want you to teleport to New
Lisbon at 11 this morning, Jake. This Colonel Cavala thing fits in with
some other rumors we've been hearing. Talk to this yoohoo that's
supposed to have sniped the damn colonel, then contact the guy who
swears he saw him alive not three days ago." Geer took another bite out of
his waffleburger. "You realize how important this may be, Jake. Politically
and, perhaps, to all mankind."
The phone robot reminded the boss. "Tell him why we need an invisible
agent, boss."
"Oh, yeah." Geer took one further bite, chewed, swallowed. "If this
yoohoo in New Lisbon saw the late colonel where he thinks he saw him you
may have to turn invisible to get yourself in there." The boss waved a sheet
of orange-colored fax paper. "We only have nineteen invisible agents now,
Jake, since Agent Busino lost the ability to make the lower part of his body
from the knees down invisible. It takes two long years to process an
invisible agent, as you well know. If only Vincent X. Worth hadn't had that
fatal hopper accident and . . ."
"I know," said Conger. Worth had been the quirky young scientist and
researcher who'd developed many of the methods for manufacturing Wild
Talent Division agents. He was only a couple years older than Conger and
the two of them had been pretty good casual friends. Worth's private
aircruiser had exploded six months ago while he was enroute to a WTD
 conference in the Philippines. "Okay, where has the colonel been seen?"
"You'll find out all about that when you get over to New Lisbon."
Conger said, "What happened to the notion this was my layoff month?"
"Jake, we've got an emergency situation here," explained the boss.
"Think of how important this may be to the future of United States foreign
policy and the prospect of a better life for all humanity. Think of all the
good men and true who've given their all for the Wild Talent Division.
Think of that ghostly echelon of good guys, which includes Marcus Jerico,
Donald E. Tannenbaum and the aforementioned Vincent X. Worth, cut
down in the very prime of life while they were unselfishly defending the
wonderful people and institutions of this, their own their native land.
Think, if you will, of the lonely bald eagle soaring . . ."
"Okay, okay," cut in Conger. "I'll take the damn job."
A single line of moisture zigzagged down the front of the pixphone oval.
The robot sniffled, rubbed at his vinyl eyeballs. "Excuse me, Agent Conger.
I'm programmed to be sentimental over patriotic speeches."
"That's okay." Conger took a plyochief from a slash pocket in his
running suit to wipe off the phone screen. "Anything else, boss?"
Geer thought, his sunken face wrinkling. "No, that yoohoo data robot I
sent will fill you in on the background, give you what names and addresses
we have. The only other thing I can think of is a word of warning."
"About what?"
"If the National Security Office sticks any of their agents on this same
problem, give them a wide berth and avoid them like the plague, Jake."
"I always do."
Geer was eating his breakfast sandwich again. "Aren't you winded yet?"
"Nope."
"Yark."
The aircab said, "Watch your step, sir."
Conger grabbed his all-purpose valise off the seat, then glanced out the
cab window. "You're six feet above the passenger ramp."
"Which is why I cautioned you to watch out, sir."
"Better get a little closer."
"Geeze," muttered the cab's control box. The hovering craft ratcheted,
snarled and bumped down to within six inches of the ramp leading into
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