A Talent For The Invisible (v1.1) by Ron Goulart Read Free Book Online Page A

them in squat clearance machines to make sure they were authentic. From the butlers guests went up temporary ramps to a platform where they were frisked and scoped by special security robots.
    Conger had prepared himself in a public flower garden near President Barca de Pesca’s floating palace. He was now invisible. Invisible to everyone except National Security Office agents.
    He’d left Canguru crouched behind early tulips to watch approaching guests, through night binoculars, for the resurrected Machado.
    The fragile white-haired butler at the ramp Conger chose rubbed at his small pinkish eyes as Conger went by him. The gunmetal security robot paid him no heed. Conger had anticipated that. These were discarded US robots, used in Washington back at the end of the 20th Century. They weren’t sophisticated enough to detect him.
    All three guest ramps converged on an ascension chute of clear rose-tinted plastic. A high-ranking Martian cat man elbowed into Conger, blinked his narrow green eyes, and stepped into the chute. He went wooshing up toward the presidential ball, his orange fur standing on end.
    After him a lovely black princess from Third World Temporary Country #6 went shooting upward, holding down the short skirt of her formal gown.
    Conger waited at the arched chute entrance. When a lizard dowager turned on the threshold to disentangle her pearls from the sword handle of an Urbanian general, Conger leaped around her and made his ascent.
    Two hundred guests were already dancing to the music of a 19-piece silk-suited robot orchestra. The waltz was a craze in Rio at the moment and the robots were playing Strauss.
    Angelica Abril, the pretty NSO secret agent, came whirling by in the arms of a burly black man. It was Big Mac, the agent from China II who’d tried to hit Conger with a gargoyle.
    Noticing Conger, Angelica gave a brief wink.
    Conger thumbed his nose. He wished the girl wasn’t able to see him.
    And he didn’t much like the idea of her dancing with the AEF agent.
    Still, if you were a visible spy you had to work under different rules, Angelica was wearing a short-skirted off the shoulder gown, looking very tan and smooth.
    Conger stopped watching her and worked his way invisibly around the ballroom. Being an invisible man in crowds was especially difficult. If more than a couple of people bumped into nothing it could cause surprise and screw you up.
    He leaped back suddenly to avoid a robot cart of champagne which was heading for one of the air palace’s balconies.
    The US ambassador to Brazil began to run alongside the low wheeled cart. He snatched two glasses and returned to the lizard duchess he’d been waltzing with. The ambassador toasted the scaly green woman in fluent Venusian. She grinned widely and replied, “God bless America!”
    Toward the center of the vast black dance floor a tight circle of eight people were waltzing. That would be President Barca de Pesca and his plainclothes security people.
    Conger noticed an obvious wig and false moustache waltz by. He followed, but it was only an aging Peruvian diplomat and not Machado in disguise.
    Something booted him in the knee and he spun to see Angelica pass again.
    When the waltz ended the robot orchestra leader, tugging at his white waistcoat, announced, “Now we will favor you with a medley of Brazilian folk dances.” He tapped his baton in the palm of his realistic hand and the mechanical orchestra began playing When The Saints Go Marching In .
    “Que! Quern! Por que!” shouted someone in the heart of the presidential cluster.
    “Take it easy, Senhor Presidente,” called the American ambassador. “I gimmicked your orchestra to give out with a little downhome American music. Didn’t think you’d mind. The duchess here has never heard any American jazz.”
    “Oh, of course,” said President Barco de Pesca. He was a man about the same height as Canguru, though substantially wider. He had chosen to wear his full uniform as