A Talent For The Invisible (v1.1) Read Free Page B

Portugal on them at eye level. Conger halted before 1926A, knocked his prearranged knock on the dictator’s broad nose.
    On the other side of the door someone yelled, “Voila!” There was a good deal of metallic clacking, followed by a jittering crash.
    Conger knocked again, this time on the triple chin.
    Finally someone called, “Momentito.”
    There was more clattering, followed by another zestful shout of “Voila!”
    “Enough already,” said the other voice. “Where’s that nitwit turnoff switch? There.”
    “Voila!” was yelled once more, in a running down mechanical way.
    “You’re pretty tall for a spy,” said a voice from immediately behind the door. “I’m giving you the once over through this nitwit spyhole. They didn’t put it in the right place and I have to stand on tiptoe. There.”
    “How about the counter knock?” suggested Conger.
    “Which?” asked the voice behind the door.
    “When I knock like this,” said Conger, knocking again, “you’re supposed to knock a certain way in response.”
    “Wait a second, I’ll try to remember. Is this it?”
    “Nope.”
    “You’re right. I can’t keep all these nitwit knocks straight. They put too many beats in them. Nobody can remember a knock that goes on forever. This is it. Am I right?”
    “You’ve got it.”
    “Okay, hold on and I’ll try to get this nitwit door to let you in. I wanted to stay at the Novo American but they tell me the RFA budget is tight this season and anyway the Ritz-Mechanix, being 90% automatic, will take better care of me. Is the door opening? No, it isn’t. Just stay right there while I give it a couple good taps with my shoe. Hold on and I’ll get my shoe off. Boy, the way they make shoes nowadays you can hardly remove the nitwit things. I don’t know about you, but when I was a boy shoes had laces instead of these little electric seams. Did you have shoes with laces as a kid?”
    “I went barefoot a lot.”
    “Oh, really? My parents would never sit still for barefeet. I was considered too fragile, being the runt of the family. There, now I’ll wap it.”
    After a moment the door groaned, gave a chill sigh and slid aside.
    Standing in the foyer, his electric-seam shoe still raised high, was a man not quite five feet tall. He had curly blond hair and a substantial curly blond moustache. He was thirty-nine years old, dressed in a one-piece white fencing suit with a red heart stitched to its chest. “How do you do, senhor. I’m Canguru, the master spy. Come in.”
    Fallen, arms-wide, over the floating air column coffee table was a fencing master android. Though the teaching mechanism was turned off, it still made a low dry buzzing. “Taking up fencing?” asked Conger.
    “No, ballroom dancing, but the nitwit room service sent up the wrong machine. Since they did, and included this outfit, I gave the fencing a try.”
    Canguru guided Conger to a tin sofa, then sat opposite him on an imitation rubber divan. “Besides being a highly successful spy, senhor, I now and then do a little highjacking.” He leaned toward Conger, passing him a bowl of puffed potato balls. “Care for a snack?”
    “No, thanks.” Conger got a pillbox of vitamin B-Complex out of a side pocket, swallowed two capsules. “You’re supposed to have seen Colonel Cavala up and around.”
    “Exactly what I’m leading up to,” said the small spy. “A few days ago, while engaged in the highjacking facet of my career, I chanced to be behind the walls of the monastery of the San Joaquim Brothers.”
    “Where is it?”
    “Near the town of Vinda, some fifty miles from us, to the south,” replied Canguru. “It’s where they make Mizinga.”
    “Beg pardon?”
    “Have you never heard of Mizinga? It’s a world-famous liqueur. These nitwit brothers turn the stuff out. It contains over one hundred herbs and other ingradients. Only the San Joaquim Brothers, plus some six or seven robots, know the secret of Mizinga. Personally I don’t