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

slow push.
    Kneeling in the small alcove room before another altar was a husky man of fifty, wearing the rough brown San Joaquim robe. It was Colonel Macaco Cavala. “How about the new mattress I’ve been praying for?” he was asking the mansize statue of the saint. “A fellow who’s been dead has to take especial care of himself.”
    Conger put a hand into the kit strapped to his side. He drew out what he thought was truth serum, then noticed he’d gotten vitamin A&D capsules instead. He swallowed a couple, before getting out the serum and a silver injection bug from his kit.
    He made his way invisibly across the shrine, slapped the serum-loaded bug against the back of Cavala’s thick neck.
    “What kind of shrine are you running anyway, you let insects nibble on . . .” The resurrected colonel stopped, stiffened.
    “Give me your name,” ordered Conger. He rested his invisible buttocks against the rail guarding the statue of the patron saint of taste.
    Cavala’s dark eyes grew cloudy. “I am Macaco Jose Cavala, former colonel in the People’s Army of Portugal, an unfortunate recent victim of . . .”
    “You’re supposed to be dead.”
    The husky Cavala gave a dazed grin. “I was, I was, unseen senhor. What an experience that was, let me tell you. I’m sure you, whoever you might be, have preconceptions as to what death will actually be like. I know I surely did. Well, in the first place you don’t …”
    “Who brought you back to life?”
    “The Agrarian Espionage Force financed it, bless them,” answered the truth-drugged colonel. “After which, they saw to it I was brought here to bide my time in safety, relative safety. We don’t want to attempt a coup yet, or at least AEF doesn’t. They feel this isn’t the proper season for it. In Portugal summer is a better time for a coup d’état. I have to admit the coup attempted in New Lisbon a few weeks ago by some of my misguided rivals was a complete flopola. However, it seems to me what I have going for me is the miraculous …”
    “Okay, the secret agents from China II picked up the bill,” cut in Conger. “Who did the actual job of bringing you back to life?”
    “They call him Sandman.”
    “Sandman?”
    Cavala, becoming more lax, tipped over into the altar rail. His head bonged against the old dark wood twice before he slid down to lie on his face on the bottom most altar step. “I assume Sandman is a nickname, an ironic nickname,” he murmured. “Since, unlike the sandman of legend and lore, he brings not sleep but awakening. At least, so far …”
    “Who is he?”
    “That I do not know, senhor. I only heard about him after I came back to life. You see, I was dead when he did most of his wonderful work on me. When you’re dead, if I can make myself clear to you on this point, your perceptions are somewhat …”
    “Yeah, okay.” Catching hold of the colonel, Conger propped him against a four-legged rack of votive candles. The tiny dancing flames spread quivering red light over the reanimated man’s broad face. “Have you seen this Sandman guy?”
    “To be perfectly truthful,” said the drugged man, “I saw only his back as he was going out of the laboratory. A relatively tall thin man dressed in a white smock. I’d estimate his age as in the middle thirties, though, as you must understand, my unseen friend, having only just returned to the living I wasn’t noticing all the fine details. You know who he reminded me of?”
    “Who?”
    “Not exactly, but there was a similarity in the gait and the build of Sandman. He reminded me of Sir Thomas Anstey-Guthrie, the noted British neobiologist. I met him at a world science fiction convention in Amsterdam a few years ago. Still, if it were Sir Thomas, why didn’t …”
    “Do you know anything about Sandman’s methods, how he does it?”
    “His methods are marvelous, if you ask me.”
    “I am asking you. Can you give me some specifics, some details!”
    “Alas, no, my friend.