A Talent For The Invisible (v1.1) by Ron Goulart

committing a mortal sin.”
    The two agents, one of whom was a lanky Chinese, walked by Conger, not noticing him at all.
    Conger went to the cab end of the float. Another man was sitting in there, drinking Mexican beer out of a plastic bubble. Conger swung silently up on the running board and stuck a stunbug against the man’s fat neck. The driver fell back, then over sideways.
    When Conger passed the landcar the two men were ordering Canguru out, the thin Chinese asking, “Where’s your sidekick?”
    “I’m alone,” insisted Canguru. “Except for the strong spiritual protection of the bishop of Guaymas.”
    “Stun him a little bit,” suggested the second agent.
    Conger found only one other man, a small bald black, in the vicinity of the peon float. He used a second stunbug from his kit on him, left him stretched out at the side of the road.
    He went back toward the landcar.
    The Chinese had Canguru out on the roadway, clutching at his cocoa-brown suit front. “I can keep stunning you and reviving you until you talk. How’d your friend get out of the car and away from us.”
    “Say, Benson,” suggested his companion, “do you think the other fellow might be that invisible agent Big Mac warned us to …” He raised a hand toward the spot on his neck where Conger had slapped the stunbug before he went tumbling down.
    The Chinese spun, firing his stungun in a circle. “It must be the invisible man.”
    Conger had ducked as the other man fell. He put a stunbug against the Chinese agent’s ankle.
    Becoming visible as soon as the second man hit the ground, Conger said, “These guys are AEF, huh?”
    “Look at the way they stitched the lapels on this nitwit suit,” said Canguru. “One of them is ripped nearly off after only a small amount of mild pummeling and tugging.” He sighed. “Yes, that Chinese there is the partner of the fellow I noticed back in Guaymas.”
    “He must have noticed you, too, and alerted these guys. They must be here to keep people away from Mentex and Sandman,” said Conger. “But apparently Big Mac and Ting aren’t in this part of Mexico.”
    “Nor Miss Abril,” added Canguru.
    Conger nodded, went to move the float which blocked their path.

CHAPTER 18
    The old people sat cross-legged in the field, twenty scattered across the flat dusty half acre, illuminated by floating white light balls. Some were thin and sinewy and dry, others fat and blotchy pink. At the edge of the bright-lit field a huge chubby man in a pullover white robe lounged in a water-filled chair. He was a cyborg, his screwin right hand at the moment was a public address mike. “Once the thinking process contracts sufficiently into the self,” he was saying in a tinny voice, “the control of the body’s aging process is more nearly attainable. Let us therefore think inward, always inward.”
    Near the fat cyborg, who must be Dr. Cazedessus, a dark brittle old man giggled.
    “You’re not thinking in, Mr. Feldman,” warned the Mentex head.
    “Most sorry,” apologized old Feldman. “I keep thinking of bawdy stories I read in the college humor magazines of my youth.”
    “That will not make you one whit younger.”
    Conger, invisible once more, walked along the edge of the field. It was now growing on toward eleven PM and he’d been prowling the Mentex Institute grounds for over two hours. Passing by the young-thinking outdoor session, he entered one of the large warehouses at the far edge of the field.
    The air inside the giant room was chill, the light a dim grey. Cartons of food pouches, mountain spring water, dehydrated meat and instant brown gravy were stacked high throughout the warehouse.
    Near a tower of nearbeer cases Conger slowed and sniffed. For a second or two he thought it was the scent Angelica used. No, this was a stronger, more musky smell. Conger knelt, noticed a hairline crack running under the stacked cartons.
    “It’s funny Angelica doesn’t seem to be around at all,” he said to