Smoke

now you know that the two in combination create invisibility. You have in your possession an invisibility formula.'

David said, 'Peter, that's right! I never even thought about that.' His mind had been too full of the other ramifications of the problem.

Peter was less thrilled. He said, 'Go on, Mr. Leethe.'

'NAABOR, for its own purposes, would like to employ the services of an invisible person,' Leethe went on. 'You, for your purposes, would like volunteers upon which to test your med — formulae. NAABOR is prepared to present you with two volunteers at this time, to be made invisible. As an inducement, NAABOR will undertake, in the near future, to provide you as many volunteers as you require for more normal study.'

David, all agog, said, 'Peter, do you think — ?' But Peter was saying to Leethe, 'What's the catch?'

'Catch?' Leethe smacked his right fist into a catcher's mitt, then tossed the ball into the dugout. 'What catch can there possibly be? NAABOR will supply the volunteers, both now and for later, with all releases signed. You can observe your new guinea pigs, if you can be said to observe an invisible—'

'For how long?' Peter asked.

Leethe showed how long the fish was he'd almost caught. 'How long do you want?'

'A week.'

'Oh, come,' Leethe said, reducing the fish to a minnow. 'You were only hoping for twenty-four hours with the first one.'

'The circumstances were different.'

'We have a time consideration, on our side,' Leethe admitted. 'We could agree to forty-eight hours.'

Peter considered that, then nodded. 'Acceptable,' he said, then added, 'We'll want a contract,' and David looked stern and said, 'That's right!'

'Of course,' Leethe said.

'Prepared by Bradley Cummingford.'

'Less work for me,' Leethe said. 'Why not phone him right now? The sooner we get the paperwork out of the way, the sooner we can get started, and the sooner we'll see some results.' He smiled at himself. 'Or not,' he appended. 'As the case may be.'

34

It was Tuesday morning when Mordon Leethe put in his request for more invisibles; the rest of Tuesday, how those phones and faxes flew. Documents were drawn up, sent, revised, sent, argued over, sent, signed, and sent. Meanwhile, the vast machinery of NAABOR was grinding through who knew what contortions to select, approve, and induce the two volunteers. At last, at ten minutes past six that evening, in the lab, long after Shanana had left for the day and Bradley's last contractual nit had been picked, David put down a retort and answered the telephone himself, to hear someone say, 'This is Ms. Clarkson from Personnel, wishing to speak to either—'

'I beg your pardon?'

'— Dr. Loo — I say, this is Ms. Clarkson from Personnel, and I wish to speak—'

'What personnel? I don't know what you mean.'

'Is this the Loomis—'

'Heimhocker, yes.'

'I'd like to speak to—'

'This is Dr. Loomis.'

'— either Doctor Loo — oh. You're Dr. Loomis.'

'I know who I am,' David said. 'Who are you?'

'Ms. Clarkson of Personnel, as I believe I said before.'

From across the lab, Peter said, 'Who is it, David?'

'I'm trying to find out,' David told him, and into the phone he said, 'I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about. What is personnel?'

'The department I'm in!'

'Department? Macy's?' Away from the phone: 'Peter? Did we order anything from Macy's?'

'The department of NAABOR!' screamed the woman.

'I don't think so,' Peter said.

'Oh, for heaven's sake,' David told the phone. 'Why didn't you say so?'

'I thought I had.' The woman seemed to be panting now.

'Well, you didn't,' David said.

There was a little silence down the phone line then, which David didn't intrude on, having nothing to say — she was the one who'd made the call, after all — and then, in a much more controlled manner, she said, 'May I speak to Dr. Heimhocker, please.'

'Of course,' David said, and held the phone out toward Peter, saying, 'It's for you.'

Peter approached, hand out. 'Who is it?'

'Somebody from NAABOR. It's you she wants to talk to.'

'Huh.' Peter took the phone, spoke briefly into it, wrote a couple of things on the pad near the phone, then said, 'Fine. Thank you very much. Good-bye,' and hung up.

David said, 'What was that all about?'

'Our volunteers. They'll be here at nine tomorrow morning.'

'Oh, the volunteers!' David clapped his hands. 'Peter, it's actually going to happen!'

'It would seem so.'

David gave him a look. 'Peter,' he said, 'I know we're both being calm and collected about all this, but in fact, it is very exciting.'

'I suppose it is,' Peter said. 'And especially for' — he added, looking at the names he'd written on the pad — 'Michael Prendergast and George Clapp.'

George Clapp was black, but that wasn't the surprise. The surprise was that Michael Prendergast was a woman. And a beautiful woman at that, astonishingly beautiful in her flowered summer dress, a tanned and healthy blonde of about twenty-five, the Playmate of the decade, with bright blue eyes and delicious cheekbones and a body as strokable as a kitten's.

George Clapp on the other hand was probably forty years of age and barely five feet tall. A skinny gnarly sort of guy, he wore a shiny black suit, thin black tie, white shirt, and big black river-barge shoes. His skin was a dull brown. Two thick ropes of old scar tissue angled across his face, from just under his right eye down his right cheek, across his chin and on down to the side of his neck under his left ear.

Beforehand, Peter and David had decided to speed the process by each doing the preliminary interview with one subject. Peter had drawn Michael, so he took her up to the sitting room that Mordon Leethe craved so much. As they sat facing one another on the sofas there, Peter took her through her medical history, and he simply couldn't find anything wrong. Not a junkie, no history of mental problems, no serious or chronic illnesses. Married twice, divorced twice, never pregnant. Healthy siblings, healthy parents, healthy grandparents. Finishing, Peter said, 'This is not a question on the form, but I feel I have to ask it, anyway.'

'Why, you mean,' she said.

'Yes. You do understand what the idea is here, don't you?'

'Perfectly,' she said. 'I am a willing volunteer in a medical experiment, at the end of which I either will or will not be invisible.' She smiled briefly, a dazzling sight. 'My guess is that I will not be,' she said, 'but I don't want to spoil anybody's fun.'

'Thank you.'

'The corporation I work for is paying me a great deal of money over my remaining lifetime, no matter what happens with the experiment. If it turns out I am invisible, they'll have other well-paying uses for me.'

'So you're doing it for money,' Peter said. He felt vaguely disappointed.

'Not entirely,' she said. 'Dr. Heimhocker, would you say I'm attractive?'

'Anybody would say you're attractive,' Peter told her. 'You're probably the most beautiful woman I've ever been in the same room with. You understand you aren't my type—'

She smiled, and nodded.

'— but I certainly recognize beauty when I see it. Which is really why I'm asking the question. Why risk what