Smoke

'First,' Martin said, 'lunch.'

The car that squealed to a stop in the middle of the road was full of drunken teenage boys. It came down Route 14 from the north, weaving back and forth in the road ahead of Freddie, polluting the air with terrible rap noises, and then it stopped so suddenly its front bumper kissed the blacktop, and five teenagers piled out of it, leaving the doors open and the rap snarling as they ran with drunken intensity straight at Freddie. That is, at the bicycle rolling along all by itself at the edge of the road.

Damn, damn, double damn. By Freddie's calculations, Quarantine Road would be just a little beyond that next curve up there; he was almost to it. But these drunken clowns were too close and coming too fast for Freddie to take any evasive action, even if he'd had a friendly cornfield beside him instead of these hilly, rocky, underbrush- clogged woods. No time to swing around and head the other way, and no profit in it, either, since they could always catch up with him in their car, and probably run him down with it, too.

Freddie jumped off the bike and gave it a shove toward the woods. It was still rolling, though with a distinct wobble, when the first of the drunken louts reached it, and launched himself through the air and tackled it, which must have hurt.

Freddie was already through them, running toward their car, the blacktop hot beneath his bare feet. The car was an old Ford LTD that had apparently been used as a stable for several years. The driver had not only left the rap crap blasting and the key in its ignition, he'd left the engine running as well, merely shifting into 'park' before he'd leaped out in pursuit of the bike. Sliding behind the fuzzy-cloth-covered wheel with its eight-ball speed-turner mounted on it, feeling his body immediately stick to the vinyl fake-zebra seat cover, Freddie grabbed the eight-ball- topped gearshift with one hand while slamming the driver's door with the other, shifted into 'drive,' and drove.

The assembled meatheads looked up from dismembering the bicycle to see their former chariot execute a fast hard K-turn, its other doors slamming as the LTD shot forward, its wheels smoking as it reversed, and the whole car bouncing like something in a demolition derby when it slashed away, northbound.

How they yowled! Like hyenas disturbed over carrion. Freddie couldn't hear them, because he was leaving so fast and also because he couldn't figure out at first how to stop that strident yawp out of the LTD's oversize speakers. Then he was around the far curve, the throwbacks were out of sight, and he slowed down long enough to discover the racket didn't come from a radio station but a tape. He ejected the tape from the player, and then from the car.

Quarantine Road. Freddie made the turn, and on this narrow dirt road there was no other traffic at all. If he'd only made it this far on the bike, he'd have been absolutely safe.

On the other hand, this LTD was faster, if grubbier. Freddie drove along, and in no time at all he passed the archway with the double S's. A blacktop road went in under it, but no structures could be seen from here in those woods.

Freddie kept going, and a quarter mile later he found a weedy dirt track that wandered away to the right. He drove in there, went far enough to be invisible from Quarantine Road, turned off into the scrubby woods, and kept going until the bottom was torn out by a rock. That seemed far enough.

Most people wanted to talk about the invisible man during lunch, but Martin would have none of it. 'Our digestions come first,' he said. 'We can wait, and take our time, and have a nice lunch, and then, over coffee afterward, we can discuss exactly what to do about Peter and David's invisible man.'

Of course Nurse Martin was, as usual, right. So everybody thought about the invisible man, but spoke, if they spoke at all, disjointedly about other things that didn't matter a bit.

At last lunch was finished, coffee was served, and the plates and staff were removed to the kitchen. Robert said, 'Now, does anyone have anything they've been dying to say?'

A clamor of voices arose, but through them drove the Kissingeresque basso of Edmond, a corporate attorney in his other life, who said, 'I would like to say a word about kidnapping.'

That shut everybody up. They all stared at Edmond, a bearlike man famous in his group for having more hair on his shoulders than on his head. At last, William, an antiques dealer, said, 'Edmond, this isn't kidnapping. This is an invisible man!'

Edmond spread his meaty hands. 'Hath an invisible man no rights? Hath he not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, even if you can't see them? If you prick him, doth he not bleed?'

'Not so's you'd notice,' said Peter.

Edmond said, 'I just think you should consider the ramifications, from a legal point of view, before you proceed.'

'Fine,' David said. 'Then we'll proceed.'

'And it isn't kidnapping,' Peter insisted. 'We had an agreement with the man.'

'Which he abrogated,' Edmond said, 'when he left your house.'

'And which he reinstated,' Peter said, 'when he phoned me. He phoned me, Edmond, not—'

'Us,' said David.

'Exactly,' Peter said. 'He phoned us, he asked for either of us, so he was returning to the original agreement, and in fact he said so on the phone, offered to go on with the observation pattern we'd agreed to in the first place.'

'An interesting question,' Edmond said. 'Unlikely, I suppose, to go to court.'

'Freddie is very likely to wind up in court,' Peter said, 'but hardly as the plaintiff.'

Robert said, 'I know we have an hour, or more than an hour, but let's figure out now what we're going to do when he gets here.'

'How will we know when he's here?' asked Curtis, a set designer. 'I mean, if we can't see him.'

David said, 'I suppose he must have some sort of car, to come all the way up from the city.'

'That should be something to see,' Daniel, an architect, said. 'An empty car, speeding along the highway.'

David said, 'Maybe he has a friend who can drive him,' and Peter said, 'Or possibly he wraps his head in bandages like Claude Rains in that movie.'

'That would be spooky,' Curtis said.

Robert said, 'All right, he gets here, we see his car or he rings the bell or whatever. Peter and David, you two discuss the situation with him, see if you can persuade him to cooperate, but if it becomes clear he isn't going to cooperate, we ought to have a plan.'

Martin said, 'Here's what we'll do. Peter, if you decide he's planning to give you the slip again, say, 'Harvey,' as though that were somebody's name here—'

Peter said, 'Why Harvey?'

'Because that was the six-foot invisible rabbit in the play of the same name,' Martin said. 'Don't worry about it, Peter, just say 'Harvey' if you think we have to hold the fellow here against his will. Then we'll all jump up and block the exits, and imprison him in this room.'

'I'm not very happy about that idea,' Edmond said.

'But you'll go along with it,' Robert told him.

Edmond shrugged those hairy shoulders. 'If I must. But, Peter, if you can get his willing agreement to stay, that would be so much better than using restraint.'

'We had his agreement last time,' Peter pointed out, 'and we saw what it was worth.'

'Besides,' David said, 'when he finds out, you know, he's going to be mad at us.'

'I'm afraid he is,' Peter agreed.

'He's likely to go away,' David said, 'just out of spite, and then that awful policeman will get him.'

'Or the tobacco-company people,' Peter said.

'When he finds out what?'

'That it's permanent, of course,' Peter said, then looked up and frowned at everybody, to see them all frowning at him. 'Who said that?' he asked.

They all went on looking at him.

'It's permanent?'

'Oh, my God,' David whispered. 'He's here.'