It was obvious that he'd vanished on purpose. And it hadn't just been
something he'd recently discovered. He had known all along that he
could pull the trick; if he hadn't known that, he wouldn't have done
what he had done beforehand. No seventeen-year-old boy, no matter what
he was, would give the FBI the raspberry unless he was pretty sure he
could get away with it.
Malone remembered the raspberry and winced slightly. The cab driver
called back, "Anything wrong, buddy?"
"Everything," Malone said. "But don't worry about it."
The cab driver shrugged and turned back to the wheel. Malone went back
to Mike Fueyo.
The kid could make himself vanish at will.
Invisibility?
Malone thought about that for a while. The fact that it was impossible
didn't decide him against it. Everything was impossible; that much was
clear. But he didn't think Mike Fueyo had just become invisible. No.
There had been the sense of presence actually leaving the room. If
Mike had become invisible and stayed, Malone was sure he wouldn't have
felt the boy leave.
Mike had not just become invisible. (_And what do I mean, "just"?_
Malone asked himself unhappily.) He had gone--elsewhere.
This brought him back full circle to his original question. Where was
the boy now? But he ignored it for a minute or two as another, even
more difficult query presented itself.
_Never mind where_, Malone told himself. _How?_
Something was bothering him. Malone realized that it had been
bothering him for a long time. At last he managed to locate it and
hold it up to the light for inspection.
Dr. O'Connor, the psionics expert at Westinghouse, had mentioned
something during Malone's last conversation with him. Dr. O'Connor,
who'd invented a telepathy detector, had been discussing further
reaches in his field.
"After all," he'd said, "if thoughts can bridge any distance whatever,
regardless of other barriers, there is no reason why matter could not
do likewise."
"But it doesn't," Malone had said. "Or at least it hasn't so far."
"There's no way to be sure of that," Dr. O'Connor had said sternly.
"After all, we have no reports of it--but that means little. Our
search has only begun."
"Oh," Malone had said. "Sure."
"Matter, controlled by thought, might bridge distances
instantaneously," Dr. O'Connor had said.
And he'd referred to something, some word...
_Teleportation._
That was it. Malone sat back. All you had to do, he reflected, was to
think yourself somewhere else, and--bing!--you were there. If Malone
had been able to do it, it would not only have saved him a lot of time
and trouble, but also such things as cab fare and train fare and ...
oh, a lot of different things.
But he couldn't. And Dr. O'Connor hadn't found anyone else who could,
either. As far as Malone knew, nobody could teleport.
Except Mike Fueyo.
The cab stopped in front of FBI headquarters. "You some kind of secret
agent?" the cabbie said. "Like on 3-D?"
"Of course not," Malone said pleasantly. "I'm a foreign spy."
"Oh," the cabbie said. "Sure." He took his money with a somewhat
puzzled air, while Malone crossed the sidewalk and went into the
building.
Everyone was active. Malone pushed his way through arguing knots of
men until he reached the small office which he and Boyd had been
assigned. He had already decided not to tell Boyd about the
disappearing boy. That would only confuse him, and matters were
confused enough as they stood. Malone had no proof; he had only his
word and the word of a few baffled policemen, all of whom were
probably thoroughly confused by now.
Boyd had a job to do, and Malone had decided to let him go on doing
it. That, as a matter of fact, was what he was doing when Malone
entered the room.
He was sitting at his desk, talking on the telephone. Malone couldn't
see the face on the screen, but Boyd was scowling at it fiercely.
"Sure," he said. "So some guy makes a fuss. That's what you're there
for."
"But he wants to sue the city," a voice said tinnily. "Or somebody,
anyhow."
"Let him sue," Boyd said. "We've got authority. Just get that car."
"Look," the voice said. "I--"
"I don't care now," Boyd snapped. "Get it. Then hand it over to the
pickup squad and say, 'Mr. Malone wants this car immediately.' They'll
know what to do. Got that?"
"Sure, Mr. Boyd," the voice said. "But I don't--"
"Never mind," Boyd said. "Go ahead and get the job done. The United
States of America is depending on you." With one last scowl, he hung
up and swung around to face Malone. "You gave me a great job," he
said. "I really love it, you know that?"
"It's got to be done," Malone said in a noncommittal voice. "How's it
going so far?"
Boyd closed his eyes for a second. "Twenty-three red 1972 Cadillacs to
date--which isn't bad, I suppose," he said. "And six calls like the
one you just heard. All from agents with problems. What _am_ I
supposed to do when a guy catches a couple necking in a 1972 red
Cadillac?"
"At this time of day?" Malone said.
"New York," Boyd said, and shrugged. "Things are funny here."
Malone nodded. "What did you do about them?" he said.
"Told the agent to take the car and give 'em a pass to a movie," Boyd
said.
"Good," Malone said. "Keep that sort of thing in the dark where it
belongs." For some reason, this reminded him of Dorothy. He still had
to get tickets for a show. But that could wait. "How about the
assembly line?" he said.
"Disassembly," Boyd said. "Leibowitz has started it going. He borrowed
the use of a big auto repair shop out in Jersey City, and they'll be
doing a faster job than we thought." He paused. "But it's been a
wonderful day," he said. "One to remember as long as I live. Possibly
even until tomorrow. And how have you been doing?"
"Well," Malone said, "I'm not absolutely sure yet."
"That's a nice helpful answer," Boyd said. "In the best traditions of
the FBI."
"I can't help it," Malone said. "It's true."
"Well, what the hell have you been doing?" Boyd said. "Drinking?
Helling around? Living it up while I sit here and talk to people about
Cadillacs?"
"Not exactly," Malone said. "I've been--well, doing more or less what
Burris told me to do. Nosing around. Keeping my eyes open. I think--"
The phone chimed. Boyd flipped up the mike and eyed the screen
balefully. "Federal Bureau of Investigation," he said crisply. "Who
the hell are you?"
A voice on the other end said, "What?" before the image on the screen
cleared.
"Federal Bureau of Investigation," Boyd said in a perfectly innocent
voice. "Boyd speaking."
"Oh," a voice said. It was a very calm, quiet voice. "Hello, Boyd."
The image cleared. Boyd was facing the picture of a man in his middle
thirties, a brown-haired man with large, gentle brown eyes and an
expression that somehow managed to look both sad and confident.
"Hello, Dr. Leibowitz," Boyd said.
"Is Mr. Malone in?" Leibowitz said. "I really wanted to talk to him."
"Sure," Boyd said. "Just a second."
He motioned to Malone, who came around and sat at Boyd's desk as Boyd
got up. He nodded to Leibowitz, and the electronics engineer nodded
back.
"How's everything coming, Dr. Leibowitz?" Malone said.
Leibowitz shrugged meaningfully. "All right," he said. "I called you
to tell you about that, by the way. We've managed to cut the per-car
time down somewhat."
"That's wonderful," Malone said.
"It's now down to about four hours per car, and that means we may be
able to do even better than running one off the line every fifteen
minutes. At the moment, fifteen minutes is about standard, though,
with sixteen cars in the line."
"Sure," Malone said. "But anything you can do to speed it up--"
"I understand," Leibowitz said. "Of course I'll do anything that I can
for you. I have got a small preliminary report, by the way."
"Yes?"
"The first car has just been run off the assembly line," Leibowitz
said. "And I'm afraid, Mr. Malone, that there's nothing odd about it
at all."
"Well," Malone said, "we can't expect to hit the jackpot with our
first try."
"Certainly not," Leibowitz said. "But the second should be off soon.
And then the rest. I'm keeping my eye on every one, of course."
"Fine," Malone said, and meant it. Leibowitz was the kind of man who
inspired instant and complete trust. Malone was perfectly sure he'd do
the job he had started to do. Then an idea struck him. "Has the first
car been reassembled yet?" he asked.
"Of course," Leibowitz said. "We took that step into account in our
timing. What would you like done with it--and with the other ones, as
they come off?"
"Unless you can find something odd about a car, just return it to its
owner," Malone said. "Or pass the problem on to the squad men; they'll
take care of it." He paused. "If you do find something odd--"
"I'll call you at once, of course," Leibowitz said.
"Good," Malone said. "Incidentally, I did want to ask you something. I
don't want you to think I'm doubting your work, or anything like that.
Believe me."
"I'm sure you're not," Leibowitz said.
"But," Malone said, "why does it take so long? I'd think it would be
fairly easy to spot a robotic or a semi-robotic brain capable of
controlling a car."
"It might have been, once," Leibowitz said. "But these days the
problems are rather special. Oh, I don't mean we can't do it--we can
and we will. But with subminiaturization, Mr. Malone, and semipsionic
circuits, a pretty good brain can be hidden beneath a coat of paint."
For no reason at all, Malone suddenly thought of Dorothy again. "A
coat of paint?" he said in a disturbed tone.
"Certainly," Leibowitz said, and smiled at him. It was a warm smile
that had little or nothing to do with the problem they were talking
about. But Malone liked it. It made him feel as if Leibowitz liked
him, and approved of him. He grinned back.
"But a coat of paint isn't very much," Malone said.
"It doesn't have to be very much," Leibowitz said. "Not these days.
I've often told Emily--that's my wife, Mr. Malone--that I could hide a
TV circuit under her lipstick. Not that there would be any use in it;
but the techniques are there. Mr. Malone. And if your conjecture is
correct, someone is using them."
"Oh," Malone said. "Sure. But you _can_ find the circuits, if they're
there?"
Leibowitz nodded slowly. "We can, Mr. Malone," he said. "They betray
themselves. A microcircuit need not be more than a few microns thick,
you see--as far as the conductors and insulators are concerned, at any
rate. But the regulators-transistors and such--have to be as big as a
pinhead."
"Enormous, huh?" Malone said.
"Well," Leibowitz said, and chuckled, "quite large enough to locate
without trouble, at any rate. They're very hard to conceal. And the
leads from the brain to the power controls are even easier to
find--comparatively speaking, of course."
"Of course," Malone said.
"All the brain does, you see," Leibowitz said, "is control the
mechanism that steers the car. But it takes real power to steer--a
great deal more than it does to compute the steering."
"I see," Malone, who didn't, said desperately. "In other words, unless
something radically new has been developed, you can find the
circuits."
"Right," Leibowitz said, grinning. "It would have to be something very
new indeed, Mr. Malone. We're up on most of the latest developments
here; we've got to be. But I don't want you giving me the credit for
this."
"No?" Malone said.
"Oh, no," Leibowitz said. "All I do is work out the general
application to theory, as far as actual detection is concerned. It's
my partner, Mr. Hardin, who takes care of all the engineering
details."