Czytaj książkę: «The Pinocchio Syndrome»

Dedication

To Susan and to Karen

Pinocchio looked at Candlewick. To his astonishment he saw that Candlewick’s teeth had grown very large, and that his ears were growing longer.

Pinocchio looked at his own face in the mirror, and saw that his ears were growing longer too, as were his teeth. He looked down at his hands and saw that they were turning into hoofs. So were his feet.

Pinocchio cried out in terror. But his cry came out as the braying of a donkey.

PINOCCHIO

Prologue

May 15

Aboard the cruise ship Crescent Queen Somewhere west of Crete

It begins with a fairy-tale prince and an open sea …

‘Look at the way he moves.’

‘He’s sexy.’

‘Look at the way his ass moves when he jumps.’

‘Don’t you two ever think of anything else?’

The Crescent Queen, a charter cruise ship of American ownership staffed by an English crew, was sailing smoothly on a calm sea, her decks bathed in Mediterranean sunlight.

Three girls, all thirteen years old, were standing on the promenade deck, their eyes riveted to a volleyball game being played by eight boys their own age. The boys were sweating from their exertions, calling out encouragement to each other as they changed position and dove for the ball. The deep blue of the waves made a brilliant backdrop to the game.

The prettiest girl, Gaye, was also the shyest. She had a crush on the dark-haired boy who was now serving the volleyball. She lacked the confidence to approach him or even to smile when their eyes met, but she had made no secret of her feelings to her two friends.

Their names were Alexis and Shanda. Alexis was a tall girl with unruly auburn hair and a determination to wear as much makeup as she could get away with. Shanda, whose parents were both physicians, was the most aggressive of the three. Her mother, back home in Connecticut, had already endured many sleepless nights over Shanda, who seemed to be on a fast track leading to cigarettes, alcohol, and perhaps pregnancy.

The present cruise had been chartered by the National Talented and Gifted Scholarship Association, whose acronym was TAGS. The purpose of the Association was to encourage achievement by junior high school students around the country by sponsoring events that would reward the students for good grades and challenge them intellectually.

There were eight hundred students aboard, along with sixty-five teachers from around the country and a crew of sixty. The cruise was six weeks long, with extended stopovers in Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii. En route the students were given intensive course work in language, science, and history. There was to be a competitive exam given on the way back to New York, the winners to be honored with scholarships and a guaranteed return cruise next year.

A less-than-publicized fact about intellectually gifted children is that they tend to be sexually precocious. This was particularly true of Shanda, whose career in junior high had already included some amorous adventures that she had managed with considerable difficulty to keep secret. Shanda had quickly gravitated to Alexis the day the Crescent Queen set sail from New York Harbor. The two had co-opted Gaye into their friendship because they envied her beauty and were beguiled by her sweet, gentle personality.

An only child, Gaye had been lively and rambunctious until the onset of puberty dropped a shroud of self-consciousness over her personality. For a while she was so withdrawn that her mother sent her to a child psychiatrist. Then it was discovered that her IQ was 164. Her moodiness was chalked up to her high intelligence and the routine identity crisis experienced by gifted children. It did not help that she was the only daughter of Kemper Symington, the United States secretary of defense, a highly visible architect of the current administration’s foreign policy.

Like everyone else on board, the three girls had become aware of handsome Jeremy Asner, a tall, athletic boy from Riverside, California, who was the sole representative of his school district on this cruise. Jeremy was a junior high school all-American in soccer, and had dreams of a career in politics.

A well-spoken, polite boy whose gray eyes had a dreamy and somehow withdrawn quality, Jeremy had quickly become the most popular boy on the Queen. Shanda and Alexis had coveted him from afar for several weeks, but had made no romantic headway with him. Now they had decided their best bet was to set Jeremy up with Gaye, who exceeded them in physical beauty and seemed more Jeremy’s type. If Gaye got to first base with Jeremy, the victory would be for all three.

The only problem was Gaye herself. She was too shy to approach Jeremy directly. Weeks of wheedling by her two willful friends had not moved her. Before long the cruise would be over and it would be too late.

Tonight, however, was the Week Five dance, to be held in the main ballroom. According to the rules set by the social committee, anyone could invite anyone. Girls were free to invite boys. Shanda and Alexis were giving their final push to Gaye.

‘You’ve got to invite him,’ Shanda said. ‘I talked to his roommate. He doesn’t have a date. He’s even thinking of not going to the dance. He’s just waiting for you, Gaye!’

‘I don’t know,’ Gaye temporized, looking across the deck at the boys, who were now changing sides. Under the bright sunlight, his dark hair tousled by the wind, Jeremy looked almost too handsome to be real. She felt unworthy to approach him. He looked like a prince out of a fairy tale.

If only I knew he liked me …

Sensing Gaye’s thoughts, Shanda said, ‘Look, he thinks you’re cute. His roommate told me. But he thinks you’re standoffish. He’s afraid to talk to you.’

Gaye took this news with suspicion. ‘When did you talk to him?’

‘Last night after dinner,’ Shanda said. ‘For God’s sake, Gaye, can’t you see this is your chance? You can ask him to the dance. That way he doesn’t have to get up his guts to ask you. There’s no risk. It’s guaranteed!’

Gaye had only known Shanda for a few weeks, but she was familiar enough with her mannerisms to know when she was lying. This story didn’t sound right.

‘If he likes me, he can ask me,’ she responded.

‘He can’t, dummy!’ Shanda exploded. ‘He’s afraid of you. Don’t you listen?’

Gaye still hung back.

Then something happened that forced the girls’ hand. Jeremy left his friends and headed toward the academic area amidships. The game went on without him.

‘I can’t do it,’ Gaye said fearfully.

‘If you can’t, I will,’ Shanda said.

Still a bit out of breath, Jeremy called something over his shoulder to one of his friends. He was coming straight toward the girls.

Gaye knew she was trapped. Shanda, the aggressive one, would not hesitate to speak to him on Gaye’s behalf. Jeremy was only a dozen feet from her now, not looking at her but coming straight toward her.

‘Come on, dummy,’ Shanda hissed in her ear as she pushed her forward.

The push was rough. Gaye’s slender young body was flung forward, right into the path of the approaching boy. She tried to catch her balance, but it was too late. She saw Jeremy’s arms react as his eyes turned to her. In that last split second she thought, Shanda was lying. He doesn’t like me. He can’t –

The thought never completed itself. Before she could turn to dart a look of reproach at her friend, Gaye Symington ceased to exist.

Shanda and Alexis were sharing a grin of complicity when their bodies turned to vapor.

No one heard the blast or even saw the flash. The deuterium and tritium that fuse in a hydrogen bomb are heated within a few microseconds to a temperature of ten million degrees centigrade. The energy from the reaction heats the surrounding air to a temperature of 300,000 degrees after one hundredth of a millisecond.

There would be no wreckage for the searchers to find. The only proof that there had been a ship here, and a nuclear explosion, would be a digital blip on monitor screens in radar installations around the world.

Jeremy Asner’s last thought before death canceled his brain was She’s prettier close up.

Book One
The Pied Piper

The Piper was angry when the townspeople refused to pay him for getting rid of the rats. In revenge, he decided to kill all the children of the town. He lured them to the river with the song of his pipe. The children could not resist the song, any more than had the rats. They hurried to the river and flung themselves in, one by one. All were drowned.

Only one child survived – a deaf boy who could not hear the song of the pipe. He remained at home, and found out afterward that all his friends were gone.

‘THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN’

1

SIX MONTHS LATER

Liberty, Iowa

November 15

11:45 A.M.

Snow fell silently, like a sleep coming over the land.

The postman came around the corner, pulling his bag behind him. he wheels of his cart left moist black trails in the fresh snow on the sidewalk. A crumpled snowman, made from yesterday’s storm, regarded the passing postman pathetically, its corncob pipe falling down its face.

It was the biggest snow on record for this time of year. School had been canceled yesterday. Today was Saturday, so the town’s children could enjoy what was left of the accumulation with their sleds and flying saucers.

The postman wore his Saturday look, a bit more watchful than usual, as he started to cross the street. Saturdays were more dangerous for him than weekdays, and more interesting. Children were on the loose. With children came snowballs, pranks, and sometimes an unruly dog. He had to be on his toes.

But something stopped him in the middle of the street. He stood still in his tracks, his cart beside him, his eyes fixed on something beyond the houses and the trees and the snow-covered lawns. One hand was raised toward his chin, as though to stroke it thoughtfully. The other was at his side. His eyes blinked as a wind-blown snowflake plopped on the lashes. His mouth was closed, the jaws set rigidly.

No one would find him for ten minutes. As luck would have it, the children were all inside their houses, playing in their rooms, watching Saturday-morning television, or getting ready for lunch. Those mothers who were not out at work did not expect the mail until after noon, so no one came out to check a mailbox.

During those ten minutes the postman did not move a muscle. He was as rigid as the dying snowman who sagged under the new-fallen snow.

The mother was standing in her kitchen, watching the news station on TV as she talked to her sister on the phone.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Just getting ready to give the kids lunch.’

She paused, listening to something her sister was saying.

‘No,’ she said with some anger. ‘I’m so fed up with husbands, I’m not going to move a muscle. They can get along without me. I’ve had it.’

She craned her neck to glance into the playroom. Her maternal radar had alerted her to the fact that the little ones were up to something.

‘Just a second,’ she said to her sister. Then she held the phone against her breast and shouted at her older child, the boy, ‘Stop doing that to her!’

There was a pause. The mother went to the door of the playroom and gave both children a hard look. ‘Lunch in five minutes,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave this room until you clean up this mess.’

They were five and seven. The little girl was quiet enough when left to her own devices, but the boy, Chase, was a terror. When he wasn’t torturing his sister he was putting her up to some sort of mischief. It was impossible to leave them alone in a room for half an hour without a crisis resulting.

The mother went back to the kitchen, the cordless phone in her hand. On the TV screen was the face of Colin Goss, the controversial right-wing politician whose rise in the polls had alarmed many observers.

‘God,’ she said, ‘there’s that maniac Goss on the news.’

‘Turn it off,’ her sister advised.

‘I wish I could turn him off,’ the mother said.

Both sisters hated Colin Goss, a perennial independent candidate for president who had lost three times in the general election. They considered him a pure demagogue, a menace to freedom and a potential Hitler. Their husbands, however, had been swept up in the recent groundswell of support for Goss. It was difficult to get through an evening without an argument on this subject.

‘Gary watches all Goss’s speeches on C-SPAN,’ the mother said. ‘He actually thinks the guy makes sense.’

‘So does Rich. I’ve heard him say it a thousand times. Colin Goss is strong, Colin Goss is the only man who has the guts to do what needs to be done. To me he’s a madman. Also, he’s icky.’

‘Creepy. You’re right.’

A lot of men admired Goss for his success in business and his strength and toughness. They viewed him as a dynamic leader who could ‘save the country.’ But when many women looked at Goss’s face they saw a lecher, a dirty old man. There was something cruelly sensual about Goss that repelled them.

Colin Goss’s main campaign issue was, and always had been, antiterrorism. A Nobel Prize-winning biochemist who had built his own pharmaceutical empire from nothing, Goss had gone on to become one of the richest conglomerators in the world. His influence was said to extend to every corner of government and the private sector. Over the years Goss had had run-ins with terrorists whose activities had affected his business dealings overseas. In the 1990s he emerged as the most eloquent, and certainly the most strident, antiterrorist in American politics.

Goss’s views never caught on, primarily because terrorism had not yet hit Americans close to home, and also because his speeches bristled with thinly veiled racism, particularly against Arabs and other people of color. When Goss talked of ‘cleaning up’ the Third World and the American underclass, many political observers cringed. Rhetoric like this had not been heard since the fascist movements of the 1930s.

But the World Trade Center attack changed the political climate. And with that attack still fresh in the public mind, the Crescent Queen disaster created a new political world.

‘If it weren’t for the Crescent Queen,’ the mother said, ‘no one would give Goss the time of day. But people are scared out of their wits.’

‘Well, it’s no wonder,’ her sister said. ‘All those poor children vaporized out in the ocean. It’s unbelievable.’

Military and scientific observers had determined that the Crescent Queen was destroyed by a tactical nuclear weapon delivered by ballistic missile. No terrorist group had taken credit for the attack. The president had promised that those responsible would be brought swiftly to justice. ‘The Crescent Queen disaster must not only be solved,’ he said. ‘It must be avenged.’

But in the six months since the attack, the combined efforts of the federal intelligence services had failed to identify the perpetrators. A state of fear unequaled since the Cuban missile crisis had set in among Americans.

A week after the attack a terrifying piece of video was sent to the major television networks and cable stations from an unknown source. It showed the Crescent Queen floating placidly in the Mediterranean, in such close focus that the name of the ship was visible on the bow. Then the nuclear explosion vaporized the vessel, and the camera pulled back to show the mushroom cloud rising majestically over the blue sea. The video had clearly been shot from a surface vessel at a safe distance from the blast.

‘It gives you the creeps,’ said the sister. ‘Just waiting to see where the next one is going to drop. I can’t sleep at night.’

‘Gary thinks the Muslims are behind the whole thing,’ said the mother. ‘He says the nuclear technology is being provided by Iraq or Libya or somebody, and the Muslim terrorists are pushing the button.’

‘Maybe he’s right. But it doesn’t make much difference, since we don’t know what to do about it. I feel like a sitting duck. I’m scared for my kids.’

‘Do you know what Rich says? He says kill all the Muslims and everything will fall into place.’

‘Gary is exactly the same. He says nuke the Arabs and divide the oil resources among the developed countries, and our troubles will be over.’

Many American men had similar opinions. It was hard to avoid unreasoning anger when they saw news video of Muslims marching in the streets of Middle Eastern capitals to celebrate the Crescent Queen disaster. Shaking fists and holding up signs that read DEATH TO AMERICA, the Muslims considered the attack a victory over the United States. Islamic terrorism was on the upswing, spreading throughout developing countries like a cancer. Governments in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa, intimidated by the Muslim groundswell, did not dare to refuse safe haven to the terrorists, even though this brought economic reprisals from America.

Meanwhile the continuing oil crisis, fostered by hostile Arab states, aggravated the recession that had begun just before the president’s election. Unemployment was at its highest point in a generation.

Few Americans dared to remember the time, only a few years ago, when the worst problem the nation faced was what to do with the surplus. The old world was gone. A new one had taken its place, a world in which one held one’s breath and waited for disaster to strike.

‘You know,’ said the mother, ‘I believe Gary honestly thinks that’s what Goss will do if he gets into office.’

‘You mean kill all the Muslims?’

‘Yes. That, or something like that – crazy as it sounds.’

‘I don’t know … It does sound insane, but I’m not sure I would completely put it past Goss. There’s something about those eyes of his … You know, Hitler never actually said he was going to kill people, either.’

‘I can’t believe we’re actually saying if he gets in,’ said the mother. ‘Ten years agó it would have been unthinkable.’

‘Yeah, but that was before the Crescent Queen. People want revenge. Men especially.’

‘The recession has a lot to do with it too. Being out of work for two years can do something to a man’s mind. I know it’s done something to Gary’s mind. He never used to be this way.’

The president’s popularity was at an all-time low. There was talk in Congress to the effect that he should resign. A constitutional amendment would permit a special election in which the American people could choose a new leader. Colin Goss was a visible spearhead of this movement. In the new climate of fear and anger, Goss was viewed as a viable candidate for president. His standing in the polls had been increasing steadily as public confidence in the administration declined.

‘Rich says if Goss runs for president he’ll be the first one at the polls. He wants to vote for Goss that badly.’

‘I just pray it never happens.’

The mother turned away from the TV. As she did so she saw the postman through the window, standing in the middle of the street. She frowned as she noticed his immobility. His shoulders and cap were now covered by a light layer of snow.

‘Listen,’ she said to her sister, ‘I’ve got to go. There seems to be something wrong with Mr Kennedy. I’ll call you back, okay?’

She hung up the phone, quickly looked in on the children, and threw on her coat. She remembered at the front door to put on her boots. She made her way across the snow-covered lawn to the sidewalk, and then into the street.

An odd stillness hung over the block as she moved toward the silent mailman. There was not a car in sight, not a tire track the entire length of the street. Snowflakes swayed downward like pillows from the gray sky.

She was close enough now to see the snowflakes on the mailman’s nose and eyelashes. His face was rigid. He reminded her of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, who simply froze in one position when the rain caused him to rust.

‘Mr Kennedy?’ she asked. ‘Are you all right?’

The postman’s eyes were a pale blue. They gave no sign that he had heard her. Something about them was strange, but it would not be until much later, telling her story to the health authorities, that she would put it into words by saying that his eyes were as though hypnotized from within.

She called to him several more times, and dared to touch his sleeve. But he was like a statue, completely oblivious of her.

She saw a couple of neighbor children coming toward her.

‘Stay back, children,’ she called. ‘Mr Kennedy may be sick.’

The children moved reluctantly away. The mother hurried inside, told Chase and Annie to stay in the playroom, and then called 911. The operator got the street wrong, and it was not until about twenty-five minutes later that a police car rolled to a stop alongside the immobile mailman. By now some more children had emerged from the surrounding houses and were gawking from their front lawns.

One of the policemen approached the mailman. He noticed a wet area on the man’s cheek. Looking down, he saw the remnants of a snowball on the ground at the mailman’s feet.

‘Children, I want you all to go inside your houses now,’ he said, motioning to his partner, who herded the children away.

The policeman tried to help the mailman into the cruiser, but the mailman seemed to resist, clinging to the spot where he stood. His jaws were clenched tightly, and he had a look of empty, meaningless stubbornness on his face.

After another few minutes of indecisive parley, an ambulance was called. When it arrived two paramedics discussed the situation with the police and finally lifted the mailman onto their gurney and slid him into the back of the ambulance.

‘All right, children,’ said one of the mothers who had ventured onto her frozen stoop. ‘It’s all over now. Let’s all get inside before we freeze our noses off.’

The children, bored now that the police car and ambulance were gone, went back into their houses.

The emergency room physician who examined Wayne Kennedy that afternoon found all his vital signs essentially normal. Heart rate, blood pressure, even reflexes were well within normal limits. But the patient could not speak or perform simple commands. (‘Wayne, can you lift your little finger for me?’) His eyes were seen to notice a flashlight beam as it was moved across his field of vision, but when asked to follow the light on command, he could not or would not obey.

By evening Kennedy had been moved to a semiprivate room adjacent to the intensive care ward. The doctors did not understand his condition, so they did not know what to expect. Emergency life support might become necessary if some unknown toxic or infectious agent was behind his illness. On the other hand, the silence and the stubborn immobility suggested a mental disturbance, and Kennedy would have to be watched for this as well.

By nine o’clock that night, most of the physicians and interns on duty had had a look at the patient, and none could offer a constructive thought.

The nurses were told to keep a close watch on him, and he was put to bed for the night.

In all this time Wayne Kennedy, a fifteen-year veteran of the postal service with a large family of his own, had not uttered a single sound.