David Zeman - The Pinocchio Syndrome

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.

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.

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.