David Zeman - The Pinocchio Syndrome

‘But you don’t have any evidence that the time is now,’ he probed.

‘No.’ She shook her head.

There was a pause. Fallon nodded to a female reporter who was hurrying past with a cameraman in tow. Something about the nod seemed a bit too familiar for a high-level official’s press secretary. Karen suspected Fallon was a ladies’ man. She filed away her intuition for future reference.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Nice talking to you.’

‘If it was possible to make a person sick for political purposes,’ she said, ‘Vice President Everhardt would probably be a good choice, given the current circumstances. Don’t you think so?’

Fallon smiled. ‘You certainly do have a tendency toward the hypothetical,’ he observed.

‘Think about it a moment,’ she went on, undaunted. ‘Everhardt was the ideal running mate for the president five years ago. He was chosen over a lot of other possible candidates, and the process of selection took a long time. Now, just like that, he’s out of the picture.’

‘That’s true.’

‘The administration has been struggling in the polls, with all these calls for the president to resign,’ Karen said. ‘Now, with Everhardt removed, the pressure will probably increase. The administration looks weaker than ever.’

Fallon nodded. ‘Maybe.’

‘Suppose for the sake of argument that Everhardt was eliminated intentionally,’ Karen suggested.

‘That’s a heck of a supposition,’ Fallon observed.

‘Far-fetched or not,’ the reporter said, ‘suppose it was true. Unlikely things happen in the world, don’t they? Think of the Kennedy assassination. Nobody saw it coming. And the ripple effect was enormous. The whole course of our history …’

As a CIA man Fallon bristled at the mention of the Kennedy assassination.

‘I’m afraid I’m out of time, Miss Embry. I wish you good luck with your theories.’

‘Call me Karen.’ She held out a hand. Mitch Fallon was a person she had to be nice to.

‘Karen, then. Call me Mitch. Keep in touch. Nice to meet you.’

‘Same here,’ she smiled. ‘I’ll be around.’

He watched her walk away from him. She moved with firm strides, her body lithe and athletic. The young female animal at the peak of her powers and her attractiveness , he thought. If she was this intense on the job, what must she be like between the sheets?

He stopped in at the director’s office on his way back to his own office.

‘Did you talk to her?’ the director asked.

‘Yes.’

‘What does she have?’

‘Nothing, except an overactive imagination. As far as I can see.’

‘Keep your eye on her.’

‘I will, sir.’

The director turned his back.

Karen arrived home an hour after the news conference. Before turning on the computer to write down her notes, she rewound the tape on her office VCR and checked the last hour of news. An item immediately caught her eye.

‘Health authorities in Australia are concerned about a tiny Aborigine village deep in the outback where a strange and crippling illness has broken out. Over a hundred villagers are unable to speak or move. Others, according to doctors on the scene, have died of the disease, which was apparently not reported at first because of the remoteness of the village. ’

A video image of one of the victims was displayed behind the commentator. It was a close-up, surprisingly eloquent, of an Aborigine girl, perhaps seventeen years old, whose eyes looked unseeing into the camera. The eyes were macabre. They looked hypnotized from within.

Karen dropped her notes and looked long and hard at the TV screen.

She had seen that look before. On the face of a six-year-old child in Iowa.

The girl is bound to an apparatus which resembles a couch or examining table, tilted sharply toward the floor. Her skin glows against the black leatherette, the more so because of the light shining down from above. Her eyes are open, but she seems to sleep like the princess in the fairy tale. Her hair is blond. It is in disarray and hangs over her left cheek, obscuring much of her face.

Her hands are bound by rings fixed under the seat. Her legs are not bound, but because of the shape of the apparatus she assumes the crouch as a natural position. Her knees are bent, the thighs approximately vertical, the calves angled toward the floor. It is just possible for the eye to see that her toenails are painted, though the color does not come through from this vantage point.

Her left breast is clearly visible, pushed against the leatherette. The outline of her ribs is seen under the skin of her side. Her arms are long and slender.

There is something pathetic about her bound posture, but also something provocative. Her pelvis is the center of focus. The gradual upward thrust of the back leads to it, as does the vertical line of the thighs. The curve of her buttocks is given optimum shape and tension by her bound posture. She looks like a princess, but not one garbed in silk and brocade. Hers is the nobility of nudity.

There is movement, there is sound. A shadow approaches from the right, moving slowly. The girl sees nothing. As the shadow comes closer there are calls from the distance, and laughter. She does not hear. Or rather, if she hears she does not move a muscle to show that she hears.

The shadow is next to her now, a hand outstretched. The music builds toward its crescendo. The voices call out urgently.

Now the hanging cord is seen, dangling from the other hand. Slender, tufted at the end, it moves along the wall, swinging slightly as it approaches her. The voices call out encouragement. Uncertain, hesitant, the shadow dangles. Then it falls over the naked buttocks. The girl’s empty eyes do not say whether she is aware of the approach or not. Is it obliviousness or terror that freezes her?

The shadow swings this way and that. The voices call out. The female flesh waits passively.

Suddenly everything stops. The poised shadow does not move. The girl is a statue. The voices are cut off. The hanging tail is an inch from her crotch. But nothing moves. All is still.

A sound is heard. A gasp, perhaps a cry of anguish.

Darkness falls. Girl, shadow, wall, disappear like magic.

The scene is ended, until next time.

Sydney, Australia

November 27

Karen Embry’s plane landed at four-thirty in the morning, Australia time, after a total of twenty-three hours spent in the air.

It had taken lengthy politicking with her agent to get him to agree to this journey. She had told him much – but not all – that she had learned about the mystery illness. Sensing a book in the offing, he had finally given in.

Karen could not sleep on airplanes. By the time she arrived she had not slept in a day and a half. She had powerful uppers in her purse, given to her by a fellow reporter who was a speed addict. But she hadn’t taken any. So far the scent of a story was enough to keep her alert.

She took a local flight to Perth, and then a chartered Cessna into the outback, landing on an airstrip seemingly a thousand miles from nowhere.

According to the reports she had read, the mystery disease had gone undiscovered for a couple of months or more. It had not spread beyond the small tribe of Aborigines, but it had killed most of them and incapacitated the rest. There were only about fifteen survivors, most of them quarantined in a health clinic.

The reports about the illness were garbled, no doubt because of the remote location and the victims’ suspicion of the authorities. However, in one somewhat obscure report an Aborigine from a neighboring village had said, ‘When the people neared death, their feet and hands became hard and large, like the hoofs of animals.’ This had made Karen decide to see the syndrome for herself.