The moderator went through a short welcoming routine and then nodded to Thompson. "Mr. President, the first opening statement will be yours," he said. The camera shifted to a mid-closeup and Thompson began to speak—"
"Stomach," Maxwell said tersely from behind me.
"I see it," Pak answered in a much calmer voice. "...This should do it."
I kept my own eyes on the President's face. A brief flicker of almost-pain came and went. "He's looking okay now," I announced.
"Unfortunately, we can't tell if the treatment is working," Pak commented. "Only where the attack is directed—"
"Right elbow," Maxwell cut him off.
"Got it."
"Thank you, Mr. President," the moderator cut smoothly into Thompsons's speech. "Senator Danzing: your opening statement, sir."
The camera shifted to Danzing and I took a deep breath and relaxed a bit. Only for a second, though, as an angled side camera was brought into play and Thompson appeared in the foreground. "Watch it," I warned the other. "He's on camera again."
"Uh-huh," Maxwell grunted. "—stomach again."
"Got it," Pak assured him. "Whoever our thief is, he isn't very imaginative."
"Not terribly dangerous, either, at least so far," I put in. "Though I suppose we should be grateful for small favors."
"Or for small minds," Maxwell said dryly. "It's starting to look more and more like murder wasn't the original object at all."
"I do not understand," Christophe spoke up.
Maxwell snorted. "Haven't you ever heard of political dirty tricks?"
The camera was full on Danzing again, and I risked a glance around at the others hunched over the table set up between the two hotel beds. "You mean... all of this just to make Thompson look wracked by aches and pains on camera?"
"Why not?" Maxwell said, glancing briefly up at me. "Stupider things have been done. Effectively, I might add."
"I suppose." But probably, I added to myself, none stranger than this one. My eyes flicked to the table and to two wax figures standing up in flower pots of Haitian soil there: one with a half dozen acupuncture needles already sticking out of it, the other much larger one looking more like a pincushion than a doll.
But those weren't pins sticking into it. Rather, they were a hundred thin wires leading out of it. Out, and into a board with an equal number of neatly spaced and labeled lights set into it... and even as I watched, one of the tiny piezo crystals Christophe had so carefully embedded into his creation reacted to the subtle change in pressure of the wax and the corresponding light blinked on—
"Right wrist," Maxwell snapped.
"Got it," Pak said. Belatedly, I turned back to my station at the TV, just in time to see the President's arm wave in one of his trademark wide-open gestures. The arm swung forward, hand cupped slightly toward the camera... and as it paused there my eyes focused on that hand, and despite the limitations of the screen I could almost imagine I saw the slight discolorations under his neatly manicured fingernails. Would any of the reporters in the ballroom be close enough to see that? Probably not. And even if they did, they almost certainly wouldn't recognize Christophe's oddly translucent wax for what it really was.
Or believe it if they did. Doll-to-person voodoo was ridiculous enough; running the process in reverse, person-to-doll, was even harder to swallow.
The picture shifted to Danzing. "He's off-camera again," I announced, getting my mind back on my job.
The battles raged for just over an hour—the President's and Senator's verbal battle, and our quieter, behind-the-scenes one. And when it was over, the two men on the stage shook hands and headed backstage... and because I knew to look for it, I noticed the slight limp to the President's walk. Hardly surprising, really—though I've never tried it, I'm sure it's very difficult to walk properly when your socks are full of Haitian dirt.
—
The Secret Service dropped me out of the investigation after that, so I don't know whether or not they ever actually recovered the doll. But at this point it hardly matters. The President's clearly still alive, and by now the stolen doll is almost certainly inert. I haven't seen Pak or Christophe since the debate, either, but from the excited way they were talking afterwards I'd guess that by now they've probably worked most of the bugs out of the new voodoo diagnostic technique that Maxwell came up with that night. And I suppose I have to accept that all medical advances, whether they make me uncomfortable or not, are ultimately a good thing.
And actually, the whole experience has wound up saving me a fair amount of money, too. Instead of shelling out fifteen dollars for a haircut once a month, I've learned to do the job myself, at home.
I collect and destroy my fingernail clippings, too. Not paranoid, you understand; just cautious.
Banshee
The bar was a small, roadside spot nestled almost invisibly among the mountains of south-central Wyoming. It had probably once been a tourist trap of sorts. I guessed, before newer roads had drained traffic away and left it struggling to survive on the flyspeck towns loosely grouped around it. How it was managing to do so I couldn't guess; even at four o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon a decent bar ought to have had more than three cars huddled together in its parking lot. In my mind's eye I envisioned an interior to the place as dreary as its exterior, aching with a sense of failure, and the thought of facing that nearly made me pass it up. But I hadn't eaten since breakfast and my stomach had been rumbling for the past two hours... and besides, perhaps my patronage would help a little. Pulling my old rust bucket into the lot, I climbed out into the hot sun and went inside.
I'd been right about the bar being largely deserted; but on the plus side, the decor was not nearly as depressing as I'd feared it would be. Old and somewhat faded, it had nevertheless been well cared for. Which, coincidentally, was how I viewed the waitress who reached my side as I settled down at my chosen table. "Afternoon," she said with a smile as she set down a water glass in front of me. "Our special today is home-barbequed chicken with..."
"Sounds good," I agreed, when she'd finished her description, "but I think I'll just have a medium-rare burger and a glass of beer."
"You got it," she said, smiling again as she marked it down on her pad and moved back toward the kitchen. The chicken actually had sounded better, but the burger was cheaper, and taking that instead would enable me to shift a little more of my limited resources into her tip. Silly, perhaps, but I'd always felt that a little sacrificial scrimping was well worthwhile when it would help brighten someone's day.
Taking a long swallow of water, I moved the glass across the table and pulled out my map. I'd need to find a motel eventually, but I wanted to get at least a little closer to where I'd be hiking before I quit for the day. If I picked up Eleven and got at least to Woods Landing... "Hey! You!"
I looked up to see the barman waving the phone in my direction, an odd expression on his face. "Phone's for you," he announced.
My tongue froze against my teeth. "It... what?" I managed.
His expression grew a little odder. "Your name Sinn?"
My stomach tightened against its emptiness. No one knew where I was... which meant no one could possibly have called me. But someone had. "Yes... yes it is," I told him. "Adam Sinn."