by Timothy Zahn
“You miss the point,” Maxwell grated. “It’s not the President’s pain treatments we’re worried about.”
“Then what—?”
“You mean you have forgotten,” Christophe put in, “how voodoo dolls were originally used?”
I looked at the doll still in Pak’s hand. “Oh, hell,” I said quietly.
“Our theory is that it is the protein signature in the hair and nail clippings that, so to speak, forms the connection between the doll and the subject,” Christophe said, gesturing broadly at the dolls in the vault. “Once that connection is made, what happens to the doll is duplicated in what happens to the subject.”
I gnawed at my lip. “Well … these dolls were made specifically for medical purposes, right? Is there anything about their design that would make it impossible to use them for attack purposes? Or even to limit the amount of damage they could do?”
Christophe’s brow furrowed. “It is an interesting question. There was certainly no malice involved in their creation, which may be a factor. But whether some other person could so bend them to that purpose—”
“If you don’t know,” I interrupted brusquely, “just say so.”
“I do not know,” he said, looking a little hurt.
“What’s all this dirt for?” Maxwell asked, poking a finger experimentally into one of the row planters.
“Ah!” Christophe said, perking up. “That is our true crowning achievement, Mr. Maxwell—the discovery that it is the soil of Haiti that is the true source of voodoo power.”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“No, it’s true,” Pak put in. “A doll that’s taken away from Haiti soon loses its potency. Having them in Haitian soil seems to keep them working indefinitely.”
“Or in other words, the doll they stole will eventually run out of steam,” I nodded. “How soon before that happens? A few hours? Days?”
“I expect it’d be measured in terms of a few weeks, maybe longer. I don’t think we’ve ever gotten around to properly experimenting with—”
“If you don’t know,” I growled, “just say so.”
“I don’t know.”
I looked at Maxwell. “Well, that’s something, anyway. If it takes our thief long enough to figure out what he’s got, it won’t do him any good.”
“Oh, he knows what he’s got, all right,” Maxwell said grimly. “Unless you really think he just grabbed that one by accident?”
“I suppose not,” I sighed, glancing back at the rows of figurines. None of the others showed evidence of even having been touched, let alone considered for theft. “Dr. Christophe … is there anything like a—well, a range for this … effect of yours? In other words, does the President have to be within five miles, say, of the doll before anything will happen?”
Christophe and Pak exchanged looks. “We’ve treated patients who were as far as a hundred miles away,” Pak said. “In fact—yes. I believe President Thompson himself was on a campaign trip in Omaha two months ago when we treated a stomach cramp.”
Omaha. Great. If this nonsensical, unreal effect could reach a thousand miles across country, the thief could be anywhere.
Maxwell apparently followed my train of thought. “Looks like I was right—our best bet is to try and narrow down the possibilities.”
I nodded, eyeing the vault door. This wasn’t some cheap chain lock substitute Pak and Christophe had here—only a genuine professional would have the know-how to get into it. “Alarm systems?” I asked.
“I’ve got the parameters,” Maxwell said before either of the others could speak. “You think I’ve proved sufficient urgency now for us to head back and dig into your files?”
The President’s life, threatened by the melding of two pseudosciences that no one in his right mind could possibly believe in … except maybe that the combination happened to work. “Yeah, I think you’ve got a case,” I admitted. “How’s the President taking it?”
Maxwell hesitated a fraction too long. “He’s doing fine,” he said.
I cocked my eyebrow at him. “Really?” I asked pointedly.
His jaw clenched momentarily. “Actually … I’m not sure he’s been told yet. There’s nothing he can do, and we don’t want to … you know.”
Stir up psychosomatic trouble, I finished silently for him. Made as much sense as any of the rest of it, I supposed—
“Wait a second,” I interrupted my own thought. “I remember reading once that for acupuncture to work the subject has to believe in it, at least a little. Doesn’t the same apply to voodoo?”
Christophe drew himself up to his full height. “Mr. Harland,” he said stiffly, “we are not dealing with fantasies and legends here. Our method is a fully medical, fully scientific treatment of the patient, and whatever he believes or does not believe matters but little.”
Maxwell looked at Pak. “You agree with that, Doctor?”
Pak pursed his lips. “There’s some element of belief in it, sure,” he conceded. “But what area of medicine doesn’t have that? The whole double-blind/placebo approach to drug testing shows—”
“Fine, fine,” Maxwell cut him off. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, anyway. If the President has enough belief to get benefit out of it, he probably has enough to get hurt, too.”
Pak swallowed visibly. “Mr. Maxwell … look, we’re really sorry about all this. Is there anything at all we can do to help?”
Maxwell glanced at me. “You think of anything?”
I looked past him at the rows of dolls. There was still a heavy aura of unreality hanging over this whole thing. … With an effort I forced myself back to business. “I presume your people already checked for fingerprints?”
“In the entryway, on the windows, on the vault itself, and also on the file cabinet where the records are kept. We’re assuming that’s how the thief knew which doll was the President’s.”
“In that case—” I shrugged. “I guess it’s time to get back to the station and warm up the computer. So unless you two know of a antidote to—”
I broke off as, for some reason, a train of thought I’d been sidetracked from earlier suddenly reappeared. “Something?” Maxwell prompted.
“Dr. Christophe,” I said slowly, “what would happen if a given patient had two dolls linked to him? And different things were done to each one?”
Christophe nodded eagerly. “Yes—I had the exact same thought myself. If Sam’s acupuncture can counteract any damage done through the stolen doll—” He looked at Pak. “Certainly you can do it?”
Pak’s forehead creased in a frown. “It’s a nice thought, Pierre, but I’m not at all sure I can do it. If the dolls are both running the same strength—”
“But they won’t be,” Maxwell interrupted him. “The Haitian dirt, remember? You can keep yours stuck up to its knees in the stuff, while theirs will gradually be losing power.” He shook his head abruptly. “I can’t believe I’m actually talking like this,” he muttered. “Anyway, it’s our best shot until we get the first doll back. I’m going to phone for a car—have all the stuff you’ll need ready in fifteen minutes, okay?”
“Wait a second,” Pak objected. “Where are we going?”
“The White House, of course,” Maxwell told him. “Well, Baltimore, actually—the President’s there right now getting ready for the debate tonight. I want you to be right there with him in case an attack is made.”
“But the doll will work—”
“I’m not talking about the damn doll—I’m talking about the problem of communications lag. If the President has to tell someone where it hurts and then they have to call you from Baltimore or the White House and then you have to get the doll out and treat it and ask over the phone whether it’s doing any good—” He broke off. “What am I explaining all of this for? You’re going to be with the President for the next few days
and that’s that. As material witnesses, if nothing else.”
He hadn’t a hope of getting that one to stick, and he and I both knew it. But Pak and Christophe apparently didn’t. Or else they were feeling responsible enough that they weren’t in any mood to be awkward. Whichever, by the time Maxwell got his connection through to the White House they’d both headed off to collect their materials and equipment, and by the time the car arrived ten minutes later they were ready to go. Maxwell gave the driver directions, and as they drove off he and I got back in my car and returned to the station.
“Well, there you have it,” I sighed, leaning back in my chair and waving at the printout. “Your likeliest suspects. Take your pick.”
Maxwell said a particularly obscene word and hefted the stack of paper. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance we missed any helpful criteria, is there?”
I shrugged. “You sat there and watched me feed it all in. Expert safecracker, equally proficient with fancy vaults and fancy electronic alarm systems, not dead, not in jail, et cetera, et cetera.”
He shook his head. “It’ll take days to sort through these.”
“Longer than that to track all of them down,” I agreed. “Any ideas you’ve got, I’ll take them.”
He gnawed at the end of a pencil. “What about cross-referencing with our hate mail file? Surely no ordinary thief would have any interest in killing President Thompson.”
“Fine—but most of your hate-mail people aren’t going to know about the President’s doll in the first place. We’d do better to try and find a leak from either the White House or Pak and Christophe’s place.”
“We’re already doing that,” he said grimly. “Also checking with the CIA regarding foreign intelligence services and terrorist organizations. These guys”—he tapped the printout—“were more of a long shot, but we couldn’t afford to pass it up.”
“Nice to occasionally be included in what’s going on,” I murmured. “How’s the President?”
“As of ten minutes ago he was fine.” Maxwell had been calling at roughly fifteen minute intervals, despite the fact that the Baltimore Secret Service contingent had my phone number and had promised to let us know immediately if anything happened.
“Well, that’s something, anyway.” I glanced at my watch. It was nearly four o’clock; two and a half hours since we’d left the voodoo acupuncture clinic and maybe as many as sixteen since the doll had been stolen.
And something here was not quite right. “Maxwell, don’t take this the wrong way … but what the hell is he waiting for?”
“Who, the thief?”
“Yeah.” I chewed at my lip. “Think about it a minute. We assume he knows what he has and that he went in deliberately looking for it. So why wait to use it?”
“Establishing an alibi?” Maxwell suggested slowly.
“For murder with a voodoo doll?”
“Yeah, I suppose that doesn’t make any sense,” he admitted. “Well . . . maybe he’s not planning to use it himself. Maybe he’s going to send out feelers and sell the doll to the highest bidder.”
“Maybe,” I nodded. “On the other hand, who would believe him?”
“Holding it for ransom, then?”
“He’s had sixteen hours to cut out newspaper letters and paste up a ransom note. Anything like that shown up?”
He shook his head. “I’m sure I’d have been told if it had. Okay, I’ll bite: what is taking him so long?”
“I don’t know, but whatever he’s planning he’s up against at least two time limits. One: the longer he holds it, the better the chance that we’ll catch up with him. And two: the longer he waits, the less power the doll’s going to have.”
“Unless he knows about the Haitian soil connection … no. If he’d known he should have helped himself to some when he took the doll.”
“Though he could have a private source of the stuff,” I agreed. “It’s still a fair assumption, though. Could he have expected us to have Pak standing by waiting to counteract whatever he does? He might be holding off then until Pak relaxes his guard some.”
“The theft went undiscovered for at least a couple of hours,” Maxwell pointed out. “He could have killed the President in his sleep. For that matter, he could have done it right there in the vault and never needed to take the doll at all.”
“Point,” I conceded. “So simple murder isn’t what he’s looking for—complicated murder, maybe, but not simple murder.”
“Oh, my God,” Maxwell whispered suddenly, his face going pale. “The debate. He’s going to do it at the debate.”
For a long second we stared at each other. Then, simultaneously, we grabbed our jackets and bolted for the door.
It was something like forty miles to Baltimore; an hour’s trip under normal conditions. Maxwell insisted on driving and made it in a shade over forty-five minutes. In rush hour traffic, yet.
We arrived at the Hyatt and found the President’s suite … and discovered that all our haste had been for nothing.
“What do you mean, they won’t cancel?” Maxwell growled to VanderSluis, the Secret Service man who met us just inside the door.
“Who’s this ‘they’ you’re talking about?” the other growled back. “It’s the President who won’t cancel.”
“Didn’t you tell him—?”
“We gave him everything you radioed in,” VanderSluis sighed. “Didn’t do a bit of good. He says canceling at the last minute like this without a good reason would be playing right into Danzing’s rhetoric.”
“Has he been told … ?”
“About the doll? Yeah, but it didn’t help. Probably hurt, actually—he rightly pointed out that if someone’s going to attack him using the doll, hiding won’t do him a damn bit of good.”
Maxwell glanced at me, frustration etched across his face. “What about Pak and Christophe?” he asked VanderSluis. “They here?”
“Sure—down the hall in seventeen.”
“Down the hall? I thought I told them to stick by the President.”
“They’re as close now as they’re likely to get,” VanderSluis said grimly. “The President said he didn’t want them underfoot while he was getting ready for the debate.”
Or roughly translated, he didn’t want any of the media bloodhounds nosing about to get a sniff of them and start asking awkward questions. “At least they’re not back in Washington,” I murmured as Maxwell opened his mouth.
Maxwell closed his mouth again, clenched his teeth momentarily. “I suppose so,” he said reluctantly. “Well … come on, Harland, let’s go talk to them. Maybe they’ll have some ideas.”
We found them in the room, lounging on the two double beds watching television. On the floor between the beds, the room’s coffee table had been set up like a miniature surgical tray, with Pak’s acupuncture needles laid out around a flower pot containing Christophe’s replacement doll. It looked as hideous as the ones back in their Washington vault. “Anything?” Maxwell asked as the doctors looked up at us.
“Ah—Mr. Maxwell,” Christophe said, tapping the remote to turn off the TV. “You will be pleased to hear that President Thompson is in perfect health—”
“He had some stomach trouble an hour ago.” Pak put in, “but I don’t think it had anything to do with the doll. Just predebate tension, probably. Anyway, I got rid of it with the new doll.”
Maxwell nodded impatiently. “Yeah, well, the lull’s about to end. We think that the main attack’s going to come sometime during the debate.”
Both men’s eyes widened momentarily, and Christophe muttered something French under his breath. Pak recovered first. “Of course. Obvious, in a way. What can we do?”
“The same thing you were brought here for in the first place: counteract the effects of the old doll with the new one. Unfortunately, we’re now back to our original problem.”
>
“Communications?” I asked.
He nodded. “How are we going to know—fast—what’s happening out there on the stage?”
I found myself gazing at the now-dark TV. “Dr. Pak … how are you at reading a man’s physical condition from his expression and body language?”
“You mean can I sit here and tell how President Thompson is feeling by watching the debate on TV?” Pak shook his head. “No chance. Even if the camera was on him the whole time, which of course it won’t be.”
“Maybe a signal board,” Maxwell suggested, a tone of excitement creeping into his voice. “With individual buttons for each likely target—joints, stomach, back, and all.”
“And he does, what, pushes a button whenever he hurts somewhere?” I scoffed.
“It doesn’t have to be that obvious,” Maxwell said, reaching past Christophe to snare the bedside phone. “We can make it out of tiny piezo crystals—it doesn’t take more than a touch to trigger those things. And they’re small enough that a whole boardful of them could fit on the lectern behind his notes—Larry?” he interrupted himself into the phone. “Bill Maxwell. Listen, do we have any of those single-crystal piezo pressure gadgets we use for signaling and spot security? … Yeah, short range would be fine—we’d just need a booster somewhere backstage … Oh, great … Well, as many as you’ve got … Great—I’ll be right down.”
He tossed the phone back into it cradle and headed for the door. “We’re in,” he announced over his shoulder. “They’ve got over a hundred of the things. I’ll be right back.” Scooping up a room key from a low table beside the door, he left.
I looked at my watch. Five-fifteen, with the debate set to begin at nine. Not much time for the kind of wiring Maxwell was talking about. “You think it’ll work?” I asked Pak.
He shrugged uncomfortably. “I suppose so. The bad part is that it means I’ll be relying on diagnostics from someone who is essentially an amateur.”
