The Conspiracy Club Read Online Free PDF Page A

dreamy look came into his eyes as he embarked upon a story. A patient he’d seen back in Panama. A young officer in the Corps of Engineers who’d returned from a jungle hike, felt an itch under his left shoulder blade, reached back and fingered a slight swelling and believed himself bitten.
    He’d thought nothing of it until a day later when the swelling had tripled in size.
    “But still,” said Arthur, “he didn’t come in for examination. No fever, no other discomfort — the old machismo, you know. On the second day, the pain arrived. Wonderful messenger, pain. Teaches us all sorts of lessons about our bodies. This pain was electric — or so the fellow described it. A high-voltage electric shock running continuously through his torso. As if he’d been hooked up to a live circuit. By the time I saw him he was deathly pallid and shaking and in quite a bit of agony. And the swelling had trebled, yet again. Furthermore,” Arthur leaned forward, “the lad was certain there was something moving within.”
    He selected a potato chip, slid it between his lips, chewed deliberately, dusted crumbs from his beard and continued.
    “My assumption upon hearing that — motion — was crepitus. Fluid buildup secondary to infection, nothing alarming on the face of it. But the poor lad removed his shirt and as I observed the mass I became intrigued.” Arthur licked salt from his lips. In the dim light of the bar, his eyes were the color of fine jade.
    “The swelling was huge, Jeremy. Highly discolored, the beginnings of necrosis had set in. Black flesh, somewhat bubal, so one had to consider plague. But there was no serious probability of plague, the corps had cleaned the Canal Zone quite thoroughly. Still, medicine is predicated on surprise, that’s the fun of it, and I knew I had to culture the mass. In preparation, I palpated — the wretch could barely contain himself from screaming — and as I did I noticed that there did, indeed, seem to be some sort of independent movement beneath the skin. Unlike any crepitus I’d ever seen.”
    Another potato chip. A slow sip of martini.
    Arthur sat back again.
    Jeremy had moved forward on his seat. He relaxed, consciously. Waited for the punch line.
    Arthur ate and drank, looked quite content. The old bastard hadn’t finished. Too drunk to continue?
    Jeremy fought the urge to say, “What happened then?”
    Finally, Arthur drained his martini glass and gave a low sigh of contentment. “At that point, rather than commence with the examination, I sent the fellow for an X ray and the results were quite fascinating, if inconclusive.”
    Munch. Sip.
    “What did it show?” said Jeremy.
    “A gelatinous mass of indeterminate origin,” said Arthur. “A mass unlike any neoplasm or cystic formation I’d ever seen. My reference books were of no help. Neither was the radiologist — not the brightest fellow in the first place. In any event, I decided to cut the lad open, but gingerly. Which was fortunate because I was able to preserve it, intact.”
    Arthur stared at the empty martini glass and smiled in reminiscence. Jeremy busied himself with the last drops of single malt.
    Unbuttoning his vest, the pathologist shook his head, in wonder. “Infestation.
Larval
infestation. The poor lad had been selected by a little known jungle beetle as the nutritional host for its new family — an unusually petite ectoparasitoid of the Adephaga family. The insect is equipped with a set of biochemical tools that prove extremely useful to its survival. It’s brown and unassuming and, hence, hard to spot, and, to the uninformed, appears minimally threatening. Furthermore, it exudes a chemical that repels predators, and its excrement possesses anesthetic properties. Its modus is to deposit its feces on the victim’s skin, which accomplishes the dual goal of relieving itself and numbing the host epidermis. That allows for a swift, clean incision large enough to accommodate an extravagantly curved