Firestarter

  "Oh, John, that doesn't mean anything--"

  "Yes it does. If I knew something, I'd be one of those guys like that Hockstetter. College-educated."

  With great disdain she replied, "My daddy says any fool can buy a college education somewhere."

  In his heart, he rejoiced.

  2

  Three days after that, the fish swallowed the lure.

  Charlie told him that she had decided to let them make their tests. She would be careful, she said. And she would make them be careful, if they didn't know how. Her face was thin and pinched and pale.

  "Don't you do it," John said, "unless you've thought it all out."

  "I've tried," she whispered.

  "Are you doing it for them?"

  "No!"

  "Good! Are you doing it for you?"

  "Yes. For me. And for my father."

  "All right," he said. "And Charlie--make them play it your way. Understand me? You've shown them how tough you can be. Don't let them see a weak streak now. If they see it, they'll use it. Play tough. You know what I mean?"

  "I ... think so."

  "They get something, you get something. Every time. No freebies." His shoulders slumped a bit. The fire went out of his eye. She hated to see him this way, looking depressed and defeated. "Don't let them treat you like they treated me. I gave my country four years of my life and one eye. One of those years I spent in a hole in the ground eating bugs and running a fever and smelling my own shit all the time and picking lice out of my hair. And when I got out they said thanks a lot, John, and put a mop in my hand. They stole from me, Charlie. Get it? Don't let them do that to you."

  "I get it," she said solemnly.

  He brightened a little, then smiled. "So when's the big day?"

  "I'm seeing Dr. Hockstetter tomorrow. I'll tell him I've dedded to cooperate ... a little. And I'll ... I'll tell him what I want."

  "Well, just don't ask for too much at first. It's just like the carny at the midway, Charlie. You got to show em some flash before you take their cash."

  She nodded.

  "But you show them who's in the saddle, right? Show them who's boss."

  "Right."

  He smiled more broadly. "Good kid!" he said.

  3

  Hockstetter was furious.

  "What the hell sort of game are you playing?" he shouted at Rainbird. They were in Cap's office. He dared to shout, Rainbird thought, because Cap was here to play referee. Then he took a second look at Hockstetter's hot blue eyes, his flushed cheeks, his white knuckles, and admitted that he was probably wrong. He had dared to make his way through the gates and into Hockstetter's sacred garden of privilege. The shaking-out Rainbird had administered after the blackout ended was one thing; Hockstetter had lapsed dangerously and had known it. This was something else altogether. He thought.

  Rainbird only stared at Hockstetter.

  "You've carefully set it up around an impossibility! You know damned well she isn't going to see her father! They get something, you get something,' " Hockstetter mimicked furiously. "You fool!"

  Rainbird continued to stare at Hockstetter. "Don't call me a fool again," he said in a perfectly neutral voice. Hockstetter flinched ... but only a little.

  "Please, gentlemen," Cap said wearily. "Please."

  There was a tape recorder on his desk. They had just finished listening to the conversation Rainbird had had with Charlie that morning.

  "Apparently Dr. Hockstetter has missed the point that he and his team are finally going to get something," Rainbird said. "Which will improve their store of practical knowledge by one hundred percent, if my mathematics are correct."

  "As the result of a totally unforeseen accident," Hockstetter said sullenly.

  "An accident you people were too shortsighted to manufacture for yourselves," Rainbird countered. "Too busy playing with your rats, maybe."

  "Gentlemen, that's enough!" Cap said. "We're not here to indulge in a lot of recriminations; that is not the purpose of this meeting." He looked at Hockstetter. "You're going to get to play ball," he said. "I must say you show remarkably little gratitude."

  Hockstetter muttered.

  Cap looked at Rainbird. "All the same, I also think you took your role of amicus curiae a little bit too far in the end."

  "Do you think so? Then you still don't understand." He looked from Cap to Hockstetter and then back to Cap again. "I think both of you have shown an almost paralyzing lack of understanding. You've got two child psychiatrists at your disposal, and if they are an accurate representation of the caliber of that field, there are a lot of disturbed kids out there who have got big-time trouble."

  "Easy to say," Hockstetter said. "This--"

  "You just don't understand how smart she is," Rainbird cut him off. "You don't understand how ... how adept she is at seeing the causes and effects of things. Working with her is like picking your way through a minefield. I pointed out the carrot-and-stick idea to her because she would have thought of it herself. By thinking of it for her, I've shored up the trust she has in me ... in effect, turned a disadvantage into an advantage."

  Hockstetter opened his mouth. Cap held up one hand and then turned to Rainbird. He spoke in a soft, placatory tone that he used with no one else ... but then, no one else was John Rainbird. "That doesn't alter the fact that you seem to have limited how far Hockstetter and his people can go. Sooner or later she's going to understand that her ultimate request--to see her father--is not going to be granted. We're all in agreement that to allow that might close off her usefulness to us forever."

  "Right on," Hockstetter said.

  "And if she's as sharp as you say," Cap said, "she's apt to make the ungrantable request sooner rather than later."

  "She'll make it," Rainbird agreed. "And that will end it. For one thing, she'd realize as soon as she saw him that I was lying all along about his condition. That would lead her to the conclusion that I had been shilling for you guys all along. So it becomes entirely a question of how long you can keep her going."

  Rainbird leaned forward.

  "A couple of points. First, you've both got to get used to the idea that she's simply not going to light fires for you ad infinitum. She's a human being, a little girl who wants to see her father. She's not a lab rat."

  "We've already--" Hockstetter began impatiently.

  "No. No, you haven't. It goes back to the very basis of the reward system in experimentation. The carrot and the stick. By lighting fires, Charlie thinks she's holding the carrot out to you and that she will eventually lead you--and herself--to her father. But we know differently. In truth, her father is the carrot, and we are leading her. Now a mule will plow the whole south forty trying to get that carrot dangling in front of his eyes, because a mule is stupid. But this little girl isn't."

  He looked at Cap and Hockstetter.

  "I keep saying that. It is like pounding a nail into oak--oak of the first cutting. Hard going, don't you know; you both seem to keep forgetting. Sooner or later she's going to wise up and tell you to stick it. Because she isn't a mule. Or a white lab rat."

  And you want her to quit, Cap thought with slow loathing. You want her to quit so you can kill her.

  "So you start with that one basic fact," Rainbird continued. "That's Go. Then you start thinking of ways to prolong her cooperation as long as possible. Then, when it's over, you write your report. If you got enough data, you get rewarded with a big cash appropriation. You get to eat the carrot. Then you can start injecting a bunch of poor, ignorant slobs with your witch's brew all over again."

  "You're being insulting," Hockstetter said in a shaking voice.

  "It beats the terminal stupids," Rainbird answered.

  "How do you propose to prolong her cooperation?"

  "You'll get some mileage out of her just by granting small privileges." Rainbird said. "A walk on the lawn. Or ... every little girl loves horses. I'll bet you could get half a dozen fires out of her just by having a groom lead her aro
und the bridle paths on one of those stable nags. That ought to be enough to keep a dozen paper pushers like Hockstetter dancing on the head of a pin for five years."

  Hockstetter pushed back from the table. "I don't have to sit here and listen to this."

  "Sit down and shut up," Cap said.

  Hot blood slammed into Hockstetter's face and he looked ready to fight; it left as suddenly as it had come and he looked ready to cry. Then he sat down again.

  "You let her go into town and shop," Rainbird said.

  "Maybe you arrange for her to go to Seven Flags over Georgia and ride the rollercoaster. Maybe even with her good friend John the orderly."

  "You seriously think just those things--" Cap began.

  "No, I don't. Not for long. Sooner or later it will get back to her father. But she's only human. She wants things for herself as well. She'll go quite aways down the road you want her to go down just by rationalizing it to herself, telling herself she's showing you the flash before grabbing the cash. But eventually it's going to get back to dear old Dads, yes. She's no sellout, that one. She's tough."

  "And that's the end of the trolley-car ride," Cap said thoughtfully. "Everybody out. The project ends. This phase of it, anyway." In many ways, the prospect of an end in sight relieved him tremendously.

  "Not right there, no," Rainbird said, smiling his mirthless smile. "We have one more card up our sleeve. One more very large carrot when the smaller ones play out. Not her father--not the grand prize--but something that will keep her going yet a while longer."

  "And what would that be?" Hockstetter asked.

  "You figure it out," Rainbird said, still smiling, and said no more. Cap might, in spite of how far he had come unraveled over the last half year or so. He had more smarts on half power than most of his employees (and all the pretenders to his throne) had on full power. As for Hockstetter, he would never see it. Hockstetter had risen several floors past his level of incompetency, a feat more possible in the federal bureaucracy than elsewhere. Hockstetter would have trouble following his nose to a shit-and-cream-cheese sandwich.

  Not that it mattered if any of them figured out what the final carrot (the Game Carrot, one might say) in this little contest was; the results would still be the same. It was going to put him comfortably in the driver's seat one way or the other. He might have asked them: Who do you think her father is now that her father isn't there?

  Let them figure it out for themselves. If they could.

  John Rainbird went on smiling.

  4

  Andy McGee sat in front of his television set. The little amber Home Box Office pilot light glowed in the square gadget on top of the TV. On the screen, Richard Dreyfuss was trying to build the Devil's Butte in his living room. Andy watched with a calm and vapid expression of pleasure. Inside he was boiling with nervousness. Today was the day.

  For Andy, the three weeks since the blackout had been a period of almost unbearable tension and strain interwoven with bright threads of guilty exhilaration. He could understand simultaneously how the Russian KGB could inspire such terror and how George Orwell's Winston Smith must have enjoyed his brief period of crazy, furtive rebellion. He had a secret again. It gnawed and worked in him, as all grave secrets do within the minds of their keepers, but it also made him feel whole and potent again. He was putting one over on them. God knew how long he would be able to continue or if it would come to anything, but right now he was doing it.

  It was almost ten in the morning and Pynchot, that eternally grinning man, was coming at ten. They would be going for a walk in the garden to "discuss his progress." Andy intended to push him ... or to at least try. He might have made the effort before this, except for the TV monitors and the endless bugging devices. And the wait had given him time to think out his line of attack and probe it again and again for weak spots. He had, in fact, rewritten parts of the scenario in his mind many times.

  At night, lying in bed in the dark, he had thought over and over again: Big Brother is watching. Just keep telling yourself that, keep it foremost in your mind. They've got you locked up right in the forebrain of Big Brother, and if you really expect to help Charlie, you've got to keep on fooling them.

  He was sleeping less than he ever had in his life, mostly because he was terrified of talking in his sleep. Some nights he lay wakeful for hours, afraid even to toss and turn in case they should wonder why a drugged man should be so restless. And when he did sleep it was thin, shot with strange dreams (often the Long John Silver figure, the one-eyed pirate with the pegleg, recurred in these) and easily broken.

  Slipping the pills was the easiest part, because they believed he wanted them. The pills came four times a day now, and there had been no more tests since the blackout. He believed they had given up, and that was what Pynchot wanted to tell him today on his walk.

  Sometimes he would cough the pills out of his mouth into his cupped hand and put them in food scraps he would later scrape down the garbage disposal. More went down the toilet. Still others he had pretended to take with ginger ale. He spat the pills into the half-empty cans to dissolve and then let them stand, as if forgotten. Later he would turn them down the sink.

  God knew he was no professional at this, and presumably the people who were monitoring him were. But he didn't think they were monitoring him very closely anymore. If they were, he would be caught. That was all.

  Dreyfuss and the woman whose son had been taken for a ride by the saucer people were scaling the side of Devil's Butte when the buzzer that marked the breaking of the door circuit went off briefly. Andy didn't let himself jump.

  This is it, he told himself again.

  Herman Pynchot came into the living room. He was shorter than Andy but very slender; there was something about him that had always struck Andy as slightly effeminate, although it was nothing you could put your finger on. Today he was looking extremely reet and compleat in a thin gray turtleneck sweater and a summerweight jacket. And of course he was grinning.

  "Good morning, Andy," he said.

  "Oh," Andy said, and then paused, as if to think. "Hello, Dr. Pynchot."

  "Do you mind if I turn this off? We ought to go for our walk, you know."

  "Oh." Andy's brow furrowed, then cleared. "Sure. I've seen it three or four times already. But I like the ending. It's pretty. The UFOs take him away, you know. To the stars."

  "Really," Pynchot said, and turned off the TV. "Shall we go?"

  "Where?" Andy asked.

  "Our walk," Herman Pynchot said patiently. "Remember?"

  "Oh," Andy said. "Sure." He got up.

  5

  The hall outside Andy's room was wide and tile-floored. The lighting was muted and indirect. Somewhere not far away was a communications or computer center; people strolled in with keypunch cards, out with swatches of printouts, and there was the hum of light machinery.

  A young man in an off-the-rack sport coat--the essence of government agent--lounged outside the door of Andy's apartment. There was a bulge under his arm. The agent was a part of the standard operating procedure, but as he and Pynchot strolled, he would fall behind them, watching but out of earshot. Andy thought he would be no problem.

  The agent fell in behind them now as he and Pynchot strolled to the elevator. Andy's heartbeat was now so heavy it felt as if it were shaking his entire ribcage. But without seeming to, he was watching everything closely. There were perhaps a dozen unmarked doors. Some of them he had seen standing open on other walks up this corridor--a small, specialized library of some kind, a photocopying room in another--but about many of them he simply had no idea. Char-He might be behind any one of them right now ... or in some other part of the installation entirely.

  They got into the elevator, which was big enough to accommodate a hospital gurney. Pynchot produced his keys, twisted one of them in the keyway, and pushed one of the unmarked buttons. The doors closed and the elevator rose smoothly. The Shop agent lounged at the back of the car. Andy stood with his hands in th
e pockets of his Lee Riders, a slight, vapid smile on his face.

  The elevator door opened on what had once been a ballroom. The floor was polished oak, pegged together. Across the wide expanse of the room, a spiral staircase made a graceful double twist on its way to the upper levels. To the left, French doors gave on to a sunny terrace and the rock garden beyond it. From the right, where heavy oak doors stood half open, came the clacking sound of a typing pool, putting out that day's two bales of paperwork.

  And from everywhere came the smell of fresh flowers.

  Pynchot led the way across the sunny ballroom, and as always Andy commented on the pegged-together floor as if he had never noticed it before. They went through the French doors with their Shop-shadow behind them. It was very warm, very humid. Bees buzzed lazily through the air. Beyond the rock garden were hydrangea, forsythia, and rhododendron bushes. There was the sound of riding lawnmowers making their eternal rounds. Andy turned his face up to the sun with a gratitude that wasn't feigned.

  "How are you feeling, Andy?" Pynchot asked.

  "Good. Good."

  "You know, you've been here almost half a year now," Pynchot said in an isn't-it-amazing-how-the-time-flies-when-you' re-having-a-good-time tone of mild surprise. They turned right, onto one of the graveled paths. The smell of honey-suckle and sweet sassafras hung in the still air. On the other side of the duckpond, near the other house, two horses cantered lazily along.

  "That long," Andy said.

  "Yes, it is a long time," Pynchot said, grinning. "And we've decided that your power has ... diminished, Andy. In fact, you know we've had no appreciable results at all."

  "Well, you keep me drugged all the time," Andy said reproachfully. "You can't expect me to do my best if I'm stoned."

  Pynchot cleared his throat but did not point out that Andy had been totally clean for the first three series of tests and all three had been fruitless.

  "I mean, I've done my best, Dr. Pynchot. I've tried."

  "Yes, yes. Of course you have. And we think--that is, I think--that you deserve a rest. Now, the Shop has a small compound on Maui, in the Hawaii chain, Andy. And I have a six-month report to write very soon. How would you like it"--Pynchot's grin broadened into a game-show host's leer and his voice took on the tones of a man about to offer a child an incredible treat--"how would you like it if I recommended that you be sent there for the immediate future?"