Firestarter

  Rainbird. This should have been Rainbird's job, goddammit.

  "Listen to me, Charlie." He smiled a wide, friendly smile. "How would you like to go to Six Flags over Georgia? It's just about the neatest amusement park in the whole South, except maybe for Disney World. We'd rent the whole park for a day, just for you. You could ride the Ferris wheel, go in the haunted mansion, the merry-go-round--"

  "I don't want to go to any amusement park, I just want to see my daddy. And I'm going to. I hope you hear me, because I'm going to!"

  It was hotter.

  "You're sweating," Charlie said.

  He thought of the cinderblock wall, exploding so fast you could see the flames only in slow motion. He thought of the steel tray flipping over twice as it flew across the room, spraying burning chunks of wood. If she flicked that power out at him, he would be a pile of ashes and fused bone almost before he knew what was happening to him.

  Oh God please--

  "Charlie, getting mad at me won't accomplish anyth--"

  "Yes," she said with perfect truth. "Yes it will. And I'm mad at you, Dr. Hockstetter. I'm really mad at you."

  "Charlie, please--"

  "I want to see him," she said again. "Now go away. You tell them I want to see my father and then they can test me some more if they want. I don't mind. But if I don't see him, I'll make something happen. Tell them that."

  He left. He felt that he should say something more--something that would redeem his dignity a little, make up a little for the fear

  ("you're sweating")

  she had seen scrawled on his face--but nothing occurred. He left, and not even the steel door between him and her could completely ease his fear ... or his anger at John Rainbird. Because Rainbird had foreseen this, and Rainbird had said nothing. And if he accused Rainbird of that, the Indian would only smile his chilling smile and ask who was the psychiatrist around here, anyway?

  The tests had diminished her complex about starting fires until it was like an earthen dam that had sprung leaks in a dozen places. The tests had afforded her the practice necessary to refine a crude sledgehammer of power into something she could flick out with deadly precision, like a circus performer throwing a weighted knife.

  And the tests had been the perfect object lesson. They had shown her, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who was in charge here.

  She was.

  4

  When Hockstetter was gone, Charlie fell on the couch, her hands to her face, sobbing. Waves of conflicting emotion swept her--guilt and horror, indignation, even a kind of angry pleasure. But fear was the greatest of them all. Things had changed when she agreed to their tests; she feared things had changed forever. And now she didn't just want to see her father; she needed him. She needed him to tell her what to do next.

  At first there had been rewards--walks outside with John, currying Necromancer, then riding him. She loved John and she loved Necromancer ... if that stupid man could only have known how badly he had hurt her by saying Necromancer was hers when Charlie knew he never could be. The big gelding was only hers in her uneasy half-remembered dreams. But now ... now ... the tests themselves, the chance to use her power and feel it grow ... that was starting to become the reward. It had become a terrible but compelling game. And she sensed she had barely scratched the surface. She was like a baby who has just learned how to walk.

  She needed her father, she needed him to tell her what was right, what was wrong, whether to go on or to stop forever. If--

  "If I can stop," she whispered through her fingers.

  That was the most frightening thing of all--no longer being sure that she could stop. And if she could not, what would that mean? Oh, what would that mean?

  She began to cry again. She had never felt so dreadfully alone.

  5

  The funeral was a bad scene.

  Andy had thought he would be okay; his headache was gone, and, after all, the funeral was only an excuse to be alone with Cap. He hadn't liked Pynchot, although in the end Pynchot had proved to be just a little too small to hate. His barely concealed arrogance and his unconcealed pleasure at being on top of a fellow human being--because of those things and because of his overriding concern for Charlie, Andy had felt little guilt about the ricochet that he had inadvertently set up in Pynchot's mind. The ricochet that had finally torn the man apart.

  The echo effect had happened before, but he had always had a chance to put things right again. It was something he had got pretty good at by the time he and Charlie had to run from New York City. There seemed to be land mines planted deep in almost every human brain, deep-seated fears and guilts, suicidal, schizophrenic, paranoid impulses--even murderous ones. A push caused a state of extreme suggestibility, and if a suggestion tended down one of those dark paths, it could destroy. One of his housewives in the Weight-Off program had begun to suffer frightening catatonic lapses. One of his businessmen had confessed a morbid urge to take his service pistol down from the closet and play Russian roulette with it, an urge that was somehow connected in his mind with a story by Edgar Allan Poe, "William Wilson," that he had read way back in high school. In both cases, Andy had been able to stop the echo before it sped up and turned into that lethal ricochet. In the case of the businessman, a quiet, sandy-haired, third-echelon bank officer, all it had taken was another push and the quiet suggestion that he had never read the Poe story at all. The connection--whatever it had been--was broken. The chance to break the echo had never come with Pynchot.

  Cap talked restlessly of the man's suicide as they drove to the funeral through a cold, swishing autumn rain; he seemed to be trying to come to terms with it. He said he wouldn't have thought it possible for a man just to ... to keep his arm in there once those blades had begun to chop and grind. But Pynchot had. Somehow Pynchot had. That was when the funeral started being bad for Andy.

  The two of them attended only the graveside services, standing well back from the small group of friends and family, clustered under a bloom of black umbrellas. Andy discovered it was one thing to remember Pynchot's arrogance, the little-Caesar power-tripping of a small man who had no real power; to remember his endless and irritating nervous tic of a smile. It was quite another to look at his pallid, washed-out wife in her black suit and veiled hat, holding the hands of her two boys (the younger was about Charlie's age, and they both looked utterly stunned and out of it, as if drugged), knowing--as she must--that the friends and relatives must all know how her husband was found, dressed in her underwear, his right arm vaporized nearly to the elbow, sharpened like a living pencil, his blood splattered in the sink and on the Wood-Mode cabinets, chunks of his flesh--

  Andy's gorge rose helplessly. He bent forward in the cold rain, struggling with it. The minister's voice rose and fell senselessly.

  "I want to go," Andy said. "Can we go?"

  "Yes, of course," Cap said. He looked pale himself, old and not particularly welL "I've been to quite enough funerals this year to hold me."

  They slipped away from the group standing around the fake grass, the flowers already drooping and spilling petals in this hard rain, the coffin on its runners over the hole in the ground. They walked side by side back toward the winding, graveled drive where Cap's economy-sized Chevy was parked near the rear of the funeral cortege. They walked under willows that dripped and rustled mysteriously. Three or four other men, barely seen, moved around them. Andy thought that he must know now how the President of the United States feels.

  "Very bad for the widow and the little boys," Cap said. "The scandal, you know."

  "Will she ... uh, will she be taken care of?"

  "Very handsomely, in terms of money," Cap said almost tonelessly. They were nearing the lane now. Andy could see Cap's orange Vega, parked on the verge. Two men were getting quietly into a Biscayne in front of it. Two more got into a gray Plymouth behind it. "But nobody's going to be able to buy off those two little boys. Did you see their faces?"

  Andy said nothing. Now he felt guilt; it was
like a sharp sawblade working in his guts. Not even telling himself that his own position had been desperate would help. All he could do now was hold Charlie's face in front of him ... Charlie and a darkly ominous figure behind her, a one-eyed pirate named John Rainbird who had wormed his way into her confidence so he could hasten the day when--

  They got into the Vega and Cap started the engine. The Biscayne ahead pulled out and Cap followed. The Plymouth fell into place behind them.

  Andy felt a sudden, almost eerie certainty that the push had deserted him again--that when he tried there would be nothing. As if to pay for the expression on the faces of the two boys.

  But what else was there to do but try?

  "We're going to have a little talk," he said to Cap, and pushed. The push was there, and the headache settled in almost at once--the price he was going to have to pay for using it so soon after the last time. "It won't interfere with your driving."

  Cap seemed to settle in his seat. His left hand, which had been moving toward his turnsignal, hesitated a moment and then went on. The Vega followed the lead car sedately between the big stone pillars and onto the main road.

  "No, I don't think our little talk will interfere with my driving at all," Cap said.

  They were twenty miles from the compound; Andy had checked the odometer upon leaving and again upon arriving at the cemetery. A lot of it was over the highway Pynchot had told him about, 301. It was a fast road. He guessed he had no more than twenty-five minutes to arrange everything. He had thought of little else over the last two days and thought he had everything pretty well mapped out ... but there was one thing he badly needed to know.

  "How long can you and Rainbird ensure Charlie's cooperation, Captain Hollister?"

  "Not much longer," Cap said. "Rainbird arranged things very cleverly so that in your absence, he's the only one really in control of her. The father surrogate." In a low, almost chanting voice, he said, "He's her father when her father isn't there."

  "And when she stops, she's to be killed?"

  "Not immediately. Rainbird can keep her at it awhile longer." Cap signaled his turn onto 301. "He'll pretend we found out. Found out that they were talking. Found out that he was giving her advice on how to handle her ... her problem. Found out he had passed notes to you."

  He fell silent, but Andy didn't need anymore. He felt sick. He wondered if they had congratulated each other on how easy it was to fool a little kid, to win her affections in a lonely place and then twist her to their own purposes once they had earned her trust. When nothing else would work, just tell her that her only friend, John the orderly, was going to lose his job and maybe be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act for presuming to be her friend. Charlie would do the rest on her own. Charlie would deal with them. She would continue to cooperate.

  I hope I meet this guy soon. I really do.

  But there was no time to think about that now ... and if things went right, he would never have to meet Rainbird at all.

  "I'm slated to go to Hawaii a week from today," Andy said.

  "Yes, that's right."

  "How?"

  "By army transport plane."

  "Who did you contact to arrange that?"

  "Puck," Cap said immediately.

  "Who's Puck, Captain Hollister?"

  "Major Victor Puckeridge," Cap said. "At Andrews."

  "Andrews Air Force Base?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "He's a friend?"

  "We play golf." Cap smiled vaguely. "He slices."

  Wonderful news, Andy thought. His head was throbbing like a rotted tooth.

  "Suppose you called him this afternoon and said you wanted to move that flight up by three days?"

  "Yes?" Cap said doubtfully.

  "Would that present a problem? A lot of paperwork?"

  "Oh, no. Puck would slice right through the paperwork." The smile reappeared, slightly odd and not really happy. "He slices. Did I tell you that?"

  "Yes. Yes, you did."

  "Oh. Good."

  The car hummed along at a perfectly legal fifty-five. The rain had mellowed to a steady mist. The windshield wipers clicked back and forth.

  "Call him this afternoon, Cap. As soon as you get back."

  "Call Puck, yes. I was just thinking I ought to do that."

  "Tell him I've got to be moved on Wednesday instead of Saturday."

  Four days was not much time to recuperate--three weeks would have been more like it--but things were moving rapidly to a climax now. The endgame had begun. The fact was there, and Andy, out of necessity, recognized it. He wouldn't--couldnt--leave Charlie in the path of this Rainbird creature any longer than he had to.

  "Wednesday instead of Saturday."

  "Yes. And then you tell Puck that you'll be coming along."

  "Coming along? I can't--"

  Andy renewed the push. It hurt him, but he pushed hard. Cap jerked in his seat. The car swerved minutely on the road, and Andy thought again that he was practically begging to start up an echo in this guy's head.

  "Coming along, yes. I'm coming along."

  "That's right," Andy said grimly. "Now--what sort of arrangements have you made about security?"

  "No particular security arrangements," Cap said. "You're pretty much incapacitated by Thorazine. Also, you're tipped over and unable to use your mental-domination ability. It has become dormant."

  "Ah, yes," Andy said, and put a slightly shaky hand to his forehead. "Do you mean I'll be riding the plane alone?"

  "No," Cap said immediately, "I believe I'll come along myself."

  "Yes, but other than the two of us?"

  "There will be two Shop men along, partly to act as stewards and partly to keep an eye on you. SOP, you know. Protect the investment."

  "Only two operatives are scheduled to go with us? You're sure?"

  "Yes."

  "And the flight crew, of course."

  "Yes."

  Andy looked out the window. They were halfway back now. This was the crucial part, and his head was already aching so badly that he was afraid he might forget something. If he did, the whole cardhouse would come tumbling down.

  Charlie, he thought, and tried to hold on.

  "Hawaii's a long way from Virginia, Captain Hollister. Will the plane make a refueling stop?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know where?"

  "No," Cap said serenely, and Andy could have punched him in the eye.

  "When you speak to ..." What was his name? He groped frantically in his tired, hurt mind and retrieved it. "When you speak to Puck, find out where the plane will set down for refueling."

  "Yes, all right."

  "Just work it naturally into your conversation with him."

  "Yes, I'll find out where it's going to refuel by working it naturally into our conversation." He glanced at Andy with thoughtful, dreamy eyes, and Andy found himself wondering if this man had given the order that Vicky be killed. There was a sudden urge to tell him to floor the accelerator pedal and drive into that oncoming bridge abutment. Except for Charlie. Charlie! his mind said. Hold on for Charlie. "Did I tell you that Puck slices?" Cap said fondly.

  "Yes. You did." Think! Think, dammit! Somewhere near Chicago or Los Angeles seemed the most likely. But not at a civilian airport like O'Hare or L. A. International. The plane would refuel at an airbase. That in itself presented no problem to his rag of a plan--it was one of the few things that did not--as long as he could find out where in advance.

  "We'd like to leave at three in the afternoon," he told Cap.

  "Three."

  "You'll see that this John Rainbird is somewhere else."

  "Send him away?" Cap said hopefully, and it gave Andy a chill to realize that Cap was afraid of Rainbird--quite badly afraid.

  "Yes. It doesn't matter where."

  "San Diego?"

  "All light."

  Now. Last lap. He was just going to make it; up ahead a green reflectorized sign pointed the way to the Longmont exit. A
ndy reached into the front pocket of his pants and pulled out a folded slip of paper. For the moment, he only held it in his lap, between first and second fingers.

  "You're going to tell the two Shop guys who are going to Hawaii with us to meet us at the airbase," he said. "They're to meet us at Andrews. You and I will go to Andrews just as we are now."

  "Yes."

  Andy drew in a deep breath. "But my daughter will be with us."

  "Her?" Cap showed real agitation for the first time. "Her? She's dangerous! She can't--we can't--"

  "She wasn't dangerous until you people started playing with her," Andy said harshly. "Now she is coming with us and you are not to contradict me again, do you understand that?"

  This time the car's swerve was more pronounced, and Cap moaned. "She'll be coming with us," he agreed. "I won't contradict you anymore. That hurts. That hurts."

  But not as much as it hurts me.

  Now his voice seemed to be coming from far away, through the blood-soaked net of pain that was pulling tighter and tighter around his brain. "You're going to give her this," Andy said, and passed the folded note to Cap. "Give it to her today, but do it carefully, so that no one suspects."

  Cap tucked the note into his breast pocket. Now they were approaching the Shop; on their left were the double runs of electrified fence. Warning signs flashed past every fifty yards or so.

  "Repeat back the salient points," Andy said.

  Cap spoke quickly and concisely--the voice of a man who had been trained in the act of recall since the days of his military-academy boyhood.

  "I will arrange for you to leave for Hawaii on an army transport plane on Wednesday instead of Saturday. I will be coming with you; your daughter will also accompany us. The two Shop agents who will also be coming will meet us at Andrews. I will find out from Puck where the plane will be refueling. I'll do that when I call him to change the flight date. I have a note to give your daughter. I'll give it to her after I finish talking to Puck, and I will do it in a way which will arouse no undue suspicion. And I will arrange to have John Rainbird in San Diego next Wednesday. I believe that covers the waterfront."

  "Yes," Andy said, "I believe it does." He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes. Jumbled fragments of past and present flew through his mind, aimlessly, jackstraws blown in a high wind. Did this really have a chance to work, or was he only buying death for both of them? They knew what Charlie could do now; they'd had firsthand experience. If it went wrong, they would finish their trip in the cargo bay of that army transport plane. In two boxes.