an you put Charlene McGee's matches out of her reach?" Wanless asked.

Cap nodded slowly. "You have a point of a sort, but-"

"Ask yourself this, Captain Hollister: how must it have been for Andrew and Victoria McGee when this child was an infant? After they begin to make the necessary connection? The bottle is late. The baby cries. At the same time, one of the stuffed animals right there in the crib with her bursts into smoky flame. There is a mess in the diaper. The baby cries. A moment later the dirty clothes in the hamper begin to burn spontaneously. You have the records, Captain Hollister; you know how it was in that house. A fire extinguisher and a smoke detector in every single room. And once it was her hair, Captain Hollister; they came into her room and found her standing in her crib and screaming and her hair was on fire."

"Yes," Cap said, "it must have made them goddam nervous."

"So," Wanless said, "they toilet-trained her... and they fire-trained her."

"Fire-training," Cap mused.

"Which is only to say that, like my brother and his boy Freddy, they made a complex. You have quoted me that analogy, Captain Hollister, so let us examine it for a moment. What is toilet-training? It is making a complex, pure and simple." And suddenly astonishingly, the old man's voice climbed to a high, wavering treble, the voice of a woman scolding a baby. Cap looked on with disgusted astonishment.

"You bad baby!" Wanless cried. "Look what you've done! It's nasty, baby, see how nasty it is? It's nasty to do it in your pants! Do grown-ups do it in their pants? Do it on the pot, baby, on the pot."

"Please," Cap said, pained.

"It is the making of a complex," Wanless said. "Toilet-training is accomplished by focusing the child's attention on his own eliminatory processes in a way we would consider unhealthy if the object of fixation were something different. How strong is the complex inculcated in the child, you might ask? Richard Damon of the University of Washington asked himself this question and made an experiment to find out. He advertised for fifty student volunteers. He filled them up with water and soda and milk until they all badly needed to urinate. After a certain set time had passed, he told them they could go... if they went in their pants."

"That's disgusting!" Cap said loudly. He was shocked and sickened. That wasn't an experiment; it was an exercise in degeneracy.

"See how well the complex has set in your own psyche," Wanless said quietly. "You did not think it was so disgusting when you were twenty months old. Then, when you had to go, you went. You would have gone sitting on the pope's lap if someone had set you there and you had to go. The point of the Damon experiment, Captain Hollister, is this: most of them couldn't. They understood that the ordinary rules of behavior had been set aside, at least for the course of the experiment; they were each alone in quarters at least as private as the ordinary bathroom... but fully eighty-eight percent of them just couldn't. No matter how strong the physical need was, the complex instilled by their parents was stronger."

"This is nothing but pointless wandering," Cap said curtly.

"No, it isn't. I want you to consider the parallels between toilet-training and fire-training... and the one significant difference, which is the quantum leap between the urgency of accomplishing the former and the latter. If the child toilet-trains slowly, what are the consequences? Minor unpleasantness. His rooms smells if not constantly aired. The mamma is chained to her washing machine. The cleaners may have to be called in to shampoo the carpet after the job is finally done. At the very worst, the baby may have a constant diaper rash, and that will only happen if the baby's skin is very sensitive or if the mamma is a sloven about keeping him clean. But the consequences to a child who can make fire..."

His eyes glittered. The left side of his mouth sneered. "My estimation of the McGees as parents is very high," Wanless said. "Somehow they got her through it. I would imagine they began the job long before parents usually begin the toilet-training process; perhaps even before she was able to crawl. 'Baby mustn't! Baby hurt herself! No, no, no! Bad girl! Bad girl! Ba-ad girl!'"

"But your own computer suggests by its readouts that she is overcoming her complex, Captain Hollister. She is in an enviable position to do it. She is young, and the complex has not had a chance to set in a bed of years until it becomes like cement. And she has her father with her! Do you realize the significance of that simple fact? No, you do not. The father is the authority figure. He holds the psychic reins of every fixation in the female child. Oral, anal, genital; behind each, like a shadowy figure standing behind a curtain, is the father authority figure. To the girl-child he is Moses; the laws are his laws, handed down she knows not how, but his to enforce. He is perhaps the only person on earth who can remove this block. Our complexes, Captain Hollister, always give us the most agony and psychic distress when those who have inculcated them die and pass beyond argument... and mercy."

Cap glanced at his watch and saw that Wanless had been in here almost forty minutes. It felt like hours. "Are you almost done? I have another appointment-"

"When complexes go, they go like dams bursting after torrential rains," Wanless said softly. "We have a promiscuous girl who is nineteen years old. Already she has had three hundred lovers. Her body is as hot with sexual infection as that of a forty-year-old prostitute. But until she was seventeen she was a virgin. Her father was a minister who told her again and again as a little girl that sex inside marriage was a necessary evil, that sex outside marriage was hell and damnation, that sex was the apple of original sin. When a complex like that goes, it goes like a breaking dam. First there is a crack or two, little trickling rills of water so small as to escape notice. And according to your computer's information, that is where we are now with this (little girl. Suggestions that she has used her ability to help her father, at her father's urging. And then it all goes at once, spewing out millions of gallons of water, destroying everything in its path, drowning "everyone caught in its way, changing the landscape forever!"

Wanless's croaking voice had risen from its original soft pitch to a broken-voiced old man's shout-but it was more peevish than magnificent.

"Listen," he said to Cap. "For once, listen to me. Drop the blinders from your eyes. The man is not dangerous in and of himself. He has a little power, a toy, a plaything. He understands that. He has not been able to use it to make a million dollars. He does not rule men and nations. He has used his power to help fat women lose weight. He has used it to help timid executives gain confidence. He is unable to use the power often or well... some inner physiological factor limits him. But the girl is incredibly dangerous. She is on the run with her daddy, faced with a survival situation. She is badly frightened. And he is frightened as well, which is what makes him dangerous. Not in and of himself, but because you are forcing him to reeducate the little girl. You are forcing him to change her conceptions about the power inside her. You are forcing him to force her to use it."

Wanless was breathing hard.

Playing out the scenario-the end was now in sight-Cap said calmly, "What do you suggest?"

"The man must be killed. Quickly. Before he can do anymore pick-and-shovel work on the complex he and his wife built into the little girl. And the girl must also be killed, I believe. In case the damage has already been done."

"She's only a little girl, Wanless, after all. She can light fires, yes. Pyrokinesis, we call it. But you're making it sound like armageddon."

"Perhaps it will be," Wanless said. "You mustn't let her age and size fool you into forgetting the Z factor... which is exactly what you are doing, of course. Suppose lighting fires is only the tip of this iceberg? Suppose the talent grows? She is seven. When John Milton was seven, he was perhaps a small boy grasping a stick of charcoal and laboring to write his own name in letters his mamma and daddy could understand. He was a baby. John Milton grew up to write Paradise Lost."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," Cap said flatly.

"I am talking about the potential for destruction. I am talking about a talent which is linked to the pituitary gland, a gland which is nearly dormant in a child Charlene McGee's age. What happens when she becomes an adolescent and that gland awakes from its sleep and becomes for twenty months the most powerful force in the human body, ordering everything from the sudden maturation of the primary and secondary sex characteristics to an increased production of visual purple in the eye? Suppose you have a child capable of eventually creating a nuclear explosion simply by the force of her will?"

"That's the most insane thing I've ever heard."

"Is it? Then let me progress from insanity to utter lunacy, Captain Hollister. Suppose there is a little girl out there someplace this morning who has within her, lying dormant only for the time being, the power to someday crack the very planet in two like a china plate in a shooting gallery?"

They looked at each other in silence. And suddenly the intercom buzzed.

After a moment, Cap leaned over and thumbed it. "Yes, Rachel?" Goddamned if the old man hadn't had him there, for just a moment. He was like some awful gore-crow, and that was another reason Cap didn't like him. He was a go-getter himself, and if there was one thing he couldn't stand, it was a pessimist.

"You have a call on the scrambler," Rachel said. "From the service area."

"All right, dear. Thanks. Hold it for a couple of minutes, okay?"

"Yes, sir."

He sat back in his chair. "I have to terminate this interview, Dr. Wanless. You may be sure that I'll consider everything you've said very carefully."

"Will you?" Wanless asked. The frozen side of his mouth seemed to sneer cynically.

"Yes."

Wanless said: "The girl... McGee... and this fellow Richardson... they are the last three marks of a dead equation, Captain Hollister. Erase them. Start over. The girl is very dangerous."

"I'll consider everything you've said," Cap repeated.

"Do so." And Wanless finally began to struggle to his feet, propping himself on his cane. It took him a long time. At last he was up. "Winter is coming," he said to Cap. "These old bones dread it." "Are you staying in Longmont tonight?" "No, Washington."

Cap hesitated and then said, "Stay at the Mayflower. I may want to get in touch with you."

Something in the old man's eyes-gratitude? Yes, almost certainly that. "Very good, Captain Hollister," he said, and worked his way back to the door on his cane-an old man who had once opened Pandora's box and now wanted to shoot all of the things that had flown out instead of putting them to work.

When the door had snicked closed behind him, Cap breathed a sigh of relief and picked up the scrambler phone.

7

"Who am I talking to?" "Orv Jamieson, sir." "Have you got them, Jamieson?" "Not yet, sir, but we found something interesting at the airport." "What's that?"

"All the pay phones are empty. We found a few quarters and dimes on the floors of some of them." "Jimmied?" "No, sir. That's why I called you. They haven't been jimmied, they're just empty. Phone company's going crazy." "All right, Jamieson." "It speeds things up. We've been figuring that maybe the guy hid the girl outside and only checked himself in. But either way, we figure now that we're looking for a guy who paid with a lot of change." "If they are at a motel and not shacked up at a summer camp somewhere." "Yes, sir." "Carry on, OJ." "Yes, sir. Thank you." He sounded absurdly pleased that his nickname had been remembered.

Cap hung up. He sat with his eyes half closed for five minutes, thinking. The mellow autumn light fell through the bay window and lit the office, warmed it. Then he leaned forward and got Rachel again.

"Is John Rainbird there?" "Yes he is, Cap." "Give me another five minutes and then send him in. I want to talk to Norville Bates out in the service area. He's the head honcho until A1 gets there." "Yes, sir," Rachel said, a little doubtfully. "It will have to be an open line. Walkie-talkie link-up. Not very-""Yes, that's fine," he said impatiently.

It took two minutes. Bates's voice was thin and crackling. He was a good man-not very imaginative, but a plugger. The kind of man Cap wanted to have holding the fort until Albert Steinowitz could get there. At last Norville came on the line and told Cap they were beginning to spread out into the surrounding towns-Oakville, Tremont, Messalonsett, Hastings Glen, Looton.

"All right, Norville, that's good," Cap said. He thought of Wanless saying You are forcing him to reeducate the little girl. He thought of Jamieson telling him all the phones were empty. McGee hadn't done that. The girl had done it. And then, because she was still up, she had burned that soldier's shoes off, probably by accident. Wanless would be pleased to know that Cap was going to take fifty percent of his advice after all-the old turd had been amazingly eloquent this morning.

"Things have changed," Cap said. "We've got to have the big boy sanctioned. Extreme sanction. You follow?"

"Extreme sanction," Norville said flatly. "Yes, sir."

"Very good, Norville," Cap said softly. He put the phone down and waited for John Rainbird to come in.

The door opened a moment later and there he stood, as big as life and twice as ugly. He was so naturally quiet, this half Cherokee, that if you had been looking down at your desk, reading or answering correspondence, you wouldn't have been aware that anyone was in the room with you at all. Cap knew how rare that was. Most people could sense another person in the room: Wanless had once called that ability not a sixth sense but a bottom-of-the-barrel sense, a knowledge born of infinitesimal input from the five normal senses. But with Rainbird, you didn't know. Not one of the whisker thin sensory tripwires so much as vibrated. Al Steinowitz had said a strange thing about Rainbird once over glasses of port in Cap's living room: "He's the one human being I ever met who doesn't push air in front of him when he walks." And Cap was glad Rainbird was on their side, because he was the only human he had ever met who completely terrified him.

"Rainbird was a troll, an orc, a balrog of a man. He stood two inches shy of seven feet tall, and he wore his glossy black hair drawn back and tied in a curt ponytail. Ten years before, a Claymore had blown up in his face during his second tour of Vietnam, and now his countenance was a horror show of scar tissue and runneled flesh. His left eye was gone. There was nothing where it had been but a ravine. He would not have plastic surgery or an artificial eye because, he said, when he got to the happy hunting ground beyond, he would be asked to show his battlescars. When he said such things, you did not know whether to believe him or not; you did not know if he was serious or leading you on for reasons of his own.

Over the years, Rainbird had been a surprisingly good agent-partially because the last thing on earth he looked like was an agent, mostly because there was an apt, ferociously bright mind behind that mask of flesh. He spoke four languages fluently and had an understanding of three others. He was taking a sleep course in Russian. When he spoke, his voice was low, musical, and civilized.

"Good afternoon, Cap."

"Is it afternoon?" Cap asked, surprised.

Rainbird smiled, showing a big set of perfectly white teeth-shark's teeth, Cap thought. "By fourteen minutes," he said. "I picked up a Seiko digital watch on the black market in Venice. It is fascinating. Little black numbers that change constantly. A feat of technology. I often think, Cap, that we fought the war in Vietnam not to win but to perform feats of technology. We fought it in order to create the cheap digital-wristwatch, the home Ping-Pong game that hooks up to one's TV, the pocket calculator. I look at my new wristwatch in the dark of night. It tells me I am closer to my death, second by second. That is good news."

"Sit down, old friend," Cap said. As always when he talked to Rainbird, his mouth was dry and he had to restrain his hands, which wanted to twine and knot together on the polished surface of his desk. All of that, and he believed that Rainbird liked him-if Rainbird could be said to like anyone.

Rainbird sat down. He was wearing old bluejeans and a faded chambray shirt.

"How was Venice?" Cap asked.

"Sinking," Rainbird said.

"I have a job for you, if you want it. It is a small one, but it may lead to an assignment you'll find considerably more interesting."

"Tell me."

"Strictly volunteer," Cap persisted. "You're still on R and R."

"Tell me," Rainbird repeated gently, and Cap told him. He was with Rainbird for only fifteen minutes, but it seemed an hour. When the big Indian left, Cap breathed a long sigh. Both Wanless and Rainbird in one morning-that would take the snap out of anyone's day. But the morning was over now, a lot had been accomplished, and who knew what might lie ahead this afternoon? He buzzed Rachel.

"Yes, Cap?"

"I'll be eating in, darling. Would you get me something from the cafeteria? It doesn't matter what. Anything. Thank you, Rachel."

Alone at last. The scrambler phone lay silent on its thick base, filled with microcircuits and memory chips and God alone knew what else. When it buzzed again, it would probably be Albert or Norville to tell him that it was over in New York-the girl taken, her father dead. That would be good news.

Cap closed his eyes again. Thoughts and phrases floated through his mind like large, lazy kites. Mental domination. Their think-tank boys said the possibilities were enormous. Imagine someone like McGee close to Castro, or the Ayatollah Khomeini. Imagine him getting close enough to that pinko Ted Kennedy to suggest in a low voice of utter conviction that suicide was the best answer. Imagine a man like that sicced on the leaders of the various communist guerrilla groups. It was a shame they had to lose him. But... what could be made to happen once could be made to happen again.

The little girl. Wanless saying The power to someday crack the very planet in two like a china plate in a shooting gallery... ridiculous, of course. Wanless had gone as crazy as the little boy in the D. H. Lawrence story, the one who could pick the winners at the racetrack. Lot Six had turned into battery acid for Wanless; it had eaten a number of large, gaping holes in the man's good sense. She was a little girl, not a doomsday weapon. And they had to hang onto her at least long enough to document what she was and to chart what she could be. That alone would be enough to reactivate the Lot Six testing program. If she could be persuaded to use her powers for the good of the country, so much the better. So much the better, Cap thought. The scrambler phone suddenly uttered its long, hoarse cry. His pulse suddenly leaping, Cap grabbed it.

THE INCIDENT AT THE MANDERS FARM

1

While Cap discussed her future with Al Steinowitz in Longmont, Charlie McGee was sitting on the edge of the motel bed in Unit Sixteen of the Slumberland, yawning and stretching. Bright morning sunlight fell aslant through the window, out of a sky that was a deep and blameless autumn blue. Things seemed so much better in the good daylight.

She looked at her daddy, who was nothing but a motionless hump under the blankets. A fluff of black hair stuck out-that was all. She smiled. He always did his best. If he was hungry and she was hungry and there was only an apple, he would take one bite and make her eat the rest. When he was awake, he always did his best.

But when he was sleeping, he stole all the blankets.

She went into the bathroom, shucked off her underpants, and turned on the shower. She used the toilet while the water got warm and then stepped into the shower stall. The hot water hit her and she closed her eyes, smiling. Nothing in the world was any nicer than the first minute or two in a hot shower.

(you were bad last night)

A frown creased her brow.

(No. Daddy said not.)

(lit that man's shoes on fire, bad girl, very bad, do you like teddy all black?)

The frown deepened. Unease was now tinctured with fear and shame. The idea of her teddy bear never even fully surfaced; it was an underthought, and as so often happened, her guilt seemed to be summed up in a smell-a burned, charred smell. Smoldering cloth and stuffing. And this smell summoned hazy pictures of her mother and father leaning over her, and they were big people, giants; and they were scared; they were angry, their voices were big and crackling, like boulders jumping and thudding down a mountainside in a movie.

("bad girl! very bad! you mustn't, Charlie! never! never! never!")

How old had she been then? Three? Two? How far back could a person remember? She had asked Daddy that once and Daddy said he didn't know. He said he remembered getting a bee sting and his mother had told him that happened when he was only fifteen months old.

This was her earliest memory: the giant faces leaning over her; the big voices like boulders rolling downhill; and a smell like a burned waffle. That smell had been her hair. She had lit her own hair on fire and had burned nearly all of it off. It was after that that Daddy mentioned "help" and Mommy got all funny, first laughing, then crying, then laughing again so high and strange that Daddy had slapped her face. She remembered that because it was the only time that she knew of that her daddy had done something like that to her mommy. Maybe we ought to think about getting "help" for her, Daddy had said. They were in the bathroom and her head was wet because Daddy had put her in the shower. Oh, yes, her mommy had said, let's go see Dr. Wanless, he'll give us plenty of "help," just like he did before... then the laughing, the crying, more laughter, and the slap.

(you were so BAD last night)

"No," she murmured in the drumming shower. "Daddy said not. Daddy said it could have... been... his... face."

(YOU WERE VERY BAD LAST NIGHT)

But they had needed the change from the telephones. Daddy had said so.

(VERY BAD!)

And then she began to think about Mommy again, about the time when she had been five, going on six. She didn't like to think about this but the memory was here now and she couldn't put it aside. It had happened just before the bad men had come and hurt Mommy.

(killed her, you mean, they killed her)

yes, all right, before they killed her, and took Charlie away. Daddy had taken her on his lap for storytime, only he hadn't had the usual storybooks about Pooh and Tigger and Mr. Toad and Willy Wonka's Great Glass Elevator. Instead he had a number of thick books with no pictures. She had wrinkled her nose in distaste and asked for Pooh instead.

"No, Charlie," he had said. "I want to read you some other stories, and I need you to listen. You're old enough now, I think, and your mother thinks so, too. The stories may scare you a little bit, but they're important. They're true stories."

She remembered the names of the books Daddy had read the stories from, because the stories had scared her. There was a book called Lo! by a man named Charles Fort. A book called Stranger Than Science by a man named Frank Edwards. A book called Night's Truth. And there had been another book called Pyrokinesis: A Case Book, but Mommy would not let Daddy read anything from that one. "Later," Mommy had said, "when she's much older, Andy." And then that book had gone away. Charlie had been glad.

The stories were scary, all right. One was about a man who had burned to death in a park. One was about a lady who had burned up in the living room of her trailer home, and nothing in the whole room had been burned but the lady and a little bit of the chair she had been sitting in while she watched TV. Parts of it had been too complicated for her to understand, but she remembered one thing: a policeman saying: "We have no explanation for this fatality. There was nothing left of the victim but teeth and a few charred pieces of bone. It would have taken a blowtorch to do that to a person, and nothing around her was even charred. We can't explain why the whole place didn't go up like a rocket."

The third story had been about a big boy-he was eleven or twelve-who had burned up while he was at the beach. His daddy had put him in the water, burning himself badly in the process, but the boy had still gone on burning until he was all burned up. And a story about a teenage girl who had burned up while explaining all her sins to the priest in the confession room. Charlie knew all about the Catholic confession room because her friend Deenie had told her. Deenie said you had to tell the priest all the bad stuff you had done all week long. Deenie didn't go yet because she hadn't had first holy communion, but her brother Carl did. Carl was in the fourth grade, and he had to tell everything, even the time he sneaked into his mother's room and took some of her birthday chocolates. Because if you didn't tell the priest, you couldn't be washed in THE BLOOD OF CHRIST and you would go to THE HOT PLACE.

The point of all these stories had not been lost on Charlie. She had been so frightened after the one about the girl in the confession room that she burst into tears. "Am I going to burn myself up?" She wept. "Like when I was little and caught my hair on fire? Am I going to burn to pieces?"

And Daddy and Mommy had looked upset. Mommy was pale and kept chewing at her lips, but Daddy had put an arm around her and said, "No, honey. Not if you always remember to be careful and not think about that... thing. That thing you do sometimes when you're upset and scared."

"What is it?" Charlie had cried. "What is it, tell me what is it, I don't even know, I'll never do it, I promise!"

Mommy had said, "As far as we can tell, honey, it's called pyrokinesis. It means being able to light fires sometimes just by thinking about fires. It usually happens when people are upset. Some people apparently have that... that power all their lives and never even know it. And some people... well, the power gets hold of them for a minute and they..." She couldn't finish.

"They burn themselves up," Daddy had said. "Like when you were little and caught your hair on fire, yes. But you can get control of that, Charlie. You have to. And God knows it isn't your fault." His eyes and Mommy's had met for a moment when he said that, and something had seemed to pass between them.

Hugging her around the shoulders, he had said, "Sometimes you can't help it, I know. It's an accident, like when you were smaller and you forget to go to the bathroom because you were playing and you wet your pants. We used to call that having an accident-do you remember?"

"I never do that anymore."

"No, of course you don't. And in a little while, you'll have control of this other thing in just the same way. But for now, Charlie, you've got to promise us that you'll never never never get upset that way if you can help it. In that way that makes you start fires. And if you do, if you can't help it, push it away from yourself. At a wastebasket or an ashtray. Try to get outside. Try to push it at water, if there's any around."

"But never at a person," Mommy had said, and her face was still and pale and grave. "That would be very dangerous, Charlie. That would be a very bad girl. Because you could"-she struggled, forced the words up and out-"you could kill a person."

And then Charlie had wept hysterically, tears of terror and remorse, because both of Mommy's hands were bandaged, and she knew why Daddy had read her all the scary stories. Because the day before, when Mommy told her she couldn't go over to Deenie's house because she hadn't picked up her room, Charlie had got very angry, and suddenly the firething had been there, popping out of nowhere as it always did, like some evil jack-in-the-box, nodding and grinning, and she had been so angry she had shoved it out of herself and at her mommy and then Mommy's hands had been on fire. And it hadn't been too bad.

(could have been worse could have been her face)

because the sink had been full of soapy water for the dishes, it hadn't been too bad, but it had been VERY BAD, and she had promised them both that she would never never never

The warm water drummed on her face, her chest, her shoulders, encasing her in a warm envelope, a cocoon, easing away memories and care. Daddy had told her it was all right. And if Daddy said a thing was so, it was. He was the smartest man in the world.

Her mind turned from the past to the present, and she thought about the men who were chasing them. They were from the government, Daddy said, but not a good part of the government. They worked for a part of the government called the Shop. The men chased them and chased them. Everywhere they went, after a little while, those Shop men showed up.

I wonder how they'd like it if I set them on fire? a part of her asked coolly, and she squeezed her eyes shut in guilty horror. It was nasty to think that way. It was bad.

Charlie reached out, grasped the HOT shower faucet, and shut it off with a sudden hard twist of her wrist. For the next two minutes she stood shivering and clutching her slight body under the ice-cold, needling spray, wanting to get out, not allowing herself to.

When you had bad thoughts, you had to pay for them.

Deenie had told her so.

2

Andy woke up a little at a time, vaguely aware of the drumming sound of the shower. At first it had been part of a dream: he was on Tashmore Pond with his grandfather and he was eight years old again, trying to get a squirming nightcrawler onto his hook without sticking the hook into his thumb. The dream had been incredibly vivid. He could see the splintery wicker creel in the bow of the boat, he could see the red tire patches on Granther McGee's old green boots, he could see his own old and wrinkled first baseman's mitt, and looking at it made him remember that he had Little League practice tomorrow at Roosevelt Field. But this was tonight, the last light and the drawing dark balanced perfectly on the cusp of twilight, the pond so still that you could see the small clouds of midges and noseeums skimming over its surface, which was the colour of chrome. Heat lightning flashed intermittently... or maybe it was real lightening, because it was raining. The first drops darkened the wood of Granther's dory, weatherbeaten white, in penny-sized drops. Then you could hear it on the lake, a low and mysterious hissing sound, like-

�Clike the sound of a-

�Cshower, Charlie must be in the shower.

He opened his eyes and looked at an unfamiliar beamed ceiling. Where are we?

It fell back into place a piece at a time, but there was an instant of frightened free-fall that came of having been in too many places over the last year, of having too many close shaves and being under too much pressure. He thought longingly of his dream and wished he could be back in it with Granther McGee, who had been dead for twenty years now.

Hastings Glen. He was in Hastings Glen. They were in Hastings Glen.

He wondered about his head. It hurt, but not like last night, when that bearded guy had let them off: The pain was down to a steady low throb. If this one followed previous history, the throb would be just a faint ache by this evening, and entirely gone by tomorrow.

The shower was turned off:

He sat up in bed and looked at his watch. It was quarter to eleven.

"Charlie?"

She came back into the bedroom, rubbing herself vigorously with a towel.

"Good morning, Daddy." "Good morning. How are you?" "Hungry," she said. She went over to the chair where she had put her clothes and picked up the green blouse. Sniffed it. Grimaced. "I need to change my clothes." "You'll have to make do with those for a while, babe. We'll get you something later on today."

"I hope we don't have to wait that long to eat."

"We'll hitch a ride," he said, "and stop at the first cafe was come to."

"Daddy, when I started school, you told me never to ride with strangers." She was into her underpants and green blouse, and was looking at him curiously.

Andy got out of bed, walked over to her, and put his hands on her shoulders. "The devil you don't know is sometimes better than the one you do," he said. "Do you know what that means, keed?"

She thought about it carefully. The devil they knew was those men from the Shop, she guessed. The men that had chased them down the street in New York the day before. The devil they didn't know-

"I guess it means that most people driving cars don't work for that Shop," she said.

He smiled back. "You got it. And what I said before still holds, Charlie: when you get into a bad fix, you sometimes have to do things you'd never do if things were going good."

Charlie's smile faded. Her face became serious, watchful. "Like getting the money to come out of the phones?"

"Yes," he said.

"And it wasn't bad?"

"No. Under the circumstances, it wasn't bad."

"Because when you get into a bad fix, you do what you have to do to get out of it."

"With some exceptions, yes."

"What are exceptions, Daddy?"

He ruffled her hair. "Never mind now, Charlie. Lighten up."

But she wouldn't. "And I didn't mean to set that man's shoes on fire. I didn't do it on purpose."

"No, of course you didn't."

Then she did lighten up; her smile, so much like Vicky's, came out radiantly. "How does your head feel this morning, Daddy?"

"Much better, thanks."

"Good." She looked at him closely. "Your eye looks funny."

"Which eye?"

She pointed at his left. "That one."

"Yeah?" He went into the bathroom and wiped a clear place on the steamed mirror.

He looked at his eye for a long time, his good humor fading. His right eye looked just as it always had, a gray green-the color of the ocean on an overcast spring day. His left eye was also gray green, but the white was badly bloodshot, and the pupil looked smaller than the right pupil. And the eyelid had a peculiar droop that he had never noticed before.

Vicky's voice suddenly rang into his mind. It was so clear that she might have been standing beside him. The headaches, they scare me, Andy. You're doing something to yourself as well as to other people when you use that push or whatever you want to call it.

The thought was followed by the image of a balloon being blown up... and up... and up... and finally exploding with a loud bang.

He began to go over the left side of his face carefully, touching it everywhere with the tips of his right fingers. He looked like a man in a TV commercial marveling over the closeness of his shave. He found three spots-one below his left eye, one on his left cheekbone, and one just below the left temple-where there was no feeling at all. Fright drifted through the hollow places in his body like quiet early-evening mist. The fright was not so much for himself as it was for Charlie, for what would happen to her if she got left on her own.

As if he had called her, he could see her beyond him in the mirror.

"Daddy?" She sounded a little scared. "You okay?"

"Fine," he said. His voice sounded good. There was no tremor in it; nor was it too confident, falsely booming. "Just thinking how much I need a shave." She put a hand over her mouth and giggled. "Scratchy like a Brillo pad. Yuck. Gross." He chased her into the bedroom and rubbed his scratchy cheek against her smooth one. Charlie giggled and kicked.

3

As Andy was tickling his daughter with his stubbly beard, Orville Jamieson, aka OJ, aka The Juice, and another Shop agent named Bruce Cook were getting out of a light-blue Chevy outside the Hastings Diner.

OJ paused for a moment, looking down Main Street with its slant parking, its appliance store, its grocery store, its two gas stations, its one drugstore, its wooden municipal building with a plaque out front commemorating some historical event no one gave a shit about. Main Street was also Route 40, and the McGees were not four miles from where OJ and Bruce Cook now stood.

"Look at this burg," OJ said, disgusted. "I grew up close to here. Town called Lowville. You ever hear of Lowville, New York?" Bruce Cook shook his head.

"It's near Utica, too. Where they make Utica Club beer. I was never so happy in my life as I was the day I got out of Lowville." OJ reached under his jacket and readjusted The Windsucker in its holster.

"There's Tom and Steve," Bruce said. Across the street, a light-brown Pacer had pulled into a parking slot just vacated by a farm truck. Two men in dark suits were getting out of the Pacer. They looked like bankers. Farther down the street, at the blinker light, two more Shop people were talking to the old cunt that crossed the school kids at lunch time. They were showing her the picture and she was shaking her head. There were ten Shop agents here in Hastings Glen, all of them coordinating with Norville Bates, who was back in Albany waiting for Cap's personal ramrod, A1 Steinowitz.

"Yeah, Lowville," OJ sighed. "I hope we get those two suckers by noon. And I hope my next assignment's Karachi. Or Iceland. Any place, as long as it's not upstate New York. This is too close to Lowville. Too close for comfort."

"You think we will have them by noon?" Bruce asked.

OJ shrugged. "We'll have them by the time the sun goes down. You can count on that." They went into the diner, sat at the counter, and ordered coffee. A young waitress with a fine figure brought it to them. "How long you been on, sis?" OJ asked her. "If you got a sis, I pity her," the waitress said. "If there's any fambly resemblance, that is."

"Don't be that way, sis," OJ said, and showed her his ID. She looked at it a long time. Behind her, an aging juvenile delinquent in a motorcycle jacket was pushing buttons on a Seeberg.

"I been on since seven," she said. "Same as any other morning. Prolly you want to talk to Mike. He's the owner." She started to turn away and OJ caught her wrist in a tight grip. He didn't like women who made fun of his looks. Most women were sluts anyway, his mother had been right about that even if she hadn't been right about much else. And his mother surely would have known what to think about a high-tit bitch like this one.

"Did I say I wanted to talk to the owner, sis?"

She was starting to be frightened now, and that was okay with OJ. "N-no."

"That's right. Because I want to talk to you, not to some guy that's been out in the kitchen scrambling eggs and making Alpoburgers all morning." He took the picture of Andy and Charlie out of his pocket and handed it to her, not letting go of her wrist. "You recognize them, sis? Serve them their breakfast this morning, maybe?"

"Let go. You're hurting me." All the color had gone out of her face except for the whore's rouge she had tricked herself up with. Probably she had been a cheerleader in high school. The kind of girl who laughed at Orville Jamieson when he asked them out because he had been president of the Chess Club instead of quarterback on the football team. Bunch of cheap Lowville whores. God, he hated New York. Even New York City was too fucking close.

"You tell me if you waited on them or if you didn't. Then I'll let go. Sis."

She looked briefly at the picture. "No! I didn't. Now let-"

"You didn't look long enough sis. You better look again."

She looked again. "No! No!" she said loudly. "I've never seen them! Let me go, can't you?" The elderly jd in the cut-rate Mammoth Mart leather jacket sauntered over, zippers jingling, thumbs hooked in his pants pockets. "You're bothering the lady," he said. Bruce Cook gazed at him with open, wide-eyed contempt. "Be careful we don't decide to bother you next, pizza-face," he said. "Oh," the old kid in the leather jacket said, and his voice was suddenly very small. He moved away quickly, apparently remembering that he had pressing business on the street.

Two old ladies in a booth were nervously watching the little scene at the counter. A big man in reasonably clean cook's whites-Mike, the owner, presumably-was standing in the kitchen doorway, also watching. He held a butcher knife in one hand, but he held it with no great authority.

"What do you guys want?" he asked.

"They're feds," the waitress said nervously. "They-"

"Didn't serve them? You're sure?" OJ asked. "Sis?"

"I'm sure," she said. She was nearly crying now.

"You better be. A mistake can get you five years in jail, sis." "I'm sure," she whispered. A tear spilled over the bottom curve of one eye and slipped down her cheek. "Please let go. Don't hurt me anymore."

OJ squeezed tighter for one brief moment, liking the feel of the small bones moving under his hand, liking the knowledge that he could squeeze harder yet and snap them... and then he let go. The diner was silent except for the voice of Stevie Wonder coming from the Seeberg, assuring the frightened patrons of the Hastings Diner that they could feel it all over. Then the two old ladies got up and left in a hurry.

OJ picked up his coffee cup, leaned over the counter, poured the coffee on the floor, and then dropped the cup, which shattered. Thick china shrapnel sprayed in a dozen different directions. The waitress was crying openly now.

"Shitty brew," OJ said.

The owner made a halfhearted gesture with the knife, and OJ's face seemed to light up.

"Come on, man," he said, half-laughing. "Come on. Let's see you try."

Mike put the knife down beside the toaster and suddenly cried out in shame and outrage: "I fought in Vietnam! My brother fought in Vietnam! I'm gonna write my congressman about this! You wait and see if I don't!" OJ looked at him. After a while Mike lowered his eyes, scared. The two of them went out. The waitress scooched and began to pick up broken pieces of coffee cup, sobbing. Outside, Bruce said, "How many motels?"

"Three motels, six sets of tourist cabins," OJ said, looking down toward the blinker. It fascinated him. In the Lowville of his youth there had been a diner with a plaque over the double Silex hotplate and that plaque had read IF YOU DON'T LIKE OUR TOWN, LOOK FOR A TIMETABLE. How many times had he longed to pull that plaque off the wall and stuff" it down someone's throat?

"There are people checking them out," he said as they walked back toward their light-blue Chevrolet, part of a government motor pool paid for and maintained by tax dollars "We'll know soon now."

4

John Mayo was with an agent named Ray Knowles. They were on their way out along Route 40 to the Slumberland Motel. They were driving a late model tan Ford, and as they rode up the last hill separating them from an actual view of the motel, a tire blew.

"Shit-fire," John said as the car began to pogo up and down and drag to the right. "That's fucking government issue for you. Fucking retreads." He pulled over onto the soft shoulder and put on the Ford's four-way flashers. "You go on," he said. "I'll change the goddam tire."

"I'll help," Ray said. "It won't take us five minutes."

"No, go on. It's right over this hill, should be."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I'll pick you up. Unless the spare's flat, too. It wouldn't surprise me."

A rattling farm truck passed them. It was the one OJ and Bruce Cook had seen leaving town as they stood outside the Hastings Diner.