t also sounded like maybe you saved your old man's life."

Silence from Charlie. But he could feel trouble and confusion and misery coming of her in waves. He hastened on, not wanting her to remember right now that she had come very close to killing her father as well.

"As for that guy Hockstetter, I've seen him around. I saw guys like him in the war. Every one of them a ninety-day wonder, King Shit of Turd Mountain. If he can't get what he wants from you one way, he'll try some other way."

"That's what scares me the most," she admitted in a low voice.

"Besides, there's one guy who could use a hotfoot."

Charlie was shocked, but giggled hard-the way a dirty joke could sometimes make her laugh harder just because it was so bad to tell them. When she was over her giggles, she said: "No, I won't light fires, I promised myself. It's bad and I won't."

It was enough. It was time to stop. He felt that he could keep going on pure intuition, but he recognized that it might be a false feeling. He was tired now. Working on the girl had been every bit as exhausting as working on one of Rammaden's safes.

It would be too easy to go on and make a mistake that could never be undone.

"Yeah, okay. I guess you're right."

"You really will see my dad?"

"I'll try, kid."

"I'm sorry you got stuck in here with me, John. But I'm awful glad, too."

"Yeah."

They talked of inconsequential things, and she put her head on his arm. He felt that she was dozing ofd" again-it was very late now-and when the lights went on about forty minutes later, she was fast asleep. The light in her face made her stir and turn her head into his darkness. He looked down thoughtfully at the slender willow stem of her neck, the tender curve of her skull. So much power in that small, delicate cradle of bone. Could it be true? His mind still rejected it, but his heart felt it was so. It was a strange and somehow wonderful feeling to find himself so divided. His heart felt it was true to an extent they wouldn't believe, true perhaps to the extent of that mad Wanless's ravings.

He picked her up, carried her to her bed, and slipped her between the sheets. As he pulled them up to her chin, she stired half awake.

He leaned over impulsively and kissed her. "Goodnight, kid."

"Goodnight, Daddy," she said in a thick, sleeping voice. Then she rolled over and became still.

He looked down at her for several minutes longer, then went back into the living room. Hockstetter himself came bustling in ten minutes later. "Power failure," he said. "Storm. Dam electronic locks, all jammed. Is she-"

"She'll be fine if you keep your goddam voice down," Rainbird said in a low voice. His huge hands pistoned out, caught Hockstetter by the lapels of his white lab coat, and jerked him forward, so that Hockstetter's suddenly terrified face was less than an inch from his own. "And if you ever behave as if you know me in here again, if you ever behave toward me as if I am anything but a D-clearance orderly, I'll kill you, and then I'll cut you into pieces, and Cuisinart you, and turn you into catmeat."

Hockstetter spluttered impotently. Spit bubbled at the corner of his lips.

"Do you understand? I'll kill you." He shook Hockstetter twice.

"I-I-I un-un-understand."

"Then let's get out of here," Rainbird said, and shoved Hockstetter, pale and wideeyed, out into the corridor.

He took one last look around and then wheeled his cart out and closed the selflocking door behind him. In the bedroom, Charlie slept on, more peacefully than she had in months. Perhaps years.

SMALL FIRES, BIG BROTHER

1

The violent storm passed. Time passed three weeks of it. Summer, humid and over bearing, still held sway over eastern Virginia, but school was back in session and lumbering yellow school buses trundled up and down the well-kept rural roads in the Longmont area. In not-too-distant Washington, D.C... another year of legislation, rumor, and innuendo was beginning, marked with the usual freak-show atmosphere engendered by national television, planned information leaks, and overmastering clouds of bourbon fumes.

None of that made much of an impression in the cool, environmentally controlled rooms of the two antebellum houses and the corridors and levels honeycombed beneath. The only correlative might have been that Charlie McGee was also going to school. It was Hockstetter's idea that she be tutored, and Charlie had balked, but John Rainbird had talked her into it.

"What hurt's it gonna do?" he asked. "There's no sense in a smart girl like you getting way behind.

Shit-excuse me, Charlie-but I wish to God sometimes that I had more than an eighth-grade education. I wouldn't be moppin floors now-you can bet your boots on that. Besides, it'll pass the time."

So she had done it-for John. The tutors came: the young man who taught English, the older woman who taught mathematics, the younger woman with the thick glasses who began to teach her French, the man in the wheelchair who taught science. She listened to them, and she supposed she learned, but she had done it for John.

On three occasions John had risked his job to pass her father notes, and she felt guilty about that and hence was more willing to do what she thought would please John. And he had brought her news of her dad-that he was well, that he was relieved to know Charlie was well too, and that he was cooperating with their tests. This had distressed her a little, but she was now old enough to understand-a little bit, anyway-that what was best for her might not always be best for her father. And lately she had begun to wonder more and more if John might know best about what was right for her. In his earnest, funny way (he was always swearing and then apologizing for it, which made her giggle), he was very persuasive.

He had not said anything about making fires for almost ten days after the blackout. Whenever they talked of these things, they did it in the kitchen, where he said there were no "bugs," and they always talked in low voices.

On that day he had said, "You thought any more about that fire business, Charlie?" He always called her Charlie now instead of "kid." She had asked him to.

She began to tremble. Just thinking about making fires had this effect on her since the Manders farm. She got cold and tense and trembly; on Hockstetter's reports this was called a "mild phobic reaction."

"I told you," she said. "I can't do that. I won't do that."

"Now, can't and won't aren't the same thing," John said. He was washing the floor-

but very slowly, so he could talk to her. His mop swished. He talked the way cons talked in prison, barely moving his lips. Charlie didn't reply. "I just had a couple of thoughts on this," he said. "But if you don't want to hear them-if your head's really set-I'll just shut up."

"No, that's okay," Charlie said politely, but she did really wish he would shut up, not talk about it, not even think about it, because it made her feel bad. But John had done so much for her... and she desperately didn't want to offend him or hurt his feelings. She needed a friend:

"Well, I was just thinking that they must know how it got out of control at that farm," he said. "They'd probably be really careful. I don't think they'd be apt to test you in a room full of paper and oily rags, do.you?"

"No, but-"

He raised one hand a little way off his mop. "Hear me out, hear me out."

"Okay."

"And they sure know that was the only time you caused a real-what's it?-a conflagration. Small fires, Charlie. That's the ticket. Small fires. And if something did happen-which I doubt, cause I think you got better control over yourself than you think you do-but say something did happen. Who they gonna blame, huh? They gonna blame you? After the fuckheads spent half a year twisting your arm to do it? Oh hell, I'm sorry."

The things he was saying scared her, but still she had to put her hands to her mouth and giggle at the woebegone expression on his face. John smiled a little too, then shrugged. "The other thing I was thinkin is that you can't learn to control something unless you practice it and practice it." "I don't care if I ever control it or not, because I'm just not going to do it."

"Maybe or maybe not," John said stubbornly, wringing out his mop. He stood it in the corner, then dumped his soapy water down the sink. He began to run a bucket of fresh to rinse with. "You might get surprised into using it."

"No, I don't think so."

"Or suppose you got a bad fever sometime. From the flu or the croup or, hell, I dunno, some kind of infection." This was one of the few profitable lines Hockstetter had given him to pursue. "You ever have your appendix out, Charlie?"

"No-ooo..."

John began to rinse the floor.

"My brother had his out, but it went bust first and he almost died. That was cause we were reservation Indians and nobody gave a-nobody cared much if we lived or died. He got a high fever, a hundred and five, I guess, and he went ravin right off his head, sayin horrible curses and talkin to people who weren't there. Do you know he thought our father was the Angel of Death or somethin, come to carry him off, and he tried to stick im with a knife that was on his bedside table there? I told you this story, didn't I?"

"No," Charlie said, whispering now not to keep from being overheard but out of horrified fascination. "Really?" "Really," John affirmed. He squeezed the mop out again. "It wasn't his fault. It was the fever that did it. People are apt to say or do anything when they're delirious. Anything." Charlie understood what he was saying and felt a sinking fear. Here was something she had never even considered.

"But if you had control of this pyro-whatsis..."

"How could I have control of it if I was delirious?"

"Just because you do." Rainbird went back to Wanless's original metaphor, the one that had so disgusted Cap almost a year ago now. "It's like toilet-training, Charlie. Once you get hold of your bowels and bladder, you're in control for good. Delirious people sometimes get their beds all wet from sweat, but they rarely piss the bed."

Hockstetter had pointed out that this was not invariably true, but Charlie wouldn't know that.

"Well, anyway, all I mean is that if you got control, don't you see, you wouldn't have to worry about this anymore. You'd have it licked. But to get control you have to practice and practice. The same way you learned to tie your shoes, or to make your letters in kinnygarden."

"I... I just don't want to make fires! And I won't! I won't!" "There, I went and upset you," John said, distressed. "I sure didn't mean to do that. I'm sorry, Charlie. I won't say no more. Me and my big fat mouth." But the next time she brought it up herself.

It was three or four days later, and she had thought over the things he had said very carefully... and she believed that she had put her finger on the one flaw. "It would just never end," she said. "They'd always want more and more and more. If you only knew the way they chased us, they never-give up. Once I started they'd want bigger fires and then even bigger ones and then bonfires and then... I don't know... but I'm afraid."

He admired her again. She had an intuition and a native wit that was incredibly sharp. He wondered what Hockstetter would think when he, Rainbird, told him that Charlie McGee had an extremely good idea what their top-secret master plan was. All of their reports on Charlie theorized that pyrokinesis was only the centerpiece of many related psionic talents, and Rainbird believed that her intuition was one of them. Her father had told them again and again that Charlie had known Al Steinowitz and the others were coming up to the Manders farm even before they had arrived. That was a scary thought. If she should ever get one of her funny intuitions about his authenticity... well, they said hell had no fury like a woman scorned, and if half of what he believed about Charlie was true, then she was perfectly capable of manufacturing hell, or a reasonable facsimile. He might suddenly find himself getting very hot. It added a certain spice to the proceedings... a spice that had been missing for too long.

"Charlie," he said, "I'm not sayin you should do any of these things for free."

She looked at him, puzzled.

John sighed. "I don't hardly know how to put it to you," he said. "I guess I love you a little. You're like the daughter I never had. And the way they're keeping you cooped up here, not letting you see your daddy and all, never getting to go out, missing all the things other little girls have... it just about makes me sick."

Now he allowed his good eye to blaze out at her, scaring her a little. "You could get all kinds of things just by going along with them... and attaching a few strings." "Strings," Charlie said, utterly mystified. "Yeah! You could get them to let you go outside in the sun, I bet. Maybe even into Longmont to shop for things. You could get out of this goddam box and into a regular house. See other kids. And-"

"And see my father?"

"Sure, that, too." But that was one thing that was never going to happen, because if the two of them put their information together they would realize that John the Friendly Orderly was just too good to be true. Rainbird had never passed along a single message to Andy McGee. Hockstetter thought it would be running a risk for no gain, and Rainbird, who thought Hockstetter a total bleeding asshole about most things, agreed.

It was one thing to fool an eight-year-old kid with fairy stories about there being no bugs in the kitchen and about how they could talk in low voices and riot be overheard, but it would be quite another thing to fool the girl's father with the same fairy story, even though he was hooked through the bag and back. McGee might not be hooked enough to miss the fact that they were now doing little more than playing Nice Guy and Mean Guy with Charlie, a technique police departments have used to crack criminals for hundreds of years.

So he maintained the fiction that he was taking her messages to Andy just as he was maintaining so many other fictions. It was true that he saw Andy quite often, but he saw him only on the TV monitors. It was true that Andy was cooperating with their tests, but it was also true that he was tipped over, unable to push a kid into eating a Popsicle. He had turned into a big fat zero, concerned only with what was on the tube and when his next pill was going to arrive, and he never asked to see his daughter anymore. Meeting her father face to face and seeing what they had done to him might stiffen her resistance all over again, and he was very close to breaking her now; she wanted to be convinced now. No, all things were negotiable except that. Charlie McGee was never going to see her father again. Before too long, Rainbird surmised, Cap would have McGee on a Shop plane to the Maui compound. But the girl didn't need to know that, either.

"You really think they'd let me see him?"

"No question about it," he responded easily. "Not at first, of course; he's their ace with you, and they know it. But if you went to a certain point and then said you were going to cut them off unless they let you see him-"He let it dangle there. The bait was out, a big sparkling lure dragged through the water. It was full of hooks and not good to eat anyway, but that was something else this tough little chick didn't know.

She looked at him thoughtfully. No more was said about it. That day.

Now, about a week later, Rainbird abruptly reversed his field. He did this for no concrete reason, but his own intuition told him he could get no further by advocacy. It was time to beg, as Br'er Rabbit had begged Br'er Fox not to be thrown into that briar patch.

"You remember what we was talkin about?" He opened the conversation. He was waxing the kitchen floor. She was pretending to linger over her selection of a snack from the fridge. One clean, pink foot was cocked behind the other so he could see the sole-a pose that he found curiously evocative of mid-childhood. It was somehow pre-erotic, almost mystic. His heart went out to her again. Now she looked back over her shoulder at him doubtfully. Her hair, done up in a ponytail, lay over one shoulder.

"Yes," she said, "I remember."

"Well, I been thinkin, and I started to ask myself what makes me an expert on givin advice," he said. "I can't even float a thousand-dollar bank loan for a car.",

"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 decided 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 had 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 around 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 roller-coaster. 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. Charlie 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 the 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 honeysuckle 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 thinkthat 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?"

And the immediate future might be two years, Andy thought. Maybe five. They would want to keep an eye on him in case the mental-domination ability recurred, and maybe as an ace in the hole in case some unforeseen difficulty with Charlie cropped up. But in the end, he had no doubt that there would be an accident or an overdose or a "suicide." In Orwell's parlance, he would become an unperson.

"Would I still get my medication?" Andy asked.

"Oh, of course," Pynchot said.

"Hawaii..." Andy said dreamily. Then he looked around at Pynchot with what he hoped was an expression of rather stupid cunning. "Probably Dr. Hockstetter won't let me go. Dr. Hockstetter doesn't like me. I can tell."

"Oh, he does," Pynchot assured him. "He does like you, Andy. And in any case, you're my baby, not Dr. Hockstetter's. I assure you, he'll go along with what I advise."

"But you haven't written your memorandum on the subject yet," Andy said.

"No, I thought I'd talk to you first. But, really, Hockstetter's approval is just a formality."

"One more series of tests might be wise," Andy said, and pushed out lightly at Pynchot. "Just for safety's sake."

Pynchot's eyes suddenly fluttered in a strange way. His grin faltered, became puzzled, and then faded altogether. Now Pynchot was the one who looked drugged, and the thought gave Andy a vicious kind of satisfaction. Bees droned in the flowers. The scent of new-cut grass, heavy and cloying, hung in the air.

"When you write your report, suggest one more series of tests," Andy repeated.

Pynchot's eyes cleared. His grin came splendidly back. "Of course, this Hawaii thing is just between us for the time being," he said. "When I write my report, I will be suggesting one more series of tests. I think it might be wise. Just for safety's sake, you know."

"But after that I might go to Hawaii?"

"Yes," Pynchot said. "After that."

"And another series of tests might take three months or so?"

"Yes, about three months." Pynchot beamed on Andy as if he were a prize pupil.

They were nearing the pond now. Ducks sailed lazily across its mirror surface. The two men paused by it. Behind them, the young man in the sport coat was watching a middle-aged man and woman cantering along side by side on the far side of the pond. Their reflections were broken only by the long, smooth glide of one of the white ducks. Andy thought the couple looked eerily like an ad for mail-order insurance, the kind of ad that's always falling out of your Sunday paper and into your lap-or your coffee.

There was a small pulse of pain in his head. Not bad at all. But in his nervousness he had come very close to pushing Pynchot much harder than he had to, and the young man might have noticed the results of that. He didn't seem to be watching them, but Andy wasn't fooled.

"Tell me a little about the roads and the countryside around here," he said quietly to Pynchot, and pushed out lightly again. He knew from various snatches of conversation that they were not terribly far from Washington, D.C... but nowhere as close as the CIA's base of operations in Langley. Beyond that he knew nothing.

"Very pretty here," Pynchot said dreamily, "since they've filled the holes."

"Yes, it is nice," Andy said, and lapsed into silence. Sometimes a push triggered an almost hypnotic trace memory in the person being pushedusually through some obscure association-and it was unwise to interrupt whatever was going on. It could set up an echo effect, and the echo would become a ricochet, and the ricochet could lead to... well, to almost anything. It had happened to one of his Walter Mitty businessmen, and it had scared the bejesus out of Andy. It had turned out okay, but if friend Pynchot suddenly got a case of the screaming horrors, it would be anything but okay.

"My wife loves that thing," Pynchot said in that same dreamy voice.

"What's that?" Andy asked. "That she loves?"

"Her new garbage disposer. It's very..."

He trailed off:

"Very pretty," Andy suggested. The guy in the sport coat had drifted a little closer and Andy felt a fine sweat break on his upper lip. "Very pretty," Pynchot agreed, and looked vaguely out at the pond. The Shop agent came closer still, and Andy decided he might have to risk another push... a very small one. Pynchot was standing beside him like a TV set with a blown tube. The shadow picked up a small chunk of wood and tossed it in the water. It struck lightly and ripples spread, shimmering. Pynchot's eyes fluttered.

"The country is very pretty around here," Pynchot said. "Quite hilly, you know. Good riding country. My wife and I ride here once a week, if we can get away. I guess Dawn's the closest town going west... southwest, actually. Pretty small. Dawn's on Highway Three-oh-one. Gether's the closest town going east."

"Is Gether on a highway?"

"Nope. Just on a little road."

"Where does Highway Three-oh-one go? Besides Dawn?"

"Why, all the way up to D.C... if you go north. Most of the way to Richmond, if you go south."