ay grinned. "It better not be. You'd have to put in a requisition in quadruplicate for a new one."

John didn't grin back. "Don't I know it," he said glumly.

They went around to the trunk and Ray unlocked it. The spare was in good shape.

"Okay," John said. "Go on."

"It really wouldn't take but five minutes to change that sucker."

"Sure, and those two aren't at that motel. But let's play it as if it were real. After all, they have to be somewhere." "Yeah, okay." John took the jack and spare out of the trunk. Ray Knowles watched him for a moment and then started walking along the shoulder toward the Slumberland Motel.

5

Just beyond the motel, Andy and Charlie McGee were standing on the soft shoulder of Highway 40. Andy's worries that someone might notice he didn't have a car had proved groundless; the woman in the office was interested in nothing but the small Hitachi TV on the counter. A miniature Phil Donahue had been captured inside, and the woman was watching him avidly. She swept the key Andy offered into the mail slot without even looking away from the picture.

"Hope y'enjoyed y'stay," she said. She was working on a box of chocolate coconut doughnuts and had got to the halfway mark.

"Sure did," Andy said, and left.

Charlie was waiting for him outside. The woman had given him a carbon copy of his bill, which he stuffed into the side pocket of his cord jacket as he went down the steps. Change from the Albany pay phones jingled mutedly.

"Okay, Daddy?" Charlie asked as they moved away toward the road.

"Lookin good," he said, and put an arm around her shoulders. To their right and back over the hill, Ray Knowles and John Mayo had just had their flat tire.

"Where are we going, Daddy?" Charlie asked.

"I don't know," he said.

"I don't like it. I feel nervous."

"I think we're well ahead of them," he said. "Don't worry. They're probably still looking for the cab driver who took us to Albany."

But he was whistling past the graveyard; he knew it and probably Charlie did, too. Just standing here beside the road made him feel exposed, like a cartoon jailbird in a striped suit. Quit it, he told himself. Next thing you'll be thinking they're everywhere-one behind every tree and a bunch of them right over the next hill. Hadn't somebody said that perfect paranoia and perfect awareness were the same thing?

"Charlie-"he began.

"Let's go to Granther's," she said.

He looked at her, startled. His dream rushed back at him, the dream of fishing in the rain, the rain that had turned into the sound of Charlie's shower. "What made you think of that?" he asked. Granther had died long before Charlie was born. He had lived his whole life in Tashmore, Vermont, a town just west of the New Hampshire border. When Granther died, the place on the lake went to Andy's mother, and when she died, it came to Andy. The town would have taken it for back taxes long since, except that Granther had left a small sum in trust to cover them.

Andy and Vicky had gone up there once a year during the summer vacation until Charlie was born. It was twenty miles off the nearest two-lane road, in wooded, unpopulated country. In the summer there were all sorts of people on Tashmore Pond, which was really a lake with the small town of Bradford, New Hampshire, on the far side. But by this time of year all the summer camps would be empty. Andy doubted if the road in was even plowed in the winter.

"I don't know," Charlie said. "It just... came into my mind. This minute." On the other side of the hill, John Mayo was opening the trunk of the Ford and making his inspection of the spare tire.

"I dreamed about Granther this morning," Andy said slowly. "First time I'd thought about him in a year or more, I guess. So I suppose you could say he just came into my head, too."

"Was it a good dream, Daddy?"

"Yes," he said, and smiled a little. "Yes, it was."

"Well, what do you think?"

"I think it's a great idea," Andy said. "We can go there and stay for a while and think about what we should do. How we should handle this. I was thinking if we could get to a newspaper and tell our story so that a lot of people knew about it, they'd have to lay off."

An old farm truck was rattling toward them, and Andy stuck out his thumb. On the other side of the hill, Ray Knowles was walking up the soft shoulder of the road. The farm truck pulled over, and a guy wearing biballs and a New York Mets baseball cap looked out.

"Well there's a purty little miss," he said, smiling. "What's your name, missy?"

"Roberta," Charlie said promptly. Roberta was her middle name.

"Well, Bobbi, where you headed this morning?" the driver asked.

"We're on our way to Vermont," Andy said. "St. Johnsbury. My wife was visiting her sister and she ran into a little problem." "Did she now," the farmer said, and said no more, but gazed at Andy shrewdly from the corners of his eyes. "Labor," Andy said, and manufactured a wide smile. "This one's got a new brother. One-forty-one this morning." "His name is Andy," Charlie said. "Isn't that a nice name?" "I think it's a corker," the farmer said. "You hop on in here and I'll get you ten miles closer to St. Johnsbury, anyhow."

They got in and the farm truck rattled and rumbled back onto the road, headed into the bright morning sunlight. At the same time, Ray Knowles was breasting the hill. He saw an empty highway leading down to the Slumberland Motel. Beyond the Motel, he saw the farm truck that had passed their car a few minutes ago just disappearing from view.

He saw no need to hurry.

6

The farmer's name was Manders-Irv Manders. He had just taken a load of pumpkins into town, where he had a deal with the fellow who ran the A amp;P. He told them that he used to deal with the First National, but the fellow over there just had no understanding about pumpkins. A jumped-up meat cutter and no more, was the opinion of Irv Manders. The A amp;P manager, on the other hand, was a corker. He told them that his wife ran a touristy sort of shop in the summertime, and he kept a roadside produce stand, and between the two of them they got along right smart.

"You won't like me minding your beeswax," Irv Manders told Andy, "but you and your button here shouldn't be thumbin. Lord, no. Not with the sort of people you find ramming the roads these days. There's a Greyhound terminal in the drugstore back in Hastings Glen. That's what you want."

"Well-"Andy said. He was nonplussed, but Charlie stepped neatly into the breach.

"Daddy's out of work," she said brightly. "That's why my mommy had to go and stay with Auntie Em to have the baby. Auntie Em doesn't like Daddy. So we stayed at home. But now we're going to see Mommy. Right, Daddy?"

"That's sort of private stuff, Bobbi," Andy said, sounding uncomfortable. He felt uncomfortable. There were a thousand holes in Charlie's story. "Don't you say another word," Irv said. "I know about trouble in families. It can get pretty bitter at times. And I know about being hard-up. It ain't no shame." Andy cleared his throat but said nothing. He could think of nothing to say. They rode in silence for a while. "Say, why don't you two come home and take lunch with me and the wife?" Irv asked suddenly.

"Oh no, we couldn't do-"

"We'd be happy to," Charlie said. "Wouldn't we, Daddy?"

He knew that Charlie's intuitions were usually good ones, and he was too mentally and physically worn down to go against her now. She was a self possessed and aggressive little girl, and more than once Andy had wondered to himself just who was running this show.

"If you're sure there's enough-"he said.

"Always enough," Irv Manders said, finally shifting the farm truck into third gear. They were rattling between autumn-bright trees: maples, elms, poplars. "Glad to have you."

"Thank you very much," Charlie said.

"My pleasure, button," Irv said. "Be my wife's, too, when she gets a look at you."

Charlie smiled.

Andy rubbed his temples. Beneath the fingers of his left hand was one of those patches of skin where the nerves seemed to have died. He didn't feel good about this, somehow. That feeling that they were closing in was still very much with him.

7

The woman who had checked Andy out of the Slumberland Motel not twenty minutes ago was getting nervous. She had forgotten all about Phil Donahue.

"You're sure this was the man," Ray Knowles was saying for the third time. She didn't like this small, trim, somehow tight man. Maybe he worked for the government, but that was no comfort to Lena Cunningham. She didn't like his narrow face, she didn't like the lines around his cool blue eyes, and most of all she didn't like the way he kept shoving that picture under her nose.

"Yes, that was him," she said again. "But there was no little girl with him. Honest, mister. My husband'll tell you the same. He works nights. It's got so we hardly ever see each other, except at supper. He'll tell-"

The other man came back in, and with ever-mounting alarm, Lena saw that he had a walkie-talkie in one hand and a great big pistol in the other.

"It was them," John Mayo said. He was almost hysterical with anger and disappointment. "Two people slept in that bed. Blond hairs on one pillow, black on the other. Goddam that flat tire! Goddam it all to hell! Damp towels hanging on the rod in the bathroom! Fucking shower's still dripping! We missed them by maybe five minutes, Ray!"

He jammed the pistol back into its shoulder holster.

"I'll get my husband," Lena said faintly.

"Never mind," Ray said. He took John's arm and led him outside. John was still swearing about the flat. "Forget the tire, John. Did you talk to OJ back in town?"

"I talked to him and he talked to Norville. Norville's on his way from Albany, and he's got Al Steinowitz with him. He landed not ten minutes ago."

"Well, that's good. Listen, think a minute, Johnny. They must have been hitching."

"Yeah, I guess so. Unless they boosted a car."

"The guy's an English instructor. He wouldn't know how to boost a candy bar out of a concession stand in a home for the blind. They were hitching, all right. They hitched from Albany last night. They hitched this morning. I'd bet you this year's salary that they were standing there by the side of the road with their thumbs out while I was walking up that hill."

"If it hadn't been for that flat-"John's eyes were miserable behind his wire-framed glasses. He saw a promotion flapping away on slow, lazy wings. "Fuck the flat!" Ray said. "What passed us? After we got the flat, what passed us?" John thought about it as he hooked the walkie-talkie back on his belt. "Farm truck," he said.

"That's what I remember, too," Ray said. He glanced around and saw Lena Cunningham's large moon face peering out the motel office window at them. She saw him seeing her and the curtain fell back into place.

"Pretty rickety truck," Ray said. "If they don't turn off the main road, we ought to be able to catch up to them."

"Let's go, then," John said. "We can keep in touch with A1 and Norville by way of OJ on the walkie-talkie."

They trotted back to the car and got in. A moment later the tan Ford roared out of the parking lot, spewing white crushed gravel out from beneath its rear tires: Lena Cunningham watched them go with relief. Running a motel was not what it once had been.

She went back to wake up her husband.

8

As the Ford with Ray Knowles behind the wheel and John Mayo riding shotgun was roaring down Route 40 at better than seventy miles an hour (and as a caravan of ten or eleven similar nondescript late-model cars were heading towards Hastings Glen from the surrounding areas of search), Irv Manders hand-signaled left and turned off the highway onto an unmarked stretch of tar-and-patch that headed roughly northeast. The truck rattled and banged along. At his urging, Charlie had sung most of her nine-song repertoire, including such golden hits as "Happy Birthday to You," "This Old Man," "Jesus Loves Me," and "Camptown Races." Irv and Andy both sang along with that one.

The road twisted and wound its way over a series of increasingly wooded ridges and then began to descend toward flatter country that had been cultivated and harvested. Once a partridge burst from a cover of goldenrod and old hay at the left side of the road and Irv shouted, "Get im, Bobbi!" and Charlie pointed her finger and chanted "Bam-ba-DAM!'" and then giggled wildly.

A few minutes later Irv turned off on a dirt road, and a mile farther along they came to a battered red, white, and blue mailbox with MANDERS stenciled on the side. Irv turned into a rutted driveway that was nearly half a mile long.

"Must cost you an arm and a leg to keep it plowed in the winter," Andy said.

"Do it m'self," Irv said.

They came to a big white frame farmhouse, three stories tall and set off" with mint-green trim. To Andy it looked like the sort of house that might have started off fairly ordinary and then grown eccentric as the years passed. Two sheds were attached to the rear, one of them zigging thisaway, the other zagging thataway. On the south side, a greenhouse wing had been added, and a big screened-in porch stood out from the north side like a stiff skirt.

Behind the house was a red barn that had seen better days, and between the house and the barn was what New Englanders called a dooryard-a flat dirt stretch of ground where a couple of dozen chickens clucked and strutted. When the truck rattled toward them they fled, squawking and fluttering their useless wings, past a chopping block with an ax buried in it.

Irv drove the truck into the barn, which had, a sweet hay smell Andy remembered from his summers in Vermont. When Irv switched the truck off, they all heard a low, musical mooing from somewhere deeper in the barn's shadowy interior.

"You got a cow," Charlie said, and something like rapture came over her face. "I can hear it."

"We've got three," Irv said. "That's Bossy you hear-a very original name, wouldn't you say, button? She thinks she's got to be milked three times a day. You can see her later, if your daddy says you can."

"Can I, Daddy?"

"I guess so," Andy said, mentally surrendering. Somehow they had gone out beside the road to thumb a ride and had got shanghaied instead.

"Come on in and meet the wife."

They strolled across the dooryard, pausing for Charlie to examine as many of the chickens as she could get close to. The back door opened and a woman of about forty five came out onto the back steps. She shaded her eyes and called, "You there, Irv! Who you brought home?" Irv smiled. "Well, the button here is Roberta. This fellow is her daddy. I didn't catch his name yet, so I dunno if we're related." Andy stepped forward and said, "I'm Frank Burton, ma'am. Your husband invited Bobbi and me home for lunch, if that's all right. We're pleased to know you." "Me too," Charlie said, still more interested in the chickens than in the woman-at least for the moment. "I'm Norma Manders," she said. "Come in. You're welcome." But Andy saw the puzzled look she threw at her husband.

They all went inside, through an entryway where stovelengths were stacked head high and into a huge kitchen that was dominated by a woodstove and a long table covered with red and white checked oilcloth. There was an elusive smell of fruit and paraffin in the air. The smell of canning, Andy thought.

"Frank here and his button are on their way to Vermont," Irv said. "I thought it wouldn't hurt em to get outside of a little hot food on their way."

"Of course not," she agreed. "Where is your car, Mr. Burton?"

"Well-"Andy began. He glanced at Charlie, but she was going to be no help; she was walking around the kitchen in small steps, looking at everything with a child's frank curiosity.

"Frank's had a little trouble," Irv said, looking directly at his wife. "But we don't have to talk about that. At least, not right now."

"All right," Norma said. She had a sweet and direct face-a handsome woman who was used to working hard. Her hands were red and chapped. "I've got chicken and I could put together a nice salad. And there's lots of milk. Do you like milk, Roberta?"

Charlie didn't look around. She's lapsed on the name, Andy thought. Oh, Jesus, this just gets better and better.

"Bobbi!" he said loudly.

She looked around then, and smiled a little too widely. "Oh, sure," she said. "I love milk."

Andy saw a warning glance pass from Irv to his wife: No questions, not now. He felt a sinking despair. Whatever had been left of their story had just gone swirling away. But there was nothing to do except sit down to lunch and wait to see what Irv Manders had on his mind.

9

"How far from the motel are we?" John Mayo asked. Ray glanced down at the odometer. "Seventeen miles," he said, and pulled over. "That's- far enough." "But maybe-""No, if we were going to catch them, we would have by now. We'll go on back and rendezvous with the others."

John struck the heel of his hand against the dashboard. "They turned off somewhere," he said. "That goddam flat shoe! This job's been bad luck from the start, Ray. An egghead and a little girl. And we keep missing them."

"No, I think we've got them," Ray said, and took out his walkie-talkie. He pulled the antenna and tipped it out the window. "We'll have a cordon around the whole area in half an hour. And I bet we don't hit a dozen houses before someone around here recognizes that truck. Late-sixties dark-green International Harvester, snowplow attachment on the front, wooden stakes around the truck bed to hold on a high load. I still think we'll have them by dark."

A moment later he was talking to A1 Steinowitz, who was nearing the Slumberland Motel. A1 briefed his agents in turn. Bruce Cook remembered the farm truck from town. OJ did, too. It had been parked in front of the A amp;P.

A1 sent them back to town, and half an hour later they all knew that the truck that had almost certainly stopped to give the two fugitives a lift belonged to Irving Manders, RFD 5, Baillings Road, Hastings Glen, New York.

It was just past twelve-thirty P.M.

10

The lunch was very nice, Charlie ate like a horse-three helpings of chicken with gravy, two of Norma Manders's hot biscuits, a side dish of salad, and three of her home-canned dill pickles. They finished off with slices of apple pie garnished with wedges of cheddar-Irv offering his opinion that "Apple pie without a piece of cheese is like a smooch without a squeeze." This earned him an affectionate elbow in the side from his wife. Irv rolled his eyes, and Charlie laughed. Andy's appetite surprised him. Charlie belched and then covered her mouth guiltily.

Irv smiled at her. "More room out than there is in, button."

"If I eat any more, I think I'll split," Charlie answered. "That's what my mother always used to... I mean, that's what she always says."

Andy smiled tiredly.

"Norma," Irv said, getting up, "why don't you and Bobbi go on out and feed those chickens?"

"Well, lunch is still spread over half an acre," Norma said.

"I'll pick up lunch," Irv said. "Want to have a little talk with Frank, here."

"Would you like to feed the chickens, honey?" Norma asked Charlie.

"I sure would." Her eyes were sparkling.

"Well, come on then. Do you have a jacket? It's turned a bit chilly."

"Uh..." Charlie looked at Andy.

"You can borrow a sweater of mine," Norma said. That look passed between her and Irv again. "Roll the sleeves up a little bit and it will be fine."

"Okay."

Norma got an old and faded warmup jacket from the entryway and a frayed white sweater that Charlie floated in, even with the cuff's turned up three or four times.

"Do they peck?" Charlie asked a little nervously.

"Only their food, honey."

They went out and the door closed behind them. Charlie was still chattering. Andy looked at Irv Manders, and Irv looked back calmly.

"You want a beer, Frank?"

"It isn't Frank," Andy said. "I guess you know that."

"I guess I do. What is your handle?"

Andy said, "The less you know, the better off you are."

"Well, then," Irv said, "I'll just call you Frank."

Faintly, they heard Charlie squeal with delight from outside. Norma said something, and Charlie agreed.

"I guess I could use a beer," Andy said.

"Okay."

Irv got two Utica Clubs from the refrigerator, opened them, set Andy's on the table and his on the counter. He got an apron from a hook by the sink and put it on. The apron was red and yellow and the hem was flounced, but somehow he managed to avoid looking silly.

"Can I help you?" Andy asked.

"No, I know where everything goes," Irv said. "Most everything, anyhow. She changes things from week to week. No woman wants a man to feel right at home in her kitchen. They like help, sure, but they feel better if you have to ask them where to put the casserole dish or where they put the Brillo."

Andy, remembering his own days as Vicky's kitchen apprentice, smiled and nodded.

"Meddling around in other folk's business isn't my strong point," Irv said, drawing water in the kitchen sink and adding detergent. "I'm a farmer, and like I told you, my wife runs a little curio shop down where Baillings Road crosses the Albany Highway. We've been here almost twenty years."

He glanced back at Andy.

"But I knew there was somethin wrong from the minute I saw you two standing by the road back there. A grown man and a little girl just aren't the kind of pair you usually see hitching the roads. Know what I mean?"

Andy nodded and sipped his beer.

"Furthermore, it looked to me like you'd just come out of the Slumberland, but you had no traveling gear, not so much as an overnight case. So I just about decided to pass you by. Then I stopped. Because... well, there's a difference between not meddling in other folks" business and seeing something that looks damn bad and turning a blind eye to it."

"Is that how we look to you? Damn bad?"

"Then," Irv said, "not now'. He was washing the old mismatched dishes carefully, stacking them in the drainer. "Now I don't know just what to make of you two. My first thought was it must be you two the cops are looking for." He saw the change come over Andy's face and the sudden way Andy set his beer can down. "I guess it is you," he said softly. "I was hopin it wasn't."

"What cops?" Andy asked harshly.

"They've got all the main roads blocked off coming in and out of Albany," Irv said. "If we'd gone another six miles up Route Forty, we would have run on one of those blocks right where Forty crosses Route Nine."

"Well, why didn't you just go ahead?" Andy asked. "That would have been the end of it for you. You would have been out of it."

Irv was starting on the pots now, pausing to hunt through the cupboards over the sink. "See what I was saying? I can't find the gloriosky Brillo... Wait, here it is... Why didn't I just take you up the road to the cops? Let's say I wanted to satisfy my own natural curiosity."

"You have some questions, huh?"

"All kinds of them," Irv said. "A grown man and a little girl hitching rides, the little girl hasn't got any overnight case, and the cops are after them. So I have an idea. It isn't so farfetched. I think that maybe here's a daddy who wanted custody of his button and couldn't get it. So he snatched her."

"It sounds pretty farfetched to me."

"Happens all the time, Frank. And I think to myself, the mommy didn't like that so well and, swore out a warrant on the daddy. That would explain all the roadblocks. You only get coverage like that for a big robbery... or a kidnapping."

"She's my daughter, but her mother didn't put the police on us," Andy said. "Her mother has been dead for a year."

"Well, I'd already kind of shitcanned the idea," Irv said. "It don't take a private eye to see the two of you are pretty close. Whatever else may be going on, it doesn't appear you've got her against her will."

Andy said nothing.

"So here we are at my problem," Irv said. "I picked the two of you up because I thought the little girl might need help. Now I don't know where I'm at. You don't strike me as the desperado type. But all the same, you and your little girl are going under false names, you're telling a story that's just as thin as a piece of tissue paper, and you look sick, Frank. You look just about as sick as a man can get and still stay on his feet. So those are my questions. Any you could answer, it might be a good thing."

"We came to Albany from New York and hitched a ride to Hastings Glen early this morning," Andy said. "It's bad to know they're here, but I think I knew it. I think Charlie knew it, too." He had mentioned Charlie's name, and that was a mistake, but at this point it didn't seem to matter.

"What do they want you for, Frank?"

Andy thought for a long time, and then he met Irv's frank gray eyes. He said: "You came from town, didn't you? See any strange people there? City types? Wearing these neat, off-the-rack suits that you forget almost as soon as the guys wearing them are out of sight? Driving late-model cars that sort of just fade into the scenery?"

It was Irv's turn to think. "There were two guys like that in the A amp;P," he said. "Talking to Helga. She's one of the checkers. Looked like they were showing her something."

"Probably our picture," Andy said. "They're government agents. They're working with the police, Irv. A more accurate way of putting it would be that the police are working for them. The cops don't know why we're wanted."

"What sort of government agency are we talking about? FBI?"

"No. The Shop."

"What? That CIA outfit?" Irv looked frankly disbelieving.

"They don't have anything at all to do with the CIA," Andy said. "The Shop is really the DSI-Department of Scientific Intelligence. I read in an article about three years ago that some wiseacre nicknamed it the Shop in the early sixties, after a science-fiction story called 'The Weapon Shops of Ishtar." By a guy named van Vogt, I think, but that doesn't matter. What they're supposed to be involved in are domestic scientific projects which may have present or future application to matters bearing on national security. That definition is from their charter, and the thing they're most associated with in the public mind is the energy research they're funding and supervising-electromagnetic stuff" and fusion power. They're actually involved in a lot more. Charlie and I are part of an experiment that happened a long time ago. It happened before Charlie was even born. Her mother was also involved. She was murdered. The Shop was responsible."

Irv was silent for a while. He let the dishwater out of the sink, dried his hands, and then came over and began to wipe the oilcloth that covered the table. Andy picked up his beer can.

"I won't say flat out that I don't believe you," Irv said finally. "Not with some of the things that have gone on under cover in this country and then come out. CIA guys giving people drinks spiked with LSD and some FBI agent accused of killing people during the Civil Rights marches and money in brown bags and all of that. So I can't say right out that I don't believe you. Let's just say you haven't convinced me yet."

"I don't think it's even me that they really want anymore," Andy said. "Maybe it was, once. But they've shifted targets. It's Charlie they're after now."

"You mean the national government is after a first- or second-grader for reasons of national security?"

"Charlie's no ordinary second-grader," Andy said. "Her mother and I were injected with a drug which was coded Lot Six. To this day I don't know exactly what it was. Some sort of synthetic glandular secretion would be my best guess. It changed the chromosomes of myself and of the lady I later married. We passed those chromosomes on to Charlie, and they mixed in some entirely new way. If she could pass them on to her children, I guess she'd be called a mutant. If for some reason she can't, or if the change has caused her to be sterile, I guess she'd be called a sport or a mule. Either way, they want her. They want to study her, see if they can figure out what makes her able to do what she can do. And even more, I think they want her as an exhibit. They want to use her to reactivate the Lot Six program."

"What is it she can do?" Irv asked.

Through the kitchen window they could see Norma and Charlie coming out of the barn. The white sweater flopped and swung around Charlie's body, the hem coming down to her calves. There was high color in her cheeks, and she was talking to Norma, who was smiling and nodding.

Andy said softly, "She can light fires." "Well, so can I," Irv said. He sat down again and was looking at Andy in a peculiar, cautious way. The way you look at people you suspect of madness.

"She can do it simply by thinking about it," Andy said. "The technical name for it is pyrokinesis. It's a psi talent, like telepathy, telekinesis, or precognition-Charlie has a dash of some of those as well, by the way-but pyrokinesis is much rarer... and much more dangerous. She's very much afraid of it, and she's right to be. She can't always control it. She could burn up your house, your barn, or your front yard if she set her mind to it. Or she could light your pipe." Andy smiled wanly. "Except that while she was lighting your pipe, she might also burn up your house, your barn, and your front yard."

Irv finished his beer and said, "I think you ought to call the police and turn yourself in, Frank. You need help." "I guess it sounds pretty nutty, doesn't it?" "Yes," Irv said gravely. "It sounds nutty as anything I ever heard." He was sitting lightly, slightly tense on his chair, and Andy thought, He's expecting me to do something loony the first chance I get.

"I suppose it doesn't matter much anyway," Andy said. "They'll be here soon enough. I think the police would actually be better. At least you don't turn into an unperson as soon as the police get their hands on you."

Irv started to reply, and then the door opened. Norma and Charlie came in. Charlie's face was bright, her eyes sparkling. "Daddy!" she said. "Daddy, I fed the-"

She broke off. Some of the color left her cheeks, and she looked narrowly from Irv Manders to her father and back to Irv again. Pleasure faded from her face and was replaced with a look of harried misery. The way she looked last night, Andy thought. The way she looked yesterday when I grabbed her out of school. It goes on and on, and where's the happy ending for her?

"You told," she said. "Oh Daddy, why did you tell?" Norma stepped forward and put a protective arm around Charlie's shoulders. "Irv, what's going on here?" "I don't know," Irv said. "What do you mean he told, Bobbi?" "That's not my name," she said. Tears had appeared in her eyes. "You know that's not my name." "Charlie," Andy said. "Mr. Manders knew something was wrong. I told him, but he didn't believe me. When you think about it, you'll understand why."

"I don't understand anyth-"Charlie began, her voice rising stridently. Then she was quiet. Her head cocked sideways in a peculiar listening gesture, although as far as any of the others could tell there was nothing to listen to. As they watched, Charlie's face simply drained of color; it was like watching some rich liquid poured out of a pitcher.

"What's the matter, honey?" Norma asked, and cast a worried glance at Irv.

"They're coming, Daddy," Charlie whispered.

Her eyes were wide circles of fear. "They're coming for us."

11

They had rendezvoused at the corner of Highway 40 and the unnumbered blacktop road Irv had turned down-on the Hastings Glen town maps it was marked as the Old Baillings Road. Al Steinowitz had finally caught up with the rest of his men and had taken over quickly and decisively. There were sixteen of them in five cars. Heading up the road toward Irv Mander's place, they looked like a fast-moving funeral procession.

Norville Bates had handed over the reins-and the responsibility-of the operation to A1 with genuine relief and with a question about the local and state police who had been rung in on the operation.

"We're keeping this one dark for now," A1 said. "If we get them, we'll tell them they can fold their roadblocks. If we don't, we'll tell them to start moving in toward the centre of the circle. But between you and me, if we can't handle them with sixteen men, we can't handle them, Norv."

Norv sensed the mild rebuke and said no more. He knew it would be best to take the two of them with no outside interference, because Andrew McGee was going to have an unfortunate accident as soon as they got him. A fatal accident. With no bluesuits hanging around, it could happen that much sooner.

Ahead of him and Al, the brakelights of OJ's car flashed briefly, and then the car turned onto a dirt road. The others followed.

12

"I don't understand any of this," Norma said. "Bobbi... Charlie... can't you calm down?"

"You don't understand," Charlie said. Her voice was high and strangled. Looking at her made Irv jumpy. Her face was like that of a rabbit caught in a snare. She pulled free of Norma's arm and ran to her father, who put his hands on her shoulders.

"I think they're going to kill you, Daddy," she said.

"What?"

"Kill you," she repeated. Her eyes were staring and glazed with panic. Her mouth worked frantically. "We have to run. We have to-"

Hot. Too hot in here.

He glanced to his left. Mounted on the wall between the stove and the sink was an indoor thermometer, the kind that can be purchased from any mail-order catalogue. At the bottom of this one, a plastic red devil with a pitchfork was grinning and mopping his brow. The motto beneath his cloven hooves read: HOT ENOUGH FOR YA?

The mercury in the thermometer was slowly rising, an accusing red finger.

"Yes, that's what they want to do," she said. "Kill you, kill you like they did Mommy, take me away, I won't, I won't let it happen, I won't let it-"

Her voice was rising. Rising like the column of mercury.

"Charlie! Watch what you're doing!"

Her eyes cleared a little. Irv and his wife had drawn together.

"Irv... what-"

But Irv had seen Andy's glance at the thermometer, and suddenly he believed. It was hot in here now. Hot enough to sweat. The mercury in the thermometer stood just above ninety degrees.

"Holy Jesus Christ," he said hoarsely. "Did she do that, Frank?" Andy ignored him. His hands were still on Charlie's shoulders. He looked into her eyes. "Charlie-do you think it's too late? How does it feel to you?" "Yes," she said. All the color was gone from her face. "They're coming up the dirt road now. Oh Daddy, I'm scared."

"You can stop them, Charlie," he said quietly.