Firestarter (3 page)

“The administration doesn't mind?”

“Don't be naive, my boy.” He had his pipe going to his satisfaction and was puffing great stinking clouds of smoke out into the ratty apartment living room. His voice accordingly became more rolling, more orotund, more Buckleyesque. “What's good for Wanless is good for the Harrison Psychology Department, which next year will have its very own building—no more slumming with those sociology types. And what's good for Psych is good for Harrison State College. And for Ohio. And all that blah-blah.”

“Do you think it's safe?”

“They don't test it on student volunteers if it isn't safe,” Quincey said. “If they have even the slightest question, they test it on rats and then on convicts. You can be sure that what they're putting into you has been put into roughly three hundred people before you, whose reactions have been carefully monitored.”

“I don't like this business about the CIA—”

“The Shop.”

“What's the difference?” Andy asked morosely. He looked at Quincey's poster of Richard Nixon standing in front of a crunched-up used car. Nixon was grinning, and a stubby V-for-victory poked up out of each clenched fist. Andy could still hardly believe the man had been elected president less than a year ago.

“Well, I thought maybe you could use the two hundred dollars, that's all.”

“Why are they paying so much?” Andy asked suspiciously.

Quincey threw up his hands. “Andy, it is the government's treat! Can't you follow that? Two years ago the Shop paid something like three hundred thousand dollars for a feasibility study on a mass-produced exploding bicycle—and
that
was in the Sunday
Times.
Just another Vietnam thing, I guess, although probably nobody knows for sure. Like Fibber McGee used to say, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.' ” Quincey knocked out his pipe with quick, jittery movements. “To guys like that, every college campus in America is like
one big Macy's. They buy a little here, do a little window-shopping there. Now if you don't want it—”

“Well, maybe I do. Are you going in on it?”

Quincey had to smile. His father ran a chain of extremely successful menswear stores in Ohio and Indiana. “Don't need two hundred that bad,” he said. “Besides, I hate needles.”

“Oh.”

“Look, I'm not trying to sell it, for Chrissakes; you just looked sort of hungry. The chances are fifty-fifty you'll be in the control group, anyway. Two hundred bucks for taking on water. Not even tapwater, mind you.
Distilled
water.”

“You can fix it?”

“I date one of Wanless's grad assistants,” Quincey said. “They'll have maybe fifty applications, many of them brownnosers who want to make points with the Mad Doctor—”

“I wish you'd stop calling him that.”

“Wanless, then,” Quincey said, and laughed. “He'll see that the apple polishers are weeded out personally. My girl will see that your application goes into his ‘in' basket. After that, dear man, you are on your own.”

So he had made out the application when the notice for volunteers went up on the Psych Department bulletin board. A week after turning it in, a young female GA (Quincey's girlfriend, for all Andy knew) had called on the phone to ask him some questions. He told her that his parents were dead; that his blood type was O; that he had never participated in a Psychology Department experiment before; that he was indeed currently enrolled in Harrison as an undergraduate, class of '69, in fact, and carrying more than the twelve credits needed to classify him as a full-time student. And yes, he was past the age of twenty-one and legally able to enter into any and all covenants, public and private.

A week later he had received a letter via campus mail telling him he had been accepted and asking for his signature on a release form. Please bring the signed form to Room 100, Jason Gearneigh Hall, on May the 6th.

And here he was, release form passed in, the cigarette-shredding Wanless departed (and he did indeed look a bit like the mad doctor in that Cyclops movie), answering questions about his religious experiences along with eleven other undergrads. Did he have epilepsy? No. His father had died suddenly of a heart attack when Andy was eleven. His mother had been killed in a car accident when Andy was seventeen—a nasty, traumatic thing. His only close family
connection was his mother's sister, Aunt Cora, and she was getting well along in years.

He went down the column of questions, checking
NO, NO, NO
. He checked only one yes question:
Have you ever suffered a fracture or serious sprain? If yes, specify.
In the space provided, he scribbled the fact that he had broken his left ankle sliding into second base during a Little League game twelve years ago.

He went back over his answers, trailing lightly upward with the tip of his Bic. That was when someone tapped him on the shoulder and a girl's voice, sweet and slightly husky, asked, “Could I borrow that if you're done with it? Mine went dry.”

“Sure,” he said, turning to hand it to her. Pretty girl. Tall. Light-auburn hair, marvelously clear complexion. Wearing a powder-blue sweater and a short skirt. Good legs. No stockings. Casual appraisal of the future wife.

He handed her his pen and she smiled her thanks. The overhead lights made copper glints in her hair, which had been casually tied back with a wide white ribbon, as she bent over her form again.

He took his form up to the GA at the front of the room. “Thank you,” the GA said, as programmed as Robbie the Robot. “Room Seventy, Saturday morning, nine
A.M
. Please be on time.”

“What's the countersign?” Andy whispered hoarsely.

The grad assistant laughed politely.

Andy left the lecture hall, started across the lobby toward the big double doors (outside, the quad was green with approaching summer, students passing desultorily back and forth), and then remembered his pen. He almost let it go; it was only a nineteen-cent Bic, and he still had his final round of prelims to study for. But the girl had been pretty, maybe worth chatting up, as the British said. He had no illusions about his looks or his line, which were both pretty nondescript, or about the girl's probable status (pinned or engaged), but it was a nice day and he was feeling good. He decided to wait. At the very least, he would get another look at those legs.

She came out three or four minutes later, a few notebooks and a text under her arm. She was very pretty indeed, and Andy decided her legs had been worth waiting for. They were more than good; they were spectacular.

“Oh, there you are,” she said, smiling.

“Here I am,” said Andy McGee. “What did you think of that?”

“I don't know,” she said. “My friend said these experiments go on all the time—she was in one last semester with those J. B. Rhine ESP cards and got fifty dollars for it even though she missed almost all of them. So I just thought—” She finished the thought with a shrug and flipped her coppery hair neatly back over her shoulders.

“Yeah, me too,” he said, taking his pen back. “Your friend in the Psych Department?”

“Yes,” she said, “and my boyfriend, too. He's in one of Dr. Wanless's classes, so he couldn't get in. Conflict of interest or something.”

Boyfriend. It stood to reason that a tall, auburn-haired beauty like this had one. That was the way the world turned.

“What about you?” she asked.

“Same story. Friend in the Psych Department. I'm Andy, by the way. Andy McGee.”

“I'm Vicky Tomlinson. And a little nervous about this, Andy McGee. What if I go on a bad trip or something?”

“This sounds like pretty mild stuff to me. And even if it is acid, well … lab acid is different from the stuff you can pick up on the street, or so I've heard. Very smooth, very mellow, and administered under very calm circumstances. They'll probably pipe in Cream or Jefferson Airplane.” Andy grinned.

“Do you know much about LSD?” she asked with a little corner-wise grin that he liked very much.

“Very little,” he admitted. “I tried it twice—once two years ago, once last year. In some ways it made me feel better. It cleaned out my head … at least, that's what it felt like. Afterward, a lot of the old crud just seemed to be gone. But I wouldn't want to make a steady habit of it. I don't like feeling so out of control of myself. Can I buy you a Coke?”

“All right,” she agreed, and they walked over to the Union building together.

He ended up buying her two Cokes, and they spent the afternoon together. That evening they had a few beers at the local hangout. It turned out that she and the boyfriend had come to a parting of the ways, and she wasn't sure exactly how to handle it. He was beginning to think they were married, she told Andy; had absolutely forbidden her to take part in the Wanless experiment. For that precise reason she had gone ahead and signed the release form and was now
determined to go through with it even though she was a little scared.

“That Wanless really does look like a mad doctor,” she said, making rings on the table with her beer glass.

“How did you like that trick with the cigarettes?”

Vicky giggled. “Weird way to quit smoking, huh?”

He asked her if he could pick her up on the morning of the experiment, and she had agreed gratefully.

“It would be good to go into this with a friend,” she said, and looked at him with her direct blue eyes. “I really am a little scared, you know. George was so—I don't know,
adamant.
”

“Why? What did he say?”

“That's just it,” Vicky said. “He wouldn't really tell me anything, except that he didn't trust Wanless. He said hardly anyone in the department does, but a lot of them sign up for his tests because he's in charge of the graduate program. Besides, they know it's safe, because he just weeds them out again.”

He reached across the table and touched her hand. “We'll both probably get the distilled water, anyway,” he said “Take it easy, kiddo. Everything's fine.”

But as it turned out, nothing was fine. Nothing.

albany

albany airport mister

hey mister, this is it we're here

Hand, shaking him. Making his head roll on his neck. Terrible headache—Jesus! Thudding, shooting pains.

“Hey mister, this is the airport.”

Andy opened his eyes, then shut them against the white light of an overhead sodium lamp. There was a terrible, shrieking whine, building up and up and up, and he winced against it. It felt as if steel darning needles were being jammed into his ears. Plane. Taking off. It began to come to him through the red fog of pain. Ah yes, Doc, it all comes back to me now.

“Mister?” The cabby sounded worried. “Mister, you okay?”

“Headache.” His voice seemed to come from far away,
buried in the jet-engine sound that was, mercifully, beginning to fade off. “What time is it?”

“Nearly midnight. Slow haul getting up here. Don't tell me, I'll tell you. Buses won't be running, if that was your plan. Sure I can't take you home?”

Andy groped in his mind for the story he had told the cabby. It was important that he remember, monster headache or not. Because of the echo. If he contradicted the earlier story in any way, it could set up a ricochet effect in the cabby's mind. It might die out—in fact, probably would—but it might not. The cabby might seize on one point of it, develop a fixation on it; shortly it would be out of control, it would be all the cabby could think about; shortly after that, it would simply tear his mind apart. It had happened before.

“My car's in the lot,” he said. “Everything is under control.”

“Oh.” The cabby smiled, relieved. “Glyn isn't gonna believe this, you know. Hey! Don't tell me, I'll t—”

“Sure she'll believe it. You do, don't you?”

The driver grinned widely. “I got the big bill to prove it, mister. Thanks.”

“Thank
you,
” Andy said. Struggle to be polite. Struggle to go on. For Charlie. If he had been alone, he would have killed himself long ago. A man wasn't meant to bear pain like this.

“You sure you're okay, mister? You look awful white.”

“I'm fine, thanks.” He began to shake Charlie. “Hey, kid.” He was careful not to use her name. It probably didn't matter, but the caution came as naturally as breathing. “Wake up, we're here.”

Charlie muttered and tried to roll away from him.

“Come on, doll. Wake up, hon.”

Charlie's eyes fluttered open—the direct blue eyes she had got from her mother—and she sat up, rubbing her face. “Daddy? Where are we?”

“Albany, hon. The airport.” And leaning closer, he muttered, “Don't say anything yet.”

“Okay.” She smiled at the cab driver, and the cabby smiled back. She slipped out of the cab and Andy followed her, trying not to stagger.

“Thanks again, man,” the cabby called. “Listen, hey. Great fare. Don't tell me, I'll tell you.”

Andy shook the outstretched hand. “Take care.”

“I will. Glyn's just not gonna believe this action.”

The cabby got back in and pulled away from the yellow-painted curb. Another jet was taking off, the engine revving and revving until Andy felt as though his head would split in two pieces and fall to the pavement like a hollow gourd. He staggered a little, and Charlie put her hands on his arm.

“Oh, Daddy,” she said, and her voice was far away.

“Inside. I have to sit down.”

They went in, the little girl in the red pants and the green blouse, the big man with the shaggy black hair and the slumped shoulders. A skycap watched them go and thought it was a pure sin, a big man like that out after midnight, drunk as a lord by the look of him, with his little girl who should have been in bed hours ago leading him around like a Seeing Eye dog. Parents like that ought to be sterilized, the skycap thought.