Firestarter (41 page)

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 not 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 preerotic, 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.

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.

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 has 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 rollercoaster. 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.