Firestarter by Stephen King
The girl could not be tested and observed with any degree of validity if she was constantly drugged, but her father would be their hostage to fortune. And on the few occasions they wanted to run tests on him, the reverse would hold. It was a simple system of levers. And as Archimedes had observed, a lever long enough would move the world.
The intercom buzzed.
"John Rainbird is here," the new girl said. Her usual bland receptionist's tone was threadbare enough to show the fear beneath.
On that one I don't blame you, babe, Cap thought.
"Send him in, please."
2
Same old Rainbird.
He came in slowly, dressed in a brown and balding leather jacket over a faded plaid shirt. Old and scuffed Dingos peeked out from beneath the cuffs of his faded straight-leg jeans. The top of his huge head seemed almost to brush the ceiling. The gored ruin of his empty eyesocket made Cap shudder inwardly.
"Cap," he said, and sat down. "I have been in the desert too long."
"I've heard about your Flagstaff house," Cap said. "And your shoe collection."
John Rainbird only stared at him unblinkingly with his good eye.
"How come I never see you in anything but those old shitkickers?" Cap asked.
Rainbird smiled thinly and said nothing. The old unease filled Cap and he found himself wondering again how much Rainbird knew, and why it bothered him so much.
"I have a job for you," he said.
"Good. Is it the one I want?"
Cap looked at him, surprised, considering, and then said, "I think it is."
"Then tell me, Cap."
Cap outlined the plan that would bring Andy and Charlie McGee to Longmont. It didn't take long.
"Can you use the gun?" he asked when he was Snished.
"I can use any gun. And your plan is a good one. It will succeed."
"How nice of you to give it your stamp of approval," Cap said. He tried for light irony and only succeeded in sounding petulant. God damn the man anyway.
"And I will fire the gun," Rainbird said. "On one condition."
Cap stood up, planted his hands on his desk, which was littered with components about the McGee file, and leaned toward Rainbird.
"No," he said. "You don't make conditions with me."
"I do this time," Rainbird said. "But you will find it an easy one to fulfill, I think."
"No," Cap repeated. Suddenly his heart was hammering in his chest, although with fear or anger he was not sure. "You misunderstand. I am in charge of this agency and this facility. I am your superior. I believe you spent enough time in the army to understand the concept of a superior officer."
"Yes," Rainbird said, smiling, "I scragged one or two in my time. Once directly on Shop orders. Your orders, Cap."
"Is that a threat?" Cap cried. Some part of him was aware that he was overreacting, but he seemed unable to help himself. "God damn you, is that a threat? If it is, I think you've lost your senses completely! If I decide I don't want you to leave this building, all I have to do is press a button! There are thirty men who can fire that rifle--"
"But none can fire it with such assurance as this one-eyed red nigger," Rainbird said. His gentle tone had not changed. "You think you have them now, Cap, but they are will-o' -the-wisps. Whatever gods there are may not want you to have them. They may not want you to set them down in your rooms of deviltry and emptiness. You have thought you had them before." He pointed to the file material heaped on the library trolley and then to the blue-backed folder. "I've read the material. And I've read your Dr. Hockstetter's report."
"The devil you have!" Cap exclaimed, but he could see the truth in Rainbird's face. He had. Somehow he had. Who gave it to him? he raged. Who?
"Oh yes," Rainbird said. "I have what I want, when I want it. People give it to me. I think ... it must be my pretty face." His smile widened and became suddenly, horribly predatory. His good eye rolled in its socket.
"What are you saying to me?" Cap asked. He wanted a glass of water.
"Just that I have had a long time in Arizona to walk and smell the winds that blow ... and for you, Cap, it smells bitter, like the wind off an alkali flat. I had time to do a lot of reading and a lot of thinking. And what I think is that I may be the only man in all the world who can surely bring those two here. And it may be that I am the only man in all the world who can do something with the little girl once she's here. Your fat report, your Thorazine and your Orasin--there may be more here than drugs can cope with. More dangers than you can understand."
Hearing Rainbird was like hearing the ghost of Wanless, and Cap was now in the grip of such fear and such fury that he couldn't speak.
"I will do all this," Rainbird said kindly. "I will bring them here and you will do all your tests." He was like a father giving a child permission to play with some new toy. "On the condition that you give the girl to me for disposal when you are finished with her."
"You're mad," Cap whispered.
"How right you are," Rainbird said, and laughed. "So are you. Mad as a hatter. You sit here and make your plans for controlling a force beyond your comprehension. A force that belongs only to the gods themselves ... and to this one little girl."
"And what's to stop me from having you erased? Right here and now?"
"My word," Rainbird said, "that if I disappear, such a shockwave of revulsion and indignation will run through this country within the month that Watergate will look like the filching of penny candy in comparison. My word that if I disappear, the Shop will cease to exist within six weeks, and that within six months you will stand before a judge for sentencing on crimes serious enough to keep you behind bars for the rest of your life." He smiled again, showing crooked tombstone teeth. "Do not doubt me, Cap. My days in this reeking, putrescent vineyard have been long, and the vintage would be a bitter one indeed."
Cap tried to laugh. What came out was a choked snarl.
"For over ten years I have been putting my nuts and forage by," Rainbird said serenely, "like any animal that has known winter and remembers it. I have such a potpourri, Cap--photos, tapes, Xerox copies of documents that would make the blood of our good friend John Q. Public run cold."
"None of that is possible," Cap said, but he knew Rainbird was not bluffing, and he felt as if a cold, invisible hand were pressing down on his chest.
"Oh, very possible," Rainbird said. "For the last three years I've been in a state of information passing-gear, because for the last three years I've been able to tap into your computer whenever I liked. On a time-sharing basis, of course, which makes it expensive, but I have been able to pay. My wages have been very fine, and with investment they have grown. I stand before you, Cap--or sit, which is the truth, but less poetic--as a triumphant example of American free enterprise in action."
"No," Cap said.
"Yes," Rainbird replied. "I am John Rainbird, but I am also the U.S. Bureau for Geological Understudies. Check, if you like. My computer code is AXON. Check the time-sharing codes in your main terminal. Take the elevator. I'll wait." Rainbird crossed his legs and the cuff of his right pantsleg pulled up, revealing a rip and a bulge in the seam of one of his boots. He looked like a man who could wait out the age, if that were necessary.
Cap's mind was whirling. "Access to the computer on a time-sharing basis, perhaps. That still doesn't tap you into--"
"Go see Dr. Noftzieger," Rainbird said kindly. "Ask him how many ways there are to tap into a computer once you have access on a time-sharing basis. Two years ago, a bright twelve-year-old tapped into the USC computer. And by the way, I know your access code, Cap. It's BROW this year. Last year it was RASP. I thought that was much more appropriate."
Cap sat and looked at Rainbird. His mind had divided, it seemed, had become a three-ring circus. Part of it was marveling that he had never heard John Rainbird say so much at one time. Part of it was trying to grapple with the idea that this maniac knew all of the Shop's business. A third part was remembering a Chinese cu
And then he thought of Wanless again--with dragging, dawning horror. He felt almost as if ... as if ... he were turning into Wanless. Beset with demons on every side but helpless to fight them off or even to enlist help.
"What do you want, Rainbird?"
"I've told you already, Cap. I want nothing but your word that my involvement with this girl Charlene McGee will not end with the rifle but begin there. I want to"--Rainbird's eye darkened and became thoughtful, moody, introspective--"I want to know her intimately."
Cap looked at him, horror-struck.
Rainbird understood suddenly, and he shook his head at Cap contemptuously. "Not that intimately. Not in the biblical sense. But I'll know her. She and I are going to be friends, Cap. If she is as powerful as all things indicate, she and I are going to be great friends."
Cap made a sound of humor: not a laugh, exactly; more of a shrill giggle.
The expression of contempt on Rainbird's face did not change. "No, of course you don't think that is possible. You look at my face and you see a monster. You look at my hands and see them covered with the blood you ordered me to spill. But I tell you, Cap, it will happen. The girl has had no friend for going on two years. She has had her father and that is all. You see her as you see me, Cap. It is your great failing. You look, you see a monster. Only in the girl's case, you see a useful monster. Perhaps that is because you are a white man. White men see monsters everywhere. White men look at their own pricks and see monsters." Rainbird laughed again.
Cap had at last begun to calm down and to think reasonably. "Why should I allow it, even if all you say is true? Your days are numbered and we both know it. You've been hunting your own death for twenty years. Anything else has been incidental, only a hobby. You'll find it soon enough. And then it ends for all of us. So why should I give you the pleasure of having what you want?"
"Perhaps it's as you say. Perhaps I have been hunting my own death--a more colorful phrase than I would have expected from you, Cap. Maybe you should have the fear of God put into you more often."
"You're not my idea of God," Cap said.
Rainbird grinned. "More like the Christian devil, sure. But I tell you this--if I had really been hunting my own death, I believe I would have found it long before this. Perhaps I've been stalking it for play. But I have no desire to bring you down, Cap, or the Shop, or U.S. domestic intelligence. I am no idealist. I only want this little girl. And you may find you need me. You may find that I am able to accomplish things that all the drugs in Dr. Hockstetter's cabinet will not."
"And in return?"
"When the affair of the McGees ends, the U.S. Bureau for Geological Understudies will cease to exist. Your computer chief, Noftzieger, can change all his codings. And you, Cap, will fly to Arizona with me on a public airline. We will enjoy a good dinner at my favorite Flagstaff restaurant and then we will go back to my house, and behind it, in the desert, we will start a fire of our own and barbecue a great many papers and tapes and films. I will even show you my shoe collection, if you like."
Cap thought it over. Rainbird gave him time, sitting calmly.
At last Cap said, "Hockstetter and his colleagues suggest it may take two years to open the girl up completely. It depends on how deeply her protective inhibitions go."
"And you will be gone in four to six months."
Cap shrugged.
Rainbird touched the side of his nose with one index finger and cocked his head--a grotesque fairy-tale gesture. "I think we can keep you in the saddle much longer than that, Cap. Between the two of us, we know where hundreds of bodies are buried--literally as well as figuratively. And I doubt if it will take years. Well both get what we want, in the end. What do you say?"
Cap thought about it. He felt old and tired and at a complete loss. "I guess," he said, "that you have made yourself a deal."
"Fine," Rainbird said briskly. "I will be the girl's orderly, I think. No one at all in the established scheme of things. That will be important to her. And of course she will never know I was the one who fired the rifle. That would be dangerous knowledge, wouldn't it? Very dangerous."
"Why?" Cap said finally. "Why have you gone to these insane lengths?"
"Do they seem insane?" Rainbird asked lightly. He got up and took one of the pictures from Cap's desk. It was the photo of Charlie sliding down the slope of crusted snow on her flattened cardboard box, laughing. "We all put our nuts and forage by for winter in this business, Cap. Hoover did it. So did CIA directors beyond counting. So have you, or you would be drawing a pension right now. When I began, Charlene McGee wasn't even born, and I was only covering my own ass."
"But why the girl?"
Rainbird didn't answer for a long time. He was looking at the photograph carefully, almost tenderly. He touched it.
"She is very beautiful," he said. "And very young. Yet inside her is your Z factor. The power of the gods. She and I will be close." His eye grew dreamy. "Yes, we will be very close."
In the Box
1
On March 27, Andy McGee decided abruptly that they could stay in Tashmore no longer. It had been more than two weeks since he had mailed his letters, and if anything was going to come of them, it already would have. The very fact of the continuing silence around Granther's camp made him uneasy. He supposed he could simply have been dismissed out of hand as a crackpot in every case, but ... he didn't believe it.
What he believed, what his deepest intuition whispered, was that his letters had been somehow diverted.
And that would mean they knew where he and Charlie were.
"We're going," he told Charlie. "Let's get our stuff together."
She only looked at him with her careful eyes, a little scared, and said nothing. She didn't ask him where they were going or what they were going to do, and that made him nervous, too. In one of the closets he had found two old suitcases, plastered with ancient vacation decals--Grand Rapids, Niagara Falls, Miami Beach--and the two of them began to sort what they would take and what they would leave.
Blinding bright sunlight streamed in through the windows on the east side of the cottage. Water dripped and gurgled in the downspouts. The night before, he had got little sleep; the ice had gone out and he had lain awake listening to it--the high, ethereal, and somehow uncanny sound of the old yellow ice splitting and moving slowly down toward the neck of the pond, where the great Hancock River spilled eastward across New Hampshire and all of Maine, growing progressively more smelly and polluted until it vomited, noisome and dead, into the Atlantic. The sound was like a prolonged crystal note or perhaps that of a bow drawn endlessly across a high violin string--a constant, fluted zuiiiiiinnnggg that settled over the nerve endings and seemed to make them vibrate in sympathy. He had never been here at ice-out before and was not sure he would ever want to be again. There was something terrible and otherworldly about that sound as it vibrated between the silent evergreen walls of this low and eroded bowl of hills.
He felt that they were very near again, like the barely seen monster in a recurring nightmare. The day after Charlie's birthday, he had been on one of his tramps, the cross-country skis buckled uncomfortably onto his feet, and he had come across a line of snowshoe tracks leading up to a tall spruce tree. There were indents in the crust like periods where the snowshoes had been taken off and jammed into the snow on their tails. There was a flurried confusion where the wearer had later refastened his snowshoes ("slushboats," Granther had always called them, holding them in contempt for some obscure reason of his own). At the base of the tree, Andy had found six Vantage cigarette butts and a crumpled yellow package that had once contained Kodak Tri-X film. More uneasy than ever, he had taken off the skis and climbed up into the tree. Halfway up he had found him
He hadn't mentioned his find to Charlie.
The suitcases were packed. Her continued silence forced him into nervous speech, as if by not talking she was accusing him.
"We're going to hitch a ride into Berlin," he said, "and then we'll get a Greyhound back to New York City. We're going to the offices of the New York Times--"
"But Daddy, you sent them a letter."
"Honey, they might not have gotten it."
She looked at him in silence for a moment and then said, "Do you think they took it?"
"Of course n--" He shook his head and started again. "Charlie, I just don't know."
Charlie didn't reply. She knelt, closed one of the suitcases, and began fumbling ineffectually with the clasps.
"Let me help you, hon."
"I can do it!" she screamed at him, and then began to cry.
"Charlie, don't," he said. "Please, hon. It's almost over."
"No, it's not," she said, crying harder. "It's never going to be over."
2
There were an even dozen agents around Granther McGee's cabin. They had taken up their positions the night before. They all wore mottled white and green clothing. None of them had been at the Manders farm, and none of them was armed except for John Rainbird, who had the rifle, and Don Jules, who carried a .22 pistol.
"I am taking no chances of having someone panic because of what happened back in New York," Rainbird had told Cap. "That Jamieson still looks as if his balls are hanging around his knees."
Similarly, he would not hear of the agents' going armed. Things had a way of happening, and he didn't want to come out of the operation with two corpses. He had handpicked all of the agents, and the one he had chosen to take Andy McGee was Don Jules. Jules was small, thirtyish, silent, morose. He was good at his job. Rainbird knew, because Jules was the only man he had chosen to work with more than once. He was quick and practical. He did not get in the way at critical moments.