by Stephen King
Fine. But then Pynchot abruptly changes his mind and decides to schedule another run of tests.
Then Pynchot decides to clean out the garbage disposal .. while it's still running.
Rainbird walked back to the computer console. He paused, thinking, then tapped HELLO COMPUTER/QUERY STATUS ANDREW MCGEE 14112/FURTHER TESTING/MAUI INSTALLATION/ Q4
PROCESS, the computer flashed. And a moment later: HELLO RAINBIRD/ ANDREW MCGEE 14112 NO FURTHER TESTING AUTHORIZATION "STARLING"SCHEDULED DEPARTURE FOR MAUI 1500 HOURS OCTOBER 9AUTHORIZATION "STARLING" ANDREWS AFB-DURBAN [ILL] AFB-KALAMI AIRFIELD [HI]/ BREAK
Rainbird glanced at his watch. October 9 was Wednesday. Andy was leaving Longmont for Hawaii tomorrow afternoon. Who said so? Authorization Starling said so, and that was Cap himself. But this was the first Rainbird knew of it.
His fingers danced over the keys again.
QUERY PROBABILITY ANDREW MCGEE 14112/SUPPOSED MENTAL DOMINATION ABILITY/CROSS-REF HERMAN PYNCHOT
He had to pause to look up Pynchot's code number in the battered and sweat-stained code book he had folded into his back pocket before coming down here.
14409 Q4
PROCESS, the computer replied, and then remained blank so long that Rainbird began to think that he had misprogrammed and would end up with nothing but a "609" for his trouble.
Then the computer flashed ANDREW MCGEE 14112/MENTAL DOMINATION PROBABILITY 35%/CROSS-REF HERMAN PYNCHOT /BREAK
Thirty-five percent?
How was that possible?
All right, Rainbird thought. Let's leave Pynchot out of the goddam equation and see what happens.
He tapped out QUERY PROBABILITY ANDREW MCGEE 14112/ SUPPOSED MENTAL DOMINATION ABILITY Q4
PROCESS, the computer flashed, and this time its response came within a space of fifteen seconds. ANDREW MCGEE 14112 MENTAL DOMINATION PROBABILITY 2%BREAK
Rainbird leaned back and closed his good eye and felt a kind of triumph through the sour thud in his head. He had asked the important questions backward, but that was the price humans paid for their intuitive leaps, leaps a computer knew nothing about, even though it had been programmed to say "Hello," "Goood-bye ,""I am sorry [programmer's name], " "That is too bad," and "Oh shit."
The computer didn't believe there was much of a probability Andy had retained his mental-domination ability ... until you added in the Pynchot factor. Then the percent jumped halfway to the moon.
He tapped QUERY WHY SUPPOSED MENTAL DOMINATION ABILITY ANDREW MCGEE 14112 [PROBABILITY] RISES FROM 2% TO 35% WHEN CROSS-REFERENCED w/mmuu( PYNCHOT 14409 Q4
PROCESS, the computer answered, and then: HERMAN PYNCHOT 14409 ADJUDGED SUICIDE/PROBABILIT TAKES INTO ACCOUNT ANDREW MCGEE 14112 MAY HAVE CAUSED SUICIDE/ MENTAL DOMINATION/BREAK
There it was, right here in the banks of the Mggett and most sophisticated computer in the Western Hemisphere. Only waiting for someone to ask it the right questions.
Suppose I feed it what I suspect about Cap as a certainty? Rainbird wondered, and decided to go ahead and do it. He dragged out his code book again and looked up Cap's number.
FILE, he tapped. CAPTAIN JAMES HOLLISTER 16040/ATTENDED FUNERAL OF HERMAN PYNCHOT 14409 W/ANDREW MCGEE 14112 P4
FILED, the computer returned.
FILE, Rainbird tapped back. CAPTAIN JAMES HOLLISTER 16040/CURRENTLY SHOWING SIGNS OF GREAT MENTAL STRESS F4
609, the computer returned. It apparently didn't know "mental stress" from "Shinola."
"Bite my bag," Rainbird muttered, and tried again.
FILE/CAPTAIN JAMES HOLLISTER 16040/CURRENTLY BEHAVING COUNTER TO DIRECTIVES REF CHARLENE MCGEE 14111 F4
FILED
"File it, you whore," Rainbird said. "Let's see about this." His fingers went back to the keys.
QUERY PROBABILITY ANDREW MCGEE 14112/SUPPOSED MENTAL DOMINATION ABILITY/CROSS-REF HERMAN PYNCHOT 14409 /CROSS-REF CAPTAIN JAMES HOLLISTER 16040 Q4
PROCESS, the computer showed, and Rainbird sat back to wait, watching the screen. Two percent was too low. Thirty-five percent was still not betting odds. But--
The computer now flashed this: ANDREW MCGEE 14112/ MENTAL DOMINATION PROBABILITY 90%/CROSS-REF HERMAN PYNCHOT 14409/CROSS-REF CAPTAIN JAMES HOLLISTER 16040 BREAK
Now it was up to ninety percent. And those were betting odds.
And two other things that John Rainbird would have bet on were, one, that what Cap had handed to the girl was indeed a note to Charlie from her father and, two, that it contained some sort of escape plan.
"You dirty old son of a bitch," John Rainbird murmured--not without admiration.
Pulling himself to the computer again, Rainbird tapped
600 GOODBYE COMPUTER 600
604 GOODBYE RAINBIRD 604
Rainbird turned off the keyboard and began to chuckle.
17
Rainbird went back to the house where he was staying and fell asleep with his clothes on. He woke up just after noon on Tuesday and called Cap to tell him he wouldn't be in that afternoon. He had come down with a bad cold, possibly the onset of the grippe, and he didn't want to chance passing it on to Charlie.
"Hope that won't keep you from going to San Diego tomorrow," Cap said briskly.
"San Diego?"
"Three files," Cap said. "Top secret. I need a courier. You're it. Your plane leaves from Andrews at oh-seven-hundred tomorrow."
Rainbird thought fast. This was more of Andy McGee's work. McGee knew about him. Of course he did. That had been in the note to Charlie, along with whatever crazy escape plan McGee had concocted. And that explained why the girl had acted so strangely yesterday. Either going to Herman Pynchot's funeral or coming back, Andy had given Cap a good hard shove and Cap had spilled his guts about everything. McGee was scheduled to fly out of Andrews tomorrow afternoon; now Cap told him that he, Rainbird, was going tomorrow morning. McGee was using Cap to get him safely out of the way first. He was--
"Rainbird ? Are you there?"
"I'm here," he said. "Can you send someone else? I feel pretty punky, Cap."
"No one I trust as well as you," Cap replied. "This stuff is dynamite. We wouldn't want ... any snake in the grass to ... to get it."
"Did you say 'snakes'?" Rainbird asked.
"Yes! Snakes!" Cap fairly screamed.
McGee had pushed him, all right, and some sort of slow-motion avalanche was going on inside of Cap Hollister. Rainbird suddenly had the feeling--no, the intuitive certainty--that if he refused Cap and just kept hammering away, Cap would blow up ... , the way Pynchot had blown up.
Did he want to do that?
He decided he did not.
"All right," he said. "I'll be on the plane. Oh-seven-hundred. And all the goddam antibiotics I can swallow. You're a bastard, Cap."
"I can prove my parentage beyond a shadow of a doubt," Cap said, but the badinage was forced and hollow. He sounded relieved and shaky.
"Yeah, I'll bet."
"Maybe you'll get in a round of golf while you're out there."
"I don't play--" Golf. He had mentioned golf to Charlie as well--golf and snakes. Somehow those two things were part of the weird merry-go-round McGee had set in motion in Cap's brain. "Yeah, maybe I will," he said.
"Get to Andrews by oh-six-thirty," Cap said, "and ask for Dick Folsom. He's Major Puckeridge's aide."
"All right," Rainbird said. He had no intention of being anywhere near Andrews Air Force Base tomorrow. "Good-bye, Cap."
He hung up, then sat on the bed. He pulled on his old desert boots and started planning.
18
HELLO COMPUTER/QUERY STATUS JOHN RAINBIRD 14222/ ANDREWS AFB [DC] TO SAN DIEGO [CA] FINAL DESTINATION/Q9
HELLO CAP/STATUS JOHN RAINBIRD 14222/ANDREWS [DC] TO SAN DIEGO [CA] FINAL DESTINATION/LEAVES ANDREWS AFB 0700 HRS EST/STATUS OK/BREAK.
Computers are children, Rainbird thought, reading this message. He had simply punched in Cap's new code--which Cap would have been stunned to know he had--and as far as the computer was concerned, he was Cap. He beg
an to whistle tunelessly. It was just after sunset, and the Shop moved somnolently along the channels of routine.
FILE TOP SECRET
CODE PLEASE
CODE 19180
CODE 19180, the computer returned. READY TO FILE TOP SECRET
Rainbird hesitated only briefly and then tapped FILE/JOHN RAINBIRD 14222/ANDREWS [DC] TO SAN DIEGO [CA] FINAL DESTINATION/CANCEL/CANCEL/CANCEL F9 [19180]
FILED.
Then, using the code book, Rainbird told the computer whom to inform of the cancellation: Victor Puckeridge and his aide, Richard Folsom. These new instructions would be in the midnight telex to Andrews, and the plane on which he was to hitch a ride would simply take off without him. No one would know a thing, including Cap.
600 GOODBYE COMPUTER 600
604 GOODBYE CAP 604
Rainbird pushed back from the keyboard. It would be perfectly possible to put a stop to the whole thing tonight, of course. But that would not be conclusive. The computer would back him up to a certain degree, but computer probabilities do not butter any bread. Better to stop them after the thing had begun, with everything hanging out. More amusing, too.
The whole thing was amusing. While they had been watching the girl, the man had regained his ability or had successfully hidden it from them all along. He was likely ditching his medication. Now he was running Cap as well, which meant that he was only one step away from running the organization that had taken him prisoner in the first place. It really was quite funny; Rainbird had learned that endgames often were.
He didn't know exactly what McGee had planned, but he could guess. They would go to Andrews, all right, only Charlie would be with them. Cap could get her off the Shop grounds without much trouble---Cap and probably no one else on earth. They would go to Andrews, but not to Hawaii. It might be that Andy had planned for them to disappear into Washington, D.C. Or maybe they would get off the plane at Durban and Cap would be programmed to ask for a staff car. In that case it would be Shytown they would disappear into--only to reappear in screaming Chicago Tribune headlines a few days later.
He had played briefly with the idea of not standing in their way at all. That would be amusing, too. He guessed that Cap would end up in a mental institution, raving about golf clubs and snakes in the grass, or dead by his own hand. As for the Shop: might as well imagine what would happen to an anthill with a quart jar of nitroglycerine planted beneath it. Rainbird guessed that no more than five months after the press got its first whiff of the Strange Ordeal of the Andrew McGee Family, the Shop would cease to exist. He felt no fealty to the Shop and never had. He was his own man, crippled soldier of fortune, copper-skinned angel of death, and the status quo here didn't mean bullrag in a pasture to him. It was not the Shop that owned his loyalty at this point.
It was Charlie.
The two of them had an appointment. He was going to look into her eyes, and she was going to look into his ... and it might well be that they would step out together, in flames. The fact that he might be saving the world from some almost unimaginable armageddon by killing her had not played a part in his calculations, either. He owed the world no more fealty than he did the Shop. It was the world as much as the Shop that had cast him rootless from a closed desert society that might have been his only salvation ... or, lacking that, have turned him into a harmless Sterno-guzzling Injun Joe pumping gas at a 76 station or selling fake kachina dolls at a shitty little roadside stand somewhere along the highway between Flagstaff and Phoenix.
But Charlie, Charlie!
They had been locked in a long waltz of death since that endless night of darkness during the power blackout. What he had only suspected that early morning in Washington when he had done Wanless had developed into an irrefutable certainty : the girl was his. But it would be an act of love, not of destruction, because the converse was almost certainly true as well.
It was acceptable. In many ways he wanted to die. And to die at her hands, in her flames, would be an act of contrition ... and possibly of absolution.
Once she and her father were together again, she would become a loaded gun ... no, a loaded flamethrower.
He would watch her and he would let the two of them get together. What would happen then? Who knew?
And wouldn't knowing spoil the fun?
19
That night Rainbird went to Washington and found a hungry lawyer who worked late hours. To this lawyer he gave three hundred dollars in small bills. And in the lawyer's office, John Rainbird neatened his few affairs in order to be ready for the next day.
Firestarter
1
At six o'clock on Wednesday morning, Charlie McGee got up, took off her nightgown, and stepped into the shower. She washed her body and her hair, then turned the water to cold and stood shivering under the spray for a minute more. She toweled dry and then dressed carefully--cotton underpants, silk slip, dark-blue knee socks, her denim jumper. She finished by putting on her scuffed and comfortable loafers.
She hadn't thought she would be able to sleep at all last night; she had gone to bed full of fear and nervous excitement. But she had slept. And dreamed incessantly not of Necromancer and the run through the woods but of her mother. That was peculiar, because she didn't think of her mother as often as she used to; at times her face seemed misty and distant in her memory, like a faded photograph. But in her dreams of last night, her mother's face--her laughing eyes, her warm, generous mouth--had been so clear that Charlie might last have seen her just the day before.
Now, dressed and ready for the day, some of the unnatural lines of strain had gone out of her face and she seemed calm. On the wall beside the door leading into the kitchenette there was a call button and a speaker grille set into a brushed-chrome plate just below the light switch. She pressed the button now.
"Yes, Charlie?"
She knew the owner of the voice only as Mike. At seven o'clock--about half an hour from now--Mike went off and Louis came on.
"I want to go out to the stables this afternoon," she said, "and see Necromancer. Will you tell someone?"
"I'll leave a note for Dr. Hockstetter, Charlie."
"Thank you." She paused, just for a moment. You got to know their voices. Mike, Louis, Gary. You got pictures of how they must look in your mind, the way you got pictures of how the DJs you heard on the radio must look. You got to like them. She suddenly realized that she would almost certainly never talk to Mike again.
"Was there something else, Charlie?"
"No, Mike. Have ... have a good day."
"Why, thank you, Charlie." Mike sounded both surprised and pleased. "You too."
She turned on the TV and tuned to a cartoon show that came on every morning over the cable. Popeye was inhaling spinach through his pipe and getting ready to beat the sauce out of Bluto. One o'clock seemed an age away.
What if Dr. Hockstetter said she couldn't go out?
On the TV screen, they were showing a cutaway view of Popeye's muscles. There were about sixteen turbine engines in each one.
He better not say that. He better not. Because I'm going. One way or the other, I'm going.
2
Andy's rest hadn't been as easy or as healing as his daughter's. He had tossed and turned, sometimes dozing, then starting out of the doze just as it began to deepen because the terrible leading edge of some nightmare touched his mind. The only one he could remember was Charlie staggering down the aisle between the stalls in the stable, her head gone and red-blue flames spouting from her neck instead of blood.
He had meant to stay in bed until seven o'clock, but when the digital face of the clock beside the bed got to 6:15, he could wait no longer. He swung out and headed for the shower.
Last night at just past nine, Pynchot's former assistant, Dr. Nutter, had come in with Andy's walking papers. Nutter, a tall, balding man in his late fifties, was bumbling and avuncular. Sorry to be losing you; hope you enjoy your stay in Hawaii; wish I was going with you, ha-ha; please sign this.
> The paper Nutter wanted him to sign was a list of his few personal effects (including his keyring, Andy noticed with a nostalgic pang). He would be expected to inventory them once in Hawaii and initial another sheet that said that they had, indeed, been returned. They wanted him to sign a paper concerning his personal effects after they had murdered his wife, chased him and Charlie across half the country, and then kidnapped and held them prisoner: Andy found that darkly hilarious and Kafkaesque. I sure wouldn't want to lose any of those keys, he thought, scrawling his signature; I might need one of them to open a bottle of soda with sometime, right, fellows?
There was also a carbon of the Wednesday schedule, neatly initialed by Cap at the bottom of the page. They would be leaving at twelve-thirty, Cap picking Andy up at his quarters. He and Cap would proceed toward the eastern checkpoint, passing Parking Area C, where they would pick up an escort of two cars. They would then drive to Andrews and board the plane at approximately fifteen hundred hours. There would be one stop for refueling--at Durban Air Force Base, near Chicago.
All right, Andy thought. Okay.
He dressed and began to move about the apartment, packing his clothes, shaving tackle, shoes, bedroom slippers. They had provided him with two Samsonite suitcases. He remembered to do it all slowly, moving with the careful concentration of a drugged man.
After he found out about Rainbird from Cap, his first thought had been a hope that he would meet him: it would be such a great pleasure to push the man who had shot Charlie with the tranquilizer dart and later betrayed her in even more terrible fashion, to put his gun to his temple and pull the trigger. But he no longer wanted to meet Rainbird. He wanted no surprises of any kind. The numb spots on his face had shrunk to pinpricks, but they were still there--a reminder that if he had to overuse the push, he would very likely kill himself.
He only wanted things to go off smoothly.
His few things were packed all too soon, leaving him with nothing to do but sit and wait. The thought that he would be seeing his daughter again soon was like a small coal of warmth in his brain.
