Firestarter(106)

Hockstetter gaped at the glass. The steaming effect had got worse, but there was no doubt that the room was empty except for the tub, the EEG, the overturned steel tray, and the flaming scatter of woodchips.

"One of you men go get her!" Hockstetter cried, turning around. The five or six men stood by their instruments and didn't move. Apparently no one but Rainbird had noticed that Cap had left as soon as the girl had.

Rainbird grinned at Hockstetter and then raised his eye to include the others, these men whose faces had suddenly gone almost as pale as their lab smocks. "Sure," he said softly. "Which of you wants to go get the little girl?"

No one moved. It was amusing, really; it occurred to Rainbird that this was the way the politicians were going to look when they found out it was finally done, that the missiles were really in the air, the bombs raining down, the woods and cities on fire. It was so amusing he had to laugh... and laugh... and laugh.

17

"They're so beautiful," Charlie said softly. "It's all so beautiful."

They were standing near the duckpond, not far from where her father and Pynchot had stood only a few days previously. This day was much cooler than that one had been, and a few leaves had begun to show color. A light wind, just a little too stiff to be called a breeze, ruled the surface of the pond.

Charlie turned her face up to the sun and closed her eyes, smiling. John Rainbird, standing beside her, had spent six months on stockade duty at Camp Stewart in Arizona before going overseas, and he had seen the same expression on the faces of men coming out after a long hard bang inside.

"Would you like to walk over to the stables and look at the horses?"

"Oh yes, sure," she said immediately, and then glanced shyly at him. "That is, if you don't mind."

"Mind? I'm glad to be outside, too. This is recess for me."

"Did they assign you?"

"Naw," he said. They began to walk along the edge of the pond toward the stables on the far side. "They asked for volunteers. I don't think they got many, after what happened yesterday."

"It scared them?" Charlie asked, just a little too sweetly.

"I guess it did," Rainbird said, and he was speaking nothing but the truth. Cap had caught up with Charlie as she wandered down the hall and escorted her back to her apartment. The young man who had bolted his position at the EEG was now being processed for duty in Panama City. The staff meeting following the test had been a nutty affair, with the scientists at both their best and worst, blue-skying a hundred new ideas on one hand and worrying tiresomely-and considerably after the fact-about how to control her on the other hand.

It was suggested that her quarters be fireproofed, that a full-time guard be installed, that the drug series be started on her again. Rainbird had listened to as much of this as he could bear and then rapped hard on the edge of the conference table with the band of the heavy turquoise ring he wore. He rapped until he had the attention of everyone there. Because Hockstetter disliked him (and perhaps "hated" would not have been too strong a word), his cadre of scientists also disliked him, but Rainbird's star had risen in spite of that. He had, after all, been spending a good part of each day with this human blowtorch.

"I suggest," he had said, rising to his feet and glaring around at them benignly from the shattered lens of his face, "that we continue exactly as we have been. Up until today you have been proceeding on the premise that the girl probably didn't have the ability which you all knew had been documented two dozen times over, and that if she did have it, it was a small ability, and if it wasn't a small ability, she would probably never use it again anyway. Now you know differently, and you'd like to upset her all over again."

"That's not true," Hockstetter said, annoyed. "That is simply-"

"It is true!" Rainbird thundered at him, and Hockstetter shrank back in his chair. Rainbird smiled again at the faces around the table. "Now. The girl is eating again. She has put on ten pounds and is no longer a scrawny shadow of what she should be. She is reading, talking, doing paint-by the-numbers kits; she has asked for a dollhouse, which her friend the orderly has promised to try and get for her. In short, her frame of mind is better than it has been since she came here. Gentlemen, we are not going to start monkeying around with a fruitful status quo, are we?"

The man who had been monitoring the videotape equipment earlier had said hesitantly, "But what if she sets that little suite of hers on fire?"

"If she was going to," Rainbird said quietly, "she would have done it already." To that there had been no response.

Now, as he and Charlie left the edge of the pond and crossed toward the dark-red stables with their fresh piping of white paint, Rainbird laughed out loud. "I guess you did scare them, Charlie."

"But you're not scared?" "Why should I be scared?" Rainbird said, and ruffled her hair. "I only turn into a baby when it's dark and I can't get out." "Oh John, you don't have to be ashamed of that." "If you were going to light me up," he said, rephrasing his comment of the night before, "I guess you would've by now." She stiffened immediately. "I wish you wouldn't... wouldn't even say things like that."

"Charlie, I'm sorry. Sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my brains."