Firestarter(5)

"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 smiled. 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 applicants, 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 applicant goes to 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."