Firestarter(97)

"Or suppose you got a bad fever sometime. From the flu or the croup or, hell, I dunno, some kind of infection." This was one of the few profitable lines Hockstetter had given him to pursue. "You ever have your appendix out, Charlie?"

"No-ooo..."

John began to rinse the floor.

"My brother had his out, but it went bust first and he almost died. That was cause we were reservation Indians and nobody gave a-nobody cared much if we lived or died. He got a high fever, a hundred and five, I guess, and he went ravin right off his head, sayin horrible curses and talkin to people who weren't there. Do you know he thought our father was the Angel of Death or somethin, come to carry him off, and he tried to stick im with a knife that was on his bedside table there? I told you this story, didn't I?"

"No," Charlie said, whispering now not to keep from being overheard but out of horrified fascination. "Really?" "Really," John affirmed. He squeezed the mop out again. "It wasn't his fault. It was the fever that did it. People are apt to say or do anything when they're delirious. Anything." Charlie understood what he was saying and felt a sinking fear. Here was something she had never even considered.

"But if you had control of this pyro-whatsis..."

"How could I have control of it if I was delirious?"

"Just because you do." Rainbird went back to Wanless's original metaphor, the one that had so disgusted Cap almost a year ago now. "It's like toilet-training, Charlie. Once you get hold of your bowels and bladder, you're in control for good. Delirious people sometimes get their beds all wet from sweat, but they rarely piss the bed."

Hockstetter had pointed out that this was not invariably true, but Charlie wouldn't know that.

"Well, anyway, all I mean is that if you got control, don't you see, you wouldn't have to worry about this anymore. You'd have it licked. But to get control you have to practice and practice. The same way you learned to tie your shoes, or to make your letters in kinnygarden."

"I... I just don't want to make fires! And I won't! I won't!" "There, I went and upset you," John said, distressed. "I sure didn't mean to do that. I'm sorry, Charlie. I won't say no more. Me and my big fat mouth." But the next time she brought it up herself.

It was three or four days later, and she had thought over the things he had said very carefully... and she believed that she had put her finger on the one flaw. "It would just never end," she said. "They'd always want more and more and more. If you only knew the way they chased us, they never-give up. Once I started they'd want bigger fires and then even bigger ones and then bonfires and then... I don't know... but I'm afraid."

He admired her again. She had an intuition and a native wit that was incredibly sharp. He wondered what Hockstetter would think when he, Rainbird, told him that Charlie McGee had an extremely good idea what their top-secret master plan was. All of their reports on Charlie theorized that pyrokinesis was only the centerpiece of many related psionic talents, and Rainbird believed that her intuition was one of them. Her father had told them again and again that Charlie had known Al Steinowitz and the others were coming up to the Manders farm even before they had arrived. That was a scary thought. If she should ever get one of her funny intuitions about his authenticity... well, they said hell had no fury like a woman scorned, and if half of what he believed about Charlie was true, then she was perfectly capable of manufacturing hell, or a reasonable facsimile. He might suddenly find himself getting very hot. It added a certain spice to the proceedings... a spice that had been missing for too long.

"Charlie," he said, "I'm not sayin you should do any of these things for free."

She looked at him, puzzled.

John sighed. "I don't hardly know how to put it to you," he said. "I guess I love you a little. You're like the daughter I never had. And the way they're keeping you cooped up here, not letting you see your daddy and all, never getting to go out, missing all the things other little girls have... it just about makes me sick."

Now he allowed his good eye to blaze out at her, scaring her a little. "You could get all kinds of things just by going along with them... and attaching a few strings." "Strings," Charlie said, utterly mystified. "Yeah! You could get them to let you go outside in the sun, I bet. Maybe even into Longmont to shop for things. You could get out of this goddam box and into a regular house. See other kids. And-"

"And see my father?"

"Sure, that, too." But that was one thing that was never going to happen, because if the two of them put their information together they would realize that John the Friendly Orderly was just too good to be true. Rainbird had never passed along a single message to Andy McGee. Hockstetter thought it would be running a risk for no gain, and Rainbird, who thought Hockstetter a total bleeding ass**le about most things, agreed.

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 riot 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.