Firestarter

He left. He felt that he should say something more-something that would redeem his dignity a little, make up a little for the fear

(“you’re sweating”)

she had seen scrawled on his face-but nothing occurred. He left, and not even the steel door between him and her could completely ease his fear… or his anger at John Rainbird. Because Rainbird had foreseen this, and Rainbird had said nothing. And if he accused Rainbird of that, the Indian would only smile his chilling smile and ask who was the psychiatrist around here, anyway?

The tests had diminished her complex about starting fires until it was like an earthen dam that had sprung leaks in a dozen places. The tests had afforded her the practice necessary to refine a crude sledgehammer of power into something she could flick out with deadly precision, like a circus performer throwing a weighted knife.

And the tests had been the perfect object lesson. They had shown her, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who was in charge here.

She was.

4

When Hockstetter was gone, Charlie fell on the couch, her hands to her face, sobbing. Waves of conflicting emotion swept her-guilt and horror, indignation, even a kind of angry pleasure. But fear was the greatest of them all. Things had changed when she agreed to their tests; she feared things had changed forever. And now she didn’t just want to see her father, she needed him. She needed him to tell her what to do next.

At first there had been rewards-walks outside with John, currying Necromancer, then riding him. She loved John and she loved Necromancer… if that stupid man could only have known how badly he had hurt her by saying. Necromancer was hers when Charlie knew he never could be. The big gelding was only hers in her uneasy half-remembered dreams. But now… now… the tests themselves, the chance to use her power and feel it grow… that was starting to become the reward. It had become a terrible but compelling game. And she sensed she had barely scratched the surface. She was like a baby who has just learned how to walk.

She needed her father, she needed him to tell her what was right, what was wrong, whether to go on or to stop forever. If-“If I can stop,” she whispered through her fingers. That was the most frightening thing of all-no longer being sure that she could stop. And if she could not, what would that mean? Oh, what would that mean? She began to cry again. She had never felt so dreadfully alone.

5

The funeral was a bad scene.

Andy had thought he would be okay; his headache was gone, and, after all, the funeral was only an excuse to be alone with Cap. He hadn’t liked Pynchot, although in the end Pynchot had proved to be just a little too small to hate. His barely concealed arrogance and his unconcealed pleasure at being on top of a fellow human being-because of those things and because of his overriding concern for Charlie, Andy had felt little guilt about the ricochet that he had inadvertently set up in Pynchot’s mind. The ricochet that had finally torn the man apart.

The echo effect had happened before, but he had always had a chance to put things right again. It was something he had got pretty good at by the time he and Charlie had to run from New York City. There seemed to be land mines planted deep in almost every human brain, deep-seated fears and guilts, suicidal, schizophrenic, paranoid impulses-even murderous ones. A push caused a state of extreme suggestibility, and if a suggestion tended down one of those park paths, it could destroy. One of his housewives in the Weight-Off program had begun to suffer frightening catatonic lapses. One of his businessmen had confessed a morbid urge to take his service pistol down from the closet and play Russian roulette with it, an urge that was somehow co

Cap talked restlessly of the man’s suicide as they drove to the funeral through a cold, swishing autumn rain; he seemed to be trying to come to terms with it. He said he wouldn’t have thought it possible for a man just to… to keep his arm in there once those blades had begun to chop and grind. But Pynchot had. Somehow Pynchot had. That was when the funeral started being bad for Andy.

The two of them attended only the graveside services, standing well back from the small group of friends and family, clustered under a bloom of black umbrellas. Andy discovered it was one thing to remember Pynchot’s arrogance, the little-Caesar, power-tripping of a small man who had no real power; to remember his endless and irritating nervous tic of a smile. It was quite another to look at his pallid, washed-out wife in her black suit and veiled hat, holding the hands of her two boys (the younger was about Charlie’s age, and they both looked utterly stu

Andy’s gorge rose helplessly. He bent forward in the cold rain, struggling with it. The minister’s voice rose and fell senselessly. “I want to go,” Andy said. “Can we go?” “Yes, of course,” Cap said. He looked pale himself, old and not particularly well. “I’ve been to quite enough funerals this year to hold me.”

They slipped away from the group standing around the fake grass, the flowers already drooping and spilling petals in this hard rain, the coffin on its ru

“Very bad for the widow and the little boys,” Cap said. “The scandal, you know.”

“Will she… uh, will she be taken care of?”

“Very handsomely, in terms of money,” Cap said almost tonelessly. They were nearing the lane now. Andy could see Cap’s orange Vega, parked on the verge. Two men were getting quietly into a Biscayne in front of it. Two more got into a gray Plymouth behind it. “But nobody’s going to be able to buy of those two little boys. Did you see their faces?”

Andy said nothing. Now he felt guilt; it was like a sharp sawblade working in hisguts. Not even telling himself that his own position had been desperate would help. All he could do now was hold Charlie’s face in front of him… Charlie and a darkly ominous figure behind her, a one-eyed pirate named John Rainbird who had wormed his way into her confidence so he could hasten the day when

They got into the Vega and Cap started the engine. The Biscayne ahead pulled out and Cap followed. The Plymouth fell into place behind them.

Andy felt a sudden, almost eerie. certainty that the push had deserted him againthat when he tried there would be nothing. As if to pay for the expression on the faces of the two boys.

But what else was there to do but try?

“We’re going to have a little talk,” he said to Cap, and pushed. The push was there, and the headache settled in almost at once-the price he was going to have to pay for using it so soon after the last time. “It won’t interfere with your driving.”