She was a long time answering. And when she did, it was in a more thoughtful and somehow adult tone than Rainbird had ever heard from her. “It’s different now,” she said. “It’s a lot stronger. But… I was more in control of it than I ever was before. That day at the farm”-she shivered a little and her voice dropped a little-“it just… just got away for a little while. It… it went everywhere.” Her eyes darkened. She looked inside memory and saw chickens exploding like horrible living fireworks. “But yesterday, when I told it to back off', it did. I said to myself, it’s just going to be a small fire. And it was. It was like I let it out in a single straight line.”
“And then you pulled it back into yourself?”
“God, no,” she said, looking at him. “I put it into the water. If I pulled it back into myself… I guess I’d burn up.”
They walked in silence for a while.
“Next time there has to be more water.”
“But you’re not scared now?”
“Not as scared as I was,” she said, making the careful distinction. “When do you think they’ll let me see my dad?”
He put an arm around her shoulders in rough good comradeship.
“Give them enough rope, Charlie,” he said.
19
It began to cloud up that afternoon and by evening a cold autumn rain had begun to fall.
In one house of a small and very exclusive suburb near the Shop complex-a suburb called Longmont Hills-Patrick Hockstetter was in his workshop, building a model boat (the boats and his restored T-bird were his only hobbies, and there were dozens of his whalers and frigates and packets about the house) and thinking about Charlie McGee. He was in an extremely good mood. He felt that if they could get another dozen tests out of her-even another ten-his future would be assured. He could spend the rest of his life investigating the properties of Lot Six… and at a substantial raise in pay. He carefully glued a mizzenmast in place and began to whistle.
In another house in Longmont Hills, Herman Pynchot was pulling a pair of his wife’s panties over a gigantic erection. His eyes were dark and trancelike. His wife was at a Tupperware party. One of his two fine children was at a Cub Scout meeting and the other fine child was at an intramural chess tourney at the junior high school. Pynchot carefully hooked one of his wife’s bras behind his back. It hung limply on his narrow chest. He looked at himself in the mirror and thought he looked… well, very pretty. He walked out into the kitchen, heedless of the unshaded windows. He walked like a man in a dream. He stood by the sink and looked down into the maw of the newly, installed WasteKing disposer. After a long, thoughtful time, he turned it on. And to the sound of its whirling, gnashing steel teeth, he took himself in hand and masturbated. When his orgasm had come and gone, he started and looked around. His eyes were full of blank terror, the eyes of a man waking from a nightmare. He shut off the garbage disposal and ran for the bedroom, crouching low as he passed the windows. His head ached and buzzed. What in the name of God was happening to him?
In yet a third Longmont Hills house-a house with a hillside view that the likes of Hockstetter and Pynchot could not hope to afford-Cap Hollister and John Rainbird sat drinking brandy from snifters in the living room. Vivaldi issued from Cap’s stereo system. Vivaldi had been one of his wife’s favorites. Poor Georgia.
“I agree with you,” Cap said slowly, wondering again why he had invited this man whom he hated and feared into his home. The girl’s power was extraordinary, and he supposed extraordinary power made for strange bedfellows. “The fact that she mentioned a ‘next time” in such an offhand way is extremely significant.”
“Yes,” Rainbird said. “It appears we do indeed have a string to play out.”
“But it won’t last forever.” Cap swirled his brandy, then forced himself to meet Rainbird’s one glittering eye. “I believe I understand how you intend to lengthen that string, even if Hockstetter does not.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” Cap said, paused a moment, then added. “It’s dangerous to you.”
Rainbird smiled.
“If she finds out what side you’re really on,” Cap said, “you stand a good chance of finding out what a steak feels like in a microwave oven.”
Rainbird’s smile lengthened into an unfunny shark’s grin. “And would you shed a bitter tear, Captain Hollister?”
“No,” Cap said. “No sense lying to you about that. But for some time now-since before she actually went and did it-I’ve felt the ghost of Dr. Wanless drifting around in here. Sometimes as close as my own shoulder.” He looked at Rainbird over the rim of his glass. “Do you believe in ghosts, Rainbird?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Then you know what I mean. During the last meeting I had with him, he tried to warn me. He made a metaphor-let me see-John Milton at seven, struggling to write his name in letters that were legible, and that same human being growing up to write Paradise Lost. He talked about her… her potential for destruction.” “Yes,” Rainbird said, and his eye gleamed.
“He asked me what we’d do if we found we had a little girl who could progress from starting fires to causing nuclear explosions to cracking the very planet open. I thought he was funny, irritating, and almost certainly mad.”
“But now you think he may have been right.”
“Let us say that I find myself wondering sometimes at three in the morning. Don’t you?”
“Cap, when the Manhattan Project group exploded their first atomic device, no one was quite sure what would happen. There was a school of thought which felt that the chain reaction would never end-that we would have a miniature sun glowing in the desert out there even unto the end of the world.”
Cap nodded slowly.
“The Nazis were also horrible,” Rainbird said. “The Japs were horrible. Now the Germans and the Japanese are nice and the Russians are horrible. The Muslims are horrible. Who knows who may become horrible in the future?”
“She’s dangerous,” Cap said, rising restlessly. “Wanless was right about that. She’s a dead end.”
“Maybe.”
“Hockstetter says that the place where that tray hit the wall was rippled. It was sheet steel, but it rippled with the heat. The tray itself was twisted entirely out of shape. She smelted it. That little girl might have put out three thousand degrees of heat for a split second there.” He looked at Rainbird, but Rainbird was looking vaguely around the living room, as if he had lost interest. “What I’m saying is that what you plan to do is dangerous for all of us, not just for you.”
“Oh yes,” Rainbird agreed complacently. “There’s a risk. Maybe we won’t have to do it. Maybe Hockstetter will have what he needs before it becomes necessary to implement… uh, plan B.”
“Hockstetter’s a type,” Cap said curtly. “He’s an information junkie. He’ll never have enough. He could test her for two years and still scream we were too hasty when we… when we took her away. You know it and I know it, so let’s not play games.”
“We’ll know when it’s time,” Rainbird said. “I’ll know.”
“And then what will happen?”
“John the friendly orderly will come in,” Rainbird said, smiling a little. “He will greet her, and talk to her, and make her smile. John the friendly orderly will make her feel happy because he’s the only one who can. And when John feels she is at the moment of greatest happiness, he will strike her across the bridge of the nose, breaking it explosively and driving bone fragments into her brain. It will be quick… and I will be looking into her face when it happens.”
He smiled-nothing sharklike about it this time. The smile was gentle, kind… and fatherly. Cap drained his brandy. He needed it. He only hoped that Rainbird would indeed know the right time when it came, or they might all find out what a steak felt like in a microwave oven.