Firestarter (47 page)

“Faster. Faster.”

The exhilaration. The freedom. She could no longer tell where her thighs ended and Necromancer's sides began. They were one, fused, as fused as the metals she welded with her power when she did their tests. Ahead of them was a huge deadfall, a blowdown of white wood like a tangled cairn of bones. Wild with lunatic joy, she kicked at Necromancer lightly with her bare heels and felt his hindquarters bunch.

They leaped it, for a moment floating in the air. Her head was back; her hands held horsehair and she screamed—not in fear but simply because not to scream, to hold in, might cause her to explode.
Free, free, free.… Necromancer, I love you
.

They cleared the deadfall easily but now the smell of smoke was sharper, clearer—there was a popping sound from behind them and it was only when a spark spiraled down and briefly stung her flesh like a nettle before going out that she realized she was naked. Naked and

(but the woods are burning)

free, unfettered, loose—she and Necromancer, running for the light.

“Faster,” she whispered. “Faster, oh please.”

Somehow the big black gelding produced even more speed. The wind in Charlie's ears was rushing thunder. She did not have to breathe; air was scooped into her throat through her half-open mouth. Sun shone through these old trees in dusty bars like old copper.

And up ahead was the light—the end of the forest, open land, where she and Necromancer would run forever. The fire was behind them, the hateful smell of smoke, the feel of fear. The sun was ahead, and she would ride Necromancer all the way to the sea, where she would perhaps find her father and the two of them would live by pulling in nets full of shining, slippery fish.

“Faster!” she cried triumphantly. “Oh, Necromancer, go
faster,
go
faster,
go—”

And that was when the silhouette stepped into the widening runnel of light where the woods ended, blocking the light in its own shape, blocking the way out. At first, as always in this dream, she thought it was her father, was
sure
it was her father, and her joy became almost hurtful … before suddenly transforming into utter terror.

She just had time to register the fact that the man was too big, too tall—and yet somehow familiar, dreadfully familiar, even in silhouette—before Necromancer reared, screaming.

Can horses scream? I didn't know they could scream—

Struggling to stay on, her thighs slipping as his hooves pawed at the air, and he wasn't screaming, he was whinnying, but it was a
scream
and there were other screaming whinnies somewhere behind her,
oh dear God,
she thought,
horses back there, horses back there and the woods are burning—

Up ahead, blocking the light, that silhouette, that dreadful shape. Now it began to come toward her; she had fallen onto the path and Necromancer touched her bare stomach gently with his muzzle.

“Don't you hurt my horse!” she screamed at the advancing silhouette, the dream-father who was not her father. “Don't you hurt the horses. Oh, please don't hurt the horses!”

But the figure came on and it was drawing a gun and that was when she awoke, sometimes with a scream, sometimes only in a shuddery cold sweat, knowing that she had dreamed badly but unable to remember anything save the mad, exhilarating plunge down the wooded trail and the smell of fire … these things, and an almost sick feeling of betrayal.…

And in the stable that day, she would touch Necromancer or perhaps put the side of her face against his warm shoulder and feel a dread for which she had no name.

It was a bigger room.

Until last week, in fact, it bad been the Shop's nondenominational chapel. The speed with which things were picking up could have been symbolized by the speed and ease with which Cap had rammed through Hockstetter's requests. A new chapel—not an odd spare room but a real chapel—was to be built at the eastern end of the grounds. Meanwhile, the remainder of the tests on Charlie McGee would be held here.

The fake wood paneling and the pews had been ripped out. Both flooring and walls had been insulated with asbestos batting that looked like steel wool and then covered over with heavy-gauge tempered sheet steel. The area that had been the altar and the nave had been partitioned off. Hockstetter's monitoring instruments and a computer terminal had been installed. All of this had been done in a single week; work had begun just four days before Herman Pynchot ended his life in such grisly fashion.

Now, at two in the afternoon on an early October day, a cinderblock wall stood in the middle of the long room. To the left of it was a huge, low tank of water. Into this tank, which was six feet deep, had been dumped more than two thousand pounds of ice. In front of it stood Charlie McGee, looking small and neat in a blue denim jumper and red and black striped rugby socks. Blond pigtails tied off with small black velvet bows hung down to her shoulder blades.

“All right, Charlie,” Hockstetter's voice said over the intercom. Like everything else, the intercom had been hastily installed, and its reproduction was tinny and poor. “We're ready when you are.”

The cameras filmed it all in living color. In these films, the small girl's head dips slightly, and for a few seconds nothing happens at all. Inset at the left of the film frame is a digital
temperature readout. All at once it begins to move upward, from seventy to eighty to ninety. After that the figures jump up so rapidly that they are just a shifting reddish blur; the electronic temperature probe has been placed in the center of the cinderblock wall.

Now the film switches to slow motion; it is the only way that the entire action can be caught. To the men who watched it through the observation room's leaded-glass viewing ports, it happened with the speed of a gunshot.

In extreme slow motion, the cinderblock wall begins to smoke; small particles of mortar and concrete begin to jump lazily upward like popping corn. Then the mortar holding the blocks together can be observed to be
running,
like warm molasses. Then the bricks begin to crumble, from the center outward. Showers of particles, then clouds of them, blow back as the blocks explode with the heat. Now the digital heat sensor implanted in the center of this wall freezes at a reading of over seven thousand degrees. It freezes not because the temperature has stopped climbing but because the sensor itself has been destroyed.

Set around this testing room that used to be a chapel are eight huge Kelvinator air conditioners, all running at high speed, all pumping freezing air into the testing room. All eight kicked into operation as soon as the room's
overall
temperature passed ninety-five. Charlie had got very good at directing the stream of heat that somehow came from her at a single point, but as anyone who has ever burned his or her hand on a hot skillet handle knows, even so-called nonconductable surfaces will conduct heat—if there is enough heat to conduct.

With all eight of the industrial Kelvinators running, the temperature in the testing room should have been minus fifteen degrees Fahrenheit, plus or minus five degrees. Instead, the records show a continued climb, up over a hundred degrees, then a hundred and five, then a hundred and seven. But all of the sweat running down the faces of the observers cannot be accounted for by the heat alone.

Now not even extreme slow motion will give a clear picture of what is happening, but one thing is clear: as the cinderblocks continue to explode outward and backward, there can be no doubt that they are burning; these blocks are burning as briskly as newspapers in a fireplace. Of course, an eighth-grade science book teaches that
anything
will burn if it gets hot enough. But it is one thing to read such information
and quite another to see cinderblock blazing with blue and yellow flame.

Then everything is obscured by a furious blowback of disintegrating particles as the whole wall vaporizes. The little girl makes a slow-motion half turn and a moment later the calm surface of the icy water in the tank is convulsed and boiling. And the heat in the room, which has crested at a hundred twelve, (even with all eight air conditioners, it is as hot as a summer noontime in Death Valley), begins to go back.

There's one for the sweeper.

Pat—I've watched the films four times now and still can't believe it isn't some sort of special effects trick. Some unsolicited advice: When you get before the Senate subcommittee that's going to deal with the Lot Six appropriations and renewal plans, have your ducks in a row and do more than cover your ass—armor-plate it! Human nature being what it is, those guys are going to look at those films and have a hard job believing it isn't a flat-out shuck-and-jive.

To business: The readouts are being delivered by special messenger, and this memo should beat them by no more than two or three hours. You can read them over for yourself, but I'll briefly sum up our findings. Our conclusions can be summed up in two words: We're stumped. She was wired up this time like an astronaut going into space. You will note:

1.) Blood pressure within normal parameters for a child of eight, and there's hardly a jog when that wall goes up like the Hiroshima bomb.

2.) Abnormally high alpha wave readings; what we'd call her “imagination circuitry” is well-engaged. You may or may not agree with Clapper and me that the waves are rather more even, suggesting a certain “controlled imaginative dexterity” (Clapper's rather fulsome phrase, not mine). Could indicate she's getting in control of it and can manipulate the ability with greater precision. Practice, as they say, makes perfect. Or it may mean nothing at all.

3.) All metabolic telemetry is within normal parameters—nothing strange or out of place. It's as if she was reading a good book or writing a class theme instead of creating what you say must have been upwards of 30,000 degrees of spot heat. To my mind the most fascinating (and frustrating!) information of all is the Beal-Searies CAT test.
Next to no caloric burn!
In case you've forgotten your physics—occupational hazard with you shrinks—a calorie is nothing but a unit of heat; the amount of heat necessary to raise a gram of water one degree centigrade, to be exact. She burned maybe 25 calories during that little exhibition, what we would burn doing half a dozen sit-ups or walking twice around the building. But calories measure heat, damn it, heat, and what she's producing is heat … or is she? Is it coming
from
her or
through
her? And if it's the latter, where is it coming from? Figure that one out and you've got the Nobel Prize in your hip pocket! I'll tell you this: if our test series is as limited as you say it is, I'm positive we'll never find out.

Last word: Are you sure you
want
to continue these tests? Lately I just have to think about that kid and I start to get very antsy. I start thinking about things like pulsars and neutrinos and black holes and Christ knows what else. There are forces loose in this universe that we don't even know about yet, and some we can observe only at a remove of millions of light-years … and breathe a sigh of relief because of it. The last time I looked at that film I began to think of the girl as a crack—a chink, if you like—in the very smelter of creation. I know how that sounds, but I feel I would be remiss not to say it. God forgive me for saying this, with three lovely girls of my own, but I personally will breathe a sigh of relief when she's been neutralized.

If she can produce 30,000 degrees of spot heat without even trying, have you ever thought what might happen if she really set her mind to it?

Brad

“I want to see my father,” Charlie said when Hockstetter came in. She looked pale and wan. She had changed from her jumper into an old nightgown, and her hair was loose on her shoulders.

“Charlie—” he began, but anything he had been meaning to follow with was suddenly gone. He was deeply troubled by Brad Hyuck's memo and by the supporting telemetry readouts. The fact that Brad had trusted those final two paragraphs to print said much, and suggested more.

Hockstetter himself was scared. In authorizing the changeover of chapel to testing room, Cap had also authorized the installation of more Kelvinator air conditioners around Charlie's apartment—not eight but twenty. Only six had been installed so far, but after Test #4, Hockstetter didn't care if they were installed or not. He thought they could set up two hundred of the damned things and not impede her power. It was no longer a question of whether or not she could kill herself; it was a question of whether or not she could destroy the entire Shop installation if she wanted to—and maybe all of eastern Virginia in the bargain. Hockstetter now thought that if she wanted to do those things, she could. And the last stop on that line of reasoning was even scarier: only John Rainbird had an effective checkrein on her now. And Rainbird was nuts.

“I want to see my father,” she repeated.

Her father was at the funeral of poor Herman Pynchot. He attended with Cap, at the latter's request. Even Pynchot's death, as unrelated to anything going on here as it was, seemed to have cast its own evil pall over Hockstetter's mind.

“Well, I think that can be arranged,” Hockstetter said cautiously, “if you can show us a little more—”

“I've shown you enough,” she said. “I want to see my daddy.” Her lower lip trembled; her eyes had taken on a sheen of tears.