Firestarter

BREAK

Rainbird leaned back and closed his good eye and felt a kind of triumph through the sour thud in his head. He had asked the important questions backward, but that was the price humans paid for their intuitive leaps, leaps a computer knew nothing about, even though it had been programmed to say “Hello,” “Good-bye,” “I am sorry [programmer’s] name,” “That is too bad,” and “Oh shit.”

The computer didn’t believe there was much of a probability Andy had retained his mentaldomination ability… until you added in the Pynchot factor. Then the percent jumped halfway to the moon.

He tapped QUERY WHY SUPPOSED MENTAL DOMINATION ABILITY ANDREW MCGEE 14112 (PROBABILITY) RISES FROM 2% to 35% WHEN CROSS-REFERENCED W/HERMAN PYNCHOT 14409 Q4

PROCESS, the computer answered, and then: HERMAN PYNCHOT 14409 ADJUDGED SUICIDE/ PROBABILITY TAKES INTO ACCOUNT ANDREW MCGEE 14112 MAY HAVE CAUSED SUICIDE/ MENTAL DOMINATION/BREAK

There it was, right here in the banks of the biggest and most sophisticated computer in the Western Hemisphere. Only waiting for someone to ask it the right questions.

Suppose I feed it what I suspect about Cap as a certainty? Rainbird wondered, and decided to go ahead and do it. He dragged out his code book again and looked up Cap’s number.

FILE, he tapped. CAPTAIN JAMES HOLLISTER 16040/ATTENDED FUNERAL

OF HERMAN PYNCHOT 14409 W/ANDREW MCGEE 14112 F4

FILED, the computer returned.

FILE, Rainbird tapped back. CAPTAIN JAMES HOLLISTER 16040/CURRENTLY SHOWING SIGNS OF GREAT MENTAL STRESS F4

609, the computer returned. It apparently didn’t know “mental stress” from “Shinola.”

“Bite my bag,” Rainbird muttered, and tried again.

FILE/CAPTAIN JAMES HOLLISTER 16040/CURRENTLY BEHAVING COUNTER TO DIRECTIVES REF CHARLENE MCGEE 14111 F4 FILED 

“File it, you whore,” Rainbird said. “Let’s see about this.” His fingers went back to the keys.

QUERY PROBABILITY ANDREW MCGEE 14112/ SUPPOSED MENTAL DOMINATION ABILITY/ CROSS-REF HERMAN PYNCHOT 14409/CROSS-REF CAPTAIN JAMES HOLLISTER 16040 Q4

PROCESS, the computer showed, and Rainbird sat back to wait, watching the screen. Two percent was too low. Thirty-five percent was still not betting odds. But-

The computer now flashed this: ANDREW MCGEE 14112/MENTAL DOMINATION PROBABILITY 90%/CROSS-REF HERMAN PYNCHOT 14409/CROSS-REF CAPTAIN JAMES HOLLISTER 16040 BREAK

Now it was up to ninety percent. And those were betting odds.

And two other things that John Rainbird would have bet on were, one, that what Cap handed to the girl was indeed a note to Charlie from her father and, two, that it contained some sort of escape plan.

“You dirty old son of a bitch,” John Rainbird murmured-not without admiration.

Pulling himself to the computer again, Rainbird tapped

600 GOODBYE COMPUTER 600

604 GOODBYE RAINBIRD 604

Rainbird turned off the keyboard and began to chuckle.

17

Rainbird went back to the house where he was staying and fell asleep with his clothes on. He woke up just after noon on Tuesday and called Cap to tell him he wouldn’t be in that afternoon. He had come down with a bad cold, possibly the onset of the grippe, and he didn’t want to chance passing it on to Charlie.

“Hope that won’t keep you from going to San Diego tomorrow,” Cap said briskly.

“San Diego?” “Three files,” Cap said. “Top secret. I need a courier. You’re it. Your plane leaves from Andrews at oh-seven-hundred tomorrow.”

Rainbird thought fast. This was more of Andy McGee’s work. McGee knew about him. Of course he did. That had been in the note to Charlie, along with whatever crazy escape plan McGee had concocted. And that explained why the girl had acted so strangely yesterday. Either going to Herman Pynchot’s funeral or coming back, Andy had given Cap a good hard shove and Cap had spilled his guts about everything. McGee was scheduled to fly out of Andrews tomorrow afternoon; now Cap told him that he, Rainbird was going tomorrow morning. McGee was using Cap to get him safely out of the way first. He was-

“Rainbird? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” he said. “Can you send someone else? I feel pretty punky, Cap.”

“No one I trust as well as you,” Cap replied. “This stuff is dynamite. We wouldn’t want… any snake in the grass to… to get it.”

“Did you say ‘snakes'?” Rainbird asked.

“Yes! Snakes!” Cap fairly screamed.

McGee had pushed him, all right, and some sort of slow-motion avalanche was going on inside of Cap Hollister. Rainbird suddenly had the feeling-no, the intuitive certainty-that if he refused Cap and just kept hammering away, Cap would blow up… the way

Pynchot had blown up.

Did he want to do that?

He decided he did not.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be on the plane. Oh-seven-hundred. And all the goddam antibiotics I can swallow. You’re a bastard, Cap.”

“I can prove my parentage beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Cap said, but the badinage was forced and hollow. He sounded relieved and shaky.

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

“Maybe you’ll get in a round of golf while you’re out there.”

“I don’t play-“Golf. He had mentioned golf to Charlie as well-golf and snakes. Somehow those two things were part of the weird merry-go-round McGee had set in motion in Cap’s brain. “Yes, maybe I will,” he said.

“Get to Andrews by oh-six-thirty,” Cap said, “and ask for Dick Folsom. He’s Major Puckeridge’s aide.” “All right,” Rainbird said. He had no intention of being anywhere near Andrews Air Force Base tomorrow. “Good-bye, Cap.” He hung up, then sat on the bed. He pulled on his old desert boots and started planning.

18

HELLO COMPUTER/QUERY STATUS JOHN RAINBIRD 14222/ANDREW AFB (DC) TO SAN DIEGO (CA) FINAL DESTINATION/Q9

HELLO CAP/STATUS JOHN RAINBIRD 14222/ ANDREWS (DC) TO SAN DIEGO (CA) FINAL DESTINATION/LEAVES ANDREWS AFB 0700HRS EST/STATUS OK/BREAK

Computers are children, Rainbird thought, reading this message. He had simply punched in Cap’s new code-which Cap would have been stunned to know he had and as far as the computer was concerned, he was Cap. He began to whistle tunelessly. It was just after sunset, and the Shop moved somnolently along the channels of routine.

FILE TOP SECRET

CODE PLEASE

CODE 19180, the computer returned. READY TO FILE TOP SECRET

Rainbird hesitated only briefly and then tapped

FILE/JOHN RAINBIRD 14222/ANDREWS (DC) TO SAN DIEGO (CA) FINAL DESTINATION/CANCEL/ CANCEL/CANCEL F9 (19180) FILED

Then, using the code book, Rainbird told the computer whom to inform of the cancellation: Victor Puckeridge and his aide, Richard Folsom. These new instructions would be in the midnight telex to Andrews, and the plane on which he was to hitch a ride would simply take off without him. No one would know a thing, including Cap. 

600 GOODBYE COMPUTER 600

604 GOODBYE CAP 604

Rainbird pushed back from the keyboard. It would be perfectly possible to put a stop to the whole thing tonight, of course. But that would not be conclusive. The computer would back him up to a certain degree, but computer probabilities do not butter any bread. Better to stop them after the thing had begun, with everything hanging out. More amusing, too.

The whole thing was amusing. While they had been watching the girl, the man had regained his ability or had successfully hidden it from them all along. He was likely ditching his medication. Now he was running Cap as well, which means that he was only one step away from running the organization that had taken him prisoner in the first place. It really was quite funny; Rainbird had learned that endgames often were.

He didn’t know exactly what McGee had planned, but he could guess. They would go to Andrews, all right, only Charlie would be with them. Cap could get her off the Shop grounds without much trouble-Cap and probably no one else on earth. They would go to Andrews, but not to Hawaii. It might be that Andy had planned for them to disappear into Washington, D.C. Or maybe they would get off the plane at Durban and Cap would be programmed to ask for a staff car. In that case it would be Shytown they would disappear into-only to reappear in screaming Chicago Tribune headlines a few days later.

He had played briefly with the idea of not standing in their way at all. That would be amusing, too. He guessed that Cap would end up in a mental institution, raving about golf clubs and snakes in the grass, or dead by his own hand. As for the Shop: might as well imagine what would happen to an anthill with a quart jar of nitroglycerine planted beneath it. Rainbird guessed that no more than five months after the press got its first whiff” of the Strange Ordeal of the Andrew McGee Family, the Shop would cease to exist. He felt no fealty to the Shop and never had. He was his own man, crippled soldier of fortune, copper-skinned angel of death, and the status quo here didn’t mean bullrag in a pasture to him. It was not the Shop that owned his loyalty