“You have some questions, huh?”

“All kinds of them,” Irv said. “A grown man and a little girl hitching rides, the little girl hasn’t got any overnight case, and the cops are after them. So I have an idea. It isn’t so farfetched. I think that maybe here’s a daddy who wanted custody of his button and couldn’t get it. So he snatched her.”

“It sounds pretty farfetched to me.”

“Happens all the time, Frank. And I think to myself, the mommy didn’t like that so well and, swore out a warrant on the daddy. That would explain all the roadblocks. You only get coverage like that for a big robbery… or a kidnapping.”

“She’s my daughter, but her mother didn’t put the police on us,” Andy said. “Her mother has been dead for a year.”

“Well, I’d already kind of shitcanned the idea,” Irv said. “It don’t take a private eye to see the two of you are pretty close. Whatever else may be going on, it doesn’t appear you’ve got her against her will.”

Andy said nothing.

“So here we are at my problem,” Irv said. “I picked the two of you up because I thought the little girl might need help. Now I don’t know where I’m at. You don’t strike me as the desperado type. But all the same, you and your little girl are going under false names, you’re telling a story that’s just as thin as a piece of tissue paper, and you look sick, Frank. You look just about as sick as a man can get and still stay on his feet. So those are my questions. Any you could answer, it might be a good thing.”

“We came to Albany from New York and hitched a ride to Hastings Glen early this morning,” Andy said. “It’s bad to know they’re here, but I think I knew it. I think Charlie knew it, too.” He had mentioned Charlie’s name, and that was a mistake, but at this point it didn’t seem to matter.

“What do they want you for, Frank?”

Andy thought for a long time, and then he met Irv’s frank gray eyes. He said: “You came from town, didn’t you? See any strange people there? City types? Wearing these neat, off-the-rack suits that you forget almost as soon as the guys wearing them are out of sight? Driving late-model cars that sort of just fade into the scenery?”

It was Irv’s turn to think. “There were two guys like that in the A amp;P,” he said. “Talking to Helga. She’s one of the checkers. Looked like they were showing her something.”

“Probably our picture,” Andy said. “They’re government agents. They’re working with the police, Irv. A more accurate way of putting it would be that the police are working for them. The cops don’t know why we’re wanted.”

“What sort of government agency are we talking about? FBI?”

“No. The Shop.”

“What? That CIA outfit?” Irv looked frankly disbelieving.

“They don’t have anything at all to do with the CIA,” Andy said. “The Shop is really the DSI-Department of Scientific Intelligence. I read in an article about three years ago that some wiseacre nicknamed it the Shop in the early sixties, after a science-fiction story called ‘The Weapon Shops of Ishtar.” By a guy named van Vogt, I think, but that doesn’t matter. What they’re supposed to be involved in are domestic scientific projects which may have present or future application to matters bearing on national security. That definition is from their charter, and the thing they’re most associated with in the public mind is the energy research they’re funding and supervising-electromagnetic stuff” and fusion power. They’re actually involved in a lot more. Charlie and I are part of an experiment that happened a long time ago. It happened before Charlie was even born. Her mother was also involved. She was murdered. The Shop was responsible.”

Irv was silent for a while. He let the dishwater out of the sink, dried his hands, and then came over and began to wipe the oilcloth that covered the table. Andy picked up his beer can.

“I won’t say flat out that I don’t believe you,” Irv said finally. “Not with some of the things that have gone on under cover in this country and then come out. CIA guys giving people drinks spiked with LSD and some FBI agent accused of killing people during the Civil Rights marches and money in brown bags and all of that. So I can’t say right out that I don’t believe you. Let’s just say you haven’t convinced me yet.”

“I don’t think it’s even me that they really want anymore,” Andy said. “Maybe it was, once. But they’ve shifted targets. It’s Charlie they’re after now.”

“You mean the national government is after a first- or second-grader for reasons of national security?”

“Charlie’s no ordinary second-grader,” Andy said. “Her mother and I were injected with a drug which was coded Lot Six. To this day I don’t know exactly what it was. Some sort of synthetic glandular secretion would be my best guess. It changed the chromosomes of myself and of the lady I later married. We passed those chromosomes on to Charlie, and they mixed in some entirely new way. If she could pass them on to her children, I guess she’d be called a mutant. If for some reason she can’t, or if the change has caused her to be sterile, I guess she’d be called a sport or a mule. Either way, they want her. They want to study her, see if they can figure out what makes her able to do what she can do. And even more, I think they want her as an exhibit. They want to use her to reactivate the Lot Six program.”

“What is it she can do?” Irv asked.

Through the kitchen window they could see Norma and Charlie coming out of the barn. The white sweater flopped and swung around Charlie’s body, the hem coming down to her calves. There was high color in her cheeks, and she was talking to Norma, who was smiling and nodding.

Andy said softly, “She can light fires.” “Well, so can I,” Irv said. He sat down again and was looking at Andy in a peculiar, cautious way. The way you look at people you suspect of madness.

“She can do it simply by thinking about it,” Andy said. “The technical name for it is pyrokinesis. It’s a psi talent, like telepathy, telekinesis, or precognition-Charlie has a dash of some of those as well, by the way-but pyrokinesis is much rarer… and much more dangerous. She’s very much afraid of it, and she’s right to be. She can’t always control it. She could burn up your house, your barn, or your front yard if she set her mind to it. Or she could light your pipe.” Andy smiled wanly. “Except that while she was lighting your pipe, she might also burn up your house, your barn, and your front yard.”

Irv finished his beer and said, “I think you ought to call the police and turn yourself in, Frank. You need help.” “I guess it sounds pretty nutty, doesn’t it?” “Yes,” Irv said gravely. “It sounds nutty as anything I ever heard.” He was sitting lightly, slightly tense on his chair, and Andy thought, He’s expecting me to do something loony the first chance I get.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter much anyway,” Andy said. “They’ll be here soon enough. I think the police would actually be better. At least you don’t turn into an unperson as soon as the police get their hands on you.”

Irv started to reply, and then the door opened. Norma and Charlie came in. Charlie’s face was bright, her eyes sparkling. “Daddy!” she said. “Daddy, I fed the-”

She broke off. Some of the color left her cheeks, and she looked narrowly from Irv Manders to her father and back to Irv again. Pleasure faded from her face and was replaced with a look of harried misery. The way she looked last night, Andy thought. The way she looked yesterday when I grabbed her out of school. It goes on and on, and where’s the happy ending for her?

“You told,” she said. “Oh Daddy, why did you tell?” Norma stepped forward and put a protective arm around Charlie’s shoulders. “Irv, what’s going on here?” “I don’t know,” Irv said. “What do you mean he told, Bobbi?” “That’s not my name,” she said. Tears had appeared in her eyes. “You know that’s not my name.” “Charlie,” Andy said. “Mr. Manders knew something was wrong. I told him, but he didn’t believe me. When you think about it, you’ll understand why.”