And Mr. Calder was only partly left. Outside the infirmary, the strangers were still examining the area for the sprayed pieces of Mr. Calder. Lights came on, and there were television cameras, and everyone was talking about how hard it must have been on Jimmy and Kathy to see such a horrible thing at their ages, so Kathy started to cry, and since Kathy was crying and everyone said it was horrible and since Jimmy's mother was hugging him as if something horrible had happened, Jimmy started to cry, too.
"The poor babies," said someone, and Jimmy couldn't stop crying. All this over Mr. Calder, who went up like a little firecracker with some of him left.
The two agents caught the nightly news on television as they went over their day's notes. There were the two children, crying away before the television cameras. The schoolyard. And Calder's home.
"A modest home on a well-kept street," said the announcer of the local television station.
"Well kept, you can bet," said the agent who had questioned the children. "We had both sides and the front of the house covered. And the backyard neighbor was a retired Marine." He blew air out of his mouth and went over the notes. Somehow, apparently in the children's toy, a bomb had been smuggled in. But then why did Calder play with it? How had it happened that a child hadn't grabbed it first and blown himself up, instead of Calder?
How did anyone even know the subject was in Fairview? He had changed his name to Calder when his children were only babies, so they never knew his real name. No one at the factory where he was assistant purchasing agent knew his name. The agent at the plant had kept an eye on that.
No stranger had entered Fairview. No stranger could have entered Fairview without the whole town knowing about it-that was why Fairview had been chosen. Everyone in this town talked. Gossip was the major industry here. That, and the single manufacturing plant.
The agent in charge of the investigation had also been in charge of picking the town for Calder. He had been careful about it. As the district director had told him, keeping the man called Calder alive was a career move:
"If he lives, you have one."
That blunt. That final.
Calder was just one of seven hundred government witnesses hidden away each year by the Justice Department. Seven hundred. Not one in the last ten years had been uncovered until he was ready for trial. This was necessary because as the Justice Department closed in on the mobs around the country, the mobs had started to fight back in their traditional way.
Good lawyers could occasionally discredit a witness in a courtroom, but the mobs had long ago found out that the best way to get rid of a troublesome witness was simply to get rid of him. During the twenties, a government witness against a racketeer signed his death warrant when he signed a statement. A secretary, a witness to a shooting, a thug who wanted to turn state's evidence-the mob would get them, even in jail. And righteously, defense counsel would get the signed statement thrown out of court because the witness's death had denied him his right to cross-examine.
So about ten years ago, the Justice Department had a good idea. Why not give the witnesses new identities and new lives and keep them absolutely secure until the trial? Then, after the trial, give them another life and watch them a while to make sure they were safe? And it had worked. Because now witnesses knew they could testify and live.
So the man called Calder had thought.
The phone in the motel room where the agent was staying rang. It was the district director of the FBI.
The agent wanted to speak first.
"As soon as I finish my report, you can have my resignation."
"Your resignation won't be required."
"Don't give me the official bullshit. I know I'm going to Anchorage or somewhere I can't live because of this thing."
"You don't know that. We don't know it. I don't know it. Just continue your work."
"You can't tell me that the agent who loses the first government witness in ten frigging years isn't going to get canned. C'mon, I'm not Bo Peep."
"You're also not the first. We lost two others this morning," said the District Director. "This whole thing may be coming apart."
In a sanitarium called Folcroft on Long Island Sound, giant computers received the details of the Fairview incident and the two others. Because of the designs of these machines, the printouts could only be gotten at one office. It had one-way windows, a large sparse desk, and a terminal which could be operated only through a code. The Fairview incident was the last to clack out of the machine. A gaunt man with a lemony face read all three reports. Unlike the district director in Oklahoma, Dr. Harold W. Smith did not think ten years work might be falling apart. He knew it was.
CHAPTER TWO
His name was Remo and the hotel guest wouldn't let him go. Was Remo aware that he and his Oriental friend probably produced an incredible amount of Theta waves and functioned to a great degree at the Alpha level?
Remo didn't know that. Would the guest please pass the salt?
The guest was sure that Remo and his elderly Oriental friend functioned at these states, otherwise how could Remo explain yesterday. How?
The salt.
Certainly, the salt. There was no other explanation, said Dr. Charlese, Averill N., as in Averill Harriman except he wasn't related to the wealthy and famous railroad family, just a poor parapsychologist trying to let people know of the great powers locked within humanity. He had a card:
Dr. Averill N. Charlese
President
Mind Potential Institute Houston, Texas
He had come down to Mexico City, where the America Games were now being held, to prove his theory. Not that it really needed proving, because it was a fact. Fact. People producing Theta waves could perform what appeared to be incredible feats.
Remo suddenly saw a small chart cover his breakfast of white rice and water. There, in blue and red and green and yellow, was an ascending "rainbow!" Yellow, at the top, was the conscious level of the mind, and darkest blue was the deep Theta state.
Remo looked around for a waiter at the El Conquistador, a large modern hotel built like a simulated Aztec temple, with waiters in Aztec-type print smocks, surrounded by very un-Aztec Muzak.
"If I'm bothering you, let me know," said Dr. Charlese, a pudgy man in his mid-thirties, with a crown of brownish gold hair gleaming like a helmet fashioned by hot comb and lacquer.
"You're bothering me," said Remo, who folded the chart and put it in Charlese's gold plaid jacket.
"Good. Honesty is the basis for a good relationship."
Remo chewed a few kernels of rice until they were liquid, then he drank it into his stomach. He eyed a roast beef, sliced thick and fatty and red, being served at a neighboring table. It had been a long time since he had had a piece of meat, and his memory hungered for it. Not his body, which now dictated what he would eat. He remembered that the roast beef used to be good. But that was a long time ago.
"I knew yesterday you were something special," said Dr. Charlese.
Remo tried to remember an incident the day before that might have inflicted this lacquer-headed sparkler of positive thought on him. He could not. There was nothing special the day before, just resting, getting sun and, of course, the training. But Charlese couldn't have been able to tell the training from a nap. Which was what it appeared to be, because at Remo's level of competence, his body had long ago achieved its maximum. He was now working in the limitless frontiers of his mind. Anything more he would learn to do, he would learn in his mind, not in his body.
Charlese opened the chart again, and moved the rice away, explaining that this was his only chart and he didn't want to get food on it.
Remo smiled politely, took the offered chart and, starting at the top left corner, tore it diagonally across. Then he tore the two remaining pieces into four, then the four into eight. He put them in Dr. Charlese's open mouth.
"Fantastic," said Dr. Charlese, spitting the confetti of his chart. A corner with a blue Theta on it landed in the center of Remo's rice. Enough. He rose from the table. He was a thin man, about six feet tall, give or take an inch, depending on how he used his body that day, with high cheekbones and eyes that had a central darkness of limitless, weightless space. He wore gray slacks and a dark turtleneck shirt. His shoes were loafers. As he left the table, the eyes of several women followed him. One sent back a green and yellow Montezuma parfait when she looked at her husband after looking at Remo.
Dr. Charlese followed him.
"You probably don't even remember what you did yesterday," said Dr. Charlese. "You were by the pool."
"Leave," said Remo.
Dr. Charlese followed him to the elevator. Remo waited until the door was just closing before he entered. The elevator was a local, making several stops before the fourteenth floor. When it reached the floor, Dr. Charlese was there smiling.
"Positive thinking. Positive thinking," he said. "I projected the elevator not to make stops."