VII
Nurse Gloria Farrow waved at me from the ramp of the jetliner, and I ranforward to collect her baggage. She eyed me curiously but said no morethan the usual greetings and indication of which bag was hers.
I knew that she was reading my mind like a psychologist all the time,and I let her know that I wanted her to. I let my mind merely ramble onwith the usual pile of irrelevancies that the mind uses to fill in blankspaces. It came up with a couple of notions here and there but nothingdefinite. Miss Farrow followed me to my car without saying a word, andlet me install her luggage in the trunk.
Then, for the first time, she spoke: "Steve Cornell, you're as healthyas I am."
"I admit it."
"Then what is this all about? You don't need a nurse!"
"I need a competent witness, Miss Farrow."
"For what?" She looked puzzled. "Suppose you stay right here and startexplaining."
"You'll listen to the bitter end?"
"I've two hours before the next plane goes back. You'll have that timeto convince me--or else. Okay?"
"That's a deal." I fumbled around for a beginning, and then I decided tostart right at the beginning, whether it sounded cockeyed or not.
Giving information to a telepath is the easiest thing in the world.While I started at the beginning, I fumbled and finally ended up bygoing back and forth in a haphazard manner, but Miss Farrow managed toinsert the trivia in the right chronological order so that when Ifinished, she nodded with interest.
I posed the question: #Am I nuts?#
"No, Steve," she replied solemnly. "I don't think so. You've managed toaccept data which is obviously mingled truth and falsehood, and you'vemanaged to question the validity of all of it."
I grunted. "How about the crazy man who questions his own sanity, usingthis personal question as proof of his sanity since real nuts _know_they're sane?"
"No nut can think that deep into complication. What I mean is that theycannot even question their own sanity in the first premise of postulatedargument. But forget that, what I wanted to know is where you intend togo from here."
I shook my head unhappily. "When I called you I had it all laid out likea roadmap. I was going to show you proof and use you as an impartialobserver to convince someone else. Then we'd go to the Medical Centerand hand it to them on a platter. Since then I've had a shock that Ican't get over, or plan beyond. Scholar Phelps is a Mekstrom. That meansthat the guy knows what gives with Mekstrom's Disease and yet he isrunning an outfit that professes to be helpless in the face of thisdisease. For all we know Phelps may be the head of the Highways inHiding, an organization strictly for profit of some sort at the expenseof the public welfare."
"You're certain that Phelps is a Mekstrom?"
"Not absolutely positive. I had to close my mind because there might bea telepath on tap. But I can tell you that nobody with normal flesh-typefingers ever made that solid rap."
"A fingernail?"
I shook my head at her. "That's a click. With an ear at all you'd notethe difference."
"I'll accept it for the moment. But lacking your original plan, what areyou going to do now?"
"I'm not sure beyond showing you the facts. Maybe I should call up thatF.B.I. team that called on me after Thorndyke's disappearance and put itin their laps."
"Good idea. But why would Scholar Phelps be lying? And beyond your basicsuspicions, what can you prove?"
"Very little. I admit that my evidence is extremely thin. I saw PhillipHarrison turning head bolts on a tractor engine with a small end wrench.It should require a crossbar socket and a lot of muscle. Next is thegirl in Ohio who should be a bloody mess from the way she was treated.Instead she got up and tried to chase me. Then answer me a puzzler: Didthe Harrisons move because Marian caught Mekstrom's, or did they movebecause they felt that I was too close to discovering their secret? TheHighway was relocated after that, you'll recall."
"It sounds frightfully complicated, Steve."
"You bet it does," I grunted. "So next I meet a guy who is supposed toknow all the answers; a man dedicated to the public welfare, medicine,and the ideal of Service. A man sworn to the Hippocratic Oath. Or," Iwent on bitterly, "is it the Hypocritic Oath?"
"Steve, please--"
"Please, Hell!" I stormed. "Why is he quietly sitting there in Mekstromhide while he is overtly grieving over the painful death of his fellowman?"
"I wouldn't know."
"Well, I'm tired of being pushed around," I growled.
"Pushed around?" she asked quietly.
With a trace of scorn, I said, "Miss Farrow, I can see two possibleanswers. Either I am being pushed around for some deliberate reason, orI'm too smart, too cagey and too dangerous for them to handle directly.It takes only about eight weeks for me to reluctantly abandon the secondin favor of the first."
"But what makes you think you are being pushed?" she wanted to know.
"You can't tell me that I am so important that they couldn't erase me aseasily as they did Catherine and Dr. Thorndyke. And now that his namecomes up, let's ask why any doctor who once met a casual patient wouldgo to the bother of sending a postcard with a message on it that iscertain to cause me unhappiness. He's also the guy who nudged me bycalling my attention to my so-called 'shock hallucination' about FatherHarrison lifting my car while Phillip Harrison raced into the fire tomake the rescue. Add it up," I told her sharply. "Next he is invited toMedical Center to study Mekstrom's. Only instead of landing there, hesends me a postcard with one of the Highways in the picture, after whichhe disappears."
Miss Farrow nodded thoughtfully. "It is all tied up with your Highwaysand your Mekstrom People."
"That isn't all," I said. "How come the Harrisons moved so abruptly?"
"You're posing questions that I can't answer," complained Miss Farrow."And I'm not one hundred percent convinced that you are right."
"You are here, and if you take a look at what I'll show you, you'll beconvinced. We'll put it this way, to start: Something cockeyed is goingon. Now, one more thing I can add, and this is the part that confusesme: Everything that has been done seems to point to me. So far as I cansee they are operating just as though they want me to start a big hasslethat will end up by getting the Highways out of their Hiding."
"Why on earth would they be doing that?" she wanted to know.
"I don't have the foggiest notion. But I do have that feeling and thereis evidence pointing that way. They've let me in on things that normallythey'd be able to conceal from a highly trained telepath. So I intend togo along with them, because somewhere at the bottom of it all we'll findthe answer."
She nodded agreement.
Now I started up the car, saying, "I'm going to find us one of theHighways in Hiding, and we'll follow it to one of the way stations. Thenyou'll see for yourself that there is something definitely fishy goingon."
"This I'd like to see," she replied quietly. Almost too quietly. I tooka dig at her as I turned the car out through a tight corner of the lotonto the road. She was sitting there with a noncommittal expression onher face and I wondered why. She replied to my thought: "Steve, you mustface one thing. Anything you firmly believe will necessarily pass acrossyour mind as fact. So forgive me if I hold a few small doubts until Ihave a chance to survey some of the evidence at first hand."
"Sure," I told her. "The first bit won't be hard."
I drove eagerly across Illinois into Iowa watching for road signs. Iknew that once I convinced someone else, it would be easier to convincea third, and a fourth, and a fiftieth until the entire world was out onthe warpath. We drove all day, stopping for chow now and then, behavinglike a couple out on a vacation tour. We stopped in a small town alongabout midnight and found a hotel without having come upon any of thehidden highways.
We met at breakfast, talked our ideas over mildly, and took off again.We crossed into Nebraska about noon and continued to meander until latein the afternoon when we came upon our first giveaway road sign.
"Th
ere," I told her triumphantly.
She nodded. "I see the sign, Steve. That much I knew. Now all you haveto do is to show me the trial-blazes up in that emblem."
"Unless they've changed their method," I told her, "this one leads West,slightly south of." I stopped the car not many yards from the sign andwent over it with my sense of perception. #You'll note the ease withwhich the emblem could be turned upside down,# I interjected. #Note thesimilar width of the top and bottom trefoil, so that only a trained andinterested observer can tell the difference.#
I drove along until we saw one on the other side of the road and westopped again, giving the sign a thorough going over. #Note that thesigns leading away from the direction are upside down,# I went on. Ididn't say a word, I was using every ounce of energy in running myperception over the sign and commenting on its various odds and ends.
#Now,# I finished, #we'll drive along this Highway in Hiding until wecome to some intersection or hideout. Then you'll be convinced.#
She was silent.
We took off along that road rather fast and we followed it for miles,passing sign after sign with its emblem turned up along the right sideof the road and turned upside-down when the sign was on the left.
Eventually we came to a crossing highway, and at that I pointedtriumphantly. "Note the missing spoke!" I said with considerableenthusiasm. "Now, Miss Farrow, we shall first turn against it for a fewmiles and then we shall U-turn and come back along the cross highwaywith it."
"I'm beginning to be convinced, Steve."
We turned North against the sign and went forty or fifty miles, just tobe sure. The signs were all against us. Eventually I turned into a gasstation and filled the carte up to the scuppers. As we turned backSouth, I asked her, "Any more comment?"
She shook her head. "Not yet."
I nodded. "If you want, we'll take a jaunt along our original course."
"By all means."
"In other words you are more than willing to be convinced?"
"Yes," she said simply. She went silent then and I wondered what she wasthinking about, but she didn't bother to tell me.
Eventually we came back to the crossroad, and with a feeling of havingbeen successful, I continued South with a confidence that I had not feltbefore. We stopped for dinner in a small town, ate hastily but well, andthen had a very mild debate.
"Shall we have a drink and relax for a moment?"
"I'd like it," she replied honestly. "But somehow I doubt that I couldrelax."
"I know. But it does seem like a good idea to take it easy for a halfhour. It might even be better if we stopped over and took off again inthe morning."
"Steve," she told me, "the only way I could relax or go to sleep wouldbe to take on a roaring load so that I'd pass out cold. I'd rather notbecause I'd get up tomorrow with a most colossal hangover. Frankly, I'mexcited and I'd prefer to follow this thing to a finish."
"It's a deal," I said. "We'll go until we have to stop."
It was about eight o'clock when we hit the road again.
* * * * *
By nine-forty-five we'd covered something better than two hundred miles,followed another intersection turn according to the missing spoke, andwere heading well toward the upper right-hand corner of Colorado on theroad map.
At ten o'clock plus a few minutes we came upon the roadsign that pointedthe way to a ranch-type house set prettily on the top of a small knollseveral hundred yards back from the main road. I stopped briefly a fewhundred feet from the lead-in road and asked Miss Farrow:
"What's your telepath range? You've never told me."
She replied instantly, "Intense concentration directed at me is about ahalf mile. Superficial thinking that might include me or my personalityas a by-thought about five hundred yards. To pick up a thought that hasnothing to do with me or my interests, not much more than a couple ofhundred feet. Things that are definitely none of my business close downto forty or fifty feet."
That was about the average for a person with a bit of psi trainingeither in telepathy or in esper; it matched mine fairly well, exceptingthat part about things that were none of my business. She meant_thoughts_ and not _things_. I had always had a hard timedifferentiating between things that were none of my damned business,although I do find it more difficult to dig the contents of a letterbetween two unknown parties at a given distance than it is to dig aletter written or addressed to a person I know. _Things_ are, by andlarge, a lot less personal than thoughts, if I'm saying anything new.
"Well," I told her, "this is it. We're going to go in close enough foryou to take a 'pathic look-around. Keep your mind sensitive. If you digany danger, yell out. I'm going to extend my esper as far as I can andif I suddenly take off like a startled spacecraft, it's because I haveuncovered something disagreeable. But keep your mind on them and not me,because I'm relying on you to keep posted on their mental angle."
Miss Farrow nodded. "It's hard to remember that other people haven't theability to make contact mentally. It's like a normal man talking to ablind man and referring constantly to visible things because he doesn'tunderstand. I'll try to remember."
"I'm going to back in," I said. "Then if trouble turns up, I'll have anadvantage. As soon as they feel our minds coming in at them, they'llknow that we're not in there for their health. So here we go!"
"I'm a good actor," she said. "No matter what I say, I'm with you allthe way!"
I yanked the car forward, and angled back. I hit the road easily andstarted backing along the driveway at a rather fast speed with my eyeshalf-closed to give my esper sense the full benefit of my concentrationalong the road. When I was not concentrating on how I was going to turnthe wheel at the next curve I thought, #I hope these folks know the bestway to get to Colorado Springs from here. Dammit, we're lost!#
Miss Farrow squeezed my arm gently, letting me know that she wasthinking the same general thoughts.
Suddenly she said, "It's a dead area, Steve."
It was a dead area, all right. My perception came to a barrier that madeit fade from full perception to not being able to perceive anything in amatter of yards. It always gives me an eerie feeling when I approach adead area and find that I can see a building clearly and not be able tocast my perception beyond a few feet.
I kept on backing up into the fringe of that dead area until I was deepwithin the edge and it took all my concentration to perceive the road afew feet ahead of my rear wheels so that I could steer. I was inchingnow, coming back like a blind man feeling his way. We were within aboutforty feet of the ranch house when Miss Farrow yelped:
"They're surrounding us, Steve!"
My hands whipped into action and my heavy right foot came down on thegas-pedal. The car shuddered, howled like a wounded banshee, and thenleaped forward with a roar.
A man sprang out of the bushes and stood in front of the car like astatue with his hand held up. Miss Farrow screamed somethingunintelligible and clutched at my arm frantically. I threw her hand offwith a snarl, kept my foot rammed down hard and hit the man dead center.The car bucked and I heard metal crumple angrily. We lurched, bouncedviciously twice as my wheels passed over his floundering body, and thenwe were racing like complete idiots along a road that should not havebeen covered at more than twenty. The main road came into sight and Isliced the car around with a screech of the rear tires, controlled thedeliberate skid with some fancy wheel-work and some fast digging of thesurrounding dangers.
Then we were tearing along the broad and beautifully clear concrete withthe speedometer needle running into the one-fifteen region.
"Steve," said Miss Farrow breathlessly, "That man you hit--"
In a hard voice I said, "He was getting to his feet when I drove out ofrange."
"I know," she said in a whimper. "I was in his mind. He was not hurt!God! Steve--what are we up against?" Her voice rose to a wail.
"I don't know, exactly," I said. "But I know what we're going to do."
"But Steve--what
can we do?"
"Alone or together, very little. But we can bring one person more outalong these Highways and then convince a fourth and a fifth and afiftieth and a thousandth. By then we'll be shoved back off the stagewhile the big wheels grind painfully slow but exceedingly meticulous."
"That'll take time."
"Certainly. But we've got a start. Look how long it took getting a startin the first place."
"But what is their purpose?" she asked.
"That I can't say. I can't say a lot of things, like how, and why andwherefore. But I know that now we have a front tooth in this affairwe're not going to let go." I thought for a moment. "I could useThorndyke; he'd be the next guy to convince if we could find him. Ormaybe Catherine, if we could find her. The next best thing is to gethold of that F.B.I. Team that called on me. There's a pair ofcold-blooded characters that seem willing to sift through a million tonsof ash to find one valuable cinder. They'll listen. I--"
Miss Farrow looked at her watch; I dug it as she made the gesture.#Eleven o'clock.#
"Going to call?" she asked.
"No," I said. "It's too late. It's one in New York now and the F.B.I.Team wouldn't be ready for a fast job at this hour."
"So?"
"I have no intention of placing a 'When you are ready' call to a numberidentified with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Not when a fulleight hours must elapse between the call and a reply. Too much canhappen to us in the meantime. But if I call in the morning, we canprobably take care of ourselves well enough until they arrive if we stayin some place that is positively teeming with citizens. Sensible?"
"Sounds reasonable, Steve."
I let the matter drop at that; I put the go-pedal down to the floor andfractured a lot of speed laws until we came to Denver.
We made Denver just before midnight and drove around until we located ahotel that filled our needs. It was large, which would prevent overtoperations on the part of the 'enemy' and it was a dead area, whichwould prevent one of them from reading our minds while we slept, and soenable them to lay counterplans against us.
The bellhop gave us a knowing leer as we registered separately, but Iwas content to let him think what he wanted. Better that he get thewrong idea about us than the right one. He fiddled around in MissFarrow's room on the ninth, bucking for a big tip--not for good service,but for leaving us alone, which he did by demonstrating how big anuisance he could be if not properly rewarded. But finally he got tiredof his drawer-opening and lamp-testing and towel-stacking, and escortedme up to the twelfth. I led him out with a five spot clutched in hisfist and the leer even stronger.
If he expected me to race downstairs as soon as he was out of ear-shot,he was mistaken, for I hit the sack like the proverbial ton of crushedmortar. It had been literally weeks since I'd had a pleasant, restfulsleep that was not broken by fitful dreams and worry-insomnia. Now thatwe had something solid to work on, I could look forward to some concreteaction instead of merely feeling pushed around.