Highways in Hiding

G >> George Oliver Smith >> Highways in Hiding

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I looked down at the itching finger and sent my perception into it with
as much concentration as I could.

My thumbnail had lifted a tiny circle no larger than the head of a pin.
Blood was oozing from beneath the lifted rim, and I nervously picked off
the tiny patch of hard, hard flesh and watched the surface blood well
out into a tiny droplet. My perception told me the truth: It was
Mekstrom's Disease and not a doubt. The Immune had caught it!

The bailiff tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Come along, Cornell!"

And I was going to have ninety days to watch that patch grow at the
inexorable rate of one sixty-fourth of an inch per hour!

XVI

The bailiff repeated, "Come along, Cornell." Then he added sourly, "Or
I'll have to slip the cuffs on you."

I turned with a helpless shrug. I'd tried to lick 'em and I'd tried to
join 'em and I'd failed both. Then, as of this instant when I might have
been able to go join 'em, I was headed for the wrong side as soon as I
opened my big yap. And if I didn't yelp, I was a dead one anyway. Sooner
or later someone in the local jug would latch on to my condition and
pack me off to Scholar Phelps' Medical Center.

Once more I was in a situation where all I could do was to play it by
ear, wait for a break, and see if I could make something out of it.

But before I could take more than a step or two toward the big door,
someone in the back of the courtroom called out:

"Your Honor, I have some vital information in this case."

His Honor looked up across the court with a great amount of irritation
showing in his face. His voice rasped, "Indeed?"

I whirled, shocked.

Suavely, Dr. Thorndyke strode down the aisle. He faced the judge and
explained who he was and why, then he backed it up with a wallet full of
credentials, cards, identification, and so forth. The judge looked the
shebang over sourly but finally nodded agreement. Thorndyke smiled
self-confidently and then went on, facing me:

"It would be against my duty to permit you to incarcerate this
miscreant," he said smoothly. "Because Mr. Cornell has Mekstrom's
Disease!"

Everybody faded back and away from me as though he'd announced me to be
the carrier of plague. They looked at me with horror and disgust on
their faces, a couple of them began to wipe their hands with
handkerchiefs; one guy who'd been standing where I'd dropped my little
patch of Mekstrom Flesh backed out of that uncharmed circle. Some of the
spectators left hurriedly.

His Honor paled. "You're certain?" he demanded of Dr. Thorndyke.

"I'm certain. You'll note the blood on his finger; Cornell recently
picked off a patch of Mekstrom Flesh no larger than the head of a pin.
It was his first sign." The doctor went on explaining, "Normally this
early seizure would be difficult to detect, except from a clinical
examination. But since I am telepath and Cornell has perception, his own
mind told me he was aware of his sorry condition. One only need read his
mind, or to dig at the tiny bit of Mekstrom Flesh that he dropped to
your floor."

The judge eyed me nastily. "Maybe I should add a charge of contaminating
a courtroom," he muttered. He was running his eyes across the floor from
me to wherever I'd been, trying to locate the little patch. I helped him
by not looking at it. The rest of the court faded back from me still
farther. I could hardly have been less admired if I'd been made of pure
cyanide gas.

The judge rapped his gavel sharply. "I parole this prisoner in the
custody of Dr. Thorndyke, who as a representative of the Medical Center
will remove the prisoner to that place where the proper treatment awaits
him."

"Now see here--" I started. But His Honor cut me off.

"You'll go as I say," he snapped. "Unfortunately, the Law does not
permit me to enjoy any cruel or unusual punishments, or I'd insist upon
your ninety-day sentence and watch you die painfully. I--Bailiff! Remove
this menace before I forget my position here and find myself in contempt
of the law I have sworn to uphold. I cannot be impartial before a man
who contaminates my Court with the world's most dangerous disease!"

I turned to Thorndyke. "All right," I grunted. "You win."

He smiled again; I wanted to wipe that smile away with a set of knuckles
but I knew that all I'd get would be a broken hand against Thorndyke's
stone-hard flesh. "Now, Mr. Cornell," he said with that clinical
smoothness, "let's not get the old standard attitude."

"Nearly everybody who contracts Mekstrom's Disease," he said to the
judge, "takes on a persecution complex as soon as he finds out that he
has it. Some of them have even accused me of fomenting some big
fantastic plot against them. Please, Mr. Cornell," he went on facing me,
"we'll give you the best of treatment that Medical Science knows."

"Yeah," I grunted.

His Honor rapped on the gavel once more. "Officer Gruenwald," he
snapped, "you will accompany the prisoner and Dr. Thorndyke to the
Medical Center and having done that you will return to report to me that
you have accomplished your mission."

Then the judge glared around, rapped once more, and cried, "Case
Finished. Next Case!"

I felt almost as sorry for the next guy coming in as I felt for myself.
His Honor was going to be one tough baby for some days to come. As they
escorted me out, a janitor came in and began to swab the floor where I'd
been standing. He was using something nicely corrosive that made the
icy, judicial eyes water, all of which discomfort was likely to be added
to the next law-breaker's sorry lot.

* * * * *

I was in fine company. Thorndyke was a telepath and Officer Gruenwald
was perceptive. They went as a team and gave me about as much chance to
escape as if I'd been a horned toad sealed in a cornerstone. Gruenwald,
of course, treated me as though my breath was deadly, my touch foul, and
my presence evil. In Gruenwald's eyes, the only difference between me
and Medusa the Gorgon was that looking at me did not turn him to stone.
He kept at least one eye on me almost constantly.

I could almost perceive Thorndyke's amusement. With the best of social
amenities, he could hardly have spent a full waking day in the company
of either a telepath or a perceptive without giving away the fact that
he was Mekstrom. But with me to watch over, Officer Gruenwald's mental
attention was not to be turned aside to take an impolite dig at his
companion. Even if he had, Thorndyke would have been there quickly to
turn his attention aside.

I've read the early books that contain predictions of how we are
supposed to operate. The old boys seemed to have the quaint notion that
a telepath should be able at once to know everything that goes on
everywhere, and a perceptive should be aware of everything material
about him. There should be no privacy. There was to be no defense
against the mental peeping Tom.

It ain't necessarily so. If Gruenwald had taken a dig at Thorndyke's
hide, the doctor would have speared the policeman with a cold, indignant
eye and called him for it. Of course, there was no good reason for
Gruenwald to take a dig at Thorndyke and so he didn't.

So I went along with the status quo and tried to think of some way to
break it up.

An hour later I was still thinking, and the bleeding on my finger had
stopped. Mekstrom Flesh had covered the raw spot with a thin, stone-hard
plate that could not be separated visually from the rest of my skin.

"As a perceptive," observed Dr. Thorndyke in a professional tone,
"you'll notice the patch of infection growing on Mr. Cornell's finger.
The rate of growth seems normal; I'll have to check it accurately once I
get him to the clinic. In fifty or sixty hours, Mr. Cornell's finger
will be solid to the first joint. In ninety days his arm will have
become as solid as the arm of a marble statue."

I interjected, "And what do we do about it?"

He moved his head a bit and eyed me in the rear view mirror. "I hope we
can help you, Cornell," he said in a tone of sympathy that was
definitely intended to impress Officer Gruenwald with his medical
appreciation of the doctor's debt to humanity. "I sincerely hope so. For
in doing so, we will serve the human race. And," he admitted with an
entirely human-sounding selfishness, "I may be able to deliver a thesis
on the cure that will qualify me for my scholarate."

I took a fast stab: "Doctor, how does my flesh differ from yours?"

Thorndyke parried this attention-getting question: "Mine is of no
consequence. Dig your own above and below the line of infection,
Cornell. If your sense of perception has been trained fine enough, dig
the actual line of infection and watch the molecular structure
rearrange. Can you dig that fine, Officer? Cornell, I hate to dwell at
length upon your misfortune, but perhaps I can help you face it by
bringing the facts to light."

#Like the devil you hate to dwell, Doctor Mekstrom!#

In the rear view mirror, his lips parted in a bland smile and one eyelid
dropped in a knowing wink.

I opened my mouth to make another stab in the open but Thorndyke got
there first. "Officer Gruenwald," he suggested, "you can help by putting
out your perception along the road ahead and seeing how it goes. I'd
like to make tracks with this crate."

Gruenwald nodded.

Thorndyke put the goose-pedal down and the car took off with a howl of
passing wind. He said with a grin, "It isn't very often that I get a
chance to drive like this, but as long as I've an officer with me--"

He was above one forty by the time he let his voice trail off.

I watched the back of their heads for a moment. At this speed, Thorndyke
would have both his mind and his hands full and the cop would be digging
at the road as far ahead as his perception could dig a clear
appreciation of the road and its hazards. Thorndyke's telepathy would be
occupied in taking this perception and using it. That left me free to
think.

I cast a dig behind me, as far behind me as my perception would reach.
Nothing.

I thought furiously. It resulted in nothing.

I needed either a parachute or a full set of Mekstrom Hide to get out of
this car now. With either I might have taken a chance and jumped. But as
it was, the only guy who could scramble out of this car was Dr. James
Thorndyke.

I caught his dropping eyelid in the rear view mirror again and swore at
him under my breath.

Time, and miles, went past. One after the other, very fast. We hissed
through towns where the streets had been opened for us and along broad
stretches of highway and between cars and trucks running at normal
speeds. One thing I must say for Thorndyke: He was almost as good a
driver as I.

* * * * *

My second arrival at the Medical Center was rather quiet. I went in the
service entrance, so to speak, and didn't get a look at the enamelled
blonde at the front portal. They whiffed me in at a broad gate that was
opened by a flunky and we drove for another mile through the grounds far
from the main road. We ended up in front of a small brick building and
as we went through the front office into a private place, Thorndyke told
a secretary that she should prepare a legal receipt for my person. I did
not like being bandied about like a hunk of merchandise, but nobody
seemed to care what I thought. It was all very fast and efficient. I'd
barely seated myself and lit a cigarette when the nurse came in with the
document which Thorndyke signed, she witnessed, and was subsequently
handed to Officer Gruenwald.

"Is there any danger of me--er--contracting--" he faltered uncertainly
to Dr. Thorndyke.

"You'll notice that--" I started to call attention to Thorndyke's
calmness at being in my presence and was going to invite Gruenwald to
take a dig at the doctor's hide, but once more the doctor blocked me.

"None of us have ever found any factor of contagion," he said. "And we
live among Mekstrom Cases. You'll notice Miss Clifton's lack of
concern."

Miss Clifton, the nurse, turned a calm face to the policeman and gave
him her hand. Miss Clifton had a face and a figure that was enough to
make a man forget anything. She knew her part very well; together, the
nurse and the policeman left the office together and I wondered just why
a non-Mekstrom would have anything to do with an outfit like this.

Thorndyke smiled and said, "I won't tell you, Steve. What you don't know
won't hurt anybody."

"Mind telling me what I'm slated for? The high jump? Going to watch me
writhing in pain as my infection climbs toward my vitals? Going to
amputate? Or are you going to cut it off inch by inch and watch me
suffer?"

"Steve, some things you know already. One, that you are a carrier. There
have been no other carriers. We'd like to know what makes you a
carrier."

#The laboratory again?# I thought.

He nodded. "Also whether your final contraction of Mekstrom's Disease
removes the carrier-factor."

I said hopefully, "I suppose as a Mekstrom I'll eventually be qualified
to join you?"

Thorndyke looked blank. "Perhaps," he said flatly.

To my mind, that flat _perhaps_ was the same sort of reply that Mother
used to hand me when I wanted something that she did not want to give.
I'd been eleven before I got walloped across the bazoo by pointing out
to her that _we'll see_ really meant _no_, because nothing that she said
it to ever came to pass.

"Look, Thorndyke, let's take off our shoes and stop dancing," I told
him. "I have a pretty good idea of what's been going on. I'd like an
honest answer to what's likely to go on from here."

"I can't give you that."

"Who can?"

He said nothing, but he began to look at me as though I weren't quite
bright. That made two of us, I was looking at him in the same manner.

My finger itched a bit, saving the situation. I'd been about to forget
that Thorndyke was a Mekstrom and take a swing at him.

He laughed at me cynically. "You're in a very poor position to dictate
terms," he said sharply.

"All right," I agreed reluctantly. "So I'm a prisoner. I'm also under a
sentence of death. Don't think me unreasonable if I object to it."

"The trouble with your thinking is that you expect all things to be
black or white and so defined. You ask me, 'am I going to live or die?'
and expect me to answer without qualification. I can only tell you that
I don't know which. That it all depends."

"Depends upon exactly what?"

He eyed me with a cold stare. "Whether you're worthy of living."

"Who's to decide?"

"We will."

I grunted, wishing that I knew more Latin. I wanted to quote that Latin
platitude about who watches the watchers. He watched me narrowly, and I
expected him to quote me the phrase after having read my mind. But
apparently the implication of the phrase did not appeal to him, and so
he remained silent.

I broke the silence by saying, "What right has any man or collection of
men to decide whether I, or anyone else, has the right to live or die?"

"It's done all the time," he replied succinctly.

"Yeah?"

"Criminals are--"

"I'm not a criminal; I've violated no man-made law. I've not even
violated very many of the Ten Commandments. At least, not the one that
is punishable by death."

He was silent for a moment again, then he said, "Steve, you're the
victim of loose propaganda."

"Who isn't?" I granted. "The entire human race is lambasted by one form
of propaganda or another from the time the infant learns to sit up until
the elderly lays down and dies. We're all guilty of loose thinking. My
own father, for instance, had to quit school before he could take any
advanced schooling, had to fight his way up, had to collect his advanced
education by study, application, and hard practice. He always swore that
this long period of hardship strengthened his will and his character and
gave him the guts to go out and do things that he'd never have thought
of if he'd had an easy life. Then the old duck turns right around and
swears that he'll never see any son of his take the bumps as he took
them."

"That's beside the point, Steve. I know what sort of propaganda you've
been listening to. It's the old do-good line; the everything for anybody
line; the no man must die alone line."

"Is it bad?"

Dr. Thorndyke shrugged. "You've talked about loose propaganda," he said.
"Well, in this welter of loose propaganda, every man had at least the
opportunity of choosing which line of guff he intends to adhere to. I'm
even willing to admit that there is both right and wrong on both sides.
Are you?"

I stifled a sour grin. "I shouldn't, because it is a mistake in any
political argument to even let on that the other guy is slightly more
than an idiot. But as an engineer, I'll admit it."

"Now that's a help," he said more cheerfully. "You're objecting, of
course, to the fact that we are taking the right to pick, choose, and
select those people that we think are more likely to be of good
advantage to the human race. You've listened to that old line about the
hypothetical cataclysm that threatens the human race, and how would you
choose the hundred people who are supposed to carry on. Well, have you
ever eyed the human race in slightly another manner?"

"I wouldn't know," I told him. "Maybe."

"Have you ever watched the proceedings of one of those big trials where
some conkpot has blown the brains out of a half-dozen citizens by
pointing a gun and emptying it at a crowd? If you have, you've been
appalled by the sob sisters and do-gooders who show that the vicious
character was momentarily off his toggle. We mustn't execute a nut, no
matter how vicious he is. We've got to protect him, feed him, and house
him for the next fifty years. Now, not only is he doing Society
absolutely no damned good while he's locked up for fifty years, he's
also eating up his share of the standard of living. Then to top this
off, so long as this nut is alive, there is the danger that some
soft-hearted fathead will succeed in getting him turned loose once
more."

"Agreed," I said. "But you're again talking about criminals, which I
don't think applies in my case."

"No, of course not," he said quickly. "I used it to prove to you that
this is one way of looking at a less concrete case. Carry this soft
headed thinking a couple of steps higher. Medical science has made it
possible for the human race to dilute its strength. Epileptics are saved
to breed epileptics; haemophiliacs are preserved, neurotics are ironed
out, weaknesses of all kinds are kept alive to breed their strain of
weakness."

"Just what has this to do with me and my future?" I asked.

"Quite a lot. I'm trying to make you agree that there are quite a lot of
undeserving characters here on Earth."

"Did I ever deny it?" I asked him pointedly, but he took it as not
including present company.

But I could see where Thorndyke was heading. First eliminate the lice on
the body politic. Okay, so I am blind and cannot see the sense of
incarcerating a murderer that has to be fed, clothed, and housed at my
expense for the rest of his natural life. Then for the second step we
get rid of weaklings, both physical and mental. I'll call Step Two
passably okay, but--? Number Three includes grifters, beggars, bums, and
guys out for the soft touch and here I begin to wonder. I've known some
entertaining grifters, beggars, and bums; a few of them chose their way
of life for their own, just as I became a mechanical engineer.

The trouble with this sort of philosophy is that it starts off with an
appeal to justice and logic (I'm quoting myself), but it quickly gets
dangerous. Start knocking off the bilge-scum. Then when the lowest
strata of society is gone, start on the next. Carry this line of
reasoning out to straight Aristotelian Logic and you come up with
parties like you and me, who may have been quite acceptable when
compared to the whole cross-section of humanity, but who now have no one
but his betters to compete with.

I had never reasoned this out before, but as I did right there and then,
I decided that Society cannot draw lines nor assume a static pose.
Society must move constantly, either in one direction or the other. And
while I object to paying taxes to support some rattlehead for the rest
of his natural life, I'd rather have it that way than to have someone
start a trend of bopping off everybody who has not the ability to absorb
the educational level of the scholar. Because, if the trend turned
upward instead of downward, that's where the dividing line would end.

Anarchy at one end, is as bad as tyranny at the other--

"I'm sorry you cannot come to a reasonable conclusion," said Dr.
Thorndyke. "If you cannot see the logic of--"

I cut him off short. "Look, Doc," I snapped, "If you can't see where
your line of thinking ends, you're in bad shape."

He looked superior. "You're sour because you know you haven't got what
it takes."

I almost nipped. "You're so damned dumb that you can't see that in any
society of supermen, you'd not be qualified to clean out ash trays," I
tossed back at him.

He smiled self-confidently. "By the time they start looking at my
level--if they ever do--you'll have been gone long ago. Sorry, Cornell.
You don't add up."

Well, that was nothing I didn't know already. In his society, I was a
nonentity. Yet, somehow, if that's what the human race was coming to
under the Thorndyke's and the Phelps', I didn't care to stay around.

"All right," I snapped. "Which way do I go from here? The laboratory, or
will you dispense with the preliminaries and let me take the high slide
right now before this--" I held up my infected finger, "gets to the
painful stages."

With the air and tone of a man inspecting an interesting specimen
impaled on a mounting pin, Thorndyke replied:

"Oh--we have use for the likes of you."

XVII

It would please me no end to report here that the gang at the Medical
Center were crude, rough, vicious, and that they didn't give a damn
about human suffering. Unfortunately for my sense of moral balance, I
can't. They didn't cut huge slices out of my hide without benefit of
anaesthesia. They didn't shove pipe-sized needles into me, or strap me
on a board and open me up with dull knives. Instead, they treated me as
if I'd been going to pay for my treatment and ultimately emerge from the
Center to go forth and extol its virtues. I ate good food, slept in a
clean and comfortable bed, smoked free cigarettes, read the best
magazines--and also some of the worst, if I must report the whole
truth--and was permitted to mingle with the rest of the patients,
guests, victims, personnel, and so forth that were attached to my ward.

I was not at any time treated as though I were anything but a willing
and happy member of their team. It was known that I was not, but if any
emotion was shown, it was sympathy at my plight in not being one of
them. This was viewed in the same way as any other accident of birth or
upbringing.

In my room was another man about my age. He'd arrived a day before me,
with an early infection at the tip of his middle toe. He was, if I've
got to produce a time-table, about three-eights of an inch ahead of me.
He had no worries. He was one of their kind of thinkers.

"How'd you connect?" I asked him.

"I didn't," he said, scratching his infected toe vigorously. "They
connected with me."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I was sleeping tight and not even dreaming. Someone rapped on my
apartment door and I growled myself out of bed and sort of felt my way.
It was three in the morning. Guy stood there looking apologetic. 'Got a
message for you,' he tells me. 'Can't it wait until morning?' I snarl
back. 'No,' he says. 'It's important!' So I invite him in. He doesn't
waste any time at all; his first act is to point at an iron floor lamp
in the corner and ask me how much I'd paid for it. I tell him. Then this
bird drops twice the amount on the coffee table, strides over to the
corner, picks up the lamp, and ties the iron pipe into a fancy-looking
bowknot. He didn't even grunt. 'Mr. Mullaney,' he asks me, 'How would
you like to be that strong?' I didn't have to think it over. I told him
right then and there. Then we spent from three ayem to five thirty going
through a fast question and answer routine, sort of like a complicated
word-association test. At six o'clock I've packed and I'm on my way here
with my case of Mekstrom's Disease."

"Just like that?" I asked Mr. Mullaney.

"Just like that," he repeated.

"So now what happens?"

"Oh, about tomorrow I'll go in for treatment," he said. "Seems as how
they've got to start treatment before the infection creeps to the first
joint or I'll lose the joint." He contemplated me a bit; he was a
perceptive and I knew it. "You've got another day or more. That's
because your ring finger is longer than my toe."

"What's the treatment like?" I asked him.

"That I don't know. I've tried to dig the treatment, but it's too far
away from here. This is just a sort of preliminary ward; I gather that
they know when to start and so on." He veiled his eyes for a moment. He
was undoubtedly thinking of my fate. "Chess?" he asked, changing the
subject abruptly.

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