Highways in Hiding
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George Oliver Smith >> Highways in Hiding
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I was going to shave and shower and dress and go downstairs. I was just
shrugging myself up and out of bed when Nurse Farrow came bustling up
the stairs and into the room with no preamble.
"Hi!" I greeted her. "I was going to--"
"Surprise us," she said quickly. "I know. So I came up to see that you
don't get into trouble."
"Trouble?" I asked, pausing on the edge of the bed.
"You're a Mekstrom, Steve," she told me unnecessarily. Then she caught
my thought and went on: "It's necessary to remind you. You have to learn
how to control your strength, Steve."
I flexed my arms. They didn't feel any different. I pinched my muscle
with my other hand and it pinched just as it always had. I took a deep
breath and the air went in pleasantly and come out again.
"I don't feel any different," I told her.
She smiled and handed me a common wooden lead pencil. "Write your name,"
she directed.
"Think I'll have to learn all over?" I grinned. I took the pencil, put
my fist down on the top of the bureau above a pad of paper and chuckled
at Farrow. "Now, let's see, my first initial is the letter 'S' made by
starting at the top and coming around in a sweeping, graceful curve like
this--"
It didn't come around in any curve. As the lead point hit the paper it
bore down in, flicked off the tip, and then crunched down, breaking off
the point and splintering the thin, whittled wood for about an eighth of
an inch. The fact that I could not control it bothered me inside and I
instinctively clutched at the shaft of the pencil. It cracked in three
places in my hand; the top end with the eraser fell down over my wrist
to the bureau top and rolled in a rapid rattle to the edge where it fell
to the floor.
"See?" asked Farrow softly.
"But--?" I blundered uncertainly.
"Steve, your muscles and your nervous system have been stepped up
proportionately. You've got to re-learn the coordination between the
muscle-stimulus and the feedback information from the work you are
doing."
I began to see what she meant. I remembered long years ago at school,
when we'd been studying some of the new alloys and there had been a
sample of a magnesium-lithium-something alloy that was machined into a
smooth cylinder about four inches in diameter and a foot long. It looked
like hard steel. People who picked it up for the first time invariably
braced their muscles and set both hands on it. But it was so light that
their initial effort almost tossed the bar through the ceiling, and even
long after we all knew, it was hard not to attack the bar without using
the experience of our mind and sense that told us that any bar of metal
_that_ big had to be _that_ heavy.
I went to a chair. Farrow said, "Be careful," and I was. But it was no
trick at all to take the chair by one leg at the bottom and lift it chin
high.
"Now, go take your shower," she told me. "But Steve, please be careful
of the plumbing. You can twist off the faucet handles, you know."
I nodded and turned to her, holding out a hand. "Farrow, you're a
brick!"
She took my hand. It was not steel hard. It was warm and firm and
pleasant. It was--holding hands with a woman.
Farrow stepped back. "One thing you'll have to remember," she said
cheerfully, "is only to mix with your own kind from now on. Now go get
that shower and shave. I'll be getting breakfast."
Showering was not hard and I remembered not to twist off the water-tap
handles. Shaving was easy although I had to change razor blades three
times in the process. I broke all the teeth out of the comb because it
was never intended to be pulled through a thicket of piano wire.
Getting dressed was something else. I caught my heel in one trouser leg
and shredded the cloth. I broke the buckle on my belt. My shoelaces went
like parting a length of wet spaghetti. The button on the top of my
shirt pinched off and when I gave that final jerk to my necktie it
pulled the knot down into something about the size of a pea.
Breakfast was very pleasant, although I bent the fork tines spearing a
rasher of bacon and removed the handle of my coffee cup without half
trying. After breakfast I discovered that I could not remove a cigarette
from the package without pinching the end down flat, and after I
succeeded in getting one into my mouth by treating both smoke and match
as if they were made of tissue paper, my first drag on the smoke lit a
howling furnace-fire on the end that consumed half of the cigarette in
the first puff.
"You're going to take some school before you are fit to walk among
normal people, Steve," said Gloria with amused interest.
"You're informing me?" I asked with some dismay, eyeing the wreckage
left in my wake. Compared to the New Steve Cornell, the famous bull in
the china shop was Gentle Ferdinand. I picked up the cigarette package
again; it squoze down even though I tried to treat it gentle; I felt
like Lenny, pinching the head off of the mouse. I also felt about as
much of a bumbling idiot as Lenny, too.
My re-education went on before, through, and after breakfast. I
manhandled old books from the attic. I shredded newspapers. I ruined
some more lead pencils and finally broke the pencil sharpener to boot. I
put an elbow through the middle panel of the kitchen door without even
feeling it and then managed to twist off the door knob. Generally
operating like a one-man army of vandals, I laid waste to the Farrow
home.
Having thus ruined a nice house, Gloria decided to try my strength on
her car. I was much too fast and too hard on the brakes, which of course
was not too bad because my foot was also too insensitive on the
go-pedal. We took off like a rocket being launched and then I tromped on
the brakes (Bending the pedal) which brought us down sharp like hitting
a haystack. This allowed our heads to catch up with the rest of us; I'm
sure that if we'd been normal-bodied human beings we'd have had our
spines snapped. Eventually I learned that everything had to be handled
as if it were tissue paper, and gradually re-adjusted my reflexes to
take proper cognizance of the feedback data according to my new body.
We returned home after a hectic twenty miles of roadwork and I broke the
glass as I slammed the car door.
"It's going to take time," I admitted with some reluctance.
"It always does," smiled Farrow as cheerfully as if I hadn't ruined
their possessions.
"I don't know how I'm going to face your folks."
Farrow's smile became cryptic. "Maybe they won't notice."
"Now look, Farrow----"
"Steve, don't forget for the moment that you're the only known Mekstrom
Carrier."
"In other words your parents are due for the treatment next?"
"Oh, I was most thorough. Both of them are in the final stages right
now. I'm sure that anything you did to the joint will only be added to
by the time they get to the walking stage. And also anything you did
they'll feel well repaid."
"I didn't do anything for them."
"You provided them with Mekstrom bodies," she said simply.
"They took to it willingly?"
"Yes. As soon as they were convinced by watching me and my strength.
They knew what it would be like, but they were all for it."
"You've been a very busy girl," I told her.
She just nodded. Then she looked up at me with troubled eyes and asked,
"What are you going to do now, Steve?"
"I'm going to haul the whole shebang down like Samson in the Temple."
"A lot of innocent people are going to get hurt if you do that."
"I can't very well find a cave in Antarctica and hide," I replied
glumly.
"Think a bit, Steve. Could either side afford to let you walk into New
Washington with the living proof of your Mekstrom Body?"
#Didn't stop 'em before,# I thought angrily. #And it seems to me that
both sides were sort of urging me to go and do something that would
uncover the other side.#
"Not deep enough," said Farrow. "That was only during the early phases.
Go back to the day when you didn't know what was going on."
I grunted sourly, "Look, Farrow, tell me. Why must I fumble my way
through this as I've fumbled through everything else?"
"Because only by coming to the conclusion in your own way will you be
convinced that someone isn't lying to you. Now, think it over, Steve."
It made sense. Even if I came to the wrong conclusion, I'd believe it
more than if someone had told me. Farrow nodded, following my thoughts.
Then I plunged in:
#First we have a man who is found to be a carrier of Mekstrom's Disease.
He doesn't know anything about the disease. Right?# (Farrow nodded
slowly.) #So now the Medical Center puts an anchor onto their carrier by
sicking an attractive dame on his trail. Um--# At this point I went into
a bit of a mental whirly-around trying to find an answer to one of the
puzzlers. Farrow just looked at me with a non-leading expression,
waiting. I came out of the merry-go-round after six times around the
circuit and went on:
#I don't know all the factors. Obviously, Catherine had to lead me fast
because we had to marry before she contracted the disease from me. But
there's a discrepancy, Farrow. The little blonde receptionist caught it
in twenty-four hours--?#
"Steve," said Farrow, "this is one I'll have to explain, since you're
not a medical person. The period of incubation depends upon the type of
contact. You actually bit the receptionist. That put blood contact into
it. You didn't draw any blood from Catherine."
"We were pretty close," I said with a slight reddening of the ears.
"From a medical standpoint, you were not much closer to Catherine than
you have been to me, or Dr. Thorndyke. You were closer to Thorndyke and
me, say, than you've been to many of the incidental parties along the
path of our travels."
"Well, let that angle go for the moment. Anyway, Catherine and I had to
marry before the initial traces were evident. Then I'd be in the
position of a man whose wife had contracted Mekstrom's Disease on our
honeymoon, whereupon the Medical Center would step in and cure her, and
I'd be in the position of being forever grateful and willing to do
anything that the Medical Center wanted me to do. And as a poor
non-telepath, I'd probably never learn the truth. Right?"
"So far," she said, still in a noncommittal tone.
"So now we crack up along the Highway near the Harrison place. The
Highways take her in because they take any victim in no matter what. I
also presume from what's gone on that Catherine is a high enough
telepath to conceal her thinking and so to become an undercover agent in
the midst of the Highways organization. And at this point the long long
trail takes a fork, doesn't it? The Medical Center gang did not know
about the Highways in Hiding until Catherine and I barrelled into it end
over end."
Farrow's face softened, and although she said nothing I knew I was on
the right track.
#So at this point,# I went on silently, #Medical Center found themselves
in a mild quandary. They could hardly put another woman on my trail
because I was already emotionally involved with the missing
Catherine--and so they decided to use me in another way. I was shown
enough to keep me busy, I was more or less urged to go track down the
Highways in Hiding for the Medical Center. After all, as soon as I'd
made the initial discovery, Phelps and his outfit shouldn't have needed
any more help.#
"A bit more thinking, Steve. You've come up with that answer before."
#Sure. Phelps wanted me to take my tale to the Government. About this
secret Highway outfit. But if neither side can afford to have the secret
come out, how come--?# I pondered this for a long time and admitted that
it made no sense to me. Finally Farrow shook her head and said,
"Steve, I've got to prompt you now and then. But remember that I'm
trying to make you think it out yourself. Now consider: You are running
an organization that must be kept secret. Then someone learns the secret
and starts heading for the Authorities. What is your next move?"
"Okay," I replied. "So I'm stupid. Naturally, I pull in my horns, hide
my signs, and make like nothing was going on."
"So stopping the advance of your organization, which is all that Phelps
really can expect."
I thought some more. #And the fact that I was carrying a story that
would get me popped into the nearest hatch for the incipient paranoid
made it all right?#
She nodded.
"And now?" she asked me.
"And now I'm living proof of my story. Is that right?"
"Right. And Steve, do not forget for one moment that the only reason
that you're still alive is because you are valuable to both sides alive.
Dead, you're only good for a small quantity of Mekstrom Inoculation."
"Don't follow," I grunted. "As you say, I'm no medical person."
"Alive, your hair grows and must be cut. You shave and trim off beard.
Your fingernails are pared. Now and then you lose a small bit of hide or
a few milliliters of blood. These are things that, when injected under
the skin of a normal human, makes them Mekstrom. Dead, your ground up
body would not provide much substance."
"Pleasant prospect," I growled. "So what do I do to avert this future?"
"Steve, I don't know. I've done what I can for you. I've effected the
cure and I've done it in safety; you're still Steve Cornell."
XXII
"Look," I blurted with a sudden rush of brain to the head, "If I'm so
all-fired important to both sides, how come you managed to sequester me
for four months?"
"We do have the laws of privacy," said Farrow simply. "Which neither
side can afford to flout overtly. Furthermore, since neither side really
knew where you were, they've been busily prowling one another's camps
and locking up the prowlers from one another's camps, and playing spy
and counterspy and counter-counterspy, and generally piling it up
pyramid-wise," she finished with a chuckle. "You got away with following
that letter to Catherine because uppermost in your mind was the brain of
a lover hunting down his missing sweetheart. No one could go looking for
Steve Cornell, Mekstrom Carrier, for reasons not intrinsically private."
"For four months?" I asked, still incredulous.
"Well, one of the angles is that both sides knew you were immobilized
somewhere, going through this cure. Having you a full Mekstrom is
something that both sides want. So they've been willing to have you
cured."
"So long as someone does the work, huh?"
"Right," she said seriously.
"Well, then," I said with a grim smile, "the obvious thing for me to do
is to slink quietly into New Washington and to seek out some high
official in secrecy. I'll put my story and facts into his hands, make
him a Mekstrom, have him cured, and then we'll set up an agency to
provide the general public with--"
"Steve, you're an engineer. I presume you've studied mathematics. So
let's assume that you can--er--bite one person every ten seconds."
"That's six persons per minute; three-sixty per hour; and, ah,
eighty-six-forty per day. With one hundred and sixty million Americans
at the last census--um. Sixty years without sleep. I see what you mean."
"Not only that, Steve, but it would create a panic, if not a global war.
Make an announcement like that, and certain of our not-too-friendly
neighbors would demand their shares or else. So now add up your time to
take care of about three billion human souls on this Earth, Steve."
"All right. So I'll forget that cockeyed notion. But still, the
Government should know--"
"If we could be absolutely certain that every elected official is a
sensible, honest man, we could," said Farrow. "The trouble is that we've
got enough demagogues, publicity hounds, and rabble-rousers to make the
secret impossible to keep."
I couldn't argue against that. Farrow was right. Not only that, but
Government found it hard enough to function in this world of Rhine
Institute with honest secrets.
"Okay, then," I said. "The only thing to do is to go back to Homestead,
Texas, throw my aid to the Highways in Hiding, and see what we can do to
provide the Earth with some more sensible method of inoculation. I
obviously cannot go around biting people for the rest of my life."
"I guess that's it, Steve."
I looked at her. "I'll have to borrow your car."
"It's yours."
"You'll be all right?"
She nodded. "Eventually I'll be a way station on the Highways, I
suppose. Can you make it alone, Steve? Or would you rather wait until my
parents are cured? You could still use a telepath, you know."
"Think it's safe for me to wait?"
"It's been four months. Another week or two--?"
"All right. And in the meantime I'll practice getting along with this
new body of mine."
We left it there. I roamed the house with Farrow, helping her with her
parents. I gradually learned how to control the power of my new muscles;
learned how to walk among normal people without causing their attention;
and one day succeeded in shaking hands with a storekeeper without giving
away my secret.
Eventually Nurse Farrow's parents came out of their treatment and we
spent another couple of days with them.
We left them too soon, I'm sure, but they seemed willing that we take
off. They'd set up a telephone system for getting supplies so that
they'd not have to go into town until they learned how to handle their
bodies properly, and Farrow admitted that there was little more that we
could do.
So we took off because we all knew that time was running out. Even
though both sides had left us alone while I was immobilized, both sides
must have a time-table good enough to predict my eventual cure. In fact,
as I think about it now, both sides must have been waiting along the
outer edges of some theoretical area waiting for me to emerge, since
they couldn't come plowing in without giving away their purpose.
So we left in Farrow's car and once more hit the big broad road.
We drove towards Texas until we came upon a Highway, and then turned
along it looking for a way station. I wanted to get in touch with the
Highways. I wanted close communication with the Harrisons and the rest
of them, no matter what. Eventually we came upon a Sign with a missing
spoke and turned in.
The side road wound in and out, leading us back from the Highway towards
the conventional dead area. The house was a white structure among a
light thicket of trees, and as we came close to it, we met a man busily
tilling the soil with a tractor plow.
Farrow stopped her car. I leaned out and started to call, but something
stopped me.
"He is no Mekstrom, Steve," said Farrow in a whisper.
"But this is a way station, according to the road sign."
"I know. But it isn't, according to him. He doesn't know any more about
Mekstrom's Disease than you did before you met Catherine."
"Then what the devil is wrong?"
"I don't know. He's perceptive, but not too well trained. Name's William
Carroll. Let me do the talking, I'll drop leading remarks for you to
pick up."
The man came over amiably. "Looking for someone?" he asked cheerfully.
"Why, yes," said Gloria. "We're sort of mildly acquainted with
the--Mannheims who used to live here. Sort of friends of friends of
theirs, just dropped by to say hello, sort of," she went on, covering up
the fact that she'd picked the name of the former occupant out of his
mind.
"The Mannheims moved about two months ago," he said. "Sold the place to
us--we got a bargain. Don't really know, of course, but the story is
that one of them had to move for his health."
"Too bad. Know where they went?"
"No," said Carroll regretfully. "They seem to have a lot of friends.
Always stopping by, but I can't help 'em any."
#So they moved so fast that they couldn't even change their Highway
Sign?# I thought worriedly.
Farrow nodded at me almost imperceptibly. Then she said to Carroll,
"Well, we won't keep you. Too bad the Mannheims moved, without leaving
an address."
"Yeah," he said with obvious semi-interest. He eyed his half-plowed
field and Farrow started her car.
We started off and he turned to go back to his work. "Anything?" I
asked.
"No," she said, but it was a very puzzled voice. "Nothing that I can put
a finger on."
"But what?"
"I don't know much about real estate deals," she said. "I suppose that
one family could move out and another family move in just in this short
a time."
"Usually they don't let farmlands lie fallow," I pointed out. "If
there's anything off color here, it's the fact that they changed their
residence without changing the Highway sign."
"Unless," I suggested brightly, "this is the coincidence. Maybe this
sign is really one that got busted."
Farrow turned her car into the main highway and we went along it. I
could have been right about the spoke actually being broken instead of
removed for its directing purpose. I hoped so. In fact I hoped so hard
that I was almost willing to forget the other bits of evidence. But then
I had to face the truth because we passed another Highway Sign and, of
course, its directional information pointed to that farm. The signs on
our side of the highway were upside down; indicating that we were
leaving the way station. The ones that were posted on the left hand side
were rightside up, indicating that the drive was approaching a way
station. That cinched it.
#Well,# as I told both Farrow and me, #one error doesn't create a trend.
Let's take another look!#
One thing and another, we would either hit another way station before we
got to Homestead, or we wouldn't. Either one could put us wise. So we
took off again with determination and finally left that side of
erroneous Highway Signs when we turned onto Route 66. We weren't on
Route 66 very long because the famous U.S. Highway sort of trends to the
Northeast and Homestead was in a Southern portion of Texas. We left
Route 66 at Amarillo and picked up U.S. 87, which leads due South.
Not many miles out of Amarillo we came up another set of Highway Signs
that pointed us on to the South. I tried to remember whether this
section led to Homestead by a long route, but I hadn't paid too much
attention to the maps when I'd had the chance and therefore the facts
eluded me.
We'd find out, Farrow and I agreed, and then before we could think much
more about it, we came upon a way station sign that pointed in to
another farmhouse.
"Easy," I said.
"You bet," she replied, pointing to the rural-type mailbox alongside the
road.
I nodded. The box was not new but the lettering on the side was. "Still
wet," I said with a grunt.
Farrow slowed her car as we approached the house and I leaned out and
gave a cheerful hail. A woman came out of the front door and waved at
us.
"I'm trying to locate a family named Harrison," I called. "Lived around
here somewhere."
The woman looked thoughtful. She was maybe thirty-five or so, clean but
not company-dressed. There was a smudge of flour on her cheek and a
smile on her face and she looked wholesome and honest.
"Why, I don't really know," she said. "That name sounds familiar, but it
is not an uncommon name."
"I know," I said uselessly. Farrow nudged me on the ankle with her toe
and then made a swift sign for "P" in the hand-sign code.
"Why don't you come on in?" invited the woman. "We've got an area
telephone directory here. Maybe--?"
Farrow nudged me once more and made the sign of "M" with her swift
fingers. We had hit it this time; here was a woman perceptive and a
Mekstrom residing in a way station. I took a mild dig at her hands and
there was no doubt of her.
A man's head appeared in the doorway above the woman; he had a hard face
and he was tall and broad shouldered but there was a smile on his face
that spread around the pipe he was biting on. He called, "Come on in and
take a look."
Farrow made the sign of "T" and "M" and that told me that he was a
telepath. She hadn't needed the "M" sign because I'd taken a fast
glimpse of his hide as soon as he appeared. Parrying for time and
something evidential, I merely said, "No, we'd hate to intrude. We were
just asking."
The man said, "Oh, shucks, Mister. Come on in and have a cup of coffee,
anyway." His invitation was swift enough to set me on edge.
I turned my perception away from him and took a fast cast at the
surrounding territory. There was a mildly dead area along the lead-in
road to the left; it curved around in a large arc and the other horn of
this horseshoe shape came up behind the house and stopped abruptly just
inside of their front door. The density of this area varied, the end in
which the house was built was so total that I couldn't penetrate, while
the other end that curved around to end by the road tapered off in
deadness until it was hard to define the boundary.
If someone were pulling a flanking movement around through that
horseshoe to cut off our retreat, it would become evident very soon.
A swift thought went through my mind: #Farrow, they're Mekstroms and
he's a telepath and she's a perceptive, and they know we're friendly if
they're Highways. If they're connected with Scholar Phelps and his--#
The man repeated, "Come on in. We've some mail to go to Homestead that
you can take if you will."
Farrow made no sound. She just seesawed her car with three rapid
back-and-forth jerks that sent showers of stones from her spinning
wheels. We whined around in a curve that careened the car up on its
outside wheels. Then we ironed out and showered the face of the man with
stones from the wheels as we took off. The shower of dust and stones
blinded him, and kept him from latching onto the tail of the car and
climbing in. We left him behind, swearing and rubbing dirt from his
eyes.
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