Highways in Hiding

G >> George Oliver Smith >> Highways in Hiding

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Scholar Phelps smiled, using a benign expression that indicated that he
was pleased with himself, but which had absolutely nothing to do with
his attitude towards me or any of the rest of the human race.

"Mr. Cornell, I am well aware of the time it may take for a man to
effect a change in his attitude. In fact, I would be very suspicious if
you were to make an abrupt reversal. However, I have outlined my
position and you may have time to think it over. Consider, at the very
least, the fact that while cooperation will bring you pleasure and
non-cooperation will bring you pain, the ultimate result will be that we
will make use of your ability in either case. Now--I will say no more
for the present."

The limousine had stopped in front of a four story brick building that
was only slightly different in general architecture than others in the
Medical Center. I could sense some slight difference, but when I took a
dig at the interior I found to my amazement that this building had been
built deliberately in a dead zone. The dead area stood up in the clarity
like a little blob of black ink at the bottom of a crystal clear
swimming pool, seen just before the ink began to diffuse.

Scholar Phelps saw my look of puzzlement and said, suavely, "We've
reversed the usual method of keeping unwilling guests. Here we know
their frame of mind and attitude; therefore to build the place in a dead
area keeps them from plotting among themselves. I trust that your
residence herein will be only temporary, Mr. Cornell."

I nodded glumly. I was facing those last and final words: _Or Else!_

Phelps signed a register at a guard's station in the lobby. We took a
very fast and efficient elevator to the third floor and Phelps escorted
me along a hallway that was lined with doors, dormitory style. In the
eye-level center of each door was a bull's eye that looked like one-way
glass and undoubtedly was. I itched to take a look, but Phelps was not
having any; he stopped my single step with a hand on my arm.

"This way," he said smoothly.

I went this way and was finally shown into one of the rooms. My nice
clean cell away from home.

XXIV

As soon as Phelps was gone, I took a careful look at my new living
quarters. The room itself was about fourteen by eighteen, but the end in
which I was confined was only fourteen by ten, the other eight feet of
end being barred off by a very efficient-looking set of heavy metal rods
and equally strong cross-girdering. There was a sliding door that fit in
place as nicely as the door to a bank vault; it was locked by heavy
keeper-bars that slid up from the floor and down from the ceiling and
they were actuated by hidden motors. In the barrier was a flat
horizontal slot wide enough to take a tray and high enough to pass a
teacup. The bottom of this slot was flush with a small table that
extended through the barrier by a couple of feet on both sides so that a
tray could be set down on the outside and slipped in.

I tested the bars with my hands, but even my new set of muscles wouldn't
flex them more than a few thousandths of an inch.

The walls were steel. All I got as I tried them was a set of
paint-clogged fingernails. The floor was also steel. The ceiling was a
bit too high for me to tackle, but I assumed that it, too, was steel.
The window was barred from the inside, undoubtedly so that any visitor
from the outside could not catch on to the fact that this building was a
private calaboose.

The--er--furnishings of this cold storage bin were meager of minimum
requirements. A washstand and toilet. A bunk made of metal girders
welded to the floor. The bedding rested on wide resilient straps fixed
to the cross-bars at top and bottom of the bed. A foam-rubber mattress,
sheets, and one blanket finished off the bed.

It was a cell designed by Mekstroms to contain Mekstroms and by
wiseacres to contain other wiseacres. The non-metallic parts of the room
were, of course, fireproof. Anything I could get hold of was totally
useless as a weapon or lever or tool; anything that might have been
useful to a prisoner was welded down.

Having given up in the escape department, I sat on my bunk and lit a
cigarette. I looked for tell-tales, and found a television lens set
above the door of the room eight feet outside of my steel barrier.
Beside the lens was a speaker grille and a smaller opening that looked
like a microphone dust cover.

With a grunt, I flipped my cigarette at the television lens. I hit just
above the hole, missing it by about an inch. Immediately a
tinny-sounding voice said,

"That is not permitted, Mr. Cornell. You are expected to maintain some
degree of personal cleanliness. Since you cannot pick up that cigarette
butt, you have placed an unwelcome task upon our personnel. One more
infraction of this nature and you will not be permitted the luxury of
smoking."

"Go to the devil!" I snapped.

There was no reply. Not even a haughty chuckle. The silence was worse
than any reply because it pointed out the absolute superiority of their
position.

Eventually I dozed off, there being nothing else to do. When I awoke
they'd shoved a tray of food in on my table. I ate unenthusiastically. I
dozed again, during which time someone removed the tray. When I woke up
the second time it was night and time to go to bed, so I went. I woke up
in the morning to see a burly guy enter with a tray of breakfast. I
attempted to engage him in light conversation but he did not even let on
that I was in the cell. Later he removed the tray as silently as he'd
brought it, and I was left with another four hours of utter boredom
until the same bird returned with a light lunch. Six hours after lunch
came a slightly more substantial dinner, but no talk.

By bedtime the second night I was getting stir-crazy.

I hit the sack at about nine thirty, and tossed and turned, unable to
drop off because I was not actually tired. I was also wondering when
they'd come around with their brain-washing crew, or maybe someone who'd
enter with an ultimatum.

On the following morning, the tray-bearer was Dr. Thorndyke, who sat on
the chair on the outside of my bars and looked at me silently. I tried
giving him stare for stare, but eventually I gave up and said, "So now
where do we go?"

"Cornell, you're in a bad spot of your own making."

"Could be," I admitted.

"And yet, really, you're more of a victim of circumstances."

"Forgetting all the sideplay, I'm a prisoner," I told him curtly. "Let's
face a few facts, Thorndyke, and stop tossing this guff."

"All right," he said shortly, "The facts are these: We would prefer that
you help us willingly. We'd further prefer to have you as you are. That
is, un-reoriented mentally."

"You couldn't afford to trust me," I grunted.

"Maybe we can. It's no secret that we've latched on to quite a number of
your friends. Let's assume that they will all be well-treated if you
agree to join us willingly."

"I'm sure that the attitude of any of my friends is such that they'd
prefer me to stand my ground rather than betray their notions of right
and wrong." I told him.

"That's a foolish premise," he replied. "You could no more prevail
against us than you could single-handedly overthrow the Government.
Having faced that fact, it becomes sound and sensible to accept the
premise and then see what sort of niche you can carve out of the new
order."

"I don't like your new order," I grunted.

"Many people will not," he admitted. "But then, people do not really
know what's good for them."

I almost laughed at him. "Look," I said, "I'd rather make my own
ignorant mistakes than to have some Great Father supervise my life. And
speaking of fathers, we've both got to admit that God Himself permits us
the complete freedom of our wills."

Thorndyke sneered at me. "If we're to quote the Scripture," he said
sourly, "I'll point out that 'The Lord Thy God is a jealous God,
visiting His wrath even upon seven generations of those who hate Him.'"

"Granted," I replied calmly, "But whether we love Him or hate Him is
entirely up to our own particular notion. Now--"

"Cornell, stop talking like an idiot. Here, too, you can take your
choice. I'm not ordering you. I'm just trying to point out that whether
you go on suffering or enjoying life is entirely up to your own
decision. And also your decision will help or hinder others."

"You're entirely too Godlike," I told him.

"Well," he said, "think it over."

"Go to the devil!"

"Now, that's a very weak response," he said loftily, "Doing nobody any
good or harm. Just talk. So stop gabbing and think."

Thorndyke left me with my thoughts. Sure, I had bargaining power, but it
was no good. I'd be useful only until they discovered some method of
inoculating normal flesh with Mekstrom's Disease, and once that was
taken care of, Steve Cornell would be a burden upon their resources.

So that was the morning of my third day of incarceration and nothing
more took place all day. They didn't even give me anything to read, and
I almost went nuts. You have no idea of how long fourteen hours can be
until you've been sitting in a cell with absolutely nothing to do. I
exercised by chinning myself on the bars and playing gymnastics. I
wanted to run but there was not enough room. The physical thrill I got
out of being able to chin myself with one hand wore off after a half
hundred pull-ups because it was no great feat for a Mekstrom. I did
push-ups and bridges and other stunts until I was bored again.

And all the while, my thinking section was going around and around. The
one main point that I kept coming back to was a very unpleasant future
to face:

It was certain that no matter what I did, nor how I argued, I was going
to help them out. Either I would do it willingly or they'd grow tired of
the lecture routine and take me in for a mental re-evaluation, after
which (Being not-Steve Cornell any more) I'd join their ranks and do
their bidding. About the only thing I could look at with self-confidence
was my determination to hold out. If I was going to join them, it would
be after I were no longer the man I am, but reoriented into whatever
design they wanted. And that resolve was weakened by the normal human
will to live. You can't make a horse drink water, but you can lead a
human being to a well and he will drink it dry if you keep a shotgun
pointed in his direction.

And so it ended up with my always wondering if, when the cards were all
dealt out face up, whether I would have the guts to keep on saying 'No'
right up to the point where I walked into their department of
brain-washing. In fact, I was rather afraid that in the last moment I'd
weaken, just to stay being me.

That uncertainty of mine was, of course, just the idea they wanted to
nourish in my mind. They were doing it by leaving me alone with my
mental merry-go-round.

Again I hit the sack out of sheer boredom and I turned and tossed for
what seemed like hours before I dropped off to sleep, wondering and
dreaming about who was to be the next visitor with a bill of goods to
sell.

The next visitor came in about midnight, or thereabouts. I woke up with
the realization that someone had come in through the outer door and was
standing there in the semi-dark caused by a bright moon shining in
through my barred window.

"Steve," she said, in a near whisper.

"Go away," I told her. "Haven't you done enough already?"

"Oh, please, Steve. I've got to talk to you."

I sat on the edge of my bunk and looked at her. She was fully dressed;
her light printed silk was of the same general pattern and fit that she
preferred. In fact, Catherine looked as I'd always seen her, and as I'd
pictured her during the long hopeless weeks of our separation.

"You've got something to add?" I asked her coldly.

"I've got to make you understand, Steve," she pleaded.

"Understand what?" I snapped. "I know already. You deliberately set out
to marry, or else-how tie some emotional cable onto me. God knows that
you succeeded. If it hadn't been for that accident, I'd have been nailed
down tight."

"That part is true," she whispered.

"Naturally, you've got justification."

"Well, I have."

"So has any burglar."

She shook her head at me. "Steve, you don't really understand. If only
you could read my mind and know the truth--"

She let this trail off in a helpless awkwardness. It was one of those
statements that are meaningless because it can be said by either friend
or foe and cannot be checked.

I just looked at her and suddenly remembered something:

This was the first time in my life that I was in a position to do some
verbal fencing with a telepath on even terms. I could say 'Yes' and
think 'No' with absolute impunity. In fact, I might even have had an
edge, since as a poor non-telepath I did have some training in
subterfuge, falsehood, and diplomatic maneuver that the telepath
couldn't have. Catherine and I, at long last, were in the position of
the so-called good old days when boys and girls couldn't really know the
truth about one another's real thoughts.

"So what's this truth?" I demanded.

"Steve, answer me truly. Have you ever been put on an odious job, only
to find that the job is really pleasant?"

"Yes."

"Then hear me out. I--in fact, no woman--takes kindly to being directed
to do what I did. I was told to meet you, to marry--" Her face looked
flustered and it might have been a bit flushed for all I knew. I
couldn't see color enough in the dim light to be sure. "--And then I met
you, Steve, and I found out that you were really a very nice sort of
guy."

"Well, thanks."

"Don't be bitter. Hear the truth. If Otto Mekstrom had not existed, if
there were no such thing as Mekstrom's Disease, and I had met you freely
and openly as men and women meet, I'd have come to feel the same, Steve.
I must make you understand that my emotional attachment to you was not
increased nor decreased by the fact that my physical actions were
directed at you. If anything, my job was just rendered pleasantly
easier."

I grunted. "And so you were made happy."

"Yes," she whispered. "And I was going to marry you and live honestly
with you--"

"Heck of a marriage with the wife in the Medical Center for Mekstrom's
Disease and our first child--"

"Steve, you poor fool, don't you understand? If our child came as
predicted, the first thing I'd do would be to have the child inoculate
the father? Then we'd be--"

"Um," I grunted. "I hadn't thought of that." This was a flat lie. I'd
considered it a-plenty since my jailing here. Present the Medical Center
with a child, a Mekstrom, and a Carrier, and good old pappy would be no
longer needed.

"Well, after I found out all about you, Steve, that's what I had in
mind. But now--"

"Now what?" I urged her gently. I had a hunch that she was leading up to
something, but ducking shy about it until she managed to find out how I
thought. It would have been all zero if we'd been in a clear area, but
as it was I led her gently on.

"But now I've failed," she said with a slight wail.

"What do they do with failures?" I asked harshly. "Siberia? Or a gunny
sack weighted down with an anvil? Or do they drum you out of the corps?"

"I don't know."

I eyed her closely. I was forced to admit that no matter how Catherine
thought, she was a mighty attractive dish from the physical standpoint.
And regardless of the trouble she'd put me through, I could not overlook
the fact that I had been deep enough in love to plan elopement and
marriage. I'd held her slender body close, and either her response had
been honestly warm or Catherine was an actress of very rare physical
ability. Scholar Phelps could hardly have picked a warmer temptress in
the first place; putting her onto me now was a stroke of near-genius.

I got up from the edge of my bunk and faced her through my bars. She
came close, too, and we looked into each other's faces over a cross-rail
of the heavy fence.

I managed a wistful grin at her. "You're not really a failure yet, are
you, kid?"

"I don't quite know how to--to--" she replied.

I looked around my little cell with a gruesome gesture. "This isn't my
idea of a pleasant home. And yet it will be my home until someone
decides that I'm too expensive to keep."

"I know," she breathed.

Taking the bit in my teeth, I said, "Catherine even though--well, heck.
I'd like to help you."

"You mean that?" she asked in almost an eager voice.

"It's not impossible to forget that we were eloping when all this
started."

"It all seems so long ago," she said with a thick voice. "And I wish we
were back there--no, Steve, I wish Mekstrom's Disease had never
happened--I wish--"

"Stop wishing and think," I told her half-humorously. "If there were no
Mekstrom's Disease, the chances are that we'd never have met in the
first place."

"That's the cruel part of it all," she cried. And I mean _cried_.

I rapped on the metal bars with a fist. "So here we are," I said
unhappily. "I can't help you now, Catherine."

She put her hands through the bars and held my face between them. She
looked searching into my eyes, as if straining to force her blocked
telepath sense through the deadness of the area. She leaned against the
steel but the barrier was very effective; our lips met through the cold
metal. It was a very unsatisfactory kiss because we had to purse our
lips like a pair of piccolo players to make them meet. It was like
making love through a keyhole.

This unsatisfactory lovemaking did not last long. Unsteadily, Catherine
said, "I want you, Steve."

Inwardly I grinned, and then with the same feeling as if I'd laughed out
loud at a funeral, I said, "Through these steel bars?"

She brought out a little cylindrical key. Then went to a brass wall
plate beside the outer door, inserted the key, and turned. The sliding
door to my cell opened on noiseless machined slides.

Then with a careful look at me, Catherine slipped a little shutter over
the glass bull's eye in the door. Her hand reached up to a hidden toggle
above the door and as she snapped it, a thick cover surged out above the
speaker, television lens, and microphone grille, curved down and shut
off the tell-tales with a cushioned sound. Apparently the top management
of the joint used these cells for other things than mere containment of
unruly prisoners. I almost grinned; the society that Scholar Phelps
proposed was not the kind that flourished in an atmosphere of trust, or
privacy--except for the top brass.

Catherine turned from her switch plate and came across the floor with
her face lifted and her lips parted.

"Hold me, Steve."

My hand came forward in a short jab that caught her dead center in the
plexus below the ribs. Her breath caught in one strangled gasp and her
eyes went glassy. She swayed stiffly in half-paralysis. My other hand
came up, closing as it rose, until it became a fist that connected in a
shoulder-jarring wallop on the side of her jaw. Her head snapped up and
her knees caved in. She folded from the hips and went down bonelessly.
From her throat came the bubbly sound of air being forced painfully
through a flaccid wet tube.

I jumped outside of the cell barrier because I was certain that they had
some means of closing the cell from a master control center. I don't
know much about penology, but that's the way I'd do it. I was
half-surprised that I'd been able to get away with this much.

Catherine stirred and moaned, and I stopped long enough to take the key
out of the wall plate. The cell door closed on its silent slides.

I had hardly been able to more than run the zipper up my shirt when the
door opened and I had to dance like a fool to get behind it. The door
admitted a flood of bright light from the corridor, and Dr. James
Thorndyke. The cell door must have been bugged.

Thorndyke came in behind a large automatic clutched in one nervous fist.
He strained his eyes at the gloom that was not cut by the ribbon of
light.

And then I cut him down with a solid slice of my right hand to the base
of his neck. I remembered to jump off the ground as the blow went home;
there was a sickening crunch of bone and muscle as Thorndyke caved
forward to the floor. He dropped the gun, luckily, as his body began to
twitch and kick spasmodically as the life drained out of him.

I re-swallowed a mouthful of bitter bile as I reached down to pick up
his gun. Then the room got hot and unbearably small and I felt a frantic
urge to leave, to close the door upon that sight.

XXV

I was yards away from my door before my panic left me. Then I remembered
where and who I was and took a fast look around. There was no one else
in the corridor, of course, or I would not have been able to cut and run
as I had. But I looked around anyway until my reasoning power told me
that I had done little to help my position.

Like the canary, my plans for escape ended once I was outside of my
cage. I literally did not know what to do with my new-found freedom. One
thing was becoming painfully obvious: I'd be pinned down tight once I
put a foot outside of the dead area in which this building was
constructed. What I needed was friends, arms, ammunition, and a good,
solid plan of escape. I had neither; unless you call my jailed friends
such help. And there I could not go; the tell-tales would give me away
to the master control center before I could raise my small--and
unarmed--army.

So I stood there in the brightly lighted corridor and tried to think. I
got nowhere, but I was driven to action again by the unmistakable sound
of the elevator at the end of the corridor.

I eyed the various cell doors with suspicion; opening any but an empty
room would cause some comment from the occupant, which again would give
me away. Nor did I have time to canvass the joint by peeking into the
one-way bull's eyes, peering into a semi-gloom to see which room was
empty.

So instead of hiding in the corridor, I sloped towards the elevator and
the stairwell that surrounded it, hoping that I could make it before the
elevator rose to my floor.

I know that my passage must have sounded like a turbojet in full flight,
but I made the stairway and took a headlong leap down the first short
flight of stairs just as the elevator door rolled open. I hit the wall
with a bumping crash that jarred my senses, but I kept my feet and
looked back up the stairs.

I caught a flash of motion; a guard sauntering past the top of the well,
a cigarette in one hand and a lazy-looking air about him. He was
expecting no trouble, and so I gave him none.

I crept up the stairs and poked my head out just at the floor level.

The guard, obviously confident that nothing, but nothing, could ever
happen in this welded metal crib, jauntily peered into a couple of the
rooms at random, took a long squint at the room I'd recently vacated,
and then went on to the end of the hall where he stuck a key in a
signal-box. On his way back he paused again to peer into my room,
straining to see if he could peer past the little shutter over the
bull's eye. Then he shrugged unhappily, and started to return.

I loped down the stairs to the second floor and waited. The elevator
came down, stopped, and the guard repeated his desultory search, not
stopping to pry into any darkened rooms.

Just above the final, first-floor flight, I stopped and sprawled on the
floor with only my head and the nose of my gun over the top step. Below
was the guard's desk and standing beside the desk with anger in every
line of his ugly face was Scholar Phelps!

The elevator came down, stopped, and the guard walked out, to be nailed
by Phelps.

"Your job," snapped the good Scholar coldly, "says you are to walk."

"Well, er--sir--it's--"

"Walk!" stormed Phelps angrily. "You can't cover that stairway in the
elevator, you fumbling idiot."

"But, sir--"

"Someone could easily come down while you go up."

"I know that, sir, but--"

"Then why do you disobey?" roared Phelps.

"Well, you see, sir, I know how this place is built and no one has ever
made it yet. Who could?" The guard looked mystified.

Phelps had to face that fact. He did not accept it gracefully. "My
orders are orders," he said stiffly. "You'll follow them. To the last
letter."

"Yes sir. I will."

"See that you do. Now, I'm going up. I'll ride and you walk. Meet me on
the fourth and bring the elevator down with you."

"Yessir."

I sloped upstairs like a scared rabbit. Up to the third again where I
moved down the corridor and slipped into the much-too-thin niche made by
a door. Stolidly the guard came up the stairs, crossed in front of the
elevator with his back to me, turned the far corner and went on up to
the fourth.

As his feet started up the stairs, I was behind him; by the time he
reached the top, I was half way up.

Phelps said, "Now, from this moment on, Waldron, you'll follow every
order to the absolute letter. And when I ring, don't make the error of
bringing the elevator. Send it. It'll come up and stop without a pilot."

"Yes sir. I'm sorry sir. But you understand, sir, there isn't really
much to guard, sir."

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