Highways in Hiding

G >> George Oliver Smith >> Highways in Hiding

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18

"Then guard nothing. But guard it well, because a man in your position
is gauged in success by the amount of boredom he creates for himself."

The guard started down and I darted up to poke my head out to see where
Phelps was going. As I neared the floor level, I had a shock like
someone hurling twenty gallons of ice water in my face. The top floor
was the end of the dead area, and I--

--pulled my head down into the murk like a diver taking a plunge.

So I stood there making like a guppy with my head, sounding out the
boundary of that deadness, ducking down as soon as the mental murk gave
me a faint perception of the wall and ceiling above me. Then I'd move
aside and sound it again. Eventually I found a little billowing furrow
that rose above the floor level and I crawled out along the floor, still
sounding and moving cautiously with my body hidden in the deadness that
rose and fell like a cloud of murky mental smoke to my sense of
perception.

I would have looked silly to any witness; wallowing along the floor like
a porpoise acting furtive in the bright lights.

But then I couldn't go any farther; the deadness sank below the floor
level and left me looking along a bare floor that was also bare to my
sense of perception.

I shoved my head out of the dead zone and took a fast dig, then dropped
back in again and lay there re-constructing what I'd perceived mentally.
I did it the second time and the third, each time making a rapid scan of
some portion of that fourth floor.

In three fast swings, I collected a couple of empty offices, a very
complete hospital set-up operating room, and a place that looked like a
consultation theatre.

On my fourth scan, I whipped past Scholar Phelps, who was apparently
deep in some personal interest.

I rose at once and strode down the hall and snapped the door open just
as Phelps' completely unexpecting mind grasped the perceptive fact that
someone was coming down his hallway wearing a great big forty five
automatic.

"Freeze!" I snapped.

"Put that weapon down, Mr. Cornell. It, nor its use, will get your
freedom."

"Maybe all I want out of life is to see you leave it," I told him.

"You'd not be that foolish, I'm sure," he said.

"I might."

He laughed, with all the self-confidence in the world. "Mr. Cornell, you
have too much will to live. You're not the martyr type."

"I might turn out to be the cornered-rat type," I told him seriously.
"So play it cagey, Phelps."

"Scholar Phelps, please."

"I wouldn't disgrace the medical profession," I told him. "So--"

"So what do you propose to do about this?"

"I'm getting out."

"Don't be ridiculous. One step out of this building and you'll return
within a half minute. How did you get out?"

"I was seduced out. Now--"

"I'd advise you to surrender; to stop this hopeless attempt; to put that
weapon down. You cannot escape. There are, in this building, your mental
and intellectual superiors whose incarceration bear me witness."

I eyed him coldly and quietly. "I'm not convinced. I'm out. And if you
could take a dig below you'd see a dead man and an unconscious woman to
bear me witness. I broke your Dr. Thorndyke's neck with a chop of my
bare hand, Phelps; I knocked Catherine cold with a fist. This thing
might not kill you, but I'm a Mekstrom, too, and so help me I can cool
you down but good."

"Violence will get you nothing."

"Try my patience. I'll bet my worthless hide on it." Then I grinned at
him. "Oh, it isn't so worthless, is it?"

"One cry from me, Mr. Cornell, and--"

"And you'll not live to see what happens. I've killed once tonight. I
didn't like it. But the idea is not as new now as it was then. I'll kill
you, Phelps, if for no other reason than merely to keep my word."

With a sneer, Phelps turned to his desk and I stabbed my perception
behind the papers and stuff to the call button; then I launched myself
across the room like a rocket, swinging my gun hand as I soared. The
steel caught him on the side of the head and drove him back from his
call button before his finger could press it. Then I let him have a fist
in the belly because the pistol swat hadn't much more than dazed him.
The fist did it. He crumpled in a heap and fought for breath
unconsciously.

I turned to the wall he'd been eyeing with so much attention.

There was row upon row of small kine tubes, each showing the dark
interior of a cell. Below each was a row of pilot lights, all dark.

On his desk was a large bank of push buttons, a speaker, and a
microphone. And beside the push button set-up was a ledger containing a
list of names with their cell numbers.

I found Marian Harrison; pushed her button, and heard her ladylike snore
from the speaker. A green lamp winked under one of the kine tubes and I
walked over and looked into the darkened cell to see her familiar hair
sprawled over a thick pillow.

I went to the desk and snapped on the microphone.

"Marian," I said. "MARIAN! HEY! MARIAN HARRISON!"

In the picture tube there was a stir, then she sat up and looked around
in a sort of daze.

"Marian, this is Steve Cornell, but don't--"

"Steve!"

"--cry out," I finished uselessly.

"Where are you?" she asked in a whisper.

"I'm in the con room."

"But how on Earth--?"

"No time to gab. I'll be down in a rush with the key. Get dressed!"

"Yes, Steve."

I took off in a headlong rush with the 'Hotel Register' in one hand. I
made the third floor and Marian's cell in slightly more than nothing
flat, but she was ready when I came barging into her room. She was out
of the cell before it hit the backstop and following me down the hall
towards her brother's room.

"What happened?" she asked breathlessly.

"Later," I told her. I opened Phillip Harrison's cell. "You go wake up
Fred Macklin and tell him to come here. Then get the Macklin
girl--Alice, it says here--and the pair of you wake up others and start
sending 'em up stairs. I'll call you on the telltale as soon as I can."

Marian took off with the key and the register and I started to shake
Phillip Harrison's shoulder. "Wake up!" I cried. "Wake up, Phillip!"

Phillip made a noise like a baby seal.

"Wake up!"

"Wha--?"

"It's Steve Cornell. Wake up!"

With a rough shake of his head, Phillip groaned and unwound himself out
of a tangle of bedclothing. He looked at me through half-closed glassy
eyes. Then he straightened and made a perilous course to the washstand
where he sopped a towel in cold water and applied it to his face, neck,
and shoulders. When he dropped the towel in the sink, his expression was
fresher and his eyes were mingled curiosity and amazement.

"What gives?" he asked, starting to dress in a hurry.

"I busted out, slugged Scholar Phelps, and took over the master control
room. I need help. We can't keep it long unless we move fast."

"Yeah man. Any moving will be fast," he said sourly. "Got any plans?"

"We've--"

The door opened to let Fred Macklin enter. He carried his shirt and had
been dressing on the run. "What goes on?" he asked.

"Look," I said quickly. "If I have to stop and give anybody a rundown,
we'll have no time to do what has to be done. There are a couple of
sources of danger. One is the guard down at the bottom of the stairway.
The other is the possible visitor. You get a couple of other young,
ambitious fellows and push that guard post over, but quick."

"Right. And you?"

"I've got to keep our hostage cold," I snapped. "And I'm running the
show by virtue of being the guy that managed to bust loose."

In the hallway there was movement, but I left it to head back to Scholar
Phelps. I got there in time to hear him groan and make scratching noises
on the carpet. I took no chances; I cooled him down with a short jab to
the pit of the stomach and doubled him over again.

He was sleeping painfully but soundlessly when Marian came in.

I turned to her. "You're supposed to be waking up--"

"I gave the key and the register to Jo Anne Tweedy," she said. "Jo
Anne's the brash young teenager you took a bump with in Ohio. She's
competent, Steve. And she's got the Macklin twins to help her. Waking up
the camp is a job for the junior division." She eyed the recumbent
Phelps distastefully. "What have you in mind for him?"

"He's valuable," I said. "We'll use him to buy our freedom."

The door opened again, interrupting Marian. It was Jonas Harrison. He
stood there in the frame of the door and looked at us with a sort of
grim smile. I had never met the old patriarch of the Harrison Family
before, but he lived up to my every expectation. He stood tall and
straight; topped by a wealth of snow white hair, white eyebrows, and the
touch of a white moustache. His eyes contrasted with the white; a rich
and startling brown.

This was a man to whom I could hand the basic problem of engineering our
final escape; Jonas Harrison was capable of plotting an airtight
getaway.

His voice was rich and resonant; it had a lift in its tone that sounded
as though his self-confidence had never been in danger of a set-back:
"Well, son, you seem to have accomplished quite a job this night. What
shall we do next?"

"Get the devil out of here," I replied--

--wondering just exactly how I'd known so instantly that this was Jonas
Harrison. The rich and resonant voice had flicked a subsurface
recollection on a faint, raw spot and now something important was
swimming around in the mire of my mind trying to break loose and come
clear.

I turned from the sword-sharp brown eyes and looked at Marian. She was
almost as I had first seen her: Not much make-up if any at all, her hair
free of fancy dressing but neat, her legs were bare and healthy-tanned.

I looked at her, and for a half dozen heartbeats her image faded from my
sight, replaced by the well remembered figure of Catherine as I had
known her first. It was a dizzy-making montage because my perception
senses the real figure of Marian, superimposed on the visual
memory-image of Catherine. Then the false sight faded and both
perception and eyesight focused upon the true person of Marian Harrison.

Marian stood there, her face softly proud. Her eyes were looking
straight into mine, as if she were mentally urging me to fight that
hidden memory into full recollection.

Then I both saw and perceived something that I had never noticed before.
A fine golden chain hung around her throat, its pendant hidden from
sight beneath the edge of her bodice. But my sense of perception dug a
modest diamond, and I could even dig the tiny initials engraved in the
metal circlet:

SC-MH

To dig anything that fine, I knew that it must be of importance to me.
And then I knew that it had once been so very personally my own
business, for the submerged recollection came bursting up to the top of
my mind. Marian Henderson had been mine once long ago!

Boldly I stepped forward and took the chain between my fingers. I
snapped it, and held the ring. "Will you wear it again, my dear?"

She held up her left hand for me to slip it on. "Steve," she breathed,
"I've never stopped wearing it, not really."

"But I didn't see it until now--"

Jonas Harrison said, "No, Steve, you couldn't see it until you
remembered."

"But look--"

"Blame me," he said in his firm determined voice. "The story begins and
ends with you, Steve. When Marian contracted Mekstrom's Disease, she
herself insisted that you be spared the emotional pain that the rest of
us could not avoid. So I erased her from your mind, Steve, and submerged
any former association. Then when the Highways in Hiding came to take us
in, I left it that way because Marian was still as unattainable to you
as if she were dead. If an apology is needed, I'll only ask that you
forgive my tampering with your mind and personality."

"Apologize?" I exploded. "I'm here, we're here, and you've just provided
me with a way out of this mousetrap!"

"A way out?" he murmured, in that absent way that telepaths have when
they're concentrating on another mind. Fast comprehension dawned in the
sharp brown eyes and he looked even more self-confident and determined.
Marian leaned back in my arms to look into my eyes. "Steve," she cried,
"it's simply got to work!" Gloria Farrow merely said, "He'll have to
have medication, of course," and went briskly to a wall cabinet and
began to fiddle with medical tools. Howard Macklin and Jonas Harrison
went into a deep telepathic conference that was interrupted only when
Jonas Harrison turned to Phillip to say, "You'll have to provide us with
uninterrupted time, somehow."

Marian disengaged herself reluctantly and started to propel me out of
the room. "Go help him, Steve. What we are going to do is not for any
non-telepath to watch."

Outside, Phillip threatened me with the guard's signal-box key. "Mind
telling a non-telepath what the devil you cooked up?"

I smiled. "If your father has the mental power to erase Marian from my
mind, he also has the power to do a fine reorientation job on Scholar
Phelps. Once we get the spiderwebs cleaned out of the top dog, we start
down the pyramid, line by line and echelon by echelon, with each
reoriented recruit adding to our force. Once we get this joint operating
on the level, we can all go to work for the rest of the human race!"

* * * * *

There is little left to tell. The Medical Center and the Highways in
Hiding are one agency dedicated to the conquest of the last and most
puzzling of the diseases and maladies that beset Mankind. We are no
closer to a solution than we ever were, and so I am still a very busy
man.

I have written this account and disclosed our secret because we want no
more victims of Mekstrom's Disease to suffer.

So I will write finish with one earnest plea and one ray of hope:

Please do not follow one of our Highways unless you are already
infected. Since I cannot hope to inoculate the entire human race, and
will not pick or choose certain worthy types for special attention, I
will deal only with those folks who find Mekstrom's Disease among their
immediate family. Such people need never be parted from their loved
ones. The rest of you will have to wait your turn.

But we'll get to it sooner or later. Thirty days ago, Steve, Junior, was
born. He's a healthy little Mekstrom, and like his pappy, Steve Junior
is a carrier, too.

* * * * *

[Transcriber's note: Back cover]

QUEST IMPOSSIBLE

Someone had stolen an important part of Steve Cornell's life.

It was bad enough when his fiancee vanished. It was infinitely worse
when everyone in the world insisted it couldn't have happened the way he
knew it had.

In a world where ESP and telepathy were normal, it was difficult to keep
secrets. But Steve's search for his missing sweetheart brought him to
the threshold of one of the greatest secrets of all time. And it was
obvious that somebody would stop at nothing to keep him from uncovering
it.

What were the oddly sinister symbols along otherwise ordinary roads?
What was behind the spreading plague called Mekstrom's Disease? Why were
there "blank" spots where telepathy didn't work? Who was the elusive
enemy with powers even beyond those ESP had bestowed on mankind?

And, most important of all ... could Steve find that enemy before they
made him vanish too?

A Lancer Book . Never Before Complete In Paperback

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18