Highways in Hiding

G >> George Oliver Smith >> Highways in Hiding

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I even read Charles Fort, although I have no belief in the supernatural,
and rather faint faith in the Hereafter. And people who enter the
Hereafter leave their remains behind for evidence.

Having to face Catherine's mother and father, who came East to see me,
made me a complete mental wreck.

It is harder than you think to face the parents of a woman you loved,
and find that all you can tell them is that somehow you fouled your
drive, cracked up, and lost their daughter. Not even dead-for-sure.
Death, I think, we all could have faced. But this uncertainty was
something that gnawed at the soul's roots and left it rotting.

To stand there and watch the tears in the eyes of a woman as she asks
you, "But can't you remember, son?" is a little too much, and I don't
care to go into details.

The upshot of it was, after about ten days of lying awake nights and
wondering where she was and why. Watching her eyes peer out of a metal
casting at me from a position sidewise of my head. Nightmares, either
the one about us turning over and over and over, or Mrs. Lewis pleading
with me only to tell her the truth. Then having the police inform me
that they were marking this case down as "unexplained." I gave up. I
finally swore that I was going to find her and return with her, or I was
going to join her in whatever strange, unknown world she had entered.

* * * * *

The first thing I did was to go back to the hospital in the hope that
Dr. Thorndyke might be able to add something. In my unconscious
ramblings there might be something that fell into a pattern if it could
be pieced together.

But this was a failure, too. The hospital super was sorry, but Dr.
Thorndyke had left for the Medical Research Center a couple of days
before. Nor could I get in touch with him because he had a six-week
interim vacation and planned a long, slow jaunt through Yellowstone,
with neither schedule nor forwarding addresses.

I was standing there on the steps hoping to wave down a cruising
coptercab when the door opened and a woman came out. I turned to look
and she recognized me. It was Miss Farrow, my former nurse.

"Why, Mr. Cornell, what are you doing back here?"

"Mostly looking for Thorndyke. He's not here."

"I know. Isn't it wonderful, though? He'll get his chance to study for
his scholarte now."

I nodded glumly. "Yeah," I said. It probably sounded resentful, but it
is hard to show cheer over the good fortune of someone else when your
own world has come unglued.

"Still hoping," she said. It was a statement and not a question.

I nodded slowly. "I'm hoping," I said. "Someone has the answer to this
puzzle. I'll have to find it myself. Everyone else has given up."

"I wish you luck," said Miss Farrow with a smile. "You certainly have
the determination."

I grunted. "It's about all I have. What I need is training. Here I am, a
mechanical engineer, about to tackle the job of a professional detective
and tracer of missing persons. About all I know about the job is what I
have read. One gets the idea that these writers must know something of
the job, the way they write about it. But once you're faced with it
yourself, you realize that the writer has planted his own clues."

Miss Farrow nodded. "One thing," she suggested, "have you talked to the
people who got you out from under your car yet?"

"No, I haven't. The police talked to them and claimed they knew nothing.
I doubt that I can ask them anything that the police have not satisfied
themselves about."

Miss Farrow looked up at me sidewise. "You won't find anything by asking
people who have never heard of you."

"I suppose not."

A coptercab came along at that moment, and probably sensing my
intention, he gave his horn a tap. I'd have liked to talk longer with
Miss Farrow, but a cab was what I wanted, so with a wave I took it and
she went on down the steps to her own business.

I had to pause long enough to buy a new car, but a few hours afterward I
was rolling along that same highway with my esper extended as far as I
could in all directions. I was driving slowly, this time both alert and
ready.

I went past the scene of the accident slowly and shut my mind off as I
saw the black-burned patch. The block was still hanging from an overhead
branch, and the rope that had burned off was still dangling, about two
feet of it, looped through the pulleys and ending in a tapered, burned
end.

I turned left into a driveway toward the home of the Harrisons and went
along a winding dirt road, growing more and more conscious of a dead
area ahead of me.

It was not a real dead zone, because I could still penetrate some of the
region. But as far as really digging any of the details of the rambling
Harrison house, I could get more from my eyesight than from any sense of
perception. But even if they couldn't find a really dead area, the
Harrisons had done very well in finding one that made my sense of
perception ineffective. It was sort of like looking through a light fog,
and the closer I got to the house the thicker it became.

Just about the point where the dead area was first beginning to make its
effect tell, I came upon a tall, browned man of about twenty-four who
had been probing into the interior of a tractor up to the time he heard
my car. He waved, and I stopped.

"Mr. Harrison?"

"I'm Phillip. And you are Mr. Cornell."

"Call me Steve like everybody else," I said. "How'd you guess?"

"Recognized you," he said with a grin. "I'm the guy that pulled you
out."

"Thanks," I said, offering a hand.

He chuckled. "Steve, consider the hand taken and shook, because I've
enough grime to muss up a regiment."

"It won't bother me," I said.

"Thanks, but it's still a gesture, and I appreciate it, but let's be
sensible. I know you can wash, but let's shake later. What can I do for
you?"

"I'd like a first-hand account, Phil."

"Not much to tell. Dad and I were pulling stumps over about a thousand
feet from the wreck. We heard the racket. I am esper enough to dig that
distance with clarity, so we knew we'd better bring along the block and
tackle. The tractor wouldn't go through. So we came on the double, Dad
rigged the tackle and hoisted and I took a running dive, grabbed and
hauled you out before the whole thing went _Whoosh!_ We were both lucky,
Steve."

I grunted a bit but managed to nod with a smile.

"I suppose you know that I'm still trying to find my fiancee?"

"I'd heard tell," he said. He looked at me sharply. I'm a total blank as
a telepath, like all espers, but I could tell what he was thinking.

"Everybody is convinced that Catherine was not with me," I admitted.
"But I'm not. I know she was."

He shook his head slowly. "As soon as we heard the screech of brakes and
rubber we esped the place," he said quietly. "We dug you, of course. But
no one else. Even if she'd jumped as soon as that tree limb came into
view, she could not have run far enough to be out of range. As for
removing a bag, she'd have had to wait until the slam-bang was over to
get it out, and by the time your car was finished rolling, Dad and I
were on the way with help. She was not there, Steve."

#You're a goddam liar!#

Phillip Harrison did not move a muscle. He was blank telepathically. I
was esping the muscles in his stomach, under his loose clothing, for
that first tensing sign of anger, but nothing showed. He had not been
reading my mind.

I smiled thinly at Phil Harrison and shrugged.

He smiled back sympathetically, but behind it I could see that he was
wishing that I'd stop harping on a dead subject. "I sincerely wish I
could be of help," he said. In that he was sincere. But somewhere,
someone was not, and I wanted to find out who it was.

The impasse looked as though it might go on forever unless I turned away
and left. I had no desire to leave. Not that Phil could help me, but
even though this was a dead end, I was loath to leave the place because
it was the last place where I had been close to Catherine.

The silence between us must have been a bit strained at this point, but
luckily we had an interruption. I perceived motion, turned and caught
sight of a woman coming along the road toward us.

"My sister," said Phil. "Marian."

Marian Harrison was quite a girl; if I'd not been emotionally tied to
Catherine Lewis, I'd have been happy to invite myself in. Marian was
almost as tall as I am, a dark, brown-haired woman with eyes of a
startling, electricity colored blue. She was about twenty-two, young and
healthy. Her skin was tanned toast brown so that the bright blue eyes
fairly sparked out at you. Her red mouth made a pleasing blend with the
tan of her skin and her teeth gleamed white against the dark when she
smiled.

Insultingly, I made some complimentary but impolite mental observations
about her figure, but Marion did not appear to notice. She was no
telepath.

"You're Mr. Cornell," she said, "I remembered you," she said quietly.
"Please believe us, Mr. Cornell, when we extend our sympathy."

"Thanks," I said glumly. "Please understand me, Miss Harrison. I
appreciate your sympathy, but what I need is action and information and
answers. Once I get those, the sympathy won't be needed."

"Of course I understand," she replied instantly. "We are all aware that
sympathy is a poor substitute. All the world grieving with you doesn't
turn a stitch to help you out of your trouble. All we can do is to wish,
with you, that it hadn't happened."

"That's the point," I said helplessly. "I don't even know what
happened."

"That makes it even worse," she said softly. Marian had a pleasant
voice, throaty and low, that sounded intimate even when talking about
something pragmatic. "I wish we could help you, Steve."

"I wish someone could."

She nodded. "They asked me about it, too, even though I was not present
until afterward. They asked me," she said thoughtfully, "about the
mental attitude of a woman running off to get married. I told them that
I couldn't speak for your woman, but that I might be able to speak for
me, putting myself in the same circumstances."

She paused a moment, and her brother turned idly back to his tractor and
fitted a small end wrench to a bolt-head and gave it a twist. He seemed
to think that as long as Marian and I were talking, he could well afford
to get along with his work. I agreed with him. I wanted information, but
I did not expect the entire world to stop progress to help me. He spun
the bolt and started on another, lost in his job while Marian went on:

"I told them that your story was authentic--the one about the bridal
nightgown." A very slight color came under the deep tan. "I told them
that I have one, too, still in its wrapper, and that someday I'd be
planning marriage and packing a go-away bag with the gown shaken out and
then packed neatly. I told them that I'd be doing the same thing no
matter whether we were having a formal church wedding with a four-alarm
reception and all the trimmings or a quiet elopement such as you were. I
told them that it was the essentials that count, not the trimmings and
the tinsel. My questioner's remark was to the effect that either you
were telling the truth, or that you had esped a woman about to marry and
identified her actions with your own wishes."

"I know which," I said with a sour smile. "It was both."

Marian nodded. "Then they asked me if it were probable that a woman
would take this step completely unprepared and I laughed at them. I told
them that long before Rhine, women were putting their nuptial affairs in
order about the time the gentleman was beginning to view marriage with
an attitude slightly less than loathing, and that by the time he popped
the question, she'd been practicing writing her name as 'Mrs.' and
picking out the china-ware and prospective names for the children, and
that if any woman had ever been so stunned by a proposal of marriage
that she'd take off without so much as a toothbrush, no one in history
had ever heard of her."

"Then you begin to agree with me?"

She shrugged. "Please," she said in that low voice, "don't ask me my
opinion of your veracity. You believe it, but all the evidence lies
against you. There was not a shred of woman-trace anywhere along your
course, from the point along the road where you first caught sight of
the limb that threw you to the place where you piled up. Nor was there a
trace anywhere in a vast circle--almost a half mile they searched--from
the crack-up. They had doctors of psi digging for footprints, shreds of
clothing, everything. Not a trace."

"But where did she go?" I cried, and when I say 'cried' I mean just
that.

Marian shook her head very slowly. "Steve," she said in a voice so low
that I could hardly hear her over the faint shrill of bolts being
unscrewed by her brother, "so far as we know, she was never here. Why
don't you forget her--"

I looked at her. She stood there, poised and a bit tensed as though she
were trying to force some feeling of affectionate kinhood across the gap
that separated us, as though she wanted to give me both physical and
mental comfort despite the fact that we were strangers on a ten-minute
first-meeting. There was distress in her face.

"Forget her--?" I ground out. "I'd rather die!"

"Oh Steve--no!" One hand went to her throat and the other came out to
fasten around my forearm. Her grip was hard.

I stood there wondering what to do next. Marian's grip on my arm relaxed
and she stepped back.

I pulled myself together. "I'm sorry," I told her honestly. "I'm putting
you through a set of emotional hurdles by bringing my problems here. I'd
better take them away."

She nodded very slowly. "Please go. But please come back once you get
yourself squared away, no matter how. We'd all like to see you when you
aren't all tied up inside."

Phil looked up from the guts of the tractor. "Take it easy, Steve," he
said. "And remember that you do have friends here."

Blindly I turned from them and stumbled back to my car. They were a pair
of very fine people, firm, upright. Marian's grip on my arm had been no
weaker than her sympathy, and Phil's less-emotional approach to my
trouble was no less deep, actually. It was as strong as his good right
arm, loosening the head bolts of a tractor engine with a small
adjustable wrench.

I'd be back. I wanted to see them again. I wanted to go back there with
Catherine and introduce them to her. But I was definitely going to go
back.

I was quite a way toward home before I realized that I had not met the
old man. I bet myself that Father Harrison was quite the firm, active
patriarch.

IV

The days dragged slowly. I faced each morning hopefully at first, but as
the days dragged on and on, I began to feel that each morning was
opening another day of futility, to be barely borne until it was time to
flop down in weariness. I faced the night in loneliness and in anger at
my own inability to do something productive.

I pestered the police until they escorted me to the door and told me
that if I came again, they'd take me to another kind of door and loose
thereafter the key. I shrugged and left disconsolately, because by that
time I had been able to esp, page by page, the entire file that dealt
with the case of "Missing Person: Lewis, Catherine," stamped "Inactive,
but not Closed."

I hated the words.

But as the days dragged out, one after another, with no respite and no
hope, my raw nervous system began to heal. It was probably a case of
numbness; you maul your thumb with a hammer and it will hurt just so
long before it stops.

I was numb for a long time. I remember night after night, lying awake
and staring into the darkness at the wall I knew was beside me, and I
hated my esper because I wanted to project my mind out across some
unknown space to reach for Catherine's mind. If we'd both been telepaths
we could cross the universe to touch each other with that affectionate
tenderness that mated telepaths always claim they have.

Instead I found myself more aware of a clouded-veil perception of Marian
Harrison as she took my arm and looked into my face on that day when I
admitted that I found little worth living for.

I knew what that meant--nothing. It was a case of my subconscious mind
pointing out that the available present was more desirable than the
unavailable not-present. At first I resented my apparent inconstancy in
forming an esper projection of Marian Harrison when I was trying to
project my blank telepathic inadequacy to Catherine. But as the weeks
faded into the past, the shock and the frustration began to pale and I
found Marian's projective image less and less an unwanted intrusion and
more and more pleasant.

I had two deeply depressed spells in those six weeks. At the end of the
fourth week I received a small carton containing some of my personal
junk that had been in Catherine's apartment. A man can't date his girl
for weeks without dropping a few things like a cigarette lighter, a tie
clip, one odd cuff-link, some papers, a few letters, some books, and
stuff both valuable and worthless that had turned up as gifts for one
reason or another. It was a shock to get this box and its arrival
bounced me deep into a doldrum-period of three or four days.

Then at the end of the sixth week I received a card from Dr. Thorndyke.
It contained a lithograph in stereo of some scene in Yellowstone other
than Old Faithful blowing its stack.

On the message side was a cryptic note:

_Steve: I just drove along that road in the right side of the
picture. It reminded me of yours, so I'm writing because I want to
know how you are making out. I'll be at the Med-Center in a couple
of weeks, you can write me there.

Jim Thorndyke._

I turned the postcard over and eyed it critically. Then I got it. Along
the roadside was a tall ornamental standard of wrought iron. The same
design as the road signs along that fatal highway of mine.

I sat there with a magnifying glass on the roadsign; its stereo image
standing up alongside the road in full color and solidity. It took me
back to that moment when Catherine had wriggled against my side,
thrilling me with her warmth and eagerness.

That put me down a few days, too.

* * * * *

Another month passed. I'd come out of my shell quite a bit in the
meantime. I now felt that I could walk in a bar and have a drink without
wondering whether all the other people in the place were pointing at me.
I'd cut myself off from all my previous friends, and I'd made no new
friends in the weeks gone by. But I was getting more and more lonely and
consequently more and more inclined to speak to people and want friends.

The accident had paled from its original horror; the vital scene
returned only infrequently. Catherine was assuming the position of a
lost love rather than a sweetheart expected to return soon. I remembered
the warmth of her arms and the eagerness of her kiss in a nostalgic way
and my mind, especially when in a doze, would play me tricks. I would
recall Catherine, but when she came into my arms, I'd be holding Marian,
brown and tawny, with her electric blue eyes and her vibrant nature.

But I did nothing about it. I knew that once I had asked Marian Harrison
for a date I would be emotionally involved. And then if--no,
when--Catherine turned up I would be torn between desires.

I would wake up and call myself all sorts of a fool. I had seen Marian
for a total of perhaps fifteen minutes--in the company of her brother.

But eventually dreaming loses its sting just as futile waiting and
searching does, and I awoke one morning in a long and involved debate
between my id and my conscience. I decided at that moment that I would
take that highway out and pay a visit to the Harrison farm. I was
salving my slightly rusty conscience by telling myself that it was
because I had never paid my respects to Father Harrison, but not too
deep inside I knew that if Father were missing and Daughter were present
I'd enjoy my visit to the farm with more relish.

But my id took a licking because the doorbell rang about nine o'clock
that morning and when I dug the doorstep I came up with two gentlemen
wearing gold badges in leather folders in their jacket pockets.

I opened the door because I couldn't have played absent to a team
consisting of one esper and one telepath. They both knew I was home.

"Mr. Cornell, we'll waste no time. We want to know how well you know
Doctor James Thorndyke."

I didn't blink at the bluntness of it. It is standard technique when an
esper-telepath team go investigating. The telepath knew all about me,
including the fact that I'd dug their wallets and identification cards,
badges and the serial numbers of the nasty little automatics they
carried. The idea was to drive the important question hard and first; it
being impossible to not-think the several quick answers that pop through
your mind. What I knew about Thorndyke was sketchy enough but they got
it all because I didn't have any reason for covering up. I let them know
that, too.

Finally, #That's about all,# I thought. #Now--why?#

The telepath half of the team answered. "Normally we wouldn't answer,
Mr. Cornell, unless you said it aloud. But we don't mind letting you
know which of us is the telepath this time. To answer, you are the last
person to have received any message from Thorndyke."

"I--what?"

"That postcard. It was the last contact Thorndyke made with anyone. He
has disappeared."

"But--"

"Thorndyke was due to arrive at The Medical Research Center in Marion,
Indiana, three weeks ago. We've been tracking him ever since he failed
to turn up. We've been able to retrace his meanderings very well up to a
certain point in Yellowstone. There the trail stops. He had a telephoned
reservation to a small hotel; there he dropped out of sight. Now, Mr.
Cornell, may I see that postcard?"

"Certainly." I got it for them. The esper took it over to the window and
eyed it in the light, and as he did that I went over to stand beside him
and together we espered that postcard until I thought the edges would
start to curl. But if there were any codes, concealed writings or any
other form of hidden meaning or message in or on that card, I didn't dig
any.

I gave up. I'm no trained investigator. But I knew that Thorndyke was
fairly well acquainted with the depth of my perceptive sense, and he
would not have concealed anything too deep for me.

Then the esper shook his head. He handed me the card. "Not a trace."

The telepath nodded. He looked at me and smiled sort of thin and
strained. "We're naturally interested in you, Mr. Cornell. This seems to
be the second disappearance. And you know nothing about either."

"I know," I said slowly. The puzzle began to go around and around in my
head again, all the way back to that gleaming road and the crack-up.

"We'll probably be back, Mr. Cornell. You don't mind?"

"Look," I told them rather firmly, "if this puzzle can be unwound, I'll
be one of the happiest men on the planet. If I can do anything to help,
just say the word."

They left after that and so did I. I was still going to pay my visit to
the Harrison farm. Another wild goose chase, but somewhere along this
cockeyed row there was an angle. Honest people who are healthy and
fairly happy with good prospects ahead of them do not just drop out of
sight without a trace.

* * * * *

A couple of hours later I was making a good pace along the highway
again. It was getting familiar to me.

I could not avoid letting my perceptive sense rest on the sign as I
drove past. Not long enough to put me in danger, but long enough to
discover to my surprise that someone had taken the trouble to repair the
broken spoke. Someone must have been a perfectionist. The break was so
slight that it seemed like calling in a mechanic because the ashtray in
the car is full.

Then I noticed other changes that time had caused.

The burned scar was fading in a growth of tall weeds. The limb of the
tree that hung out over the scene, from which block and tackle had hung,
was beginning to lose its smoke-blackened appearance. The block was gone
from the limb.

_Give us a year_, I thought, _and the only remaining scar will be the
one on my mind, and even that will be fading_.

I turned into the drive, wound around the homestead road, and pulled up
in front of the big, rambling house.

It looked bleak. The front lawn was a bit shaggy and there were some
wisps of paper on the front porch. The venetian blinds were down and
slatted shut behind closed windows. Since it was summer by now, the
closed windows and the tight door, neither of which had flyscreens
installed, quickly gave the fact away. The Harrisons were gone.

Another disappearance?

I turned quickly and drove to the nearest town and went to the post
office.

"I'm looking for the Harrison family," I told the man behind the wicket.

"Why, they moved several weeks ago."

"Moved?" I asked with a blank-sounding voice.

The clerk nodded. Then he leaned forward and said in a confidential
whisper, "Heard a rumor that the girl got a touch of that spacemen's
disease."

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