Highways in Hiding

G >> George Oliver Smith >> Highways in Hiding

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"Mekstrom's?" I blurted.

The clerk looked at me as if I'd shouted a dirty word. "She was a fine
girl," he said softly. "It's a shame."

I nodded and he went into the back files. I tried to dig alone behind
him, but the files were in a small dead area in the rear of the
building. I swore under my breath although I'd expected to find files in
dead areas. Just as Rhine Institute was opened, the Government combed
the countryside for dead or cloudy areas for their secret and
confidential files. There had been one mad claim-staking rush with the
Government about six feet ahead of the rest of the general public,
business and the underworld.

He came back with a sorrowful look. "They left a concealed address," he
said.

I felt like flashing a twenty at him like a private eye did in the old
tough-books, but I knew it wouldn't work. Rhine also made it impossible
for a public official to take a bribe. So instead, I tried to look
distressed.

"This is extremely important. I'd say it was a matter of life and
death."

"I'm sorry. A concealed forwarding address is still concealed. If you
must get in touch with them, you might drop them a letter to be
forwarded. Then if they care to answer, they'll reply to your home."

"Later," I told him. "I'll probably be back to mail it direct from
here."

He waved at the writing desk. I nodded and left.

I drove back to the ex-Harrison Farm slowly, thinking it over.
Wondering. People did not just go around catching Mekstrom's Disease,
from what little I knew of it. And somehow the idea of Marian Harrison
withering away or becoming a basket case, or maybe taking the painless
way out was a thought that my mind kept avoiding except for occasional
flashes of horror.

I drove in toward the farmhouse again and parked in front of the
verandah. I was not sure of why I was there except that I wanted to
wander through it to see what I could find before I went back to the
post-office to write that card or letter.

The back of the house was locked with an old-fashioned slide bolt that
was turned with what they used to call an "E" key. I shrugged, oiled my
conscience and found a bit of bent wire. Probing a lock like that would
have been easy for a total blank; with esper I lifted the simple keepers
and slid back the bolt almost as swiftly as if I had used a proper key.

This was no case of disappearance. In every one of the fourteen rooms
were the unmistakable signs of a deliberate removal. Discarded stuff was
mixed with the odds and ends of packing case materials, a scattered
collection of temporary nails, a half-finished but never used box filled
with old clothing.

I pawed through this but found nothing, even though I separated it from
the rest to help my esper dig it without interference.

I roamed the house slowly letting my perception wander from point to
point. I tried to time-dig the place but that was futile. I didn't have
enough perception.

I caught only one response. It was in one of the upper bedrooms. But
then as I stopped in the room where Marian had slept, I began again to
doubt my senses. It could have been esper, but it was more likely that
I'd caught the dying traces of perfume.

Then I suddenly realized that the entire premises were clear to me!

An esper map of the world looked sort of like a mottled sky, with bright
places and cloudy patches strewn in disorder across it. A mottled sky,
except that the psi-pattern usually does not change. But this house had
been in a murky area, if not dead. Now it was clear.

I left the house and went to the big combination barn and garage. It was
as unsatisfying as the house had been. Phillip Harrison, or someone, had
had a workshop out there. I found the bench and a small table where
bolt-holes, oil marks, and other traces said that there had been one of
those big combination woodworking machines there, the kind that combines
circular saw, drill, lathe, planer, router, dado, and does everything.
There had been some metal-working stuff there, too, but nothing as
elaborate as the woodshop. Mostly things like hacksaws and an electric
drill, and a circular scar where a blowtorch had been sitting.

I don't know why I kept on standing there esping the abandoned set-up.
Maybe it was because my esper dug the fact that there was something
there that I should know about, but which was so minute or remote that
the impression did not come through. I stood there puzzled at my own
reluctance to leave until something satisfied that almost imperceptible
impression.

Idly I leaned down and picked up a bit of metal from the floor and
fumbled it in my hand nervously. I looked around the place with my eyes
and saw nothing. I gave the whole garage a thorough scanning with my
esper and got zero for my trouble.

Finally I snarled at myself for being an imbecile, and left.

Everyone has done what I did, time and time again. I do not recall
anything of my walk back to the car, lost in a whirl of thoughts, ideas,
plans and questions. I would probably have driven all the way back to my
apartment with my mind in that whirligig, driving by habit and training,
but I was shaken out of it because I could not start my car by poking
that bit of metal in the lock. It did not fit.

I laughed, a bit ashamed of my preoccupation, and flung the bit of metal
into the grass, poked my key in the lock--

And then I was out pawing the grass for that piece of metal.

For the small piece of metal I had found on the floor of the abandoned
workshop was the spoke of that road sign that had been missing when
Catherine and I cracked up!

I drove out along the highway and stopped near one of the standards. I
esped the sign, compared my impression against my eyesight. I made sure.

That bit of metal, a half inch long and a bit under a quarter inch in
diameter, with both ends faintly broken-ragged, was identical in size
and shape to the unbroken spokes in the sign!

Then I noticed something else. The trefoil ornament in the middle did
not look the same as I recalled them. I took Thorndyke's card out of my
pocket and looked at the stereo. I compared the picture against the real
thing before me and I knew that I was right.

The trefoil gizmo was a take-off on the fleur-de-lis or the Boy Scout
Tenderfoot badge, or the design they use to signify North on a compass.
But the lower flare of the leaves was wider than any of the more
familiar emblems; almost as wide as the top. It took a comparison to
tell the difference between one of them right-side-up and another one
upside-down. One assumes for this design that the larger foils are
supposed to be up. If that were so, then the ones along that road out
there in or near Yellowstone were right-side-up, while the ones along my
familiar highway were upside-down.

I goaded myself. #Memory, have these things been turned or were they
always upside-down?#

The last thing I did as I turned off the highway was to stop and let my
esper dig that design once more. I covered the design itself, let my
perception roam along the spokes, and then around the circlet that
supported the spokes that held the trefoil emblem.

Oh, it was not obvious. It was designed in, so to speak. If I were asked
even today for my professional opinion I would have to admit that the
way the circlet snapped into the rest of the ornamental scrollwork was a
matter of good assembly design, and not a design deliberately created so
that the emblem could be turned upside down.

In fact, if it had not been for that tiny, broken spoke I found on the
floor of the Harrison garage, never in a million years would I have
considered these road signs significant.

* * * * *

At the post office I wrote a letter to Phillip Harrison:

_Dear Phil:_

_I was by your old place today and was sorry to find that you had
moved. I'd like to get in touch with you again. If I may ask,
please send me your forwarding address. I'll keep it concealed if
you like, or I'll reply through the post office, concealed
forward._

_As an item of interest, did you know that your house has lost its
deadness? A medium-equipped esper can dig it with ease. Have you
ever heard of the psi-pattern changing before?_

_Ah, and another item, that road sign with the busted spoke has
been replaced. You must be a bum shot, not to hit that curlicue in
the middle. I found the spoke you hit on the floor of your garage,
if you'd like it for a souvenir of one close miss._

_Please write and let me know how things are going. Rumor has it
that Marian contracted Mekstrom's and if you will pardon my
mentioning a delicate subject, I am doing so because I really want
to help if I am able. After all, no matter how lightly you hold it,
I still owe you my life. This is a debt I do not intend to forget._

_Sincerely,_

_Steve Cornell._

V

I did not go to the police.

They were sick of my face and already considering me a candidate for the
paranoid ward. All I would have to do is go roaring into the station to
tell them that I had uncovered some deep plot where the underground was
using ornamental road signs to conceal their own network of roads and
directions, and that the disappearance of Catherine Lewis, Dr. Thorndyke
and the removal of the Harrisons were all tied together.

Instead, I closed my apartment and told everyone that I was going to
take a long, rambling tourist jaunt to settle my nerves; that I thought
getting away from the scene might finish the job that time and rest had
started.

Then I started to drive. I drove for several days, not attempting to
pace off miles, but covering a lot of aimless-direction territory. I was
just as likely to spend four hours going North on one highway, and then
take the next four coming back South on a parallel highway, and
sometimes I even came back to the original starting place. After a week
I had come no farther West than across that sliver of West Virginia into
Eastern Ohio. And in Eastern Ohio I saw some more of the now familiar
and suspicious road signs.

The emblem was right side up, and the signs looked as though they had
not been up long.

I followed that road for seventy-five miles, and as I went the signs
kept getting newer and newer until I finally came to a truck loaded with
pipe, hardware, and ornamental ironwork. Leading the truck was one of
those iron mole things.

I watched the automatic gear hoist one of the old pipe and white and
black enamel roadsigns up by its roots, and place it on a truck full of
discards. I watched the mole drive a corkscrew blade into the ground
with a roaring of engine and bucking of the truck. It paused, pulled
upward to bring out the screw and its load of dirt, stones and gravel.
The crew placed one of the new signs in the cradle and I watched the
machine set the sign upright, pour the concrete, tamp down the earth,
and then move along down the road.

There was little point in asking questions of the crew, so I just took
off and drove to Columbus as hard as I could make it.

* * * * *

Shined, cleaned, polished, and very conservatively dressed, I presented
myself to the State Commissioner of Roads and Highways. I toyed briefly
with the idea of representing myself as a minor official from some
distant state like Alaska or the Virgin Islands, inquiring about these
signs for official reasons. But then I knew that if I bumped into a hot
telepath I'd be in the soup. On the other hand, mere curiosity on the
part of a citizen, well oiled with compliments, would get me at the very
least a polite answer.

The Commissioner's fifth-under-secretary bucked me down the hall;
another office bucked me upstairs. A third buck-around brought me to the
Department of Highways Marking and Road Maps.

A sub-secretary finally admitted that he might be able to help me. His
name was Houghton. But whether he was telepath or esper did not matter
because the Commission building was constructed right in the middle of a
dead area.

I still played it straight. I told him I was a citizen of New York,
interested in the new road signs, Ohio was to be commended, et cetera.

"I'm glad you feel that way," he said beaming.

"I presume these signs cost quite a bit more than the stark, black and
white enamel jobs?"

"On the contrary," he said with pride. "They might, but mass-production
methods brought the cost down. You see, the enamel jobs, while we buy
several thousand of the plates for any highway, must be set up, stamped
out, enamelled, and so on. The new signs are all made in one plant as
they are needed; I don't suppose you know, but the highway number and
any other information is put on the plate from loose, snap-in letters.
That means we can buy so many thousand of this or that letter or number,
and the necessary base plates and put them together as needed. They
admitted that they were still running at a loss, but if they could get
enough states interested, they'd eventually come out even, and maybe
they could reduce the cost. Why, they even have a contingent-clause in
the contract stating that if the cost were lowered, they would make a
rebate to cover it. That's so the first users will not bide their time
instead of buying now."

He went on and on and on like any bureaucrat. I was glad we were in a
dead area because he'd have thrown me out of his office for what I was
thinking.

Eventually Mr. Houghton ran down and I left.

I toyed around with the idea of barging in on the main office of the
company but I figured that might be too much like poking my head into a
hornet's nest.

I pocketed the card he gave me from the company, and I studied the
ink-fresh road map, which he had proudly supplied. It pointed out in a
replica panel of the fancy signs, that the State of Ohio was beautifying
their highways with these new signs at no increased cost to the
taxpayer, and that the dates in green on the various highways here and
there gave the dates when the new signs would be installed. The bottom
of the panel gave the Road Commissioner's name in boldface with
Houghton's name below in slightly smaller print.

I smiled. Usually I get mad at signs that proclaim that such and such a
tunnel is being created by Mayor So-and-so, as if the good mayor were
out there with a shovel and hoe digging the tunnel. But this sort of
thing would have been a worthy cause if it hadn't been for the sinister
side.

I selected a highway that had been completed toward Cincinnati and made
my way there with no waste of time.

* * * * *

The road was new and it was another beaut. The signs led me on, mile
after mile and sign after sign.

I did not know what I was following, and I was not sure I knew what I
was looking for. But I was on the trail of something and a bit of
activity, both mental and physical, after weeks of blank-wall
frustration made my spirits rise and my mental equipment sharper. The
radio in the car was yangling with hillbilly songs, the only thing you
can pick up in Ohio, but I didn't care. I was looking for something
significant.

I found it late in the afternoon about half-way between Dayton and
Cincinnati. One of the spokes was missing.

Fifty yards ahead was a crossroad.

I hauled in with a whine of rubber and brakes, and sat there trying to
reason out my next move by logic. Do I turn with the missing spoke, or
do I turn with the one that is not missing?

Memory came to my aid. The "ten o'clock" spoke had been missing back
there near the Harrison farm. The Harrisons had lived on the left side
of the highway. One follows the missing spoke. Here the "two o'clock"
spoke was missing, so I turned to the right along the crossroad until I
came to another sign that was complete.

Then, wondering, I U-turned and drove back across the main highway and
drove for about five miles watching the signs as I went. The ones on my
right had that trefoil emblem upside down. The ones on my left were
right side up. The difference was so small that only someone who knew
the significance would distinguish one from the other. So far as I could
reason out, it meant that what I sought was in the other direction. When
the emblem was upside down I was going away from, and when right side
up, I was going toward.

Away from or toward what?

I U-turned again and started following the signs.

Twenty miles beyond the main highway where I'd seen the sign that
announced the turn, I came upon another missing spoke. This indicated a
turn to the left, and so I slowed down until I came upon a homestead
road leading off toward a farmhouse.

I turned, determined to make like a man lost and hoping that I'd not
bump into a telepath.

A few hundred yards in from the main road I came upon a girl who was
walking briskly toward me. I stopped. She looked at me with a quizzical
smile and asked me if she could be of any help.

Brashly, I nodded. "I'm looking for some old friends of mine," I said.
"Haven't seen them for years. Named Harrison."

She smiled up at me. "I don't know of any Harrison around here." Her
voice had the Ohio twang.

"No?"

"Just where do they live?"

I eyed her carefully, hoping my glance did not look like a wolf eyeing a
lamb. "Well, they gave me some crude directions. Said I was to turn at
the main highway onto this road and come about twenty miles and stop on
the left side when I came upon one of those new road signs where someone
had shot one of the spokes out."

"Spokes? Left side--" She mumbled the words and was apparently mulling
the idea around in her mind. She was not more than about seventeen,
sun-tanned and animal-alive from living in the open. I wondered about
her. As far as I was concerned, she was part and parcel of this whole
mysterious affair. No matter what she said or did, it was an obvious
fact that the hidden road sign directions pointed to this farm. And
since no one at seventeen can be kept in complete ignorance of the
business of the parents, she must be aware of some of the ramifications.

After some thought she said, "No, I don't know of any Harrisons."

I grunted. I was really making the least of this, now that I'd arrived.

"Your folks at home?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied.

"I think I'll drop in and ask them, too."

She shrugged. "Go ahead," she said with the noncommittal attitude of
youth. "You didn't happen to notice whether the mailbox flag was up, did
you?"

I hadn't, but I espied back quickly and said, "No, it isn't."

"Then the mailman hasn't been to deliver," she said. "Mind if I ride
back to the house with you, mister?"

"Hop in."

She smiled brightly and got in quickly. I took off down the road toward
the house at an easy pace. She seemed interested in the car, and finally
said, "I've never been in a car like this before. New?"

"Few weeks," I responded.

"Fast?"

"If you want to make it go fast. She'll take this rocky road at fifty,
if anyone wants to be so foolish."

"Let's see."

I laughed. "Nobody but an idiot would tackle a road like this at fifty."

"I like to go fast. My brother takes it at sixty."

That, so far as I was concerned, was youthful exaggeration. I was busy
telling her all the perils of fast driving when a rabbit came barrelling
out of the bushes along one side and streaked across in front of me.

I twitched the wheel. The car went out of the narrow road and up on the
shoulder, tilting quite a bit. Beyond the rabbit I swung back into the
road, but not before the youngster had grabbed my arm to keep from being
tossed all over the front seat.

Her grip was like a hydraulic vise. My arm went numb and my fingers went
limp on the wheel. I struggled with my left hand to spin the wheel to
keep on the narrow, winding road and my foot hit the brake to bring the
car down, but fast.

Taking a deep breath as we stopped, I shook my right hand by holding it
in my left at the wrist. I was a mass of tingling pins and needles
because she had grabbed me just above the elbow. It felt as though it
would have taken only a trifle more to pinch my arm off and leave me
with a bloody stump.

"Sorry, mister," she said breathlessly, her eyes wide open. Her face was
white around the corners of the mouth and at the edges of her nose. The
whiteness of the flesh under the deep tan gave her a completely
frightened look, far more than the shake-up could have produced.

I reached over and took her hand. "That's a mighty powerful grip you--"

The flesh of her hand was hard and solid. Not the meaty solidity of good
tone, fine training and excellent health. It was the solidity of a--all
I could think of at the time was a green cucumber. I squeezed a bit and
the flesh gave way only a trifle. I rubbed my thumb over her palm and
found it solid-hard instead of soft and yielding.

I wondered.

I had never seen a case of Mekstrom's Disease--before.

I looked down at the hand and said, "Young lady, do you realize that you
have an advanced case of Mekstrom's Disease?"

She eyed me coldly. "Now," she said in a hard voice. "I know you'll come
in."

Something in my make-up objects violently to being ordered around by a
slip of a girl. I balance off at about one-sixty. I guessed her at about
two-thirds of that, say one-ten or thereabouts--

"One-eight," she said levelly.

#A telepath!#

"Yes," she replied calmly. "And I don't mind letting you know it, so
you'll not try anything stupid."

#I'm getting the heck out of here!#

"No, you're not. You are coming in with me."

"Like heck!" I exploded.

"Don't be silly. You'll come in. Or shall I lay one along your jaw and
carry you?"

I had to try something, anything, to get free. Yet--

"Now you're being un-bright," she told me insolently. "You should know
that you can't plan any surprise move with a telepath. And if you try a
frontal attack I'll belt you so cold they'll have to put you in the oven
for a week."

I just let her ramble for a few seconds because when she was rattling
this way she couldn't put her entire mental attention on my thoughts. So
while she was yaking it off, I had an idea that felt as though it might
work.

She shut up like a clam when she realized that her mouthing had given me
a chance to think, and I went into high gear with my perception:

#Not bad--for a kid. Growing up fast. Been playing hookey from momma,
leaving off your panties like the big girls do. I can tell by the
elastic cord marks you had 'em on not long ago.#

Seventeeners have a lot more modesty than they like to admit. She was
stunned by my cold-blooded catalog of her body just long enough for me
to make a quick lunge across her lap to the door handle on her side.

I flipped it over and gave her a shove at the same time. She went bottom
over appetite in a sprawl that would have jarred the teeth loose in a
normal body and might have cracked a few bones. But she landed on the
back of her neck, rolled and came to her feet like a cat.

I didn't wait to close the door. I just tromped on the go-pedal and the
car leaped forward with a jerk that slammed the door for me. I roared
forward and left her just as she was making another grab.

How I hoped to get out of there I did not know. All I wanted was
momentary freedom to think. I turned this way and that to follow the
road until I came to the house. I left the road, circled the house with
the turbine screaming like a banshee and the car taking the corners on
the outside wheels. I skidded into a turn like a racing driver and
ironed my wheels out flat on the takeaway, rounded another corner and
turned back into the road again going the other way.

She was standing there waiting for me as I pelted past at a good sixty,
and she reached out one girder-strong arm, latched onto the frame of the
open window on my side, and swung onto the half-inch trim along the
bottom of the car-body like a switchman hooking a freight car.

She reached for the steering wheel with her free hand.

I knew what was to happen next. She'd casually haul and I'd go off the
road into a tree or pile up in a ditch, and while the smoke was clearing
out of my mind, she'd be untangling me from the wreck and carting me
over her shoulder, without a scratch to show for her adventure.

I yanked the wheel--whip! whap!--cutting an arc. I slammed past a tree,
missing it by half an inch. I wiped her off the side of the car like a
mailbag is clipped from the fast express by the catch-hook.

I heard a cry of "Whoof!" as her body hit the trunk of the tree. But as
I regained the road and went racing on to safety, I saw in the rear view
mirror that she had bounced off the tree, sprawled a bit, caught her
balance, and was standing in the middle of the road, shaking her small
but very dangerous fist at my tail license plate.

I didn't stop driving at one-ten until I was above Dayton again. Then I
paused along the road to take stock.

Stock? What the hell did I know, really?

I'd uncovered and confirmed the fact that there was some secret
organization that had a program that included their own highway system,
concealed within the confines of the United States. I was almost certain
by this time that they had been the prime movers in the disappearance of
Catherine and Dr. Thorndyke. They--

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