Highways in Hiding

G >> George Oliver Smith >> Highways in Hiding

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Then I stopped complimenting the architect and went on about my
business, because there, directly in front of my nose, I could dig the
familiar impression of a medical office.

I went the rest of the way up the stairs and into the medical office.
There was no mistake. The usual cabinets full of instruments, a
laboratory examination table, shelves of little bottles, and along one
wall was a library of medical books. All it needed was a sign on the
door: 'S. P. Macklin, MSch' to make it standard.

At the end of the library was a set of looseleaf notebooks, and I pulled
the more recent of them out and held it up to my face. I did not dare
snap on a light, so I had to go it esper.

Even in the clear area, this told me very little. Esper is not like
eyesight, any more than you can hear printed words or perhaps carry on a
conversation by watching the wiggly green line on an oscilloscope. I
wished it was. Instead, esper gives you a grasp of materials and shapes
and things in position with regard to other things. It is sort of like
seeing something simultaneously from all sides, if you can imagine such
a sensation. So instead of being able to esper-read the journal, I had
to take it letter by letter by digging the shape of the ink on the page
with respect to the paper and the other letters, and since the guy's
handwriting was atrocious, I could get no more than if the thing were
written in Latin. If it had been typewritten, or with a stylized hand,
it would have been far less difficult; or if it had been any of my
damned business I could have dug it easily. But as it was----

"Looking for something, Mr. Cornell?" asked a cool voice that dripped
with acid sarcasm. At the same instant, the lights went on.

I whirled, clutched at my hip pocket, and dropped to my knees at the
same time. The sights of my .375 centered in the middle of a
silk-covered midriff.

She stood there indolently, disdainful of the cannon that was aimed at
her. She was not armed; I'd have caught the esper warning of danger if
she'd come at me with a weapon of some sort, even though I was
preoccupied with the bookful of evidence.

I stood up and faced her and let my esper run lightly over her body. She
was another Mekstrom, which did not surprise me a bit.

"I seem to have found what I was looking for," I said.

Her laugh was scornful but not loud. "You're welcome, Mr. Cornell."

#Telepath?#

"Yes, and a good one."

#Who else is awake?#

"Just me, so far," she replied quietly. "But I'll be glad to call out--"

#Keep it quiet, Sister Macklin.#

"Stop thinking like an idiot, Mr. Cornell. Quiet or not, you'll not
leave this house until I permit you to go."

I let my esper roam quickly through the house. An elderly couple slept
in the front bedroom. A man slept alone in the room beside them; a pair
of young boys slept in an over-and-under bunk in the room across the
hall. The next room must have been hers, the bed was tumbled but empty.
The room next to the medical office contained a man trussed in traction
splints, white bandages, and literally festooned with those little
hanging bottles that contain everything from blood plasma to food and
water, right on down to lubrication for the joints. I tried to dig his
face under the swath of bandage but I couldn't make out much more than
the fact that it was a face and that the face was half Mekstrom Flesh.

"He is a Mekstrom Patient," said Miss Macklin quietly. "At this stage,
he is unconscious."

I sort of sneered at her. "Good friend of yours, no doubt."

"Not particularly," she said. "Let's say that he is a poor victim that
would die if we hadn't found his infection early." The tone and
expression of her voice made me seethe; she sounded as though she felt
herself to be a real benefactor to the human race, and that she and her
outfit would do the same for any other poor guy that caught
Mekstrom's--providing they learned about this unfortunate occurrence in
time.

"We would, Mr. Cornell."

"Bah-loney," I grunted.

"Why dispute my word?" she asked in the same tone of innocent honesty.

I eyed her angrily and I felt my hand tighten on the revolver. "I've a
reason to become suspicious," I told her in a voice that I hoped was as
mild-mannered as her own. "Because three people have disappeared in the
past half-year without a trace, but under circumstances that put me in
the middle. All of them, somehow, seem to be involved with your hidden
road sign system and Mekstrom's Disease."

"That's unfortunate," she said quietly.

I had to grab myself to keep from yelling, "Unfortunate?" and managed to
muffle it down to a mere voice-volume sound. "People dying of Mekstrom's
because you're keeping this cure a secret and I'm batted from pillar to
post because--" I gave up on that because I really did not know why.

"It's unfortunate that you had to become involved," she said firmly.
"Because you--"

"It's unfortunate for everybody," I snapped, "because I'm going to bust
you all wide open!"

"I'm afraid not. You see, in order to do that you'll have to get out of
here and that I will not permit."

I grunted. "Miss Macklin, you Mekstroms have hard bodies, but do you
think your hide will stop a slug from this?"

"You'll never know. You see, Mr. Cornell, you do not have the cold,
brittle, determined guts that you'd need to pull that trigger."

"No?"

"Pull it," she said. "Or do you agree, now that you're of age, that you
can't bluff a telepath."

I eyed her sourly because she was right. She held that strength that
lies in weakness; I could not pull that trigger and fire a .375 inch
slug into that slender, silk-covered midriff. And opposite that, Miss
Macklin also had a strength that was strength itself. She could hold me
aloft with one hand kicking and squirming while she was twisting my arms
and legs off with her other hand.

She held all the big cards of her sex, too. I couldn't slug her with my
fist, even though I knew that I'd only break my hand without even
bruising her. I was in an awkward situation and I knew it. If she'd been
a normal woman I could have shrugged my way past her and left, but she
was determined not to let me leave without a lot of physical violence.
Violence committed on a woman gets the man in dutch no matter how
justified he is.

Yet in my own weakness there was a strength; there was another way out
and I took it. Abruptly and without forethought.

X

Shifting my aim slightly, I pulled the trigger. The .375 Bonanza went
off with a sound like an atom bomb in a telephone booth, and the slug
whiffed between her arm and her body and drilled a crater in the plaster
behind her.

The roar stunned her stiff. The color drained from her face and she
swayed uncertainly. I found time enough to observe that while her body
was as hard as chromium, her nervous system was still human and
sensitive enough to make her faint from a sudden shock. She caught
herself, and stood there stiff and white with one delicate (but
steel-hard) hand up against her throat.

Then I dug the household. They were piling out of the hay like a bunch
of trained firemen answering a still alarm. They arrived in all stages
of nightdress in the following order:

The man, about twenty-two or three, who skidded into the room on dead
gallop and put on brakes with a screech as he caught sight of the .375
with its thin wisp of blue vapor still trailing out of the muzzle.

The twins, aged about fourteen, who might have turned to run if they'd
not been frightened stiff at the sight of the cannon in my fist.

Father and then Mother Macklin, who came in briskly but without panic.

Mr. Macklin said, crisply, "May I have an explanation, Mr. Cornell?"

"I'm a cornered rat," I said thickly. "And so I'm scared. I want out of
here in one piece. I'm so scared that if I'm intercepted, I may get
panicky, and if I do someone is likely to get hurt. Understand?"

"Perfectly," said Mr. Macklin calmly.

"Are you going to let him get away with this?" snapped the eldest son.

"Fred, a nervous man with a revolver is very dangerous. Especially one
who lacks the rudimentary training in the simpler forms of burglary."

I couldn't help but admire the older gentleman's bland self-confidence.
"Young man," he said to me, "You've made a bad mistake."

"No I haven't," I snapped. "I've been on the trail of something concrete
for a long time, and now that I've found it I'm not going to let it go
easily." I waved the .375 and they all cringed but Mr. Macklin.

He said, "Please put that weapon down, Mr. Cornell. Let's not add
attempted murder to your other crimes."

"Don't force me to it, then. Get out of my way and let me go."

He smiled. "I don't have to be telepath to tell you that you won't pull
that trigger until you're sorely driven," he replied calmly. He was so
right that it made me mad. He added, "also, you've got four shells left
since you carry the firearm on an empty chamber. Not used to guns, are
you, Mr. Cornell?"

Well, I wasn't used to wearing a gun. Now that he mentioned it, I
remembered that it was impossible to fire the shell under the hammer by
any means except by pulling the trigger.

What he was telling me meant that even if I made a careful but bloody
sweep of it with my four shells, there would be two of them left, and
even the twins were more than capable of taking me apart inch by inch
once my revolver was empty.

"Seems to be an impasse, Mr. Cornell," he said with an amused smile.

"You bland-mannered bunch of--"

"Ah now, please," he said abruptly. "My wife is not accustomed to such
language, nor is my daughter, although my son and the twins probably
know enough definitions to make them angry. This is an impasse, Mr.
Cornell, and it behooves all of us to be extremely polite to one
another. For one wrong move and you'll fire; this will mean complete
chaos for all of us. One wrong word from you and someone of us will take
offense, which will be equally fatal. Now, let's all stand quietly and
talk this over."

"What's to talk over?" I demanded.

"A truce. Or call it an armistice."

"Do go on."

He looked at his family, and I followed his gaze. Miss Macklin was
leaning against the wall with a look of concentrated interest. Her elder
brother Fred was standing alert and ready but not quite poised for a
leap. Mrs. Macklin had a motherly-looking smile on her face which for
some unknown reason she was aiming at me in a disarming manner. The
twins were standing close together, both of them puzzled-looking. I
wondered whether they were esper or telepath (twins are always the same
when they're identical, and opposite when fraternal). The thing that
really bothered me was their attitude They all seemed to look at me as
though I were a poor misguided individual who had unwittingly tromped on
their toes after having fallen in among bad company. They reminded me of
the Harrisons, who looked and sounded so sympathetic when I'd gone out
there seeking Catherine.

A fine bunch to trust! First they swipe my girl and erase all traces of
her; then when I go looking they offer me help and sympathy for my
distress. The right hand giveth and the left hand taketh away, yeah!

I hated them all, yet I am not a hero-type. I wanted the whole Highways
in Hiding rolled up like an old discarded corridor carpet, with every
Mekstrom on Earth rolled up in it. But even if I'd been filled to the
scuppers with self-abnegation in favor of my fellow man, I could not
have pulled the trigger and started the shambles. For instead of blowing
the whole thing wide open because of a batch of bodies, the survivors
would have enough savvy to clean up the mess before our bodies got cold,
and the old Highways crowd would be doing business at the same old
stand. Without, I might add, without the minor nuisance that people call
Steve Cornell.

What I really wanted was to find Catherine.

And then it came to me that what I really wanted second of all was to
possess a body of Mekstrom Flesh, to be a physical superman.

"Suppose," said Miss Macklin unexpectedly, "that it is impossible?"

"Impossible?" I roared. "What have you got that I haven't got?"

"Mekstrom's Disease," replied Miss Macklin quietly.

"Fine," I sneered. "So how do I go out and get it?"

"You'll get it naturally--or not at all," she said.

"Now see here--" I started off, but Mr. Macklin stopped me with an
upraised hand.

"Mr. Cornell," he said, "we are in the very awkward position of trying
to convince a man that his preconceived notion is incorrect. We can
produce no direct evidence to support our statement. All we can do is to
tell you that so far as we know, and as much as we know about Mekstrom's
Disease, no one has ever contracted the infection artificially."

"And how can I believe you?"

"That's our awkward position. We cannot show you anything that will
support our statement. We can profess the attitudes of honesty, truth,
honor, good-will, altruism, and every other word that means the same
thing. We can talk until doomsday and nothing will be said."

"So where is all this getting us?" I asked.

"I hope it is beginning to cause your mind to doubt the preconceived
notion," he said. "Ask yourself why any outfit such as ours would
deliberately show you evidence."

"I have it and it does not make sense."

He smiled. "Precisely. It does not."

Fred Macklin interrupted, "Look, Dad, why are we bothering with all this
guff?"

"Because I have hopes that Mr. Cornell can be made to see our point, to
join, as it were, our side."

"Fat chance," I snapped.

"Please, I'm your elder and not at all inclined to waste my time. You
came here seeking information and you shall have it. You will not
believe it, but it will, I hope, fill in some blank spots after you have
had a chance to compare, sort, and use your own logic on the problem. As
a mechanical engineer, you are familiar with the line of reasoning that
we non-engineering people call Occam's Razor?"

"The law of least reaction," I said automatically.

"The what?" asked Mrs. Macklin.

Miss Macklin said, "I'll read it from Mr. Cornell's mind, mother. The
law of least reaction can be demonstrated by the following: If a bucket
of mixed wood-shavings and gasoline are heated, there is a calculable
probability that the gasoline will catch fire first because the gasoline
is easier--least reaction--to set on fire."

"Right," I said. "But how does this apply to me?"

Mr. Macklin took up the podium again: "For one thing, your assumption
regarding Catherine is correct. At the time of the accident she was
found to have Mekstrom's Disease in its earliest form. The Harrisons did
take her in to save her life. Now, dropping that side of the long story,
we must follow your troubles. The accident, to a certain group of
persons, was a fortunate one. It placed under their medical care a
man--you--in whose mind could be planted a certain mild curiosity about
a peculiar road sign and other evidences. The upshot of this was that
you took off on a tour of investigation."

That sounded logical, but there were a lot of questions that had open,
ragged ends flying loose.

Mr. Macklin went on: "Let's diverge for the moment. Mr. Cornell, what is
your reaction to Mekstrom's Disease at this point?"

That was easy. It was a curse to the human race, excepting that some
outfit knew how to cure it. Once cured, it made a physical superman of
the so-called victim. What stuck in my craw was the number of
unfortunate people who caught it and died painfully--or by their own
hand in horror--without the sign of aid or assistance.

He nodded when I'd gone about half-way through my conclusions and before
I got mentally violent about them.

"Mr. Cornell, you've expressed your own doom at certain hands. You feel
that the human race could benefit by exploitation of Mekstrom's
Disease."

"It could, if everybody helped out and worked together."

"Everybody?" he asked with a sly look. I yearned again for the ability
of a telepath, and I knew that the reason why I was running around loose
was because I was only an esper and therefore incapable of learning the
truth directly. I stood there like a totem pole and tried to think.

Eventually it occurred to me. Just as there are people who cannot stand
dictatorships, there are others who cannot abide democracy; in any
aggregation like the human race there will be the warped souls who feel
superior to the rest of humanity. They welcome dictatorships providing
they can be among the dictators and if they are not included, they fight
until the other dictatorship is deposed so that they can take over.

"True," said Mr. Macklin, "And yet, if they declared their intentions,
how long would they last?"

"Not very long. Not until they had enough power to make it stick," I
said.

"And above all, not until they have the power to grant this blessing to
those whose minds agree with theirs. So now, Mr. Cornell, I'll make a
statement that you can accept as a mere collection of words, to be used
in your arguments with yourself: We'll assume two groups, one working to
set up a hierarchy of Mekstroms in which the rest of the human race will
become hewers of wood and drawers of water. Contrasting that group is
another group who feels that no man or even a congress of men are
capable of picking and choosing the individual who is to be granted the
body of the physical superman. We cannot hope to watch the watchers, Mr.
Cornell, and we will not have on our conscience the weight of having to
select A over B as being more desirable. Enough of this! You'll have to
argue it out by yourself later."

"Later?" grunted Fred Macklin. "You're not going to--"

"I certainly am," said his father firmly. "Mr. Cornell may yet be the
agency whereby we succeed in winning out." He spoke to me again.
"Neither group dares to come into the open, Mr. Cornell. We cannot
accuse the other group of anything nefarious, any more than they dare to
accuse us. Their mode of attack is to coerce you into exposing us for a
group of undercover operators who are making supermen."

"Look," I asked him, "why not admit it? You've got nothing sinister in
mind."

"Think of all the millions of people who have not had schooling beyond
the preparatory grades," he said. "People of latent psi ability instead
of trained practice, or those poor souls who have no psi ability worth
mentioning. Do you know the history of the Rhine Institute, Mr.
Cornell?"

"Only vaguely."

"In the early days of Rhine's work at Duke University, there were many
scoffers. The scoffers and detractors, naturally enough, were those
people who had the least amount of psi ability. Admitting that at the
time all psi ability was latent, they still had less of it. But after
Rhine's death, his associates managed to prove his theories and
eventually worked out a system of training that would develop the psi
ability. Then, Mr. Cornell, those who are blessed with a high ability in
telepathy or perception--the common term of esper is a misnomer, you
know, because there's nothing extra-sensory about perception--found
themselves being suspected and hated by those who had not this delicate
sense. It took forty of fifty years before common public acceptance got
around to looking at telepathy and perception in the same light as they
saw a musician with a trained ear or an artist with a trained eye. Psi
is a talent that everybody has to some degree, and today this is
accepted with very little angry jealousy.

"But now," he went on thoughtfully, "consider what would happen if we
made a public announcement that we could cure Mekstrom's Disease by
making a physical superman out of the poor victim. Our main enemy would
then stand up righteously and howl that we are concealing the secret; he
would be believed. We would be tracked down and persecuted, eventually
wiped out, while he sat behind his position and went on picking and
choosing victims whose attitude parallel his own."

"And who is the character?" I demanded. I knew. But I wanted him to say
it aloud.

He shook his head. "I'll not say it," he said. "Because I will not
accuse him aloud, any more than he dares to tell you flatly that we are
an underground organization that must be rooted out. He knows about our
highways and our way stations and our cure, because he uses the same
cure. He can hide behind his position so long as he makes no direct
accusation. You know the law, Mr. Cornell."

Yes, I knew the law. So long as the accuser came into court with a
completely clean mind, he was safe. But Scholar Phelps could hardly make
the accusation, nor could he supply the tiniest smidgin of direct
evidence to me. For in my accusation I'd implicate him as an
accessory-accuser and then he would be called upon to supply not only
evidence but a clear, clean, and open mind. In shorter words, the old
stunt of pointing loudly to someone else as a dodge for covering up your
own crime was a lost art in this present-day world of telepathic
competence. The law, of course, insisted that no man could be convicted
for what he was thinking, but only upon direct evidence of action. But a
crooked-thinking witness found himself in deep trouble anyway, even
though crooked thinking was in itself no crime.

"Now for one more time," said Mr. Macklin. "Consider a medical person
who cannot qualify because he is a telepath and not a perceptive. His
very soul was devoted to being a scholar of medicine like his father and
his grandfather, but his telepath ability does not allow him to be the
full scholar. A doctor he can be. But he can never achieve the final
training, again the ultimate degree. Such a man overcompensates and
becomes the frustrate; a ripe disciple for the superman theory."

"Dr. Thorndyke!" I blurted.

His face was as blank, as noncommittal as a bronze bust; I could neither
detect affirmation nor negation in it. He was playing it flat; I'd never
get any evidence from him, either.

"So now, Mr. Cornell, I have given you food for thought. I've made no
direct statements; nothing that you could point to. I've defended myself
as any man will do, but only by protestations of innocence. Therefore I
suggest that you take your artillery and vacate the premises."

I remembered the Bonanza .375 that was hanging in my hand. Shamefacedly
I slipped it back in my hip pocket. "But look, sir--"

"Please leave, Mr. Cornell. Any more I cannot say without laying us wide
open for trouble. I am sorry for you, it is no joy being a pawn. But I
hope that your pawn-ship will work for our side, and I hope that you
will come through it safely. Now, please leave us quietly."

I shrugged. I left. And as I was leaving, Miss Macklin touched my arm
and said in a soft voice: "I hope you find your Catherine, Steve. And I
hope that someday you'll be able to join her."

I nodded dumbly. It was not until I was all the way back to my car that
I remembered that her last statement was something similar to wishing me
a case of measles so that I'd be afterward immune from them.

XI

As the miles separated me from the Macklins, my mind kept whirling
around in a tight circle. I had a lot of the bits, but none of them
seemed to lock together very tight. And unhappily, too many of the bits
that fit together were hunks that I did not like.

I knew the futility of being non-telepath. Had Mr. Macklin given me the
truth or was I being sold another shoddy bill of goods? Or had he spun
me a yarn just to get me out of his house without a riot? Of course,
there had been a riot, and he'd been expecting it. If nothing else, it
proved that I was a valuable bit of material, for some undisclosed
reason.

I had to grin. I didn't know the reason, but whatever reason they had,
it must gripe the devil out of them to be unable to erase me.

Then the grin faded. No one had told me about Catherine. They'd neatly
avoided the subject. Well, since I'd taken off on this still hunt to
find Catherine, I'd continue looking, even though every corner I looked
into turned out to be the hiding place for another bunch of mad spooks.

My mind took another tack: Admitting that neither side could rub me out
without losing, why in heck didn't they just collect me and put me in a
cage? Dammit, if I had an organization as well oiled as either of them,
I could collect the President right out of the New White House and put
him in a cage along with the King of England, the Shah of Persia, and
the Dali Lama to make a fourth for bridge.

This was one of those questions that cannot be answered by the
application of logic, reasoning, or by applying either experience or
knowledge. I did not know, nor understand. And the only way I would ever
find out was to locate someone who was willing to tell.

Then it occurred to me that--aside from my one experience in
housebreaking--that I'd been playing according to the rules. I'm pretty
much a law-abiding citizen. Yet it did seem to me that I learned more
during those times when the rules, if not broken, at least were bent
rather sharply. So I decided to try my hand at busting a couple of
rather high-level rules.

There was a way to track down Catherine.

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