Highways in Hiding
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George Oliver Smith >> Highways in Hiding
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He was right. In fact, if I'd tried the letter-following stunt long
earlier, I'd have been here a lot sooner.
"All right," I said. "So what do we do now?"
"We go on and on and on, Steve, until we're successful."
"Successful?"
He nodded soberly. "Until we can make every man, woman, and child on the
face of this Earth as much physical superman as we are, our job is not
finished."
I nodded. "I learned a few of the answers at the Macklin Place."
"Then this does not come as a complete shock."
"No. Not a complete shock. But there are a lot of loose ends still. So
the basic theme I'll buy. Scholar Phelps and his Medical Center are busy
using their public position to create the nucleus of a totalitarian
state, or a physical hierarchy. You and the Highways in Hiding are busy
tearing Phelps down because you don't want to see any more rule by the
Divine Right of Kings, Dictators, or Family Lines."
"Go on, Steve."
"Well, why in the devil don't you announce yourselves?"
"No good, old man. Look, you yourself want to be a Mekstrom. Even with
your grasp of the situation, you resent the fact that you cannot."
"You're right."
Phillip nodded slowly. "Let's hypothesize for a moment, taking a subject
that has nothing to do with Mekstrom's Disease. Let's take one of the
old standby science-fiction plots. Some cataclysm is threatening the
solar system. The future of the Earth is threatened, and we have only
one spacecraft capable of carrying a hundred people to safety--somewhere
else. How would you select them?"
I shrugged. "Since we're hypothecating, I suppose that I'd select the
more healthy, the more intelligent, the more virile, the more--" I
struggled for another category and then let it stand right there because
I couldn't think of another at that instant.
Phillip agreed. "Health and intelligence and all the rest being pretty
much a matter of birth and upbringing, how can you explain to Wilbur
Zilch that Oscar Hossenpfeiffer has shown himself smarter and healthier
and therefore better stock for survival? Maybe you can, but the
end-result is that Wilbur Zilch slaughters Oscar Hossenpfeiffer. This
either provides an opening for Zilch, or if he is caught at it, it
provides Zilch with the satisfaction of knowing that he's stopped the
other guy from getting what he could not come by honestly."
"So what has this to do with Mekstrom's Disease and supermen?"
"The day that we--and I mean either of us--announces that we can 'cure'
Mekstrom's Disease and make physical supermen of the former victims,
there will be a large scream from everybody to give them the same
treatment. No, we'll tell them, we can't cure anybody who hasn't caught
it. Then some pedagogue will stand up and declare that we are
suppressing information. This will be believed by enough people to do us
more harm than good. Darn it, we're not absolutely indestructible,
Steve. We can be killed. We could be wiped out by a mob of angry
citizens who saw in us a threat to their security. Neither we of the
Highways nor Phelps of The Medical Center have enough manpower to be
safe."
"So that I'll accept. The next awkward question comes up: What are we
going to do with me?"
"You've agreed that we cannot move until we know how to inoculate
healthy flesh. We need normal humans, to be our guinea pigs. Will you
help bring to the Earth's People the blessing that is now denied them?"
"If you are successful, Steve," said Marian, "You'll go down in History
along with Otto Mekstrom. You could be the turning point of the human
race, you know."
"And if I fail?"
Phillip Harrison's face took on a hard and determined look. "Steve,
there can be no failure. We shall go on and on until we have success."
That was a fine prospect. Old guinea-pig Cornell, celebrating his
seventieth birthday as the medical experimentation went on and on.
Catherine was leaning forward, her eyes bright. "Steve," she cried,
"You've just _got_ to!"
"Just call me the unwilling hero," I said in a drab voice. "And put it
down that the condemned specimen drank a hearty dinner. I trust that
there is a drink in the house."
There was enough whiskey in the place to provide the new specimen with a
near-total anesthesia. The evening was spent in forced badinage, shallow
laughter, and a pointed avoidance of the main subject. The whiskey was
good; I took it undiluted and succeeded in getting boiled to the
eyebrows before they carted me off to bed.
I did not sleep well despite my anesthesia. There was too much on my
mind and very little of it was the fault of the Harrisons. One of the
things that I had to face was the cold fact that part of Catherine's
lack of communication with me was caused by logic and good sense. Both
History and Fiction are filled with cases where love was set aside
because consummation was impossible for any number of good reasons.
So I slept fitfully, and my dreams were as unhappy as the thoughts I had
during my waking moments. Somehow I realized that I'd have been far
better off if I'd been able to forget Catherine after the accident, if
I'd been able to resist the urge to follow the Highways in Hiding, if
I'd never known that those ornamental road signs were something more
than the desire of some road commissioner to beautify the countryside.
But no, I had to go and poke my big bump of curiosity into the problem.
So here I was, resentful as all hell because I was denied the pleasure
of living in the strong body of a Mekstrom.
It was not fair. Although Life itself is seldom fair, it seemed to me
that Life was less fair to me than to others.
And then to compound my feelings of persecution, I woke up once about
three in the morning with a strong urge to take a perceptive dig down
below. I should have resisted it, but of course, no one has ever been
able to resist the urge of his sense of perception.
Down in the living room, Catherine was crying on Phillip Harrison's
shoulder. He held her gently with one arm around her slender waist and
he was stroking her hair softly with his other hand. I couldn't begin to
dig what was being said, but the tableau was unmistakable.
She leaned back and looked at him as he said something. Her head moved
in a 'No' motion as she took a deep breath for another bawl. She buried
her face in his neck and sobbed. Phillip held her close for a moment and
then loosed one hand to find a handkerchief for her. He wiped her eyes
gently and talked to her until she shook her head in a visible effort to
shake away both the tears and the unhappy thoughts.
Eventually he lit two cigarettes and handed one to her. Side by side
they walked to the divan and sat down close together. Catherine leaned
against him gently and he put his arm over her shoulders and hugged her
to him. She relaxed, looking unhappy, but obviously taking comfort in
the strength and physical presence of him.
It was a hell of a thing to dig in my mental condition. I drifted off to
a sleep filled with unhappy dreams while they were still downstairs.
Frankly, I forced myself into fitful sleep because I did not want to
stay awake to follow them.
As bad as the nightmare quality of my dreams were, they were better for
me than the probable reality.
* * * * *
Oh, I'd been infernally brilliant when I uncovered the first secret of
the Highways in Hiding. I found out that I did not know one-tenth of the
truth. They had a network of Highways that would make the Department of
Roads and Highways look like a backwood, second-rate, political
organization.
I'd believed, for instance, that the Highways were spotted only along
main arteries to and from their Way Stations. The truth was that they
had a complete system from one end of the country to the other. Lanes
led from Maine and from Florida into a central main Highway that laid
across the breadth of the United States. Then from Washington and from
Southern California another branching network met this main Highway.
Lesser lines served Canada and Mexico. The big Main Trunk ran from New
York to San Francisco with only one large major division: A heavy line
that led down to a place in Texas called _Homestead_. Homestead, Texas,
was a big center that made Scholar Phelps' Medical Center look like a
Teeny Weeny Village by comparison.
We drove in Marian's car. My rented car, of course, was returned to the
agency and my own bus would be ferried out as soon as it could be
arranged so that I'd not be without personal transportation in Texas.
Catherine remained in Wisconsin because she was too new at being a
Mekstrom to know how to conduct herself so that the fact of her
super-powerful body did not cause a lot of slack jaws and high
suspicion.
We drove along the Highways to Homestead, carrying a bag of the Mekstrom
Mail.
The trip was uneventful.
XIII
Since this account of my life and adventures is not being written
without some plan, it is no mere coincidence that this particular
section comes under Chapter Thirteen. Old Unlucky Thirteen covers ninety
days which I consider the most dismal ninety days of my life. Things,
which had been going along smoothly had, suddenly got worse.
We started with enthusiasm. They cut and they dug and they poked needles
into me and trimmed out bits of my hide for slides. I helped them by
digging my own flesh and letting their better telepaths read my results
for their records.
They were nice to me. I got the best of everything. But being nice to me
was not enough; it sort of made me feel like Gulliver in Brobdingnag.
They were so over-strong that they did not know their own strength. This
was especially true of the youngsters of Mekstrom parents. I tried to
re-diaper a baby one night and got my ring finger gummed for my efforts.
It was like wrestling Bad Cyril in a one-fall match, winner take all.
As the days added up into weeks, their hope and enthusiasm began to
fade. The long list of proposed experiments dwindled and it became
obvious that they were starting to work on brand new ideas. But brand
new ideas are neither fast in arriving nor high in quantity, and time
began to hang dismally heavy.
They began to avoid my eyes. They stopped discussing their attempts on
me; I no longer found out what they were doing and how they hoped to
accomplish the act. They showed the helplessness that comes of failure,
and this feeling of utter futility was transmitted to me.
At first I was mentally frantic at the idea of failure, but as the
futile days wore on and the fact was practically shoved down my throat,
I was forced to admit that there was no future for Steve Cornell.
I began at that time to look forward to my visit to reorientation.
Reorientation is a form of mental suicide. Once reoriented, the problems
that make life intolerable are forgotten, your personality is changed,
your grasp of everything is revised, your appreciation of all things
comes from an entirely new angle. You are a new person.
Then one morning I faced my image in the mirror and came to the
conclusion that if I couldn't be Me, I didn't want to be Somebody Else.
It is no good to be alive if I am not me, I told my image, who
obediently agreed with me.
I didn't even wait to argue with Me. I just went out and got into my car
and sloped. It was not hard; everybody in Homestead trusted me.
XIV
I left homestead with a half-formed idea that I was going to visit
Bruce, Wisconsin, long enough to say goodbye to Catherine and to release
her from any matrimonial involvement she may have felt binding. I did
not relish this idea, but I felt that getting it out, done, and agreed
was only a duty.
But as I hit the road and had time to think, I knew that my half-formed
intention was a sort of martyrdom; I was going to renounce myself in a
fine welter of tears and then go staggering off into the setting sun to
die of my mental wounds. I took careful stock of myself and faced the
fact that my half-baked idea was a sort of suicide-wish; walking into
any Mekstrom way station now was just asking for capture and a fast trip
to their reorientation rooms. The facts of my failure and my
taking-of-leave would be indication enough for Catherine that I was
bowing out. It would be better for Catherine, too, to avoid a fine,
high-strung, emotional scene. I remembered the little bawling session in
the Harrison living room that night; Catherine would not die for want of
a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. In fact, as she'd said
pragmatically, well balanced people never die of broken hearts.
Having finally convinced myself of the validity of this piece of obvious
logic, I suddenly felt a lot better. My morose feeling faded away; my
conviction of utter uselessness died; and my half-formed desire to
investigate a highly hypothetical Hereafter took an abrupt about-face.
And in place of this collection of undesirable self-pities came a much
nicer emotion. It was a fine feeling, that royal anger that boiled up
inside of me. I couldn't lick 'em and I couldn't join 'em, so I was
going out to pull something down, even if it all came down around my own
ears.
I stopped long enough to check the Bonanza .375 both visually and
perceptively and then loaded it full. I consulted a road map to chart a
course. Then I took off with the coal wide open and the damper rods all
the way out and made the wheels roll towards the East.
I especially gave all the Highways a very wide berth. I went down
several, but always in the wrong direction. And in the meantime, I kept
my sense of perception on the alert for any pursuit. I drove with my
eyes alone. I could have made it across the Mississippi by nightfall if
I'd not taken the time to duck Highway signs. But when I got good, and
sick, and tired of driving, I was not very far from the River. I found a
motel in a rather untravelled spot and sacked in for the night.
I awoke at the crack of dawn with a feeling of impending _something_. It
was not doom, because any close-danger would have nudged me on the bump
of perception. Nor was it good, because I'd have awakened looking
forward to it. Something odd was up and doing. I dressed hastily, and as
I pulled my clothing on I took a slow dig at the other cabins in the
motel.
Number One contained a salesman type, I decided, after digging through
his baggage. Number Two was occupied by an elderly couple who were
loaded with tourist-type junk and four or five cameras. Number Three
harbored a stopover truck driver and Number Four was almost overflowing
with a gang of schoolgirls packed sardine-wise in the single bed. Number
Five was mine. Number Six was vacant. Number Seven was also vacant but
the bed was tumbled and the water in the washbowl was still running out,
and the door was still slamming, and the little front steps were still
clicking to the fast clip of high heels, and----
I hauled myself out of my cabin on a dead gallop and made a fast line
for my car. I hit the car, clawed myself inside, wound up the turbine
and let the old heap in gear in one unbroken series of motions. The
wheels spun and sent back a hail of gravel, then they took a bite out of
the parking lot and the take-off snapped my head back.
Both esper and eyesight were very busy cross-stitching a crooked course
through the parking lot between the parked cars and the trees that were
intended to lend the outfit a rustic atmosphere. So I was too busy to
take more than a vague notice of a hand that clamped onto the doorframe
until the door opened and closed again. By then I was out on the highway
and I could relax a bit.
"Steve," she said, "why do you do these things?"
Yeah, it was Marian Harrison. "I didn't ask to get shoved into this
mess," I growled.
"You didn't ask to be born, either," she said.
I didn't think the argument was very logical, and I said so. "Life
wasn't too hard to bear until I met you people," I told her sourly.
"Life would be very pleasant if you'd go away. On the other hand, life
is all I've got and it's far better than the alternative. So if I'm
making your life miserable, that goes double for me."
"Why not give it up?" she asked me.
I stopped the car. I eyed her dead center, eye to eye until she couldn't
take it any more. "What would you like me to just give up, Marian? Shall
I please everybody by taking a bite of my hip-pocket artillery sights
whilst testing the trigger pull with one forefinger? Will it make
anybody happy if I walk into the nearest reorientation museum blowing
smoke out of my nose and claiming that I am a teakettle that's gotta be
taken off the stove before I blow my lid?"
Marian's eyes dropped.
"Do you yourself really expect me to seek blessed oblivion?"
She shook her head slowly.
"Then for the love of God, what do you expect of me?" I roared. "As I
am, I'm neither flesh nor fish; just foul. I'm not likely to give up,
Marian. If I'm a menace to you and to your kind, it's just too tough.
But if you want me out of your hair, you'll have to wrap me up in
something suitable for framing and haul me kicking and screaming to your
mind-refurbishing department. Because I'm not having any on my own.
Understand?"
"I understand, Steve," she said softly. "I know you; we all know you and
your type. You can't give up. You're unable to."
"Not when I've been hypnoed into it," I said.
Marian's head tossed disdainfully. "Thorndyke's hypnotic suggestion was
very weak," she explained. "He had to plant the idea in such a way as to
remain unidentified afterwards. No, Steve, your urge has always been
your own personal drive. All that Thorndyke did was to point you
slightly in our direction and give you a nudge. You did the rest."
"Well, you're a telepath. Maybe you're also capable of planting a
post-hypnotic suggestion that I forget the whole idea."
"I'm not," she said with a sudden flare.
I looked at her. Not being a telepath I couldn't read a single thought,
but it was certain that she was telling the truth, and telling it in
such a manner as to be convincing. Finally I said, "Marian, if you know
that I'm not to be changed by logic or argument, why do you bother?"
For a full minute she was silent, then her eyes came up and gave it back
to me with their electric blue. "For the same reason that Scholar Phelps
hoped to use you against us," she said. "Your fate and your future is
tied up with ours whether you turn out to be friend or enemy."
I grunted. "Sounds like a soap opera, Marian," I told her bitterly.
"Will Catherine find solace in Phillip's arms? Will Steve catch
Mekstrom's Disease? Will the dastardly Scholar Phelps--"
"Stop it!" she cried.
"All right. I'll stop as soon as you tell me what you intend to do with
me now that you've caught up with me again."
She smiled. "Steve, I'm going along with you. Partly to play the
telepath-half of your team. If you'll trust me to deliver the truth. And
partly to see that you don't get into trouble that you can't get out of
again."
My mind curled its lip. Pappy had tanned my landing gear until I was out
of the habit of using mother for protection against the slings and
arrows of outrageous schoolchums. I'd not taken sanctuary behind a
woman's skirts since I was eight. So the idea of running under the
protection of a woman went against the grain, even though I knew that
she was my physical superior by no sensible proportion. Being cared for
physically by a dame of a hundred-ten--
"Eighteen."
--didn't sit well on me.
"Do you believe me, Steve?"
"I've got to. You're here to stay. I'm a sucker for a good-looking woman
anyway, it seems. They tell me anything and I'm not hardhearted enough
to even indicate that I don't believe them."
She took my arm impulsively; then she let me go before she pinched it
off at the elbow. "Steve," she said earnestly, "Believe me and let me be
your--"
#Better half?# I finished sourly.
"Please don't," she said plaintively. "Steve, you've simply _got_ to
trust _somebody_!"
I looked into her face coldly. "The hardest job in the world for a
non-telepath is to locate someone he can trust. The next hardest is to
explain that to a telepath; because telepaths can't see any difficulty
in weeding out the non-trustworthy. Now--"
"You still haven't faced the facts."
"Neither have you, Marian. You intend to go along with me, ostensibly to
help me in whatever I intend to do. That's fine. I'll accept it. But you
know good and well that I intend to carry on and on until something
cracks. Now, tell me honestly, are you going along to help me crack
something wide open, or just to steer me into channels that will not
result in a crack-up for your side?"
Marian Harrison looked down for a moment; I didn't need telepathy to
know that I'd touched the sore spot. Then she looked up and said,
"Steve, more than anything, I intend to keep you out of trouble. You
should know by now that there is very little you can really do to harm
either side of our own private little war."
#And if I can't harm either side, I can hardly do either side any good.#
She nodded.
#Yet I must be of some importance.#
She nodded again. At that point I almost gave up. I'd been around this
circle so many times in the past half-year that I knew how the back of
my head looked. Always, the same old question.
#_Cherchez le angle_,# I thought in bum French. Something I had was
important enough to both sides to make them keep me on the loose instead
of erasing me and my nuisance value. So far as I could see, I was as
useless to either side as a coat of protective paint laid on stainless
steel. I was immune to Mekstrom's Disease; the immunity of one who has
had everything tried on him that scholars of the disease could devise.
About the only thing that ever took place was the sudden disappearance
of everybody that I came in contact with.
Marian touched my arm gently. "You mustn't think like that, Steve," she
said gently. "You've done enough useless self-condemnation. Can't you
stop accusing yourself of some evil factor? Something that really is not
so?"
"Not until I know the truth," I replied. "I certainly can't dig it; I'm
no telepath. Perhaps if I were, I'd not be in this awkward position."
Again her silence proved to me that I'd hit a touchy spot. "What am I?"
I demanded sourly. "Am I a great big curse? What have I done, other than
to be present just before several people turn up missing? Makes me sort
of a male Typhoid Mary, doesn't it?"
"Now, Steve--"
"Well, maybe that's the way I feel. Everything I put my great big
clutching hands on turns dark green and starts to rot. Regardless of
which side they're on, it goes one, two, three, four; Catherine,
Thorndyke, You, Nurse Farrow."
"Steve, what on Earth are you talking about?"
I smiled down at her in a crooked sort of quirk. "You, of course, have
not the faintest idea of what I'm thinking."
"Oh, Steve--"
"And then again maybe you're doing your best to lead my puzzled little
mind away from what you consider a dangerous subject?"
"I'd hardly do that--"
"Sure you would. I'd do it if our positions were reversed. I don't think
it un-admirable to defend one's own personal stand, Marian. But you'll
not divert me this time. I have a hunch that I am a sort of male Typhoid
Mary. Let's call me old Mekstrom Steve. The carrier of Mekstrom's
Disease, who can innocently or maliciously go around handing it out to
anybody that I contact. Is that it, Marian?"
"It's probably excellent logic, Steve. But it isn't true."
I eyed her coldly. "How can I possibly believe you?"
"That's the trouble," she said with a plaintive cry. "You can't. You've
got to believe me on faith, Steve."
I smiled crookedly. "Marian," I said, "That's just the right angle to
take. Since I cannot read your mind, I must accept the old appeal to the
emotions. I must tell myself that Marian Harrison just simply could not
lie to me for many reasons, among which is that people do not lie to
blind men nor cause the cripple any hurt. Well, phooey. Whatever kind of
gambit is being played here, it is bigger than any of its parts or
pieces. I'm something between a queen and a pawn, Marian; a piece that
can be sacrificed at any time to further the progress of the game.
Slipping me a lie or two to cause me to move in some desired direction
should come as a natural."
"But why would we lie to you?" she asked, and then she bit her lip; I
think that she slipped, that she hadn't intended to urge me into deeper
consideration of the problem lest I succeed in making a sharp analysis.
After all, the way to keep people from figuring things out is to stop
them from thinking about the subject. That's the first rule. Next comes
the process of feeding them false information if the First Law cannot be
invoked.
"Why would you lie to me?" I replied in a sort of sneer. I didn't really
want to sneer but it came naturally. "In an earlier age it might not be
necessary."
"What?" she asked in surprise.
"Might not be necessary," I said. "Let's assume that we are living in
the mid-Fifties, before Rhine. Steve Cornell turns up being a carrier of
a disease that is really a blessing instead of a curse. In such a time,
Marian, either side could sign me up openly as a sort of missionary; I
could go around the country inoculating the right people, those citizens
who have the right kind of mind, attitude, or whatever-factor. Following
me could be a clean-up corps to collect the wights who'd been inoculated
by my contact. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?" Without waiting for
either protest or that downcast look of agreement, I went on: "But now
we have perception and telepathy all over the place. So Steve Cornell,
the carrier, must be pushed around from pillar to post, meeting people
and inoculating them without ever knowing what he is doing. Because once
he knows what he is doing, his usefulness is ended in this world of
Rhine Institute."
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