Highways in Hiding

by George O. Smith

  V

  I did not go to the police.

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

  Instead, I closed my apartment and told everyone that I was going totake a long, rambling tourist jaunt to settle my nerves; that I thoughtgetting away from the scene might finish the job that time and rest hadstarted.

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

  The emblem was right side up, and the signs looked as though they hadnot been up long.

  I followed that road for seventy-five miles, and as I went the signskept getting newer and newer until I finally came to a truck loaded withpipe, hardware, and ornamental ironwork. Leading the truck was one ofthose iron mole things.

  I watched the automatic gear hoist one of the old pipe and white andblack enamel roadsigns up by its roots, and place it on a truck full ofdiscards. I watched the mole drive a corkscrew blade into the groundwith a roaring of engine and bucking of the truck. It paused, pulledupward 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 themachine 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 tookoff and drove to Columbus as hard as I could make it.

  * * * * *

  Shined, cleaned, polished, and very conservatively dressed, I presentedmyself to the State Commissioner of Roads and Highways. I toyed brieflywith the idea of representing myself as a minor official from somedistant state like Alaska or the Virgin Islands, inquiring about thesesigns for official reasons. But then I knew that if I bumped into a hottelepath I'd be in the soup. On the other hand, mere curiosity on thepart of a citizen, well oiled with compliments, would get me at the veryleast 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 theDepartment of Highways Marking and Road Maps.

  A sub-secretary finally admitted that he might be able to help me. Hisname was Houghton. But whether he was telepath or esper did not matterbecause the Commission building was constructed right in the middle of adead 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 andwhite enamel jobs?"

  "On the contrary," he said with pride. "They might, but mass-productionmethods brought the cost down. You see, the enamel jobs, while we buyseveral thousand of the plates for any highway, must be set up, stampedout, enamelled, and so on. The new signs are all made in one plant asthey are needed; I don't suppose you know, but the highway number andany 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. Theyadmitted that they were still running at a loss, but if they could getenough states interested, they'd eventually come out even, and maybethey could reduce the cost. Why, they even have a contingent-clause inthe contract stating that if the cost were lowered, they would make arebate to cover it. That's so the first users will not bide their timeinstead of buying now."

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

  Eventually Mr. Houghton ran down and I left.

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

  I pocketed the card he gave me from the company, and I studied theink-fresh road map, which he had proudly supplied. It pointed out in areplica panel of the fancy signs, that the State of Ohio was beautifyingtheir highways with these new signs at no increased cost to thetaxpayer, and that the dates in green on the various highways here andthere gave the dates when the new signs would be installed. The bottomof the panel gave the Road Commissioner's name in boldface withHoughton's name below in slightly smaller print.

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

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

  * * * * *

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

  I did not know what I was following, and I was not sure I knew what Iwas looking for. But I was on the trail of something and a bit ofactivity, both mental and physical, after weeks of blank-wallfrustration made my spirits rise and my mental equipment sharper. Theradio in the car was yangling with hillbilly songs, the only thing youcan pick up in Ohio, but I didn't care. I was looking for somethingsignificant.

  I found it late in the afternoon about half-way between Dayton andCincinnati. 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 toreason out my next move by logic. Do I turn with the missing spoke, ordo I turn with the one that is not missing?

  Memory came to my aid. The "ten o'clock" spoke had been missing backthere near the Harrison farm. The Harrisons had lived on the left sideof 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 Icame to another sign that was complete.

  Then, wondering, I U-turned and drove back across the main highway anddrove for about five miles watching the signs as I went. The ones on myright had that trefoil emblem upside down. The ones on my left wereright side up. The difference was so small that only someone who knewthe significance would distinguish one from the other. So far as I couldreason out, it meant that what I sought was in the other direction. Whenthe emblem was upside down I was going away from, and when right sideup, 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 thatannounced the turn, I came upon another missing spoke. This indicated aturn to the left, and so I slowed down until I came upon a homesteadroad leading off toward a farmhouse.

  I turned, determined to make like a man lost and hoping that I'd notbump into a telepath.

  A few hundred yards in from the main road I came upon a girl who waswalking briskly toward me. I stopped. She looked at me with a quizzicalsmile 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." Hervoice had the Ohio twang.

  "No?"

  "Just where do they live?"

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

  "Spokes? Left side--" She mumbled the words and was apparently mullingthe idea around in her mind. She was not more than about seventeen,sun-tanned and animal-alive from living in the open. I wondered abouther. As far as I was concerned, she was part and parcel of this wholemysterious affair. No matter what she said or did, it was an obviousfact that the hidden road sign directions pointed to this farm. Andsince no one at seventeen can be kept in complete ignorance of thebusiness 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 ofyouth. "You didn't happen to notice whether the mailbox flag was up, didyou?"

  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 rideback to the house with you, mister?"

  "Hop in."

  She smiled brightly and got in quickly. I took off down the road towardthe house at an easy pace. She seemed interested in the car, and finallysaid, "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 busytelling her all the perils of fast driving when a rabbit came barrellingout 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 theshoulder, tilting quite a bit. Beyond the rabbit I swung back into theroad, but not before the youngster had grabbed my arm to keep from beingtossed all over the front seat.

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

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

  "Sorry, mister," she said breathlessly, her eyes wide open. Her face waswhite around the corners of the mouth and at the edges of her nose. Thewhiteness of the flesh under the deep tan gave her a completelyfrightened 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 goodtone, fine training and excellent health. It was the solidity of a--allI could think of at the time was a green cucumber. I squeezed a bit andthe flesh gave way only a trifle. I rubbed my thumb over her palm andfound 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 youhave an advanced case of Mekstrom's Disease?"

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

  Something in my make-up objects violently to being ordered around by aslip of a girl. I balance off at about one-sixty. I guessed her at abouttwo-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, soyou'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 andcarry you?"

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

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

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

  She shut up like a clam when she realized that her mouthing had given mea 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 theelastic cord marks you had 'em on not long ago.#

  Seventeeners have a lot more modesty than they like to admit. She wasstunned by my cold-blooded catalog of her body just long enough for meto 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 bottomover appetite in a sprawl that would have jarred the teeth loose in anormal body and might have cracked a few bones. But she landed on theback 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 thecar leaped forward with a jerk that slammed the door for me. I roaredforward 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 wasmomentary freedom to think. I turned this way and that to follow theroad until I came to the house. I left the road, circled the house withthe turbine screaming like a banshee and the car taking the corners onthe outside wheels. I skidded into a turn like a racing driver andironed my wheels out flat on the takeaway, rounded another corner andturned 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 theopen window on my side, and swung onto the half-inch trim along thebottom 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 theroad into a tree or pile up in a ditch, and while the smoke was clearingout of my mind, she'd be untangling me from the wreck and carting meover 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 amailbag 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 asI regained the road and went racing on to safety, I saw in the rear viewmirror that she had bounced off the tree, sprawled a bit, caught herbalance, and was standing in the middle of the road, shaking her smallbut very dangerous fist at my tail license plate.

  I didn't stop driving at one-ten until I was above Dayton again. Then Ipaused 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 secretorganization that had a program that included their own highway system,concealed within the confines of the United States. I was almost certainby this time that they had been the prime movers in the disappearance ofCatherine and Dr. Thorndyke. They--

  I suddenly re-lived the big crack-up.

  Willingly now, no longer rejecting the memory, I followed myrecollection as Catherine and I went along that highway at a happy pace
.With care I recalled every detail of Catherine, watching the roadthrough my mind and eyes, how she'd mentioned the case of the missingspoke, and how I'd projected back to perceive that which I had not beenconscious of.

  Reminding myself that it was past, I went through it again,deliberately. The fallen limb that blocked the road, my own horror asthe wheels hit it. The struggle to regain control of the careening car.

  As a man watching a motion picture, I watched the sky and the earth turnover and over, and I heard my voice mouthing wordless shouts of fear.Catherine's cry of pain and fright came, and I listened as my mindreconstructed it this time without wincing. Then the final crash, thehorrid wave of pain and the sear of the flash-fire. I went through myown horror and self condemnation, and my concern over Catherine. Ididn't shut if off. I waded through it.

  Now I remembered something else.

  Something that any normal, sensible mind would reject as anhallucination. Beyond any shadow of a doubt there had been no time for aman to rig a block and tackle on a tree above a burning automobile intime to get the trapped victims out alive. And even more certain it wasthat no normal man of fifty would have had enough strength to lift a carby its front bumper while his son made a rush into the flames.

  That tackle had been rigged and burned afterward. But who would reject ablock and tackle in favor of an impossibly strong man? No, with thetackle in sight, the recollection of a man lifting that overturnedautomobile like a weight lifter pressing up a bar bell would be buriedin any mind as a rank hallucination. Then one more item came drivinghome hard. So hard that I almost jumped when the idea crossed my mind.

  Both Catherine and Dr. Thorndyke had been telepaths.

  A telepath close to any member of his underground outfit would divinetheir purpose, come to know their organization, and begin to grasp thefundamentals of their program. Such a person would be dangerous.

  On the other hand, an esper such as myself could be turned aside withbland remarks and a convincing attitude. I knew that I had no way oftelling lie from truth and that made my problem a lot more difficult.

  From the facts that I did have, something smelled of overripe seafood.Government and charities were pouring scads of dough into a joint calledthe Medical Research Center. To hear the scholars of medicine tell it,Mekstrom's Disease was about the last human frailty that hadn't beenlicked to a standstill. They boasted that if a victim of practicallyanything had enough life left in him to crawl to a telephone and use it,his life could be saved. They grafted well. I'd heard tales of thingslike fingers, and I know they were experimenting on hands, arms and legswith some success. But when it came to Mekstrom's they were stoppedcold. Therefore the Medical Research Center received a walloping batchof money for that alone; all the money that used to go to the variousheart, lung, spine and cancer funds. It added up well.

  But the Medical Research Center seemed unaware that some group hadsolved their basic problem.

  From the books I've read I am well aware of one of the fundamentalprinciples of running an underground: _Keep it underground!_ The Commiemenace in these United States might have won out in the middle of thecentury if they'd been able to stay a secret organization. So theHighways in Hiding could stay underground and be an efficientorganization only until someone smoked them out.

  That one was going to be me.

  But I needed an aide-de-camp. Especially and specifically I needed atrained telepath, one who would listen to my tale and not instantly howlfor the nut-hatch attendants. The F.B.I. were all trained investigatorsand they used esper-telepath teams all the time. One dug the joint whilethe other dug the inhabitant, which covered the situation to afaretheewell.

  It would take time to come up with a possible helper. So I spent thenext hour driving toward Chicago, and by the time I'd crossed theOhio-Indiana line and hit Richmond, I had a plan laid out. I placed acall to New York and within a few minutes I was talking to Nurse Farrow.

  I'll not go into detail because there was a lot of mish-mash that is notparticularly interesting and a lot more that covered my tracks since I'dparted company with her on the steps of the hospital. I did not, ofcourse, mention my real purpose over the telephone and Miss Farrow couldnot read my mind from New York.

  The upshot of the deal was that I felt that I needed a nurse for awhile, not that I was ill, but that I felt a bit woozy now and thenbecause I hadn't learned to slow down. I worked too fast and too longand my condition was not up to it yet. This Miss Farrow allowed as beingquite possible. I repeated my offer to pay her at the going prices forregistered nurses with a one-month guarantee, paid in advance. Thatsoftened her quite a bit. Then I added that I'd videograph her a checklarge enough to cover the works plus a round trip ticket. She shouldcome out and have a look, and if she weren't satisfied, she could returnwithout digging into her own pocket. All she'd lose was one day, and itmight be a bit of a vacation if she enjoyed flying in a jetliner atsixty thousand feet.

  The accumulation of offers finally sold her and she agreed toarrange a leave of absence. She'd meet me in the morning of theday-after-tomorrow, at Central Airport in Chicago.

  I videographed the check and then took off again, confident that I'd beable to sell her on the idea of being the telepath half of my amateurinvestigation team.

  Then because I needed some direct information, I turned West and crossedthe line into Indiana, heading toward Marion. So far I had a lot ofwell-placed suspicions, but until I was certain, I could do no more thanpostulate ideas. I had to know definitely how to identify Mekstrom'sDisease, or at least the infected flesh. I have a fairly good recall;all I needed now was to have someone point to a Case and say flatly thatthis was a case of Mekstrom's Disease. Then I'd know whether what I'dseen in Ohio was actually one hundred percent Mekstrom.