Highways in Hiding

by George O. Smith

  XXI

  My car leaped forward and I headed along the outside road towards thenearby highway. Through the busted gate I roared, past the downed guardand the smashed guardhouse, past the wreck of Farrow's car.

  But Nurse Farrow was not finished with this gambit yet. As I drew evenwith her, she pried herself out of the messy tangle and came across thefield in a dead run--and how that girl could run! As fast as I wasgoing, she caught up; as fast as it all happened I had too little timeto slow me down before Nurse Farrow closed the intervening distance fromher wreck to my car and had hooked her arm in through one open window.

  My car lurched with the impact, but I fought the wheel straight againand Farrow snapped, "Keep going, Steve!"

  I kept going; Farrow snaked herself inside and flopped into the seatbeside me. "Now," she said, patting the dashboard of our car, "It's upto the both of us now! Don't talk, Steve. Just drive like crazy!"

  "Where--?"

  She laughed a weak little chuckle. "Anywhere--so long as it's a long,long way from here."

  I nodded and settled down to some fancy mile-getting. Farrow relaxed inthe seat, opened the glove compartment and took out a first aid kit. Itwas only then I noticed that she was banged up quite a bit for aMekstrom. I'd not been too surprised when she emerged from the wreck;I'd become used to the idea of the indestructibility of the Mekstrom. Iwas a bit surprised at her being banged up; I'd become so used to theirdamage-proof hide that the idea of minor cuts, scars, mars, andabrasions hadn't occurred to me. Yes, that wreck would have mangled anormal man into an unrecognizable mess of hamburger. Yet I'd expected aMekstrom to come through it unscathed.

  On the other hand, the damage to Farrow's body was really minor. Shebled from a long gash on her thigh, from a wound on her right arm, andfrom a myriad of little cuts on her face, neck, and shoulders.

  So as I drove crazy-fast away from the Medical Center Nurse Farrowrelaxed in the seat and applied adhesive tape, compresses, and closedthe gashes with a batch of little skin clips in lieu of sutures. Thenshe lit two cigarettes and handed one of them to me. "Okay now, Steve,"she said easily. "Let's drive a little less crazily."

  I pulled the car down to a flat hundred and felt the strain go out ofme.

  "As I remember, there's one of the Highways not far from here--"

  She shook her head. "No, Steve. We don't want the Highways in Hiding,either."

  At a mere hundred per I could let my esper do the road-sighting, so Ilooked over at her. She was half-smiling, but beneath the little smilewas a firm look of self-confidence. "No," she said quietly, "We don'twant the Highways. If we go there, Phelps and his outfit will turnheaven and earth to break it up, now that you've become so important.You forget that the Medical Center is still being run to look legal andaboveboard; while the Highways are still in Hiding. Phelps could makequite a bitter case out of their reluctance to come out into the open."

  "Well, where do we go?" I asked.

  "West," she said simply. "West, into New Mexico. To my home."

  This sort of startled me. Somehow I'd not connected Farrow with anypermanent home; as a nurse and later as one of the Medical Center, I'dcome to think of her as having no permanent home of her own. Yet likethe rest of us, Nurse Farrow had been brought up in a home with a motherand a father and probably some sisters and brothers. Mine were dead andthe original home disbanded, but there was no reason why I should thinkof everybody else in the same terms. After all, Catherine had had amother and a father who'd come to see me after her disappearance.

  So we went West, across Southern Illinois and over the big bridge at St.Louis into Missouri and across Missouri and West, West, West. We parkednights in small motels and took turns sleeping with one of us alwaysawake and alert with esper and telepath senses geared high for the firstsight of any threat. We gave the Highways we came upon a wide berth; atno time did we come close to any of their way stations. It made our pathcrooked and much longer than it might have been if we'd strung a lineand gone. But eventually we ended up in a small town in New Mexico andat a small ranch house on the edge of the town.

  It is nice to have parents; I missed my own deeply when I was remindedof the sweet wonder of having people just plain glad to see theirchildren again, no matter what they'd done under any circumstances. Evenbringing a semi-invalid into their homes for an extended course oftreatment.

  John Farrow was a tall man with gray at the temples and a pair of sharpblue eyes that missed nothing. He was a fair perceptive who might havebeen quite proficient if he had taken the full psi course at someuniversity. Mrs. Farrow was the kind of elderly woman that any man wouldlike to have for a mother. She was sweet and gentle but there wasneither foolish softness or fatuous nonsense about her. She was atelepath and she knew her way around and let people know that she knewwhat the score was. Farrow had a brother, James, who was not at home; helived in town with his wife but came out to the old homestead about onceevery week on some errand or other.

  They took me in as though I'd come home with their daughter forsentimental reasons; Gloria sat with us in their living room and wentthrough the whole story, interrupted now and then by a remark aimed atme. They inspected my hand and agreed that something must be done. Theywere extremely interested in the Mekstrom problem and were amazed attheir daughter's feats of strength and endurance.

  My hand, by this time, was beginning to throb again. The infection washeading on a fine start down the pinky and middle fingers; the ringfinger was approaching the second joint to that point where the advancestopped long enough for the infection to become complete before itcrossed the joint. The first waves of that particular pain were comingat intervals and I knew that within a few hours the pain would becomewaves of agony so deep that I would not be able to stand it.

  Ultimately, Farrow got her brother James to come out from town with histools, and between us all we rigged up a small manipulator for my hand.Farrow performed the medical operations from the kit in the back of hercar we'd stolen from the Medical Center.

  Then after they'd put my hand through the next phase, Nurse Farrowlooked me over and gave the opinion that it was now approaching the timefor me to get the rest of the full treatment.

  One evening I went to bed, to be in bed for four solid months.

  * * * * *

  I'd like to be able to give a blow by blow description of those foursolid months. Unfortunately, I was under dope so much of the time that Iknow little about it. It was not pleasant. My arm laid like a log fromthe Petrified Forest, strapped into the machine that moved the jointswith regular motion, and with each motion starting a dart of fire andmangling pain up to the shoulder. Needles entered the veins at the elbowand the armpit, and from bottles suspended almost to the ceiling toprovide a pressurehead, plasma and blood-sustenance was trickled in tokeep the arm alive.

  Dimly I recall having the other arm strapped down and the waves of painthat blasted at me from both sides. The only way I kept from going outof my mind with the pain was living from hypo to hypo and waiting forthe blessed blackness that wiped out the agony; only to come out of ithours later with my infection advanced to another point of pain. Whenthe infection reached my right shoulder, it stopped for a long time; theinfection rose up my left arm and also stopped at the shoulder. I cameout of the dope to find James and his father fitting one of themanipulators to my right leg and through that I could feel the dartingpains in my calf and thigh.

  At those few times when my mind was clear enough to let me use myperception, I dug the room and found that I was lying in a veritableforest of bottles and rubber tubes and a swathe of bandages.

  Utterly helpless, I vaguely knew that I was being cared for in everyway. The periods of clarity were fewer, now, and shorter when they came.I awoke once to find my throat paralyzed, and again to find that my jaw,tongue, and lower face was a solid pincushion of darting needles offire. Later, my ears reported not a sound, and even later still I awoketo find myself strapped into a portable resusci
tator that moved my chestup and down with an inexorable force.

  That's about all I know of it. When the smoke cleared away completelyand the veil across my eyes was gone, it was Spring outside and I was aMekstrom.

  * * * * *

  I sat up in bed.

  It was morning, the sun was streaming in the window brightly and thefresh morning air of Spring stirred the curtains gently. It was quitewarm and the smell that came in from the outside was alive with newborngreenery. It felt good just to be alive.

  The hanging bottles and festoons of rubber hose were gone. The crudemanipulators had been stowed somewhere and the bottles of medicine andstuff were missing from the bureau. There wasn't even a thermometer in aglass anywhere within the range of my vision, and frankly I was so gladto be alive again that I did not see any point to digging through thejoint with my perception to find the location of the medical junk.Instead, I just wanted to get up and run.

  I did take a swing at the clothes closet and found my stuff. Then I tooka mild pass at the house, located the bathroom and also assured myselfthat no one was likely to interrupt me.

  I was going to shave and shower and dress and go downstairs. I was justshrugging myself up and out of bed when Nurse Farrow came bustling upthe stairs and into the room with no preamble.

  "Hi!" I greeted her. "I was going to--"

  "Surprise us," she said quickly. "I know. So I came up to see that youdon't get into trouble."

  "Trouble?" I asked, pausing on the edge of the bed.

  "You're a Mekstrom, Steve," she told me unnecessarily. Then she caughtmy thought and went on: "It's necessary to remind you. You have to learnhow to control your strength, Steve."

  I flexed my arms. They didn't feel any different. I pinched my musclewith my other hand and it pinched just as it always had. I took a deepbreath and the air went in pleasantly and come out again.

  "I don't feel any different," I told her.

  She smiled and handed me a common wooden lead pencil. "Write your name,"she directed.

  "Think I'll have to learn all over?" I grinned. I took the pencil, putmy fist down on the top of the bureau above a pad of paper and chuckledat Farrow. "Now, let's see, my first initial is the letter 'S' made bystarting at the top and coming around in a sweeping, graceful curve likethis--"

  It didn't come around in any curve. As the lead point hit the paper itbore down in, flicked off the tip, and then crunched down, breaking offthe point and splintering the thin, whittled wood for about an eighth ofan inch. The fact that I could not control it bothered me inside and Iinstinctively clutched at the shaft of the pencil. It cracked in threeplaces in my hand; the top end with the eraser fell down over my wristto the bureau top and rolled in a rapid rattle to the edge where it fellto the floor.

  "See?" asked Farrow softly.

  "But--?" I blundered uncertainly.

  "Steve, your muscles and your nervous system have been stepped upproportionately. You've got to re-learn the coordination between themuscle-stimulus and the feedback information from the work you aredoing."

  I began to see what she meant. I remembered long years ago at school,when we'd been studying some of the new alloys and there had been asample of a magnesium-lithium-something alloy that was machined into asmooth cylinder about four inches in diameter and a foot long. It lookedlike hard steel. People who picked it up for the first time invariablybraced their muscles and set both hands on it. But it was so light thattheir initial effort almost tossed the bar through the ceiling, and evenlong after we all knew, it was hard not to attack the bar without usingthe experience of our mind and sense that told us that any bar of metal_that_ big had to be _that_ heavy.

  I went to a chair. Farrow said, "Be careful," and I was. But it was notrick at all to take the chair by one leg at the bottom and lift it chinhigh.

  "Now, go take your shower," she told me. "But Steve, please be carefulof the plumbing. You can twist off the faucet handles, you know."

  I nodded and turned to her, holding out a hand. "Farrow, you're abrick!"

  She took my hand. It was not steel hard. It was warm and firm andpleasant. It was--holding hands with a woman.

  Farrow stepped back. "One thing you'll have to remember," she saidcheerfully, "is only to mix with your own kind from now on. Now go getthat shower and shave. I'll be getting breakfast."

  Showering was not hard and I remembered not to twist off the water-taphandles. Shaving was easy although I had to change razor blades threetimes in the process. I broke all the teeth out of the comb because itwas never intended to be pulled through a thicket of piano wire.

  Getting dressed was something else. I caught my heel in one trouser legand shredded the cloth. I broke the buckle on my belt. My shoelaces wentlike parting a length of wet spaghetti. The button on the top of myshirt pinched off and when I gave that final jerk to my necktie itpulled the knot down into something about the size of a pea.

  Breakfast was very pleasant, although I bent the fork tines spearing arasher of bacon and removed the handle of my coffee cup without halftrying. After breakfast I discovered that I could not remove a cigarettefrom the package without pinching the end down flat, and after Isucceeded in getting one into my mouth by treating both smoke and matchas if they were made of tissue paper, my first drag on the smoke lit ahowling furnace-fire on the end that consumed half of the cigarette inthe first puff.

  "You're going to take some school before you are fit to walk amongnormal people, Steve," said Gloria with amused interest.

  "You're informing me?" I asked with some dismay, eyeing the wreckageleft in my wake. Compared to the New Steve Cornell, the famous bull inthe china shop was Gentle Ferdinand. I picked up the cigarette packageagain; it squoze down even though I tried to treat it gentle; I feltlike Lenny, pinching the head off of the mouse. I also felt about asmuch of a bumbling idiot as Lenny, too.

  My re-education went on before, through, and after breakfast. Imanhandled old books from the attic. I shredded newspapers. I ruinedsome more lead pencils and finally broke the pencil sharpener to boot. Iput an elbow through the middle panel of the kitchen door without evenfeeling it and then managed to twist off the door knob. Generallyoperating like a one-man army of vandals, I laid waste to the Farrowhome.

  Having thus ruined a nice house, Gloria decided to try my strength onher car. I was much too fast and too hard on the brakes, which of coursewas not too bad because my foot was also too insensitive on thego-pedal. We took off like a rocket being launched and then I tromped onthe brakes (Bending the pedal) which brought us down sharp like hittinga haystack. This allowed our heads to catch up with the rest of us; I'msure that if we'd been normal-bodied human beings we'd have had ourspines snapped. Eventually I learned that everything had to be handledas if it were tissue paper, and gradually re-adjusted my reflexes totake proper cognizance of the feedback data according to my new body.

  We returned home after a hectic twenty miles of roadwork and I broke theglass as I slammed the car door.

  "It's going to take time," I admitted with some reluctance.

  "It always does," smiled Farrow as cheerfully as if I hadn't ruinedtheir possessions.

  "I don't know how I'm going to face your folks."

  Farrow's smile became cryptic. "Maybe they won't notice."

  "Now look, Farrow----"

  "Steve, don't forget for the moment that you're the only known MekstromCarrier."

  "In other words your parents are due for the treatment next?"

  "Oh, I was most thorough. Both of them are in the final stages rightnow. I'm sure that anything you did to the joint will only be added toby the time they get to the walking stage. And also anything you didthey'll feel well repaid."

  "I didn't do anything for them."

  "You provided them with Mekstrom bodies," she said simply.

  "They took to it willingly?"

  "Yes. As soon as they were convinced by watching me and my strength.They knew what it would be like, but they we
re all for it."

  "You've been a very busy girl," I told her.

  She just nodded. Then she looked up at me with troubled eyes and asked,"What are you going to do now, Steve?"

  "I'm going to haul the whole shebang down like Samson in the Temple."

  "A lot of innocent people are going to get hurt if you do that."

  "I can't very well find a cave in Antarctica and hide," I repliedglumly.

  "Think a bit, Steve. Could either side afford to let you walk into NewWashington with the living proof of your Mekstrom Body?"

  #Didn't stop 'em before,# I thought angrily. #And it seems to me thatboth sides were sort of urging me to go and do something that woulduncover the other side.#

  "Not deep enough," said Farrow. "That was only during the early phases.Go back to the day when you didn't know what was going on."

  I grunted sourly, "Look, Farrow, tell me. Why must I fumble my waythrough this as I've fumbled through everything else?"

  "Because only by coming to the conclusion in your own way will you beconvinced that someone isn't lying to you. Now, think it over, Steve."

  It made sense. Even if I came to the wrong conclusion, I'd believe itmore than if someone had told me. Farrow nodded, following my thoughts.Then I plunged in:

  #First we have a man who is found to be a carrier of Mekstrom's Disease.He doesn't know anything about the disease. Right?# (Farrow noddedslowly.) #So now the Medical Center puts an anchor onto their carrier bysicking an attractive dame on his trail. Um--# At this point I went intoa bit of a mental whirly-around trying to find an answer to one of thepuzzlers. Farrow just looked at me with a non-leading expression,waiting. I came out of the merry-go-round after six times around thecircuit and went on:

  #I don't know all the factors. Obviously, Catherine had to lead me fastbecause we had to marry before she contracted the disease from me. Butthere's a discrepancy, Farrow. The little blonde receptionist caught itin twenty-four hours--?#

  "Steve," said Farrow, "this is one I'll have to explain, since you'renot a medical person. The period of incubation depends upon the type ofcontact. You actually bit the receptionist. That put blood contact intoit. You didn't draw any blood from Catherine."

  "We were pretty close," I said with a slight reddening of the ears.

  "From a medical standpoint, you were not much closer to Catherine thanyou have been to me, or Dr. Thorndyke. You were closer to Thorndyke andme, say, than you've been to many of the incidental parties along thepath of our travels."

  "Well, let that angle go for the moment. Anyway, Catherine and I had tomarry before the initial traces were evident. Then I'd be in theposition of a man whose wife had contracted Mekstrom's Disease on ourhoneymoon, whereupon the Medical Center would step in and cure her, andI'd be in the position of being forever grateful and willing to doanything that the Medical Center wanted me to do. And as a poornon-telepath, I'd probably never learn the truth. Right?"

  "So far," she said, still in a noncommittal tone.

  "So now we crack up along the Highway near the Harrison place. TheHighways take her in because they take any victim in no matter what. Ialso presume from what's gone on that Catherine is a high enoughtelepath to conceal her thinking and so to become an undercover agent inthe midst of the Highways organization. And at this point the long longtrail takes a fork, doesn't it? The Medical Center gang did not knowabout the Highways in Hiding until Catherine and I barrelled into it endover end."

  Farrow's face softened, and although she said nothing I knew I was onthe right track.

  #So at this point,# I went on silently, #Medical Center found themselvesin a mild quandary. They could hardly put another woman on my trailbecause I was already emotionally involved with the missingCatherine--and so they decided to use me in another way. I was shownenough to keep me busy, I was more or less urged to go track down theHighways in Hiding for the Medical Center. After all, as soon as I'dmade the initial discovery, Phelps and his outfit shouldn't have neededany more help.#

  "A bit more thinking, Steve. You've come up with that answer before."

  #Sure. Phelps wanted me to take my tale to the Government. About thissecret Highway outfit. But if neither side can afford to have the secretcome out, how come--?# I pondered this for a long time and admitted thatit made no sense to me. Finally Farrow shook her head and said,

  "Steve, I've got to prompt you now and then. But remember that I'mtrying to make you think it out yourself. Now consider: You are runningan organization that must be kept secret. Then someone learns the secretand starts heading for the Authorities. What is your next move?"

  "Okay," I replied. "So I'm stupid. Naturally, I pull in my horns, hidemy signs, and make like nothing was going on."

  "So stopping the advance of your organization, which is all that Phelpsreally can expect."

  I thought some more. #And the fact that I was carrying a story thatwould get me popped into the nearest hatch for the incipient paranoidmade it all right?#

  She nodded.

  "And now?" she asked me.

  "And now I'm living proof of my story. Is that right?"

  "Right. And Steve, do not forget for one moment that the only reasonthat you're still alive is because you are valuable to both sides alive.Dead, you're only good for a small quantity of Mekstrom Inoculation."

  "Don't follow," I grunted. "As you say, I'm no medical person."

  "Alive, your hair grows and must be cut. You shave and trim off beard.Your fingernails are pared. Now and then you lose a small bit of hide ora few milliliters of blood. These are things that, when injected underthe skin of a normal human, makes them Mekstrom. Dead, your ground upbody would not provide much substance."

  "Pleasant prospect," I growled. "So what do I do to avert this future?"

  "Steve, I don't know. I've done what I can for you. I've effected thecure and I've done it in safety; you're still Steve Cornell."