Highways in Hiding (1956)

by George O. Smith

  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 p
laintive 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.”

  “Steve—” she started, but I interrupted again.

  “About all I have to do now is to walk down any main street radiating my suspicions,” I said bitterly. “And it’s off to Medical Center for Steve—unless the Highways catch me first.”

  Very quietly, Marian said, “We really dislike to use reorientation on people. It changes them so—”

  “But that’s what I’m headed for, isn’t it?” I demanded flatly.

  “I’m sorry, Steve.”

  Angrily I went on, not caring that I’d finally caught on and by doing so had sealed my own package. “So after I have my mind ironed out smoothly, I’ll still go on and on from pillar to post providing newly inoculated Mekstroms for your follow-up squad.”

  She looked up at me and there were tears in her eyes. “We were all hoping—” she started.

  “Were you?” I asked roughly. “Were you all working to innoculate me at Homestead, or were you really studying me to find out what made me a carrier instead of a victim?”

  “Both, Steve,” she said, and there was a ring of honesty in her tone. I had to believe her, it made sense.

  “Dismal prospect, isn’t it?” I asked. “For a guy that’s done nothing wrong.”

  “We’re all sorry.”

  “Look,” I said with a sudden thought, “Why can’t I still go on? I could start a way station of some sort, on some pretext, and go on innoculating the public as they come past. Then I could go on working for you and still keep my right mind.”

  She shook her head. “Scholar Phelps knows,” she said. “Above all things we must keep you out of his hands. He’d use you for his own purpose.”

  I grunted sourly. “He has already and he will again,” I told her. “Not only that, but Phelps has had plenty of chance to collect me on or off the hook. So what you fear does not make sense.”

  “It does now,” she told me seriously. “So long as you did not suspect your own part in the picture, you could do more good for Phelps by running free. Now you know and Phelps’ careful herding of your motions won’t work.”

  “Don’t get it.”

  “Watch,” she said with a shrug. “They’ll try. I don’t dare experiment, Steve, or I’d leave you right now. You’d find out very shortly that you’re with me because I got here first.”

  “And knowing the score makes me also dangerous to your Highways? Likely to bring ‘em out of Hiding?”

  “Yes.”

  “So now that I’ve dumped over the old apple cart, I can assume that you’re here to take me in.”

  “What else can I do, Steve?” she said unhappily.

  I couldn’t answer that. I just sat there looking at her and trying to remember that her shapely one hundred and eighteen pounds were steel hard and monster strong and that she could probably carry me under one arm all the way to Homestead without breathing hard. I couldn’t cut and run; she could outrun me. I couldn’t slug her on the jaw and get away; I’d break my hand. The Bonanza .375 would probably stun her, but I have not the cold blooded viciousness to pull a gun on a woman and drill her. I grunted sourly, that weapon had been about as useful to me as a stuffed bear or an authentic Egyptian Obelisk.

  “Well, I’m not going,” I said stubbornly.

  She looked at me in surprise. “What are you going to do?” she asked me.

  I felt a glow of self-confidence. If I could not run loose with guilty knowledge of my being a Mekstrom Carrier, it was equally impossible for anybody to kidnap me and carry me across the country. I’d radiate like mad; I’d complain about the situation at every crossroad, at every filling station, before every farmer. I’d complain mentally and bitterly, and sooner or later someone would get suspicious.

  “Don’t think like an idiot,” she told me sharply. “You drove across the country before, remember? How many people did you convince?”

  “I wasn’t trying, then—”

  “How about the people in the hotel in Denver?” she asked me pointedly. “What good did you do there?”

  #Very little, but—#

  “One of the advantages of a telepath is that we can’t be taken by surprise,” she informed me. “Because no one can possibly work without plans of some kind.”

  “One of the troubles of a telepath,” I told her right back, “is that they get so confounded used to knowing what is going to happen next that it takes all the pleasant element of surprise out of their lives. That makes ‘em dull and—”

  The element of surprise came in through the back window, passed between us and went Splat! against the wind-shield. There was the sound like someone chipping ice with a spike followed by the distant bark of a rifle. A second slug came through the back window about the time that the first one landed on the floor of the car. The second slug, not slowed by the shatter-proof glass in the rear, went through the shatter-proof glass in the front. A third slug passed through the same tunnel.

  These were warning shots. He’d missed us intentionally. He’d proved it by firing three times through the same hole, from beyond my esper range.

  I wound up the machinery and we took off. Marian cried something about not being foolish, but her words were swept out through the hole in the rear window, just above the marks on the pavement caused by my tires as we spun the wheels.

  * * *

  XV

  “Steve, stop it!” cried Marian as soon as she could get her breath.

  “Nuts,” I growled. I took a long curve on the outside wheels and ironed out again. “He isn’t after our corpse, honey. He’s after our hide. I don’t care for any.”

  The fourth shot went singing off the pavement to one side. It whined into the distance making that noise that sets the teeth on edge and makes one want to duck. I lowered the boom on the go pedal and tried to make the meter read off the far end of the scale;
I had a notion that the guy behind might shoot the tires out if we were going slow enough so that a blowout wouldn’t cause a bad wreck; but he probably wouldn’t do it once I got the speed up. He was not after Marian. Marian could walk out of any crack-up without a bruise, but I couldn’t.

  We went roaring around a curve. I fought the wheel into a nasty double ‘s’ curve to swing out and around a truck, then back on my own side of the road again to avoid an oncoming car. I could almost count the front teeth of the guy driving the car as we straightened out with a coat of varnish to spare. I scared everybody in all three vehicles, including me.

  Then I passed a couple of guys standing beside the road; one of them waved me on, the other stood there peering past me down the road. As we roared by, another group on the other side of the highway came running out hauling a big old hay wagon. They set the wagon across the road and then sloped into the ditch on either side of it.

  I managed to dig the bare glimmer of firearms before I had to yank my perception away from them and slam it back on the road in front. I was none too soon, because dead ahead by a thousand feet or so, they were hauling a second road block out.

  Marian, not possessed of esper, cried out as soon as she read this new menace in my mind. I rode the brakes easily and came to a stop long before we hit it. In back sounded a crackle of rifle fire; in front, three men came out waving their rifles at us.

  I whipped the car back, spun it in a seesaw, and took off back towards the first road block. Half way back I whirled my car into a rough sideroad just as the left hand rear tire went out with a roar. The car sagged and dragged me to a stop with my nose in a little ditch. The heap hadn’t stopped rocking yet before I was out and on the run.

  “Steve!” cried Marian. “Come back!”

  #To heck with it.# I kept right on running. Before me by a couple of hundred yards was a thicket of trees; I headed that way fast. I managed to sling a dig back; Marian was joining the others; pointing in my direction. One of them raised the rifle but she knocked it down.

  I went on running. It looked as though I’d be all right so long as I didn’t get in the way of an accidental shot. My life was once more charmed with the fact that no one wanted me dead.