Highways in Hiding (1956)

by George O. Smith

  “Ah, Steve,” she breathed, “So you’re going for the treatment. Think of me, Steve. Don’t let it hurt too much.”

  I smiled thinly and looked up into her eyes. They were soft and warm, a bit moist. Her lips were full and red and they were parted slightly; the lower lip glistened slightly in the light. These were lips I’d kissed and found sweet; a face I’d held between my hands. Her hair fluffed forward a trifle; threatened to cascade down over her shoulders. No, it was not at all hard to lie there and go on thinking all the soft-sweet thoughts I’d once hoped might come true—

  She recoiled, her face changing swiftly from its mask of sweet concern to one of hard calculation. I’d slipped with that last hunk of thinking and given the whole affair away.

  Catherine straightened up and turned to head for the door. She took one step and caved in like a wet towel.

  Over her still-falling body I saw Nurse Farrow calmly reloading the skin-blast hypo, which she used to fire a second load into the base of Catherine’s neck, just below the shoulder blades.

  “That,” said Farrow succinctly, “should keep her cold for a week. I just wish I’d been born with enough guts to commit murder.”

  “What—?”

  “Get dressed,” she snapped. “It’s cold outside, remember?” I started to dress as Farrow hurled my clothing out of the closet at me. She went on in the meantime: “I knew you couldn’t keep it entirely concealed from her. She’s too good a telepath. So while you were holding her attention, I let her have a shot in the neck. One of the rather bad things about being a Mekstrom is that minor items like the hypo don’t register too well.”

  I stopped. “Isn’t that bad? Seems to me that I’ve heard that pain is a necessary factor for the preservation of the—”

  “Stop yapping and dress,” snapped Farrow. “Pain is useful when it’s needed. It isn’t needed in the case of a pin pricking the hide of a Mekstrom. When a Mekstrom gets in the way of something big enough to damage him physically, then it hurts him.”

  “Sort of when a locomotive falls on their head?” I grunted.

  “Keep on dressing. We’re not out of this jungle yet.”

  “So have you any plans?”

  She nodded soberly. “Yes, Steve. Once you asked me to be your telepath, to complete your team. I let you down. Now I’ve picked you up again, and from here on—out—I—”

  I nodded. “Sold,” I told her.

  “Good. Now, Steve, dig the hallway.”

  I did. There was no one there. I opened my mouth to tell her so, and then closed it foolishly.

  “Dig the hallway down to the left. Farther. To the door down there—three beyond the one you’re perceiving now—is there a wheelchair there?”

  “Wheelchair?” I blurted.

  “Steve, this is a hospital. They don’t even let a man with an aching tooth walk to the toothache ward. He rides. Now, you keep a good esper watch on the hall and if anybody looks out while I’m gone, just cast a deep dig at their face. It’s possible that at this close range I can identify them from the perceived image in your mind. Although, God knows, no two people ever see anything alike, let alone perceive it.”

  She slipped out, leaving me with the recumbent form of my former sweetheart. Her face had fallen into the relaxed expression of sleep, sort of slack and unbuttoned.

  #Tough, baby,# I thought as I closed my eyes so that all my energy could be aimed at the use of my perception.

  Farrow was going down the hall like a professional heading for the wheelchair on a strict order. No one bothered to look out; she reached the locker room and dusted the wheelchair just as if she’d been getting it for a real patient. (The throb in my finger returned for a parthian shot and I remembered that I was a real patient!) She trundled the chair back and into my room.

  “In,” she said. “And keep that perception aimed on the hallway, the elevator, and the center corridor stairs.”

  She packed me with a blanket, tucking it so that my shoes and overclothing would not show, doing the job briskly. Then she scooped Catherine up from the floor and dropped her into my bed, and then rolled Catherine into one of those hospital doodads that hospitals use for male and female alike as bedclothing.

  “Anyone taking a fast dig in here will think she’s a patient—unless the digger knows that this room is supposed to be occupied by one Steve Cornell, obviously male. Now, Steve, ready to steer?”

  “Steer?”

  “Steer by esper. I’ll drive. Oh—I know the way,” she told me with a chuckle. “You just keep your perception peeled for characters who might be over-nosy. I’ll handle the rest.”

  We went along the hallway. I took fast digs at the rooms and hall ahead of us; the whole coast seemed clear. Waiting for the two-bit elevator was nerve wracking; hospitals always have such poky elevators. But eventually it came and we trundled aboard. The pilot was no big-dome. He smiled at Nurse Farrow and nodded genially at me. He was probably a blank, jockeying an elevator is about the top job for a non-psi these days.

  But as the elevator started down, a doctor came out of one of the rooms on the floor below. He took a fast look at the indicator above the elevator door and made a dash to thumb the button. The elevator came to a grinding halt and he got on.

  This bothered me, but Farrow merely simpered at the guy and melted him down to size. She made some remark to him that I couldn’t hear, but from the sudden increase of his pulse rate, I gathered that she’d really put him off guard. He replied in the same unintelligible tone and reached for her hand. She held his hand, and if the guy was thinking of me, my name is Sing Hoy Low and I am a Chinese Policeman.

  He held her hand until we hit the first floor, and he debarked with a calf-like glance at Nurse Farrow. We went on to the ground floor and down the lower corridor to the end, where Farrow spent another lifetime and a half filling out a white cardboard form.

  The superintendent eyed me with a sniff. “I’ll call the car,” she said.

  I half-expected Farrow to make some objection, but she quietly nodded and we waited for another lifetime until a big car whined to a stop outside. Two big guys in white coats came in, tripped the lever on back of the wheelchair and stretched me out flat and low-slung on the same wheels. It was a neat conversion from wheelchair to wheeled stretcher, but as Farrow trundled me out feet first into the cold, I felt a sort of nervous chill somewhere south of my navel. She swung me around at the last minute and I was shoved head first into the back of the car.

  Car? This was a full-fledged ambulance, about as long as a city block and as heavy as a battleship. It was completely fitted for everything that anybody could think of, including a great big muscular turbo-electric power plant capable of putting many miles per behind the tail-pipe.

  The door closed on my feet, and we took off with Farrow sitting right behind the two big hospital attendants, one of whom was driving and the other of whom was ogling Farrow in a calculating manner. She invited the ogle. Heck, she did it in such a way that I couldn’t help ogling a bit myself. If I haven’t said that Farrow was an attractive woman, it was because I hadn’t really paid attention to her looks. But now I went along and ogled, realizing in the dimmer and more obscure recesses of my mind that if I ogled in a loudly lewd perceptive manner, I’d not be thinking of what she was doing.

  So while I was pleasantly occupied in ogling, Farrow slipped two more hypos out from under her clothing. She slipped her hands out sidewise on the backs of their seats, put her face between them and said, “Anybody got a cigarette, fellows?”

  The next that took place happened, in order of occurrence, as follows:

  The driver grunted and turned his head to look at her. The other guy fumbled for a cigarette. Driver poked at the lighter on the dash, still dividing his attention between the road and Nurse Farrow. The man beside him reached for the lighter when it popped out and he held it for her while she puffed it into action. Farrow fingered the triggers on the skin-blast hypos. The man beside the driver replaced the
lighter in its socket on the dash. The driver slid aside and to the floor, a second before the other hospital orderly flopped down like a deflated balloon.

  The ambulance took a swoop to the right, nosed down into a shallow ditch and leaped like a shot deer out on the other side.

  Farrow went over the back of the seat in a flurry and I rolled off of my stretcher into the angle of the floor and the sidewall. There was a rumble and then a series of crashes before we came to a shuddering halt. I came up from beneath a pile of assorted medical supplies, braced myself against the canted deck, and looked out the wind-shield. The trunk of a tree split the field of view as close to dead center as it could be.

  “Out, Steve,” said Farrow, untangling herself from the steering wheel and the two attendants. “Out!”

  “What next?” I asked her.

  “We’ve made enough racket to wake the statue of Lincoln. Out and run for it.”

  “Which way?”

  “Follow me!” she snapped, and took off. Even in nurse’s shoes with those semi-heels, Farrow made time in a phenomenal way. I lost ground steadily. Luckily it was still early in the afternoon, so I used my perception to keep track of her once she got out of sight. She was following the gently rolling ground, keeping to the lower hollows and gradually heading toward a group of buildings off in the near-distance.

  I caught up with her just as we hit a tiny patch of dead area; just inside the area she stopped and we flopped on the ground and panted our lungs full of nice biting cold air. Then she pointed at the collection of buildings and said, “Steve, take a few steps out of this deadness and take a fast dig. Look for cars.”

  I nodded; in a few steps I could send my esper forward to dig the fact that there were several cars parked in a row near one of the buildings. I wasted no time in digging any deeper, I just retreated into the dead area and told her what I’d seen.

  “Take another dig, Steve. Take a dig for ignition keys. We’ve got to steal.”

  “I don’t mind stealing.” I took another trip into the open section and gandered at ignition locks. I tried to memorize the ones with keys hanging in the locks but failed to remember all of them.

  “Okay, Steve. This is where we walk in boldly and walk up to a couple of cars and get in and drive off.”

  “Yeah, but why—”

  “That’s the only way we’ll ever get out of here,” she told me firmly.

  I shrugged. Farrow knew more about the Medical Center than I did. If that’s the way she figured it, that’s the way it had to be. We broke out of the dead area, and as we came into the open, Farrow linked her arm in mine and hugged it.

  “Make like a couple of fatuous mushbirds,” she chuckled. “We’ve been out walking and communing with nature and getting acquainted.”

  “Isn’t the fact that you’re Mekstrom and I’m human likely to cause some rather pointed comment?”

  “It would if we were to stick around to hear it,” she said. “And if they try to read our minds, all we have to do is to think nice mushy thoughts. Face it,” she said quietly, “it won’t be hard.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re a rather nice guy, Steve. You’re fast on the uptake, you’re generally pleasant. You’ve got an awful lot of grit, guts and determination, Steve. You’re no pinup boy, Steve, but—and this may come as a shock to you—women don’t put one-tenth the stock in pulchritude that men do? You—”

  “Hey. Whoa,” I bubbled. “Slow down, before you—”

  She hugged my arm again. “Steve,” she said seriously, “I’m not in love with you. It’s not possible for a woman to be in love with a man who does not return that love. You don’t love me. But you can’t help but admit that I am an attractive woman, Steve, and perhaps under other circumstances you’d take on a large load of that old feeling. I’ll admit that the reverse could easily take place. Now, let’s forget all the odd angles and start thinking like a pair of people for whom the time, the place, and the opposite sex all turned up opportunely.”

  I couldn’t help thinking of Nurse Farrow as—Nurse Farrow. The name Gloria did not quite come out. I tried to submerge this mental attitude, and so I looked down at her with what I hoped to resemble the expression of a love-struck male. I think it was closer to the expression of a would-be little-theatre actor expressing lust, and not quite making the grade. Farrow giggled.

  But as I sort of leered down at her, I had to admit upon proper examination of her charm that Nurse Farrow could very easily become Gloria, if as she said, we had the time to let the change occur. Another idea formed in my mind: If Farrow had been kicked in the emotions by Thorndyke, I’d equally been pushed in the face by Catherine. That made us sort of kindred souls, as they used to call it in the early books of the Twentieth Century.

  Gloria Farrow chuckled. “Unlike the old torch-carriers of that day,” she said, “we rebound a bit too fast.”

  Then she let my arm go and took my hand. We went swinging across the field in a sort of happy comradeship; it must have looked as though we were long-term friends. She was a good egg, hurt and beaten down and shoved off by Thorndyke, but she had a lot of the good old bounce. Of a sudden impulse I wanted to kiss her.

  “Go ahead, Steve,” she said. “But it’ll be for the probable onlookers. I’m Mekstrom, you know.”

  So I didn’t try. I just put an arm around her briefly and realized that any attempt at affection would be like trying to strike sparks off flint with a hunk of flannel.

  We walked hand in hand towards the buildings, strolled up saucily towards two of the parked cars, made the sort of wave that lovers give one another in goodbye when they don’t really want to demonstrate their affection before ten thousand people and stepped into two cars and took off.

  Gloria Farrow was in the lead.

  We went howling down the road, Farrow in the lead car by a hundred feet and me behind her. We went roaring around a curve, over a hill, and I had my perception out to its range, which was far ahead of her car. The main gate came into range, and we bore down upon that wire and steel portal like a pair of madmen.

  Gloria Farrow plowed into the gate without letting up. The gate went whirling in pieces, glass flew and tires howled and bits of metal and plastic sang through the air. Her car weaved aside; I forgot the road ahead and put my perception into her car.

  Farrow was fighting the wheel like a racing driver in a spin. Her hands wrenched the wheel with the swift strength of the Mekstrom Flesh she wore, and the wheel bent under her hands. Over and around she went, with a tire blown and the lower rail of the big gate hanging onto the fender like a dry-land sea-anchor. She juggled the wheel and made a snaky path off to one side of the road.

  Out of the guardhouse came a uniformed man with a riot gun. He did not have time to raise it. Farrow ironed out her course and aimed the careening car dead center. She mowed the guard down and a half-thousandth of a second later she plowed into the guardhouse. The structure erupted like a box of stove-matches hit with a heavy-caliber soft-nosed slug, like a house of cards and an air-jet. There was a roar and a small gout of flame and then out of the flying wreckage on the far side came Farrow and her stolen car. Out of the mess of brimstone and shingles she came, turning end for end in a crazy, metal-crushing twist and spin. She ground to a broken halt before the last of the debris landed, and then everything was silent.

  And then for the first and only time in my life I felt the penetrant, forceful impact of an incoming thought; a mental contact from another mind:

  #Steve!# it screamed in my mind, #Get out! Get going! It’s your move now——#

  I put my foot on the faucet and poured on the oil.

  * * *

  XXI

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

  But Nurse Farrow was not finished with this gambit yet. As I drew even with her, she pried herself out of the
messy tangle and came across the field in a dead run—and how that girl could run! As fast as I was going, she caught up; as fast as it all happened I had too little time to slow me down before Nurse Farrow closed the intervening distance from her 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 again and Farrow snapped, “Keep going, Steve!”

  I kept going; Farrow snaked herself inside and flopped into the seat beside me. “Now,” she said, patting the dashboard of our car, “It’s up to 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 in the seat, opened the glove compartment and took out a first aid kit. It was only then I noticed that she was banged up quite a bit for a Mekstrom. 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. I was a bit surprised at her being banged up; I’d become so used to their damage-proof hide that the idea of minor cuts, scars, mars, and abrasions hadn’t occurred to me. Yes, that wreck would have mangled a normal man into an unrecognizable mess of hamburger. Yet I’d expected a Mekstrom to come through it unscathed.

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

  So as I drove crazy-fast away from the Medical Center Nurse Farrow relaxed in the seat and applied adhesive tape, compresses, and closed the gashes with a batch of little skin clips in lieu of sutures. Then she 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 of me.