Highways in Hiding (1956)

by George O. Smith

  “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 this secret Highway outfit. But if neither side can afford to have the secret come out, how come—?# I pondered this for a long time and admitted that it 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’m trying to make you think it out yourself. Now consider: You are running an organization that must be kept secret. Then someone learns the secret and starts heading for the Authorities. What is your next move?”

  “Okay,” I replied. “So I’m stupid. Naturally, I pull in my horns, hide my signs, and make like nothing was going on.”

  “So stopping the advance of your organization, which is all that Phelps really can expect.”

  I thought some more. #And the fact that I was carrying a story that would get me popped into the nearest hatch for the incipient paranoid made 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 reason that 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 or a few milliliters of blood. These are things that, when injected under the skin of a normal human, makes them Mekstrom. Dead, your ground up body 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 the cure and I’ve done it in safety; you’re still Steve Cornell.”

  * * *

  XXII

  “Look,” I blurted with a sudden rush of brain to the head, “If I’m so all-fired important to both sides, how come you managed to sequester me for four months?”

  “We do have the laws of privacy,” said Farrow simply. “Which neither side can afford to flout overtly. Furthermore, since neither side really knew where you were, they’ve been busily prowling one another’s camps and locking up the prowlers from one another’s camps, and playing spy and counterspy and counter-counterspy, and generally piling it up pyramid-wise,” she finished with a chuckle. “You got away with following that letter to Catherine because uppermost in your mind was the brain of a lover hunting down his missing sweetheart. No one could go looking for Steve Cornell, Mekstrom Carrier, for reasons not intrinsically private.”

  “For four months?” I asked, still incredulous.

  “Well, one of the angles is that both sides knew you were immobilized somewhere, going through this cure. Having you a full Mekstrom is something that both sides want. So they’ve been willing to have you cured.”

  “So long as someone does the work, huh?”

  “Right,” she said seriously.

  “Well, then,” I said with a grim smile, “the obvious thing for me to do is to slink quietly into New Washington and to seek out some high official in secrecy. I’ll put my story and facts into his hands, make him a Mekstrom, have him cured, and then we’ll set up an agency to provide the general public with—”

  “Steve, you’re an engineer. I presume you’ve studied mathematics. So let’s assume that you can—er—bite one person every ten seconds.”

  “That’s six persons per minute; three-sixty per hour; and, ah, eighty-six-forty per day. With one hundred and sixty million Americans at the last census—um. Sixty years without sleep. I see what you mean.”

  “Not only that, Steve, but it would create a panic, if not a global war. Make an announcement like that, and certain of our not-too-friendly neighbors would demand their shares or else. So now add up your time to take care of about three billion human souls on this Earth, Steve.”

  “All right. So I’ll forget that cockeyed notion. But still, the Government should know—”

  “If we could be absolutely certain that every elected official is a sensible, honest man, we could,” said Farrow. “The trouble is that we’ve got enough demagogues, publicity hounds, and rabble-rousers to make the secret impossible to keep.”

  I couldn’t argue against that. Farrow was right. Not only that, but Government found it hard enough to function in this world of Rhine Institute with honest secrets.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “The only thing to do is to go back to Homestead, Texas, throw my aid to the Highways in Hiding, and see what we can do to provide the Earth with some more sensible method of inoculation. I obviously cannot go around biting people for the rest of my life.”

  “I guess that’s it, Steve.”

  I looked at her. “I’ll have to borrow your car.”

  “It’s yours.”

  “You’ll be all right?”

  She nodded. “Eventually I’ll be a way station on the Highways, I suppose. Can you make it alone, Steve? Or would you rather wait until my parents are cured? You could still use a telepath, you know.”

  “Think it’s safe for me to wait?”

  “It’s been four months. Another week or two—?”

  “All right. And in the meantime I’ll practice getting along with this new body of mine.”

  We left it there. I roamed the house with Farrow, helping her with her parents. I gradually learned how to control the power of my new muscles; learned how to walk among normal people without causing their attention; and one day succeeded in shaking hands with a storekeeper without giving away my secret.

  Eventually Nurse Farrow’s parents came out of their treatment and we spent another couple of days with them.

  We left them too soon, I’m sure, but they seemed willing that we take off. They’d set up a telephone system for getting supplies so that they’d not have to go into town until they learned how to handle their bodies properly, and Farrow admitted that there was little more that we could do.

  So we took off because we all knew that time was running out. Even though both sides had left us alone while I was immobilized, both sides must have a time-table good enough to predict my eventual cure. In fact, as I think about it now, both sides must have been waiting along the outer edges of some theoretical area waiting for me to emerge, since they couldn’t come plowing in without giving away their purpose.

  So we left in Farrow’s car and once more hit the big broad road.

  We drove towards Texas until we came upon a Highway, and then turned along it looking for a way station. I wanted to get in touch with the Highways. I wanted close communication with the Harrisons and the rest of them, no matter what. Eventually we came upon a Sign with a missing spoke and turned in.

  The side road wound in and out, leading us back from the Highway towards the conventional dead area. The house was a white structure among a light thicket of trees, and as we came close to it, we met a man busily tilling the soil with a tractor plow.

  Farrow stopped her car. I leaned out and started to call, but something stopped me.

  “He is no Mekstrom, Steve,” said Farrow in a whisper.

  “But this is a way station, according to the road sign.”

  “I know. But it isn’t, according to him. He doesn’t know any more about Mekstrom’s Disease than you did before you met Catherine.”

  “Then what the devil is wrong?”

  “I don’t know. He’s perceptive, but not too well trained. Name’s William Carroll. Let me do the talking, I’ll drop leading remarks for you to pick up.”

  The man came over amiably. “Looking for someone?” he asked cheerfully.

  “Why, yes,” said Gloria. “We’re sort of mildly acquainted with the—Mannheims who used to live here. Sort of friends of friends of theirs, just
dropped by to say hello, sort of,” she went on, covering up the fact that she’d picked the name of the former occupant out of his mind.

  “The Mannheims moved about two months ago,” he said. “Sold the place to us—we got a bargain. Don’t really know, of course, but the story is that one of them had to move for his health.”

  “Too bad. Know where they went?”

  “No,” said Carroll regretfully. “They seem to have a lot of friends. Always stopping by, but I can’t help ‘em any.”

  #So they moved so fast that they couldn’t even change their Highway Sign?# I thought worriedly.

  Farrow nodded at me almost imperceptibly. Then she said to Carroll, “Well, we won’t keep you. Too bad the Mannheims moved, without leaving an address.”

  “Yeah,” he said with obvious semi-interest. He eyed his half-plowed field and Farrow started her car.

  We started off and he turned to go back to his work. “Anything?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, but it was a very puzzled voice. “Nothing that I can put a finger on.”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know much about real estate deals,” she said. “I suppose that one family could move out and another family move in just in this short a time.”

  “Usually they don’t let farmlands lie fallow,” I pointed out. “If there’s anything off color here, it’s the fact that they changed their residence without changing the Highway sign.”

  “Unless,” I suggested brightly, “this is the coincidence. Maybe this sign is really one that got busted.”

  Farrow turned her car into the main highway and we went along it. I could have been right about the spoke actually being broken instead of removed for its directing purpose. I hoped so. In fact I hoped so hard that I was almost willing to forget the other bits of evidence. But then I had to face the truth because we passed another Highway Sign and, of course, its directional information pointed to that farm. The signs on our side of the highway were upside down; indicating that we were leaving the way station. The ones that were posted on the left hand side were rightside up, indicating that the drive was approaching a way station. That cinched it.

  #Well,# as I told both Farrow and me, #one error doesn’t create a trend. Let’s take another look!#

  One thing and another, we would either hit another way station before we got to Homestead, or we wouldn’t. Either one could put us wise. So we took off again with determination and finally left that side of erroneous Highway Signs when we turned onto Route 66. We weren’t on Route 66 very long because the famous U.S. Highway sort of trends to the Northeast and Homestead was in a Southern portion of Texas. We left Route 66 at Amarillo and picked up U.S. 87, which leads due South.

  Not many miles out of Amarillo we came up another set of Highway Signs that pointed us on to the South. I tried to remember whether this section led to Homestead by a long route, but I hadn’t paid too much attention to the maps when I’d had the chance and therefore the facts eluded me.

  We’d find out, Farrow and I agreed, and then before we could think much more about it, we came upon a way station sign that pointed in to another farmhouse.

  “Easy,” I said.

  “You bet,” she replied, pointing to the rural-type mailbox alongside the road.

  I nodded. The box was not new but the lettering on the side was. “Still wet,” I said with a grunt.

  Farrow slowed her car as we approached the house and I leaned out and gave a cheerful hail. A woman came out of the front door and waved at us.

  “I’m trying to locate a family named Harrison,” I called. “Lived around here somewhere.”

  The woman looked thoughtful. She was maybe thirty-five or so, clean but not company-dressed. There was a smudge of flour on her cheek and a smile on her face and she looked wholesome and honest.

  “Why, I don’t really know,” she said. “That name sounds familiar, but it is not an uncommon name.”

  “I know,” I said uselessly. Farrow nudged me on the ankle with her toe and then made a swift sign for “P” in the hand-sign code.

  “Why don’t you come on in?” invited the woman. “We’ve got an area telephone directory here. Maybe—?”

  Farrow nudged me once more and made the sign of “M” with her swift fingers. We had hit it this time; here was a woman perceptive and a Mekstrom residing in a way station. I took a mild dig at her hands and there was no doubt of her.

  A man’s head appeared in the doorway above the woman; he had a hard face and he was tall and broad shouldered but there was a smile on his face that spread around the pipe he was biting on. He called, “Come on in and take a look.”

  Farrow made the sign of “T” and “M” and that told me that he was a telepath. She hadn’t needed the “M” sign because I’d taken a fast glimpse of his hide as soon as he appeared. Parrying for time and something evidential, I merely said, “No, we’d hate to intrude. We were just asking.”

  The man said, “Oh, shucks, Mister. Come on in and have a cup of coffee, anyway.” His invitation was swift enough to set me on edge.

  I turned my perception away from him and took a fast cast at the surrounding territory. There was a mildly dead area along the lead-in road to the left; it curved around in a large arc and the other horn of this horseshoe shape came up behind the house and stopped abruptly just inside of their front door. The density of this area varied, the end in which the house was built was so total that I couldn’t penetrate, while the other end that curved around to end by the road tapered off in deadness until it was hard to define the boundary.

  If someone were pulling a flanking movement around through that horseshoe to cut off our retreat, it would become evident very soon.

  A swift thought went through my mind: #Farrow, they’re Mekstroms and he’s a telepath and she’s a perceptive, and they know we’re friendly if they’re Highways. If they’re connected with Scholar Phelps and his—#

  The man repeated, “Come on in. We’ve some mail to go to Homestead that you can take if you will.”

  Farrow made no sound. She just seesawed her car with three rapid back-and-forth jerks that sent showers of stones from her spinning wheels. We whined around in a curve that careened the car up on its outside wheels. Then we ironed out and showered the face of the man with stones from the wheels as we took off. The shower of dust and stones blinded him, and kept him from latching onto the tail of the car and climbing in. We left him behind, swearing and rubbing dirt from his eyes.

  We whipped past the other end of the horseshoe area just as a jeepster came roaring down out of the thickened part into the region where my perception could make out the important things (Like three burly gents wearing hunting rifles, for instance.) They jounced over the rough ground and onto the lead-in road just behind us; another few seconds of gab with our friends and they’d have been able to cut us off.

  “Pour it on, Farrow!”

  I knew I was a bit of a cowboy, but Farrow made me look like a tenderfoot. We rocketed down the winding road with our wheels riding up on either side like the course in a toboggan run and Farrow rode that car like a test pilot in a sudden thunderstorm.

  I was worried about the hunting rifles, but I need not have been concerned. We were going too fast to make good aim, and their jeepster was not a vehicle known for its smooth riding qualities. They lost one character over a rough bounce and he went tail over scalp into the grass along the way. He scared me by leaping to his feet, grabbing the rifle and throwing it up to aim. But before he could squeeze off a round we were out of the lead-in road and on the broad highway.

  Once on the main road again, Farrow put the car hard down by the nose and we outran them. The jeepster was a workhorse and could have either pulled over the house or climbed the wall and run along the roof, but it was not made for chase.

  “That,” I said, “seems to be that.”

  “Something is bad,” agreed Farrow.

  “Well, I doubt that they’ll be able to clean out a pla
ce as big as Homestead. So let’s take our careful route to Homestead and find out precisely what the devil is cooking.”

  “Know the route?”

  “No, but I know where it is on the map and we can figure it out from—”

  “Steve, stop. Take a very careful and delicate view over to the right.”

  “Digging for what?”

  “Another car pacing us along a road on the other side of that field.”

  I tried and failed. Then I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes and tried again. On this second try I got a very hazy perception of a large moving mass that could only have been a car. In the car I received a stronger impression of weapons. It was the latter that cinched it.

  I hauled out my roadmap and turned it to Texas. I thumbed the sectional maps of Texas until I located the sub-district through which we were passing and then I identified this section of U.S. 87 precisely. There was another road parallel and a half mile to the right, a dirt road according to the map-legend. It intersected our road a few miles ahead.

  My next was a thorough covering of the road behind; as I expected another car was pacing us just beyond the range of my perception for anything but a rifle aimed at my hide.

  Pacing isn’t quite the word, I use it in the sense of their keeping up with us. Fact is that all of us were going about as fast as we could go, with safety of tertiary importance. Anyway, they were pacing us and closing down from that parallel road on the right.

  I took a fast and very careful scanning of the landscape to our left but couldn’t find anything. I spent some time at it then, but still came up with a blank.

  #Turn left at that feeder road a mile ahead,# I thought at Farrow and she nodded.

  There was one possibility that I did not like to face. We had definitely detected pursuit to our right and behind, but not to our left. This did not mean that the left-side was not covered. It was quite likely that the gang to the rear were in telepathic touch with a network of other telepaths, the end of which mental relay link was far beyond range, but as close in touch with our position and action as if we’d been in sight. The police make stake-out nets that way, but the idea is not exclusive. I recall hazing an eloping couple that way once.