“Right. And you?”
“I’ve got to keep our hostage cold,” I snapped. “And I’m running the show by virtue of being the guy that managed to bust loose.”
In the hallway there was movement, but I left it to head back to Scholar Phelps. I got there in time to hear him groan and make scratching noises on the carpet. I took no chances; I cooled him down with a short jab to the pit of the stomach and doubled him over again.
He was sleeping painfully but soundlessly when Marian came in.
I turned to her. “You’re supposed to be waking up—”
“I gave the key and the register to Jo Anne Tweedy,” she said. “Jo Anne’s the brash young teenager you took a bump with in Ohio. She’s competent, Steve. And she’s got the Macklin twins to help her. Waking up the camp is a job for the junior division.” She eyed the recumbent Phelps distastefully. “What have you in mind for him?”
“He’s valuable,” I said. “We’ll use him to buy our freedom.”
The door opened again, interrupting Marian. It was Jonas Harrison. He stood there in the frame of the door and looked at us with a sort of grim smile. I had never met the old patriarch of the Harrison Family before, but he lived up to my every expectation. He stood tall and straight; topped by a wealth of snow white hair, white eyebrows, and the touch of a white moustache. His eyes contrasted with the white; a rich and startling brown.
This was a man to whom I could hand the basic problem of engineering our final escape; Jonas Harrison was capable of plotting an airtight getaway.
His voice was rich and resonant; it had a lift in its tone that sounded as though his self-confidence had never been in danger of a set-back: “Well, son, you seem to have accomplished quite a job this night. What shall we do next?”
“Get the devil out of here,” I replied—
—wondering just exactly how I’d known so instantly that this was Jonas Harrison. The rich and resonant voice had flicked a subsurface recollection on a faint, raw spot and now something important was swimming around in the mire of my mind trying to break loose and come clear.
I turned from the sword-sharp brown eyes and looked at Marian. She was almost as I had first seen her: Not much make-up if any at all, her hair free of fancy dressing but neat, her legs were bare and healthy-tanned.
I looked at her, and for a half dozen heartbeats her image faded from my sight, replaced by the well remembered figure of Catherine as I had known her first. It was a dizzy-making montage because my perception senses the real figure of Marian, superimposed on the visual memory-image of Catherine. Then the false sight faded and both perception and eyesight focused upon the true person of Marian Harrison.
Marian stood there, her face softly proud. Her eyes were looking straight into mine, as if she were mentally urging me to fight that hidden memory into full recollection.
Then I both saw and perceived something that I had never noticed before. A fine golden chain hung around her throat, its pendant hidden from sight beneath the edge of her bodice. But my sense of perception dug a modest diamond, and I could even dig the tiny initials engraved in the metal circlet:
SC-MH
To dig anything that fine, I knew that it must be of importance to me. And then I knew that it had once been so very personally my own business, for the submerged recollection came bursting up to the top of my mind. Marian Henderson had been mine once long ago!
Boldly I stepped forward and took the chain between my fingers. I snapped it, and held the ring. “Will you wear it again, my dear?”
She held up her left hand for me to slip it on. “Steve,” she breathed, “I’ve never stopped wearing it, not really.”
“But I didn’t see it until now—”
Jonas Harrison said, “No, Steve, you couldn’t see it until you remembered.”
“But look—”
“Blame me,” he said in his firm determined voice. “The story begins and ends with you, Steve. When Marian contracted Mekstrom’s Disease, she herself insisted that you be spared the emotional pain that the rest of us could not avoid. So I erased her from your mind, Steve, and submerged any former association. Then when the Highways in Hiding came to take us in, I left it that way because Marian was still as unattainable to you as if she were dead. If an apology is needed, I’ll only ask that you forgive my tampering with your mind and personality.”
“Apologize?” I exploded. “I’m here, we’re here, and you’ve just provided me with a way out of this mousetrap!”
“A way out?” he murmured, in that absent way that telepaths have when they’re concentrating on another mind. Fast comprehension dawned in the sharp brown eyes and he looked even more self-confident and determined. Marian leaned back in my arms to look into my eyes. “Steve,” she cried, “it’s simply got to work!” Gloria Farrow merely said, “He’ll have to have medication, of course,” and went briskly to a wall cabinet and began to fiddle with medical tools. Howard Macklin and Jonas Harrison went into a deep telepathic conference that was interrupted only when Jonas Harrison turned to Phillip to say, “You’ll have to provide us with uninterrupted time, somehow.”
Marian disengaged herself reluctantly and started to propel me out of the room. “Go help him, Steve. What we are going to do is not for any non-telepath to watch.”
Outside, Phillip threatened me with the guard’s signal-box key. “Mind telling a non-telepath what the devil you cooked up?”
I smiled. “If your father has the mental power to erase Marian from my mind, he also has the power to do a fine reorientation job on Scholar Phelps. Once we get the spiderwebs cleaned out of the top dog, we start down the pyramid, line by line and echelon by echelon, with each reoriented recruit adding to our force. Once we get this joint operating on the level, we can all go to work for the rest of the human race!”
• • •
There is little left to tell. The Medical Center and the Highways in Hiding are one agency dedicated to the conquest of the last and most puzzling of the diseases and maladies that beset Mankind. We are no closer to a solution than we ever were, and so I am still a very busy man.
I have written this account and disclosed our secret because we want no more victims of Mekstrom’s Disease to suffer.
So I will write finish with one earnest plea and one ray of hope:
Please do not follow one of our Highways unless you are already infected. Since I cannot hope to inoculate the entire human race, and will not pick or choose certain worthy types for special attention, I will deal only with those folks who find Mekstrom’s Disease among their immediate family. Such people need never be parted from their loved ones. The rest of you will have to wait your turn.
But we’ll get to it sooner or later. Thirty days ago, Steve, Junior, was born. He’s a healthy little Mekstrom, and like his pappy, Steve Junior is a carrier, too.
Highways in Hiding (1956) Page 25