Highways in Hiding

  II

  I was fighting my body upright when Doctor Thorndyke came running."Easy, Steve," he said with a quiet gesture. He pushed me gently backdown in the bed with hands that were as soft as a mother's, but as firmas the kind that tie bow knots in half-inch bars. "Easy," he repeatedsoothingly.

  "Catherine?" I croaked pleadingly.

  Thorndyke fingered the call button in some code or other before heanswered me. "Steve," he said honestly, "you can't be kept in ignoranceforever. We hoped it would be a little longer, when you were stronger--"

  "Stop beating around!" I yelled. At least it felt like I was yelling,but maybe it was only my mind welling.

  "Easy, Steve. You've had a rough time. Shock--" The door opened and anurse came in with a hypo all loaded, its needle buried in a fluff ofcotton. Thorndyke eyed it professionally and took it; the nurse fadedquietly from the room. "Take it easy, Steve. This will--"

  "No! Not until I know--"

  "Easy," he repeated. He held the needle up before my eyes. "Steve," hesaid, "I don't know whether you have enough esper training to dig thecontents of this needle, but if you haven't, will you please trust me?This contains a neurohypnotic. It won't put you under. It will leave youas wide awake as you are now, but it will disconnect your running gearand keep you from blowing a fuse." Then with swift deftness that amazedme, the doctor slid the needle into my arm and let me have the fullload.

  I was feeling the excitement rise in me because something was wrong, butI could also feel the stuff going to work. Within half a minute I was ina chilled-off frame of mind that was capable of recognizing the factsbut not caring much one way or the other.

  When he saw the stuff taking hold, Thorndyke asked, "Steve, just who isCatherine?"

  The shock almost cut through the drug. My mind whirled with all thethings that Catherine was to me, and the doctor followed it every bit ofthe way.

  "Steve, you've been under an accident shock. There was no Catherine withyou. There was no one with you at all. Understand that and accept it. Noone. You were alone. Do you understand?"

  I shook my head. I sounded to myself like an actor reading the script ofa play for the first time. I wanted to pound on the table and add thevigor of physical violence to my hoarse voice, but all I could do was toreply in a calm voice:

  "Catherine was with me. We were--" I let it trail off because Thorndykeknew very well what we were doing. We were eloping in the new definitionof the word. Rhine Institute and its associated studies had changed alot of customs; a couple intending to commit matrimony today wereinclined to take off quietly and disappear from their usual haunts untilthey'd managed to get intimately acquainted with one another. Elopementwas a means of finding some personal privacy.

  We should have stayed at home and faced the crude jokes that haven'tchanged since Pithecanthropus first discovered that sex was funny. Butour mutual desire to find some privacy in this modern fish-bowl had putme in the hospital and Catherine--where--?

  "Steve, listen to me!"

  "Yeah?"

  "I know you espers. You're sensitive, maybe more so than telepaths. Moreimagination--"

  This was for the birds in my estimation. Among the customs that Rhinehas changed was the old argument as to whether women or men weresmarter. Now the big argument was whether espers or telepaths could getalong better with the rest of the world.

  Thorndyke laughed at my objections and went on: "You're in accidentshock. You piled up your car. You begin to imagine how terrible it wouldhave been if your Catherine had been with you. Next you carefully buildup in your subconscious mind a whole and complete story, so well puttogether that to you it seems to be fact."

  But, #--how could anyone have taken a look at the scene of the accidentand not seen traces of woman? My woman.#

  "We looked," he said in answer to my unspoken question. "There was not atrace, Steve."

  #Fingerprints?#

  "You'd been dating her."

  #Naturally!#

  Thorndyke nodded quietly. "There were a lot of her prints on the remainsof your car. But no one could begin to put a date on them, or tell howrecent was the latest, due to the fire. Then we made a door to doorcanvas of the neighborhood to be sure she hadn't wandered off in a dazeand shock. Not even a footprint. Nary a trace." He shook his headunhappily. "I suppose you're going to ask about that travelling bag youclaim to have put in the trunk beside your own. There was no trace ofany travelling bag."

  "Doctor," I asked pointedly, "if we weren't together, suppose you tellme first why I had a marriage license in my pocket; second, how come Imade a date with the Reverend Towle in Midtown; and third, why did Ibother to reserve the bridal suite in the Reignoir Hotel in Westlake? Orwas I nuts a long time before this accident. Maybe," I added, "aftermaking reservations, I had to go out and pile myself up as an excuse fornot turning up with a bride."

  "I--all I can say is that there was not a trace of woman in thataccident."

  "You've been digging in my mind. Did you dig her telephone number?"

  He looked at me blankly.

  "And you found what, when you tried to call her?"

  "I--er--"

  "Her landlady told you that Miss Lewis was not in her apartment becauseMiss Lewis was on her honeymoon, operating under the name of Mrs. SteveCornell. That about it?"

  "All right. So now you know."

  "Then where the hell is she, Doc?" The drug was not as all-powerful asit had been and I was beginning to feel excitement again.

  "We don't know, Steve."

  "How about the guy that hauled me out of that wreck? What does he say?"

  "He was there when we arrived. The car had been hauled off you by blockand tackle. By the time we got there the tackle had been burned and thecar was back down again in a crumpled mass. He is a farmer by the nameof Harrison. He had one of his older sons with him, a man abouttwenty-four, named Phillip. They both swore later that there was nowoman in that car nor a trace of one."

  "Oh, he did, did he?"

  Dr. Thorndyke shook his head slowly and then said very gently. "Steve,there's no predicting what a man's mind will do in a case of shock. I'veseen 'em come up with a completely false identity, all the way back tochildhood. Now, let's take your case once more. Among the otherincredible items--"

  "Incredible?" I roared.

  "Easy. Hear me out. After all, am I to believe your unsubstantiatedstory or the evidence of a whole raft of witnesses, the police detail,the accident squad, and the guys who hauled you out of a burning carbefore it blew up? As I was saying, how can we credit much of your talewhen you raved about one man lifting the car and the other hauling youout from underneath?"

  I shrugged. "That's obviously a mistaken impression. No one could--"

  "So when you admit that one hunk of your story is mistaken--"

  "That doesn't prove the rest is false!"

  "The police have been tracking this affair hard," said the doctorslowly. "They've gotten nowhere. Tell me, did anyone see you leave thatapartment with Miss Lewis?"

  "No," I said slowly. "No one that knew us."

  Thorndyke shook his head unhappily. "That's why we have to assume thatyou are in post-accident shock."

  I snorted angrily. "Then explain the license, the date with thereverend, the hotel reservation?"

  Thorndyke said quietly, "Hear me out, Steve. This is not my own ideaalone, but the combined ideas of a number of people who have studied thehuman mind--"

  "In other words, I'm nuts?"

  "No. Shock."

  "Shock?"

  He nodded very slowly. "Let's put it this way. Let's assume that youwanted this marriage with Miss Lewis. You made preparations, furnishedan apartment, got a license, made a date with a preacher, reserved ahoneymoon suite, and bought flowers for the bride. You take off fromwork, arrive at her door, only to find that Miss Lewis has taken off forparts unknown. Maybe she left you a letter--"

  "Letter!"

  "Hear me out, Steve. You arrive at her apartment and find her gon
e. Youread a letter from her saying that she cannot marry you. This is arather deep shock to you and you can't face it. Know what happens?"

  "I blow my brains out along a country road at ninety miles per hour."

  "Please, this is serious."

  "It sounds incredibly stupid to me."

  "You're rejecting it in the same way you rejected the fact that MissLewis ran away rather than marry you."

  "Do go on, Doctor."

  "You drive along the same road you'd planned to take, but thefrustration and shock pile up to put you in an accident-prone frame ofmind. You then pile up, not consciously, but as soon as you come uponsomething like that tree limb which can be used to make an accidentauthentic."

  "Oh, sure."

  Thorndyke eyed me soberly. "Steve," he asked me in a brittle voice, "youwon't try to convince me that any esper will let physical danger of thatsort get close enough to--"

  "I've told you how it happened. My attention was on that busted sign!"

  "Fine. More evidence to the fact that Miss Lewis was with you? Nowlisten to me. In accident-shock you'd not remember anything that yourmind didn't want you to recall. Failure is a hard thing to take. So nowyou can blame your misfortune on that accident."

  "So now you tell me how you justify the fact that Catherine toldlandladies, friends, bosses, and all the rest that she was going tomarry me a good long time before I was ready to be verbal about myplans?"

  "I--"

  "Suppose I've succeeded in bribing everybody to perjure themselves.Maybe we all had it in for Catherine, and did her in?"

  Thorndyke shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I really don't know,Steve. I wish I did."

  "That makes two of us," I grunted. "Hasn't anybody thought of arrestingme for kidnapping, suspicion of murder, reckless driving and clutteringup the highway with junk?"

  "Yes," he said quietly. "The police were most thorough. They had two oftheir top men look into you."

  "What did they find?" I asked angrily. No man likes to have his mindturned inside out and laid out flat so that all the little wheels,cables and levers are open to the public gaze. On the other hand, sinceI was not only innocent of any crime but as baffled as the rest of them,I'd have gone to them willingly to let them dig, to see if they coulddig past my conscious mind into the real truth.

  "They found that your story was substantially an honest one."

  "Then why all this balderdash about shock, rejection, and so on?"

  He shook his head. "None of us are supermen," he said simply. "Yourstory was honest, you weren't lying. You believe every word of it. Yousaw it, you went through it. That doesn't prove your story true."

  "Now see here--"

  "It does prove one thing; that you, Steve Cornell, did not have anymalicious, premeditated plans against Catherine Lewis. They've checkedeverything from hell to breakfast, and so far all we can do is makelong-distance guesses as to what happened."

  I snorted in my disgust. "That's a telepath for you. Everything soneatly laid out in rows of slats like a snow fence. Me--I'm going toconsult a scholar and have him really dig me deep."

  Thorndyke shook his head. "They had their top men, Steve. ScholarRedfern and Scholar Berks. Both of them Rhine Scholars, _magna cumlaude_."

  I blinked as I always do when I am flabbergasted. I've known a lot ofdoctors of this and that, from medicine to languages. I've even known ascholar or two, but none of them intimately. But when a doctor of psi isinvited to take his scholarte at Rhine, that's it, brother; I pass.

  Thorndyke smiled. "You weren't too bad yourself, Steve. Ran twelfth inyour class at Illinois, didn't you?"

  I nodded glumly. "I forgot to cover the facts. They'd called all thebright boys out and collected them under one special-study roof. Imajored in mechanical ingenuity not psi. Hoped to get a D. Ing. out ofit, at least, but had to stop. Partly because I'm not ingenious enoughand partly because I ran out of cash."

  Doctor Thorndyke nodded. "I know how it is," he said. I realized that hewas leading me away from the main subject gently, but I couldn't see howto lead him back without starting another verbal hassle. He had me cold.He could dig my mind and get the best way to lead me away, while Icouldn't read his. I gave up. It felt better, too, getting my mind offthis completely baffling puzzle even for a moment. He caught my thoughtsbut his face didn't twitch a bit as he picked up his narrative smoothly:

  "I didn't make it either," he said unhappily. "I'm psi and good. But I'mtelepath and not esper. I weasled my way through pre-med and medical bymain force and awkwardness, so to speak." He grinned at me sheepishly."I'm not much different than you or any other psi. The espers all thinkthat perception is superior to the ability to read minds, and viceversa. I was going to show 'em that a telepath can make Scholar ofMedicine. So I 'pathed my way through med by reading the minds of myfellows, who were all good espers. I got so good that I could read themind of an esper watching me do a delicate dissecting job, and move myhands according to his perception. I could diagnose the deep ills withthe best of them--so long as there was an esper in the place."

  "So what tripped you up?"

  "Telepaths make out best dealing with people. Espers do better withthings."

  "Isn't medicine a field that deals with people?"

  He shook his head. "Not when a headache means spinal tumor, orindigestion, or a bad cold. 'Doctor,' says the patient, 'I've a bad achealong my left side just below the ribs,' and after you diagnose, itturns out to be acute appendicitis. You see, Steve, the patient doesn'tknow what's wrong with him. Only the symptoms. A telepath can follow thepatient's symptoms perfectly, but it takes an esper to dig in his gutsand perceive the tumor that's pressing on the spine or the striae on hisliver."

  "Yeah."

  "So I flopped on a couple of tests that the rest of the class sailedthrough, just because I was not fast enough to read their minds and putmy own ability to work. It made 'em suspicious and so here I am, a meredoctor instead of a scholar."

  "There are fields for you, I'm sure."

  He nodded. "Two. Psychiatry and psychology, neither of which I have anylove for. And medical research, where the ability to grasp anotherdoctor or scholar's plan, ideas and theories is slightly more importantthan the ability to dig esper into the experiments."

  "Don't see that," I said with a shake of my head.

  "Well, Steve, let's take Mekstrom's Disease, for instance."

  "Let's take something simple. What I know about Mekstrom's Disease couldbe carved on the head of a pin with a blunt butter knife."

  "Let's take Mekstrom's. That's my chance to make Scholar of Medicine,Steve, if I can come up with an answer to one of the minor questions.I'll be in the clinical laboratory where the only cases present arethose rare cases of Mekstrom's. The other doctors, espers every one ofthem, and the scholars over them, will dig the man's body right down tothe last cell, looking and combing--you know some of the better esperscan actually dig into the constituency of a cell?--but I'll be thedoctor who can collect all their information, correlate it, and maybecome up with an answer."

  "You picked a dilly," I told him.

  It was a real one, all right. Otto Mekstrom had been a mechanic-tech atWhite Sands Space Station during the first flight to Venus, Mars andMoon round-trip with landings. About two weeks after the ship came home,Otto Mekstrom's left fingertips began to grow hard. The hardeningcrawled up slowly until his hand was like a rock. They studied him andworked over him and took all sorts of samples and made all sorts oftests until Otto's forearm was as hard as his hand. Then they amputatedat the shoulder.

  But by that time, Otto Mekstrom's toes on both feet were getting solidand his other hand was beginning to show signs of the same. On one sideof the creepline the flesh was soft and normal, but on the other it wasall you could do to poke a sharp needle into the skin. Poor Otto endedup a basket case, just in time to have the damned stuff start all overagain at the stumps of his arms and legs. He died when hardening reachedhis vitals.

  Since that day
, some twenty-odd years ago, there had been about thirtycases a year turn up. All fatal, despite amputations and everything elseknown to modern medical science. God alone knew how many unfortunatehuman beings took to suicide without contacting the big Medical ResearchCenter at Marion, Indiana.

  Well, if Thorndyke could uncover something, no one could claim that atelepath had no place in medicine. I wished him luck.

  I did not see Thorndyke again in that hospital. They released me thenext day and then I had nothing to do but to chew my fingernails andwonder what had happened to Catherine.