Highways in Hiding Read online

  III

  I'd rather not go into the next week and a half in detail. I becameknown as the bridegroom who lost his bride, and between the veiledaccusations and the half-covered snickers, life was pretty miserable. Italked to the police a couple-three times, first as a citizen asking forinformation and ending up as a complainant against party or partiesunknown. The latter got me nowhere. Apparently the police had more linesout than the Grand Bank fishing fleet and were getting no more nibblesthan they'd get in the Dead Sea. They admitted it; the day had gone whenthe police gave out news reports that an arrest was expected hourly,meaning that they were baffled. The police, with their fine collectionof psi boys, were willing to admit when they were really baffled. Italked to telepaths who could tell me what I'd had for breakfast on theday I'd entered pre-school classes, and espers who could sense the colorof the clothing I wore yesterday. I've a poor color-esper, primitive soto speak. These guys were good, but no matter how good they were,Catherine Lewis had vanished as neatly as Ambrose Bierce.

  I even read Charles Fort, although I have no belief in the supernatural,and rather faint faith in the Hereafter. And people who enter theHereafter leave their remains behind for evidence.

  Having to face Catherine's mother and father, who came East to see me,made me a complete mental wreck.

  It is harder than you think to face the parents of a woman you loved,and find that all you can tell them is that somehow you fouled yourdrive, cracked up, and lost their daughter. Not even dead-for-sure.Death, I think, we all could have faced. But this uncertainty wassomething that gnawed at the soul's roots and left it rotting.

  To stand there and watch the tears in the eyes of a woman as she asksyou, "But can't you remember, son?" is a little too much, and I don'tcare to go into details.

  The upshot of it was, after about ten days of lying awake nights andwondering where she was and why. Watching her eyes peer out of a metalcasting at me from a position sidewise of my head. Nightmares, eitherthe one about us turning over and over and over, or Mrs. Lewis pleadingwith me only to tell her the truth. Then having the police inform methat they were marking this case down as "unexplained." I gave up. Ifinally swore that I was going to find her and return with her, or I wasgoing to join her in whatever strange, unknown world she had entered.

  * * * * *

  The first thing I did was to go back to the hospital in the hope thatDr. Thorndyke might be able to add something. In my unconsciousramblings there might be something that fell into a pattern if it couldbe pieced together.

  But this was a failure, too. The hospital super was sorry, but Dr.Thorndyke had left for the Medical Research Center a couple of daysbefore. Nor could I get in touch with him because he had a six-weekinterim vacation and planned a long, slow jaunt through Yellowstone,with neither schedule nor forwarding addresses.

  I was standing there on the steps hoping to wave down a cruisingcoptercab when the door opened and a woman came out. I turned to lookand she recognized me. It was Miss Farrow, my former nurse.

  "Why, Mr. Cornell, what are you doing back here?"

  "Mostly looking for Thorndyke. He's not here."

  "I know. Isn't it wonderful, though? He'll get his chance to study forhis scholarte now."

  I nodded glumly. "Yeah," I said. It probably sounded resentful, but itis hard to show cheer over the good fortune of someone else when yourown world has come unglued.

  "Still hoping," she said. It was a statement and not a question.

  I nodded slowly. "I'm hoping," I said. "Someone has the answer to thispuzzle. I'll have to find it myself. Everyone else has given up."

  "I wish you luck," said Miss Farrow with a smile. "You certainly havethe determination."

  I grunted. "It's about all I have. What I need is training. Here I am, amechanical engineer, about to tackle the job of a professional detectiveand tracer of missing persons. About all I know about the job is what Ihave read. One gets the idea that these writers must know something ofthe job, the way they write about it. But once you're faced with ityourself, you realize that the writer has planted his own clues."

  Miss Farrow nodded. "One thing," she suggested, "have you talked to thepeople who got you out from under your car yet?"

  "No, I haven't. The police talked to them and claimed they knew nothing.I doubt that I can ask them anything that the police have not satisfiedthemselves about."

  Miss Farrow looked up at me sidewise. "You won't find anything by askingpeople who have never heard of you."

  "I suppose not."

  A coptercab came along at that moment, and probably sensing myintention, he gave his horn a tap. I'd have liked to talk longer withMiss Farrow, but a cab was what I wanted, so with a wave I took it andshe went on down the steps to her own business.

  I had to pause long enough to buy a new car, but a few hours afterward Iwas rolling along that same highway with my esper extended as far as Icould in all directions. I was driving slowly, this time both alert andready.

  I went past the scene of the accident slowly and shut my mind off as Isaw the black-burned patch. The block was still hanging from an overheadbranch, and the rope that had burned off was still dangling, about twofeet of it, looped through the pulleys and ending in a tapered, burnedend.

  I turned left into a driveway toward the home of the Harrisons and wentalong a winding dirt road, growing more and more conscious of a deadarea ahead of me.

  It was not a real dead zone, because I could still penetrate some of theregion. But as far as really digging any of the details of the ramblingHarrison house, I could get more from my eyesight than from any sense ofperception. But even if they couldn't find a really dead area, theHarrisons had done very well in finding one that made my sense ofperception ineffective. It was sort of like looking through a light fog,and the closer I got to the house the thicker it became.

  Just about the point where the dead area was first beginning to make itseffect tell, I came upon a tall, browned man of about twenty-four whohad been probing into the interior of a tractor up to the time he heardmy car. He waved, and I stopped.

  "Mr. Harrison?"

  "I'm Phillip. And you are Mr. Cornell."

  "Call me Steve like everybody else," I said. "How'd you guess?"

  "Recognized you," he said with a grin. "I'm the guy that pulled youout."

  "Thanks," I said, offering a hand.

  He chuckled. "Steve, consider the hand taken and shook, because I'veenough grime to muss up a regiment."

  "It won't bother me," I said.

  "Thanks, but it's still a gesture, and I appreciate it, but let's besensible. I know you can wash, but let's shake later. What can I do foryou?"

  "I'd like a first-hand account, Phil."

  "Not much to tell. Dad and I were pulling stumps over about a thousandfeet from the wreck. We heard the racket. I am esper enough to dig thatdistance with clarity, so we knew we'd better bring along the block andtackle. The tractor wouldn't go through. So we came on the double, Dadrigged the tackle and hoisted and I took a running dive, grabbed andhauled you out before the whole thing went _Whoosh!_ We were both lucky,Steve."

  I grunted a bit but managed to nod with a smile.

  "I suppose you know that I'm still trying to find my fiancee?"

  "I'd heard tell," he said. He looked at me sharply. I'm a total blank asa telepath, like all espers, but I could tell what he was thinking.

  "Everybody is convinced that Catherine was not with me," I admitted."But I'm not. I know she was."

  He shook his head slowly. "As soon as we heard the screech of brakes andrubber we esped the place," he said quietly. "We dug you, of course. Butno one else. Even if she'd jumped as soon as that tree limb came intoview, she could not have run far enough to be out of range. As forremoving a bag, she'd have had to wait until the slam-bang was over toget it out, and by the time your car was finished rolling, Dad and Iwere on the way with help. She was not there, Steve."

  #You're a goddam liar!#r />
  Phillip Harrison did not move a muscle. He was blank telepathically. Iwas esping the muscles in his stomach, under his loose clothing, forthat first tensing sign of anger, but nothing showed. He had not beenreading my mind.

  I smiled thinly at Phil Harrison and shrugged.

  He smiled back sympathetically, but behind it I could see that he waswishing that I'd stop harping on a dead subject. "I sincerely wish Icould be of help," he said. In that he was sincere. But somewhere,someone was not, and I wanted to find out who it was.

  The impasse looked as though it might go on forever unless I turned awayand left. I had no desire to leave. Not that Phil could help me, buteven though this was a dead end, I was loath to leave the place becauseit was the last place where I had been close to Catherine.

  The silence between us must have been a bit strained at this point, butluckily we had an interruption. I perceived motion, turned and caughtsight of a woman coming along the road toward us.

  "My sister," said Phil. "Marian."

  Marian Harrison was quite a girl; if I'd not been emotionally tied toCatherine Lewis, I'd have been happy to invite myself in. Marian wasalmost as tall as I am, a dark, brown-haired woman with eyes of astartling, electricity colored blue. She was about twenty-two, young andhealthy. Her skin was tanned toast brown so that the bright blue eyesfairly sparked out at you. Her red mouth made a pleasing blend with thetan of her skin and her teeth gleamed white against the dark when shesmiled.

  Insultingly, I made some complimentary but impolite mental observationsabout her figure, but Marion did not appear to notice. She was notelepath.

  "You're Mr. Cornell," she said, "I remembered you," she said quietly."Please believe us, Mr. Cornell, when we extend our sympathy."

  "Thanks," I said glumly. "Please understand me, Miss Harrison. Iappreciate your sympathy, but what I need is action and information andanswers. Once I get those, the sympathy won't be needed."

  "Of course I understand," she replied instantly. "We are all aware thatsympathy is a poor substitute. All the world grieving with you doesn'tturn a stitch to help you out of your trouble. All we can do is to wish,with you, that it hadn't happened."

  "That's the point," I said helplessly. "I don't even know whathappened."

  "That makes it even worse," she said softly. Marian had a pleasantvoice, throaty and low, that sounded intimate even when talking aboutsomething pragmatic. "I wish we could help you, Steve."

  "I wish someone could."

  She nodded. "They asked me about it, too, even though I was not presentuntil afterward. They asked me," she said thoughtfully, "about themental attitude of a woman running off to get married. I told them thatI couldn't speak for your woman, but that I might be able to speak forme, putting myself in the same circumstances."

  She paused a moment, and her brother turned idly back to his tractor andfitted a small end wrench to a bolt-head and gave it a twist. He seemedto think that as long as Marian and I were talking, he could well affordto get along with his work. I agreed with him. I wanted information, butI did not expect the entire world to stop progress to help me. He spunthe bolt and started on another, lost in his job while Marian went on:

  "I told them that your story was authentic--the one about the bridalnightgown." A very slight color came under the deep tan. "I told themthat I have one, too, still in its wrapper, and that someday I'd beplanning marriage and packing a go-away bag with the gown shaken out andthen packed neatly. I told them that I'd be doing the same thing nomatter whether we were having a formal church wedding with a four-alarmreception and all the trimmings or a quiet elopement such as you were. Itold them that it was the essentials that count, not the trimmings andthe tinsel. My questioner's remark was to the effect that either youwere telling the truth, or that you had esped a woman about to marry andidentified her actions with your own wishes."

  "I know which," I said with a sour smile. "It was both."

  Marian nodded. "Then they asked me if it were probable that a womanwould take this step completely unprepared and I laughed at them. I toldthem that long before Rhine, women were putting their nuptial affairs inorder about the time the gentleman was beginning to view marriage withan attitude slightly less than loathing, and that by the time he poppedthe question, she'd been practicing writing her name as 'Mrs.' andpicking out the china-ware and prospective names for the children, andthat if any woman had ever been so stunned by a proposal of marriagethat she'd take off without so much as a toothbrush, no one in historyhad ever heard of her."

  "Then you begin to agree with me?"

  She shrugged. "Please," she said in that low voice, "don't ask me myopinion of your veracity. You believe it, but all the evidence liesagainst you. There was not a shred of woman-trace anywhere along yourcourse, from the point along the road where you first caught sight ofthe limb that threw you to the place where you piled up. Nor was there atrace anywhere in a vast circle--almost a half mile they searched--fromthe crack-up. They had doctors of psi digging for footprints, shreds ofclothing, everything. Not a trace."

  "But where did she go?" I cried, and when I say 'cried' I mean justthat.

  Marian shook her head very slowly. "Steve," she said in a voice so lowthat I could hardly hear her over the faint shrill of bolts beingunscrewed by her brother, "so far as we know, she was never here. Whydon't you forget her--"

  I looked at her. She stood there, poised and a bit tensed as though shewere trying to force some feeling of affectionate kinhood across the gapthat separated us, as though she wanted to give me both physical andmental comfort despite the fact that we were strangers on a ten-minutefirst-meeting. There was distress in her face.

  "Forget her--?" I ground out. "I'd rather die!"

  "Oh Steve--no!" One hand went to her throat and the other came out tofasten around my forearm. Her grip was hard.

  I stood there wondering what to do next. Marian's grip on my arm relaxedand she stepped back.

  I pulled myself together. "I'm sorry," I told her honestly. "I'm puttingyou through a set of emotional hurdles by bringing my problems here. I'dbetter take them away."

  She nodded very slowly. "Please go. But please come back once you getyourself squared away, no matter how. We'd all like to see you when youaren't all tied up inside."

  Phil looked up from the guts of the tractor. "Take it easy, Steve," hesaid. "And remember that you do have friends here."

  Blindly I turned from them and stumbled back to my car. They were a pairof very fine people, firm, upright. Marian's grip on my arm had been noweaker than her sympathy, and Phil's less-emotional approach to mytrouble was no less deep, actually. It was as strong as his good rightarm, loosening the head bolts of a tractor engine with a smalladjustable wrench.

  I'd be back. I wanted to see them again. I wanted to go back there withCatherine and introduce them to her. But I was definitely going to goback.

  I was quite a way toward home before I realized that I had not met theold man. I bet myself that Father Harrison was quite the firm, activepatriarch.