Highways in Hiding Part 34

"Steve--get out of here! While you're safe!"

"Huh?" I blurted. "What cooks, Farrow?"

"I was a nice patsy," she said. She sat up and wiped her eyes. "I was a fool. Steve, if James Thornd.y.k.e had asked me to jump off the roof, I'd have asked him 'what direction?' That's how fat-headed I am."

"Yes?" Something was beginning to form, now.

"I--led you on, Steve."

That blinkoed me. The phrase didn't jell. The half a minute she'd spent bawling on my shoulder with my arms around her had been the first physical contact I'd ever had with Nurse Farrow. It didn't seem--

"No, Steve. Not that way. I couldn't see you for Thornd.y.k.e any more than you could see me for Catherine." Her telepathy had returned, obviously; she was in better control of herself. "Steve," she said, "I led you on; did everything that Thornd.y.k.e told me to. You fell into it like a rock.

Oh--it was going to be a big thing. All I had to do was to haul you deeper into this mess, then I'd disappear strangely. Then we'd be--tog--ether--we'd be--"

She started to come unglued again but stopped the dissolving process just before the wet and gooey stage set in. She seemed to put a set in her shoulders, and then she looked down at me with pity. "Poor esper,"

she said softly, "you couldn't really know--"

"Know what?" I asked harshly.

"He fooled me--too," she said, in what sounded like a complete irrelevancy.

"Look, Farrow, try and make a bit of sense to a poor perceptive who can't read a mind. Keep it running in one direction, please?"

Again, as apparently irrelevant, she said, "He's a top grade telepath; he knows control--"

"Control--?" I asked blankly.

"You don't know," she said. "But a good telepath can think in patterns that prevent lesser telepaths from really digging deep. Thornd.y.k.e is brilliant, of scholar grade, really. He--"

"Let's get back to it, Farrow. What's cooking?"

Sternly she tossed her head. It was an angry motion, one that showed her disdain for her own tears and her own weakness. "Your own sweet Catherine."

I eyed her, not coldly but with a growing puzzlement. I tried to formulate my own idea but she went on, briskly, "That accident of yours was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to you, Steve."

"How long have I been known to be a Mekstrom Carrier?" I asked bluntly.

"No more than three weeks before you met Catherine Lewis," she told me as bluntly. "It took the Medical Center that long to work her into a position to meet you, Steve."

That put the icing on the cake. If nothing else, it explained why Catherine was here willingly. I didn't really believe it because no one can turn one hundred and eighty degrees without effort, but I couldn't deny the fact that the evidence fits the claim. If what Farrow said were true, my marriage to Catherine would have provided them with the same lever as the little blonde receptionist. The pile-up must have really fouled up their plans.

"It did, Steve," said Farrow, who had been following my mental ramblings. "The Highways had to step in and help. This fouled things up for both sides."

"Both sides?" I asked, completely baffled.

She nodded. "Until the accident, the Medical Center did not know that the Highways existed. But when Catherine dropped completely out of sight, Thornd.y.k.e did a fine job of probing you. That's when he came upon the scant evidence of the Highway Sign and the mental impression of the elder Harrison lifting the car so that Phillip could get you out. Then he knew, and--"

"Farrow," I snapped, "there are a lot of holes in your story. For instance--"

She held up a hand to stop me. "Steve," she said quietly, "you know how difficult it is for a non-telepath to find someone he can trust. But I'm trying to convince you that--"

I stopped Farrow this time. "How can I believe you now?" I asked her pointedly. "You seem to have a part in this side of the quiet warfare."

Nurse Farrow made a wry face as though she'd just discovered that the stuff she had in her mouth was a ball of wooly centipedes. "I'm a woman," she said simply. "I'm soft and gullible and easily talked into complacency. But I've just learned that their willingness to accept women is based upon the fact that no culture can thrive without women to propagate the race. I find that I am--" She paused, swallowed, and her voice became strained with bitterness, "--useful as a breeding animal.

Just one of the peasants whose glory lies in carrying their heirs. But I tell you, Steve--" and here she became strong and her voice rang out with a vigorous rejection of her future, "I'll be forever d.a.m.ned if I will let my child be raised with the c.o.c.keyed notion that he has some G.o.d-Granted Right to Rule."

My vigilant sense of perception had detected a change in the human-pattern in the building. People were moving--no, it was one person who was moving.

Down in the laboratory below, and at the other end of the building, Catherine was still working over the autoclave and instruments. The waspish-looking superintendent had taken off for somewhere else, and while Catherine was alone now, she was about to be joined by Dr.

Thornd.y.k.e. Half afraid that my perception of them would touch off their own telepathic sense of danger, I watched deliberately.

The door opened and Thornd.y.k.e came in; Catherine turned from her work and said something, which of course I could not possibly catch.

#What are they saying, Farrow?# I snapped mentally.

"I don't know. They're too far for my range."

I swore, but I didn't really have to have a dialog script. Nor did they do the obvious; what they did was far more telling.

Catherine turned and patted his cheek. They laughed at one another, and then Catherine began handing Thornd.y.k.e the instruments out of the autoclave, which he proceeded to mix in an unholy mess in the surgical tray. Catherine saw what he was doing and made some remark; then threatened him with a pair of haemostats big enough to clamp off a three-inch fire hose. It was pleasant enough looking horseplay; the sort of intimacy that people have when they've been together for a long time.

Thornd.y.k.e did not look at all frightened of the haemostats, and Catherine did not really look as though she'd follow through with her threat. They finally tangled in a wrestle for the instrument, and Thornd.y.k.e took it away from her. They leaned against a cabinet side by side, their elbows touching, and went on talking as if they had something important to discuss in the midst of their fun. It could have been reorientation or it could have been Catherine's real self. I still couldn't quite believe that she had played me false. My mind spinned from one side to the other until I came up with a blunt question that came to my lips without any mental planning. I snapped, "Farrow, what grade of telepath is Catherine?"

"Doctor grade," she replied flatly. "Might have taken some pre-scholar training if economics hadn't interfered. I'd not really call her Rhine Scholar material, but I'm prejudiced against her."

If what Farrow said was true, Catherine was telepath enough to control and marshall her mind to a faretheewell. She could think and plan to herself in the presence of another telepath without giving her plots away.

She was certainly smart enough to lead one half-trained perceptive around by a ring in my nose. Me? I was as big a fool as Farrow.

XX

Nurse Farrow caught my hand. "Steve," she snapped out in a rapid, flat voice, "Think only one thought. Think of how Catherine is here; that she came here to protect your life and your future!"

"Huh?"

"Think it!" she almost cried. "She's coming!"

I nearly fumbled it. Then I caught on. Catherine was coming; to remove the little finger manipulator and to have a chit-chat with me. I didn't want to see her, and I was beginning to wish--then I remembered that one glimmer out of me that I knew the truth and everything would be higher than Orbital Station One.

I shoved my mind into low gear and started to think idle thoughts, letting myself sort of daydream. I was convincing to myself; it's hard to explain exactly, but I was play-thinking like a dramatist. I fell into it; it seemed almost truth to me as I roamed on and on. I'd been trapped and Catherine had come here to hand herself over as a hostage against my good behavior. She'd escaped the Highways bunch or maybe she just left them quietly. Somehow Phelps had seen to it that Catherine got word--I didn't know how, but that was not important. The important thing was Catherine being here as a means of keeping me alive and well.

I went on thinking the lie. Catherine came in shortly and saw what Nurse Farrow was doing.

"I was supposed to do that," said Catherine.