I'd rather not go into the next week and a half in detail. I became
known as the bridegroom who lost his bride, and between the veiled
accusations and the half-covered snickers, life was pretty miserable. I
talked to the police a couple-three times, first as a citizen asking for
information and ending up as a complainant against party or parties
unknown. The latter got me nowhere. Apparently the police had more lines
out than the Grand Bank fishing fleet and were getting no more nibbles
than they'd get in the Dead Sea. They admitted it; the day had gone when
the police gave out news reports that an arrest was expected hourly,
meaning that they were baffled. The police, with their fine collection
of psi boys, were willing to admit when they were really baffled. I
talked to telepaths who could tell me what I'd had for breakfast on the
day I'd entered pre-school classes, and espers who could sense the color
of the clothing I wore yesterday. I've a poor color-esper, primitive so
to 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 the
Hereafter 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 your
drive, cracked up, and lost their daughter. Not even dead-for-sure.
Death, I think, we all could have faced. But this uncertainty was
something 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 asks
you, "But can't you remember, son?" is a little too much, and I don't
care to go into details.
The upshot of it was, after about ten days of lying awake nights and
wondering where she was and why. Watching her eyes peer out of a metal
casting at me from a position sidewise of my head. Nightmares, either
the one about us turning over and over and over, or Mrs. Lewis pleading
with me only to tell her the truth. Then having the police inform me
that they were marking this case down as "unexplained." I gave up. I
finally swore that I was going to find her and return with her, or I was
going 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 that
Dr. Thorndyke might be able to add something. In my unconscious
ramblings there might be something that fell into a pattern if it could
be 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 days
before. Nor could I get in touch with him because he had a six-week
interim 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 cruising
coptercab when the door opened and a woman came out. I turned to look
and 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 for
his scholarte now."
I nodded glumly. "Yeah," I said. It probably sounded resentful, but it
is hard to show cheer over the good fortune of someone else when your
own 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 this
puzzle. I'll have to find it myself. Everyone else has given up."
"I wish you luck," said Miss Farrow with a smile. "You certainly have
the determination."
I grunted. "It's about all I have. What I need is training. Here I am, a
mechanical engineer, about to tackle the job of a professional detective
and tracer of missing persons. About all I know about the job is what I
have read. One gets the idea that these writers must know something of
the job, the way they write about it. But once you're faced with it
yourself, you realize that the writer has planted his own clues."
Miss Farrow nodded. "One thing," she suggested, "have you talked to the
people 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 satisfied
themselves about."
Miss Farrow looked up at me sidewise. "You won't find anything by asking
people who have never heard of you."
"I suppose not."
A coptercab came along at that moment, and probably sensing my
intention, he gave his horn a tap. I'd have liked to talk longer with
Miss Farrow, but a cab was what I wanted, so with a wave I took it and
she 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 I
was rolling along that same highway with my esper extended as far as I
could in all directions. I was driving slowly, this time both alert and
ready.
I went past the scene of the accident slowly and shut my mind off as I
saw the black-burned patch. The block was still hanging from an overhead
branch, and the rope that had burned off was still dangling, about two
feet of it, looped through the pulleys and ending in a tapered, burned
end.
I turned left into a driveway toward the home of the Harrisons and went
along a winding dirt road, growing more and more conscious of a dead
area ahead of me.
It was not a real dead zone, because I could still penetrate some of the
region. But as far as really digging any of the details of the rambling
Harrison house, I could get more from my eyesight than from any sense of
perception. But even if they couldn't find a really dead area, the
Harrisons had done very well in finding one that made my sense of
perception 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 its
effect tell, I came upon a tall, browned man of about twenty-four who
had been probing into the interior of a tractor up to the time he heard
my 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 you
out."
"Thanks," I said, offering a hand.
He chuckled. "Steve, consider the hand taken and shook, because I've
enough 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 be
sensible. I know you can wash, but let's shake later. What can I do for
you?"
"I'd like a first-hand account, Phil."
"Not much to tell. Dad and I were pulling stumps over about a thousand
feet from the wreck. We heard the racket. I am esper enough to dig that
distance with clarity, so we knew we'd better bring along the block and
tackle. The tractor wouldn't go through. So we came on the double, Dad
rigged the tackle and hoisted and I took a running dive, grabbed and
hauled you out before the whole thing went _Whoosh!_ We were both lucky,
Steve."