"Not particularly," she said. "Let's say that he is a poor victim that
would die if we hadn't found his infection early." The tone and
expression of her voice made me seethe; she sounded as though she felt
herself to be a real benefactor to the human race, and that she and her
outfit would do the same for any other poor guy that caught
Mekstrom's--providing they learned about this unfortunate occurrence in
time.
"We would, Mr. Cornell."
"Bah-loney," I grunted.
"Why dispute my word?" she asked in the same tone of innocent honesty.
I eyed her angrily and I felt my hand tighten on the revolver. "I've a
reason to become suspicious," I told her in a voice that I hoped was as
mild-mannered as her own. "Because three people have disappeared in the
past half-year without a trace, but under circumstances that put me in
the middle. All of them, somehow, seem to be involved with your hidden
road sign system and Mekstrom's Disease."
"That's unfortunate," she said quietly.
I had to grab myself to keep from yelling, "Unfortunate?" and managed to
muffle it down to a mere voice-volume sound. "People dying of Mekstrom's
because you're keeping this cure a secret and I'm batted from pillar to
post because--" I gave up on that because I really did not know why.
"It's unfortunate that you had to become involved," she said firmly.
"Because you--"
"It's unfortunate for everybody," I snapped, "because I'm going to bust
you all wide open!"
"I'm afraid not. You see, in order to do that you'll have to get out of
here and that I will not permit."
I grunted. "Miss Macklin, you Mekstroms have hard bodies, but do you
think your hide will stop a slug from this?"
"You'll never know. You see, Mr. Cornell, you do not have the cold,
brittle, determined guts that you'd need to pull that trigger."
"No?"
"Pull it," she said. "Or do you agree, now that you're of age, that you
can't bluff a telepath."
I eyed her sourly because she was right. She held that strength that
lies in weakness; I could not pull that trigger and fire a .375 inch
slug into that slender, silk-covered midriff. And opposite that, Miss
Macklin also had a strength that was strength itself. She could hold me
aloft with one hand kicking and squirming while she was twisting my arms
and legs off with her other hand.
She held all the big cards of her sex, too. I couldn't slug her with my
fist, even though I knew that I'd only break my hand without even
bruising her. I was in an awkward situation and I knew it. If she'd been
a normal woman I could have shrugged my way past her and left, but she
was determined not to let me leave without a lot of physical violence.
Violence committed on a woman gets the man in dutch no matter how
justified he is.
Yet in my own weakness there was a strength; there was another way out
and I took it. Abruptly and without forethought.
X
Shifting my aim slightly, I pulled the trigger. The .375 Bonanza went
off with a sound like an atom bomb in a telephone booth, and the slug
whiffed between her arm and her body and drilled a crater in the plaster
behind her.
The roar stunned her stiff. The color drained from her face and she
swayed uncertainly. I found time enough to observe that while her body
was as hard as chromium, her nervous system was still human and
sensitive enough to make her faint from a sudden shock. She caught
herself, and stood there stiff and white with one delicate (but
steel-hard) hand up against her throat.
Then I dug the household. They were piling out of the hay like a bunch
of trained firemen answering a still alarm. They arrived in all stages
of nightdress in the following order:
The man, about twenty-two or three, who skidded into the room on dead
gallop and put on brakes with a screech as he caught sight of the .375
with its thin wisp of blue vapor still trailing out of the muzzle.
The twins, aged about fourteen, who might have turned to run if they'd
not been frightened stiff at the sight of the cannon in my fist.
Father and then Mother Macklin, who came in briskly but without panic.