XI

As the miles separated me from the Macklins, my mind kept whirling

around in a tight circle. I had a lot of the bits, but none of them

seemed to lock together very tight. And unhappily, too many of the bits

that fit together were hunks that I did not like.

I knew the futility of being non-telepath. Had Mr. Macklin given me the

truth or was I being sold another shoddy bill of goods? Or had he spun

me a yarn just to get me out of his house without a riot? Of course,

there had been a riot, and he'd been expecting it. If nothing else, it

proved that I was a valuable bit of material, for some undisclosed

reason.

I had to grin. I didn't know the reason, but whatever reason they had,

it must gripe the devil out of them to be unable to erase me.

Then the grin faded. No one had told me about Catherine. They'd neatly

avoided the subject. Well, since I'd taken off on this still hunt to

find Catherine, I'd continue looking, even though every corner I looked

into turned out to be the hiding place for another bunch of mad spooks.

My mind took another tack: Admitting that neither side could rub me out

without losing, why in heck didn't they just collect me and put me in a

cage? Dammit, if I had an organization as well oiled as either of them,

I could collect the President right out of the New White House and put

him in a cage along with the King of England, the Shah of Persia, and

the Dali Lama to make a fourth for bridge.

This was one of those questions that cannot be answered by the

application of logic, reasoning, or by applying either experience or

knowledge. I did not know, nor understand. And the only way I would ever

find out was to locate someone who was willing to tell.

Then it occurred to me that--aside from my one experience in

housebreaking--that I'd been playing according to the rules. I'm pretty

much a law-abiding citizen. Yet it did seem to me that I learned more

during those times when the rules, if not broken, at least were bent

rather sharply. So I decided to try my hand at busting a couple of

rather high-level rules.

There was a way to track down Catherine.

So I gassed up the buggy, turned the nose East, and took off like a man

with a purpose in mind. En route, I laid out my course. Along that

course there turned out to be seven Way Stations, according to the

Highway signs. Three of them were along U.S. 12 on the way from

Yellowstone to Chicago. One of them was between Chicago and Hammond,

Indiana. There was another to the south of Sandusky, Ohio, one was

somewhere south of Erie, Pa., and the last was in the vicinity of

Newark. There were a lot of the Highways themselves, leading into and

out of my main route--as well as along it.

But I ignored them all, and nobody gave me a rough time.

Eventually I walked into my apartment. It was musty, dusty, and

lonesome. Some of Catherine's things were still on the table where I'd

dropped them; they looked up at me mutely until I covered them with the

walloping pile of mail that had arrived in my long absence. I got a

bottle of beer and began to go through the mail, wastebasketing the

advertisements, piling the magazines neatly, and filing some offers of

jobs (Which reminded me that I was still an engineer and that my funds

wouldn't last indefinitely) and went on through the mail until I came to

a letter--The Letter.

_Dear Mr. Cornell:_

_We're glad to hear from you. We moved, not because Marian caught

Mekstrom's, but because the dead area shifted and left us sort of

living in a fish-bowl, psi-wise._

_Everybody is hale and hearty here and we all wish you the best._

_Please do not think for a moment that you owe us anything. We'd

rather be free of your so-called debt. We regret that Catherine was

not with you, maybe the accident might not have happened. But we do

all think that we stand as an association with a very unhappy

period in your life, and that it will be better for you if you try

to forget that we exist. This is a hard thing to say, Steve, but

really, all we can do for you is to remind you of your troubles._

_Therefore with love from all of us, we'd like to make this a

sincerely sympathetic and final--_

_Farewell, Philip Harrison._

I grunted unhappily. It was a nice-sounding letter, but it did not ring

true, somehow. I sat there digging it for hidden meanings, but none

came. I didn't care. In fact, I didn't really expect any more than this.

If they'd not written me at all, I'd still have done what I did. I sat

down and wrote Phillip Harrison another letter:

_Dear Philip:_

_I received your letter today, as I returned from an extended trip

through the west. I'm glad to hear that Marian is not suffering

from Mekstrom's Disease. I am told that it is fatal to

the--uninitiated._

_However, I hope to see you soon._

_Regards, Steve Cornell._

_That_, I thought, _should do it!_

Then to help me and my esper, I located a tiny silk handkerchief of

Catherine's, one she'd left after one of her visits. I slipped it into

the envelope and slapped a stamp and a notation on the envelope that

this letter was to be forwarded to Phillip Harrison. I dropped it in the

box about eleven that night, but I didn't bother trying to follow it

until the morning.

Ultimately it was picked up and taken to the local post office, and from

there it went to the clearing station at Pennsylvania Station at 34th

St., where I hung around the mail-baggage section until I attracted the

attention of a policeman.

"Looking for something, Mr. Cornell?"

"Not particularly," I told the telepath cop. "Why?"

"You've been digging every mailbag that comes out of there."

"Am I?" I asked ingeniously.

"Can it Buster, or we'll let you dig your way out of a jail."

"You can't arrest a man for thinking."

"I'll be happy to make it loitering," he said sharply.

"I've a train ticket."

"Use it, then."

"Sure. At train time I'll use it."

"Which train?" he asked me sourly. "You've missed three already."

"I'm waiting for a special train, officer."

"Then please go and wait in the bar, Mr. Cornell."

"Okay. I'm sorry I caused you any trouble, but I've a bit of a personal

problem. It isn't illegal."

"Anything that involves taking a perceptive dig at the U.S. Mail is

illegal," said the policeman. "Personal or not, it's out. So either you

stop digging or else."

I left. There was no sense in arguing with the cop. I'd just end up

short. So I went to the bar and I found out why he'd recommended it. It

was in a faintly-dead area, hazy enough to prevent me from taking a

squint at the baggage section. I had a couple of fast ones, but I

couldn't stand the suspense of not knowing when my letter might take off

without me.

Since I'd also pushed my loitering-luck I gave up. The only thing I

could hope for was that the sealed forwarding address had been made out

at that little town near the Harrisons and hadn't been moved. So I went

and took a train that carried no mail.

It made my life hard. I had to wander around that tank town for hours,

keeping a blanket-watch on the post office for either the income or the

outgo of my precious hunk of mail. I caught some hard eyes from the

local yokels but eventually I discovered that my luck was with me.

A fast train whiffled through the town and they baggage-hooked a mailbag

off the car at about a hundred and fifty per. I found out that the next

stop of that train was Albany. I'd have been out of luck if I'd hoped to

ride with the bag.

Then came another period of haunting that dinky post office (I've

mentioned before that it was in a dead area, so I couldn't watch the

insides, only the exits) until at long last I perceived my favorite bit

of mail emerging in another bag. It was carted to the railroad station

and hung up on another pick-up hook. I bought a ticket back to New York

and sat on a bench near the hook, probing into the bag as hard as my

sense of perception could dig.

I cursed the whole world. The bag was merely labelled "Forwarding Mail"

in letters that could be seen at ninety feet. My own letter, of course,

I could read very well, to every dotted 'i' and crossed 't' and the

stitching in Catherine's little kerchief. But I could not make out the

address printed on the form that was pasted across the front of the

letter itself.

As I sat there trying to probe that sealed address, a fast train came

along and scooped the bag off the hook.

I caught the next train. I swore and I squirmed and I groaned because

that train stopped at every wide spot in the road, paused to take on

milk, swap cars, and generally tried to see how long it could take to

make a run of some forty miles. This was Fate. Naturally, any train that

stopped at my rattle burg would also stop at every other point along the

road where some pioneer had stopped to toss a beer bottle off of his

covered wagon.

At long last I returned to Pennsylvania Station just in time to perceive

my letter being loaded on a conveyor for LaGuardia.

Then the same damned policeman collared me.

"This is it," he said.

"Now see here, officer. I--"

"Will you come quietly, Mr. Cornell? Or shall I put the big arm on you?"

"For what?"

"You've been violating the 'Disclosure' section of the Federal

Communications Act, and I know it."

"Now look, officer, I said this was not illegal."

"I'm not an idiot, Cornell!" I noted uncomfortably that he had dropped

the formal address. "You have been trailing a specific piece of mail

with the express purpose of finding out where it is going. Since its

destination is a sealed forwarding address, your attempt to determine

this destination is a violation of the act." He eyed me coldly as if to

dare me to deny it. "Now," he finished, "Shall I read you chapter and

verse?"

He had me cold. The 'Disclosure' Act was an old ruling that any

transmission must not be used for the benefit of any handler. When Rhine

came along, 'Disclosure' Act was extended to everything.

"Look officer, it's my girl," hoping that would make a difference.

"I know that," he told me flatly. "Which is why I'm not running you in.

I'm just telling you to lay off. Your girl went away and left you a

sealed forwarding address. Maybe she doesn't want to see you again."

"She's sick," I said.

"Maybe her family thinks you made her sick. Now stop it and go away. And

if I ever find you trying to dig the mail again, you'll dig iron bars.

Now scat!"

He urged me towards the outside of the station like a sheep-dog hazing

his flock. I took a cab to LaGuardia, even though it was not as fast as

the subway. I was glad to be out of his presence.

I connected with my letter again at LaGuardia. It was being loaded

aboard a DC-16 headed for Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Hawaii, and

Manila. I didn't know how far it was going so I bought a ticket for the

route with my travel card and I got aboard just ahead of the closing

door.

My bit of mail was in the compartment below me, and in the hour travel

time to Chicago, I found out that Chicago was the destination for the

mailbag, although the superscript on the letter was still hazy.

I followed the bag off the plane at Chicago and stopped long enough to

cancel the rest of my ticket. There was no use wasting the money for the

unused fare from Chicago to Manila. I rode into the city in a

combination bus-truck less than six feet from my little

point-of-interest. During the ride I managed to dig the superscript.

It forwarded the letter to Ladysmith, Wisconsin, and from there to a

rural route that I couldn't understand although I got the number.

Then I went back to Midway Airport and found to my disgust that the

Chicago Airport did not have a bar. I dug into this oddity for a moment

until I found out that the Chicago Airport was built on Public School

Property and that according to law, they couldn't sell anything harder

than soda pop within three hundred feet of public school property, no

matter who rented it. So I dawdled in the bar across Cicero Avenue until

plane time, and took an old propeller-driven Convair to Eau Claire on a

daisy-clipping ride that stopped at every wide spot on the course. From

Eau Claire the mail bag took off in the antediluvian Convair but I took

off by train because the bag was scheduled to be dropped by guided

glider into Ladysmith.

At Ladysmith I rented a car, checked the rural routes, and took off

about the same time as my significant hunk of mail.

Nine miles from Ladysmith is a flagstop called Bruce, and not far from

Bruce there is a body of water slightly larger than a duck pond called

Caley Lake.

A backroad, decorated with ornamental metal signs, led me from Bruce,

Wisconsin, to Caley Lake, where the road signs showed a missing spoke.

I turned in, feeling like Ferdinand Magellan must have felt when he

finally made his passage through the Strait to discover the open sea

that lay beyond the New World. I had done a fine job of tailing and I

wanted someone to pin a leather medal on me. The side road wound in and

out for a few hundred yards, and then I saw Phillip Harrison.

He was poking a long tool into the guts of an automatic pump, built to

lift water from a deep well into a water tower about forty feet tall. He

did not notice my arrival until I stopped my rented car beside him and

said:

"Being a mechanical engineer and an esper, Phil, I can tell you that you

have a--"

"A worn gasket seal," he said. "It doesn't take an esper engineer to

figure it out. How the heck did you find us?"

"Out in your mailbox there is a letter," I told him. "I came with it."

He eyed me humorously. "How much postage did you cost? Or did you come

second class mail?"

I was not sure that I cared for the inference, but Phillip was kidding

me by the half-smile on his face. I asked, "Phil, please tell me--what

is going on?"

His half-smile faded. He shook his head unhappily as he said, "Why can't

you leave well-enough alone?"

My feelings welled up and I blew my scalp. "Let well enough alone?" I

roared. "I'm pushed from pillar to post by everybody. You steal my girl.

I'm in hokus with the cops, and then you tell me that I'm to stay--"

"Up the proverbial estuary lacking the customary means of locomotion,"

he finished with a smile.