"Then this does not come as a complete shock."
"No. Not a complete shock. But there are a lot of loose ends still. So
the basic theme I'll buy. Scholar Phelps and his Medical Center are busy
using their public position to create the nucleus of a totalitarian
state, or a physical hierarchy. You and the Highways in Hiding are busy
tearing Phelps down because you don't want to see any more rule by the
Divine Right of Kings, Dictators, or Family Lines."
"Go on, Steve."
"Well, why in the devil don't you announce yourselves?"
"No good, old man. Look, you yourself want to be a Mekstrom. Even with
your grasp of the situation, you resent the fact that you cannot."
"You're right."
Phillip nodded slowly. "Let's hypothesize for a moment, taking a subject
that has nothing to do with Mekstrom's Disease. Let's take one of the
old standby science-fiction plots. Some cataclysm is threatening the
solar system. The future of the Earth is threatened, and we have only
one spacecraft capable of carrying a hundred people to safety--somewhere
else. How would you select them?"
I shrugged. "Since we're hypothecating, I suppose that I'd select the
more healthy, the more intelligent, the more virile, the more--" I
struggled for another category and then let it stand right there because
I couldn't think of another at that instant.
Phillip agreed. "Health and intelligence and all the rest being pretty
much a matter of birth and upbringing, how can you explain to Wilbur
Zilch that Oscar Hossenpfeiffer has shown himself smarter and healthier
and therefore better stock for survival? Maybe you can, but the
end-result is that Wilbur Zilch slaughters Oscar Hossenpfeiffer. This
either provides an opening for Zilch, or if he is caught at it, it
provides Zilch with the satisfaction of knowing that he's stopped the
other guy from getting what he could not come by honestly."
"So what has this to do with Mekstrom's Disease and supermen?"
"The day that we--and I mean either of us--announces that we can 'cure'
Mekstrom's Disease and make physical supermen of the former victims,
there will be a large scream from everybody to give them the same
treatment. No, we'll tell them, we can't cure anybody who hasn't caught
it. Then some pedagogue will stand up and declare that we are
suppressing information. This will be believed by enough people to do us
more harm than good. Darn it, we're not absolutely indestructible,
Steve. We can be killed. We could be wiped out by a mob of angry
citizens who saw in us a threat to their security. Neither we of the
Highways nor Phelps of The Medical Center have enough manpower to be
safe."
"So that I'll accept. The next awkward question comes up: What are we
going to do with me?"
"You've agreed that we cannot move until we know how to inoculate
healthy flesh. We need normal humans, to be our guinea pigs. Will you
help bring to the Earth's People the blessing that is now denied them?"
"If you are successful, Steve," said Marian, "You'll go down in History
along with Otto Mekstrom. You could be the turning point of the human
race, you know."
"And if I fail?"
Phillip Harrison's face took on a hard and determined look. "Steve,
there can be no failure. We shall go on and on until we have success."
That was a fine prospect. Old guinea-pig Cornell, celebrating his
seventieth birthday as the medical experimentation went on and on.
Catherine was leaning forward, her eyes bright. "Steve," she cried,
"You've just _got_ to!"
"Just call me the unwilling hero," I said in a drab voice. "And put it
down that the condemned specimen drank a hearty dinner. I trust that
there is a drink in the house."
There was enough whiskey in the place to provide the new specimen with a
near-total anesthesia. The evening was spent in forced badinage, shallow
laughter, and a pointed avoidance of the main subject. The whiskey was
good; I took it undiluted and succeeded in getting boiled to the
eyebrows before they carted me off to bed.
I did not sleep well despite my anesthesia. There was too much on my
mind and very little of it was the fault of the Harrisons. One of the
things that I had to face was the cold fact that part of Catherine's
lack of communication with me was caused by logic and good sense. Both
History and Fiction are filled with cases where love was set aside
because consummation was impossible for any number of good reasons.
So I slept fitfully, and my dreams were as unhappy as the thoughts I had
during my waking moments. Somehow I realized that I'd have been far
better off if I'd been able to forget Catherine after the accident, if
I'd been able to resist the urge to follow the Highways in Hiding, if
I'd never known that those ornamental road signs were something more
than the desire of some road commissioner to beautify the countryside.
But no, I had to go and poke my big bump of curiosity into the problem.
So here I was, resentful as all hell because I was denied the pleasure
of living in the strong body of a Mekstrom.
It was not fair. Although Life itself is seldom fair, it seemed to me
that Life was less fair to me than to others.
And then to compound my feelings of persecution, I woke up once about
three in the morning with a strong urge to take a perceptive dig down
below. I should have resisted it, but of course, no one has ever been
able to resist the urge of his sense of perception.
Down in the living room, Catherine was crying on Phillip Harrison's
shoulder. He held her gently with one arm around her slender waist and
he was stroking her hair softly with his other hand. I couldn't begin to
dig what was being said, but the tableau was unmistakable.
She leaned back and looked at him as he said something. Her head moved
in a 'No' motion as she took a deep breath for another bawl. She buried
her face in his neck and sobbed. Phillip held her close for a moment and
then loosed one hand to find a handkerchief for her. He wiped her eyes
gently and talked to her until she shook her head in a visible effort to
shake away both the tears and the unhappy thoughts.
Eventually he lit two cigarettes and handed one to her. Side by side
they walked to the divan and sat down close together. Catherine leaned
against him gently and he put his arm over her shoulders and hugged her
to him. She relaxed, looking unhappy, but obviously taking comfort in
the strength and physical presence of him.
It was a hell of a thing to dig in my mental condition. I drifted off to
a sleep filled with unhappy dreams while they were still downstairs.
Frankly, I forced myself into fitful sleep because I did not want to
stay awake to follow them.
As bad as the nightmare quality of my dreams were, they were better for
me than the probable reality.
* * * * *
Oh, I'd been infernally brilliant when I uncovered the first secret of
the Highways in Hiding. I found out that I did not know one-tenth of the
truth. They had a network of Highways that would make the Department of
Roads and Highways look like a backwood, second-rate, political
organization.
I'd believed, for instance, that the Highways were spotted only along
main arteries to and from their Way Stations. The truth was that they
had a complete system from one end of the country to the other. Lanes
led from Maine and from Florida into a central main Highway that laid
across the breadth of the United States. Then from Washington and from
Southern California another branching network met this main Highway.
Lesser lines served Canada and Mexico. The big Main Trunk ran from New
York to San Francisco with only one large major division: A heavy line
that led down to a place in Texas called _Homestead_. Homestead, Texas,
was a big center that made Scholar Phelps' Medical Center look like a
Teeny Weeny Village by comparison.
We drove in Marian's car. My rented car, of course, was returned to the
agency and my own bus would be ferried out as soon as it could be
arranged so that I'd not be without personal transportation in Texas.
Catherine remained in Wisconsin because she was too new at being a
Mekstrom to know how to conduct herself so that the fact of her
super-powerful body did not cause a lot of slack jaws and high
suspicion.
We drove along the Highways to Homestead, carrying a bag of the Mekstrom
Mail.
The trip was uneventful.