"Whoa, baby!" I roared. "Slow down. I'm a bit less than bright, but what
have I done now?"
I'd have slapped her across the face as an anodyne if she hadn't been
Mekstrom.
Farrow cooled visibly, then her face sort of came apart and she sort of
flopped forward onto the bed and buried her face in my shoulder. I
couldn't help but make comparisons; she was like a hunk of marble, warm
and vibrant. Like having a statue crying on my shoulder. She sagged
against me like a loose bag of cement and her hands clutched at my
shoulder blades like a pair of C-clamps. A big juicy tear dropped from
her cheek to land on my chest, and I was actually surprised to find that
a teardrop from a Mekstrom did not land like a drop of mercury. It just
splashed like any other drop of water, spread out, and made my chest
wet.
Eventually I held her up from me, tried to shake her gently, and said,
"Now what's the shooting all about, Farrow?"
She shook her head as if to clear her thinking gear.
"Steve," she said in a quietly serious tone, "I've been such an utter
fool."
"You're not unique, Farrow," I told her. "People have been doing damfool
stunts since--"
"I know," she broke in. Then with an effort at light-heartedness, she
added, "There must be a different version of that Garden of Eden story.
Eve is always blamed as having tempted Adam. Somewhere, Old Adam must
have been slightly to blame--?"
I didn't know what she was driving toward, but I stroked her hair and
waited. She was probably right. It still takes two of a kind to make one
pair.
"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 Thorndyke 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 Thorndyke 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 Thorndyke 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. Thorndyke 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, Thorndyke 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 damned if I
will let my child be raised with the cockeyed notion that he has some
God-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.
Thorndyke. Half afraid that my perception of them would touch off their
own telepathic sense of danger, I watched deliberately.
The door opened and Thorndyke 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 Thorndyke 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.
Thorndyke 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
Thorndyke 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.