"Good. Now, Steve, dig the hallway."
I did. There was no one there. I opened my mouth to tell her so, and
then closed it foolishly.
"Dig the hallway down to the left. Farther. To the door down
there--three beyond the one you're perceiving now--is there a wheelchair
there?"
"Wheelchair?" I blurted.
"Steve, this is a hospital. They don't even let a man with an aching
tooth walk to the toothache ward. He rides. Now, you keep a good esper
watch on the hall and if anybody looks out while I'm gone, just cast a
deep dig at their face. It's possible that at this close range I can
identify them from the perceived image in your mind. Although, God
knows, no two people ever _see_ anything alike, let alone perceive it."
She slipped out, leaving me with the recumbent form of my former
sweetheart. Her face had fallen into the relaxed expression of sleep,
sort of slack and unbuttoned.
#Tough, baby,# I thought as I closed my eyes so that all my energy could
be aimed at the use of my perception.
Farrow was going down the hall like a professional heading for the
wheelchair on a strict order. No one bothered to look out; she reached
the locker room and dusted the wheelchair just as if she'd been getting
it for a real patient. (The throb in my finger returned for a parthian
shot and I remembered that I _was_ a real patient!) She trundled the
chair back and into my room.
"In," she said. "And keep that perception aimed on the hallway, the
elevator, and the center corridor stairs."
She packed me with a blanket, tucking it so that my shoes and
overclothing would not show, doing the job briskly. Then she scooped
Catherine up from the floor and dropped her into my bed, and then rolled
Catherine into one of those hospital doodads that hospitals use for male
and female alike as bedclothing.
"Anyone taking a fast dig in here will think she's a patient--unless the
digger knows that this room is supposed to be occupied by one Steve
Cornell, obviously male. Now, Steve, ready to steer?"
"Steer?"
"Steer by esper. I'll drive. Oh--I know the way," she told me with a
chuckle. "You just keep your perception peeled for characters who might
be over-nosy. I'll handle the rest."
We went along the hallway. I took fast digs at the rooms and hall ahead
of us; the whole coast seemed clear. Waiting for the two-bit elevator
was nerve wracking; hospitals always have such poky elevators. But
eventually it came and we trundled aboard. The pilot was no big-dome. He
smiled at Nurse Farrow and nodded genially at me. He was probably a
blank, jockeying an elevator is about the top job for a non-psi these
days.
But as the elevator started down, a doctor came out of one of the rooms
on the floor below. He took a fast look at the indicator above the
elevator door and made a dash to thumb the button. The elevator came to
a grinding halt and he got on.
This bothered me, but Farrow merely simpered at the guy and melted him
down to size. She made some remark to him that I couldn't hear, but from
the sudden increase of his pulse rate, I gathered that she'd really put
him off guard. He replied in the same unintelligible tone and reached
for her hand. She held his hand, and if the guy was thinking of me, my
name is Sing Hoy Low and I am a Chinese Policeman.
He held her hand until we hit the first floor, and he debarked with a
calf-like glance at Nurse Farrow. We went on to the ground floor and
down the lower corridor to the end, where Farrow spent another lifetime
and a half filling out a white cardboard form.
The superintendent eyed me with a sniff. "I'll call the car," she said.
I half-expected Farrow to make some objection, but she quietly nodded
and we waited for another lifetime until a big car whined to a stop
outside. Two big guys in white coats came in, tripped the lever on back
of the wheelchair and stretched me out flat and low-slung on the same
wheels. It was a neat conversion from wheelchair to wheeled stretcher,
but as Farrow trundled me out feet first into the cold, I felt a sort of
nervous chill somewhere south of my navel. She swung me around at the
last minute and I was shoved head first into the back of the car.
Car? This was a full-fledged ambulance, about as long as a city block
and as heavy as a battleship. It was completely fitted for everything
that anybody could think of, including a great big muscular
turbo-electric power plant capable of putting many miles per behind the
tail-pipe.
The door closed on my feet, and we took off with Farrow sitting right
behind the two big hospital attendants, one of whom was driving and the
other of whom was ogling Farrow in a calculating manner. She invited the
ogle. Heck, she did it in such a way that I couldn't help ogling a bit
myself. If I haven't said that Farrow was an attractive woman, it was
because I hadn't really paid attention to her looks. But now I went
along and ogled, realizing in the dimmer and more obscure recesses of my
mind that if I ogled in a loudly lewd perceptive manner, I'd not be
thinking of what she was doing.
So while I was pleasantly occupied in ogling, Farrow slipped two more
hypos out from under her clothing. She slipped her hands out sidewise on
the backs of their seats, put her face between them and said, "Anybody
got a cigarette, fellows?"
The next that took place happened, in order of occurrence, as follows:
The driver grunted and turned his head to look at her. The other guy
fumbled for a cigarette. Driver poked at the lighter on the dash, still
dividing his attention between the road and Nurse Farrow. The man beside
him reached for the lighter when it popped out and he held it for her
while she puffed it into action. Farrow fingered the triggers on the
skin-blast hypos. The man beside the driver replaced the lighter in its
socket on the dash. The driver slid aside and to the floor, a second
before the other hospital orderly flopped down like a deflated balloon.
The ambulance took a swoop to the right, nosed down into a shallow ditch
and leaped like a shot deer out on the other side.
Farrow went over the back of the seat in a flurry and I rolled off of my
stretcher into the angle of the floor and the sidewall. There was a
rumble and then a series of crashes before we came to a shuddering halt.
I came up from beneath a pile of assorted medical supplies, braced
myself against the canted deck, and looked out the wind-shield. The
trunk of a tree split the field of view as close to dead center as it
could be.
"Out, Steve," said Farrow, untangling herself from the steering wheel
and the two attendants. "Out!"
"What next?" I asked her.
"We've made enough racket to wake the statue of Lincoln. Out and run for
it."
"Which way?"
"Follow me!" she snapped, and took off. Even in nurse's shoes with those
semi-heels, Farrow made time in a phenomenal way. I lost ground
steadily. Luckily it was still early in the afternoon, so I used my
perception to keep track of her once she got out of sight. She was
following the gently rolling ground, keeping to the lower hollows and
gradually heading toward a group of buildings off in the near-distance.
I caught up with her just as we hit a tiny patch of dead area; just
inside the area she stopped and we flopped on the ground and panted our
lungs full of nice biting cold air. Then she pointed at the collection
of buildings and said, "Steve, take a few steps out of this deadness and
take a fast dig. Look for cars."
I nodded; in a few steps I could send my esper forward to dig the fact
that there were several cars parked in a row near one of the buildings.
I wasted no time in digging any deeper, I just retreated into the dead
area and told her what I'd seen.
"Take another dig, Steve. Take a dig for ignition keys. We've got to
steal."
"I don't mind stealing." I took another trip into the open section and
gandered at ignition locks. I tried to memorize the ones with keys
hanging in the locks but failed to remember all of them.
"Okay, Steve. This is where we walk in boldly and walk up to a couple of
cars and get in and drive off."
"Yeah, but why--"
"That's the only way we'll ever get out of here," she told me firmly.
I shrugged. Farrow knew more about the Medical Center than I did. If
that's the way she figured it, that's the way it had to be. We broke out
of the dead area, and as we came into the open, Farrow linked her arm in
mine and hugged it.
"Make like a couple of fatuous mushbirds," she chuckled. "We've been out
walking and communing with nature and getting acquainted."
"Isn't the fact that you're Mekstrom and I'm human likely to cause some
rather pointed comment?"
"It would if we were to stick around to hear it," she said. "And if they
try to read our minds, all we have to do is to think nice mushy
thoughts. Face it," she said quietly, "it won't be hard."
"Huh?"
"You're a rather nice guy, Steve. You're fast on the uptake, you're
generally pleasant. You've got an awful lot of grit, guts and
determination, Steve. You're no pinup boy, Steve, but--and this may come
as a shock to you--women don't put one-tenth the stock in pulchritude
that men do? You--"
"Hey. Whoa," I bubbled. "Slow down, before you--"
She hugged my arm again. "Steve," she said seriously, "I'm not in love
with you. It's not possible for a woman to be in love with a man who
does not return that love. You don't love me. But you can't help but
admit that I am an attractive woman, Steve, and perhaps under other
circumstances you'd take on a large load of that old feeling. I'll admit
that the reverse could easily take place. Now, let's forget all the odd
angles and start thinking like a pair of people for whom the time, the
place, and the opposite sex all turned up opportunely."
I couldn't help thinking of Nurse Farrow as--Nurse Farrow. The name
Gloria did not quite come out. I tried to submerge this mental attitude,
and so I looked down at her with what I hoped to resemble the expression
of a love-struck male. I think it was closer to the expression of a
would-be little-theatre actor expressing lust, and not quite making the
grade. Farrow giggled.
But as I sort of leered down at her, I had to admit upon proper
examination of her charm that Nurse Farrow could very easily become
Gloria, if as she said, we had the time to let the change occur. Another
idea formed in my mind: If Farrow had been kicked in the emotions by
Thorndyke, I'd equally been pushed in the face by Catherine. That made
us sort of kindred souls, as they used to call it in the early books of
the Twentieth Century.
Gloria Farrow chuckled. "Unlike the old torch-carriers of that day," she
said, "we rebound a bit too fast."
Then she let my arm go and took my hand. We went swinging across the
field in a sort of happy comradeship; it must have looked as though we
were long-term friends. She was a good egg, hurt and beaten down and
shoved off by Thorndyke, but she had a lot of the good old bounce. Of a
sudden impulse I wanted to kiss her.
"Go ahead, Steve," she said. "But it'll be for the probable onlookers.
I'm Mekstrom, you know."
So I didn't try. I just put an arm around her briefly and realized that
any attempt at affection would be like trying to strike sparks off flint
with a hunk of flannel.
We walked hand in hand towards the buildings, strolled up saucily
towards two of the parked cars, made the sort of wave that lovers give
one another in goodbye when they don't really want to demonstrate their
affection before ten thousand people and stepped into two cars and took
off.
Gloria Farrow was in the lead.
We went howling down the road, Farrow in the lead car by a hundred feet
and me behind her. We went roaring around a curve, over a hill, and I
had my perception out to its range, which was far ahead of her car. The
main gate came into range, and we bore down upon that wire and steel
portal like a pair of madmen.
Gloria Farrow plowed into the gate without letting up. The gate went
whirling in pieces, glass flew and tires howled and bits of metal and
plastic sang through the air. Her car weaved aside; I forgot the road
ahead and put my perception into her car.
Farrow was fighting the wheel like a racing driver in a spin. Her hands
wrenched the wheel with the swift strength of the Mekstrom Flesh she
wore, and the wheel bent under her hands. Over and around she went, with
a tire blown and the lower rail of the big gate hanging onto the fender
like a dry-land sea-anchor. She juggled the wheel and made a snaky path
off to one side of the road.
Out of the guardhouse came a uniformed man with a riot gun. He did not
have time to raise it. Farrow ironed out her course and aimed the
careening car dead center. She mowed the guard down and a
half-thousandth of a second later she plowed into the guardhouse. The
structure erupted like a box of stove-matches hit with a heavy-caliber
soft-nosed slug, like a house of cards and an air-jet. There was a roar
and a small gout of flame and then out of the flying wreckage on the far
side came Farrow and her stolen car. Out of the mess of brimstone and
shingles she came, turning end for end in a crazy, metal-crushing twist
and spin. She ground to a broken halt before the last of the debris
landed, and then everything was silent.
And then for the first and only time in my life I felt the penetrant,
forceful impact of an incoming thought; a mental contact from another
mind:
#Steve!# it screamed in my mind, #Get out! Get going! It's your move
now----#