My car leaped forward and I headed along the outside road towards the
nearby highway. Through the busted gate I roared, past the downed guard
and the smashed guardhouse, past the wreck of Farrow's car.
But Nurse Farrow was not finished with this gambit yet. As I drew even
with her, she pried herself out of the messy tangle and came across the
field in a dead run--and how that girl could run! As fast as I was
going, she caught up; as fast as it all happened I had too little time
to slow me down before Nurse Farrow closed the intervening distance from
her wreck to my car and had hooked her arm in through one open window.
My car lurched with the impact, but I fought the wheel straight again
and Farrow snapped, "Keep going, Steve!"
I kept going; Farrow snaked herself inside and flopped into the seat
beside me. "Now," she said, patting the dashboard of our car, "It's up
to the both of us now! Don't talk, Steve. Just drive like crazy!"
"Where--?"
She laughed a weak little chuckle. "Anywhere--so long as it's a long,
long way from here."
I nodded and settled down to some fancy mile-getting. Farrow relaxed in
the seat, opened the glove compartment and took out a first aid kit. It
was only then I noticed that she was banged up quite a bit for a
Mekstrom. I'd not been too surprised when she emerged from the wreck;
I'd become used to the idea of the indestructibility of the Mekstrom. I
was a bit surprised at her being banged up; I'd become so used to their
damage-proof hide that the idea of minor cuts, scars, mars, and
abrasions hadn't occurred to me. Yes, that wreck would have mangled a
normal man into an unrecognizable mess of hamburger. Yet I'd expected a
Mekstrom to come through it unscathed.
On the other hand, the damage to Farrow's body was really minor. She
bled from a long gash on her thigh, from a wound on her right arm, and
from a myriad of little cuts on her face, neck, and shoulders.
So as I drove crazy-fast away from the Medical Center Nurse Farrow
relaxed in the seat and applied adhesive tape, compresses, and closed
the gashes with a batch of little skin clips in lieu of sutures. Then
she lit two cigarettes and handed one of them to me. "Okay now, Steve,"
she said easily. "Let's drive a little less crazily."
I pulled the car down to a flat hundred and felt the strain go out of
me.
"As I remember, there's one of the Highways not far from here--"
She shook her head. "No, Steve. We don't want the Highways in Hiding,
either."
At a mere hundred per I could let my esper do the road-sighting, so I
looked over at her. She was half-smiling, but beneath the little smile
was a firm look of self-confidence. "No," she said quietly, "We don't
want the Highways. If we go there, Phelps and his outfit will turn
heaven and earth to break it up, now that you've become so important.
You forget that the Medical Center is still being run to look legal and
aboveboard; while the Highways are still in Hiding. Phelps could make
quite a bitter case out of their reluctance to come out into the open."
"Well, where do we go?" I asked.
"West," she said simply. "West, into New Mexico. To my home."
This sort of startled me. Somehow I'd not connected Farrow with any
permanent home; as a nurse and later as one of the Medical Center, I'd
come to think of her as having no permanent home of her own. Yet like
the rest of us, Nurse Farrow had been brought up in a home with a mother
and a father and probably some sisters and brothers. Mine were dead and
the original home disbanded, but there was no reason why I should think
of everybody else in the same terms. After all, Catherine had had a
mother and a father who'd come to see me after her disappearance.
So we went West, across Southern Illinois and over the big bridge at St.
Louis into Missouri and across Missouri and West, West, West. We parked
nights in small motels and took turns sleeping with one of us always
awake and alert with esper and telepath senses geared high for the first
sight of any threat. We gave the Highways we came upon a wide berth; at
no time did we come close to any of their way stations. It made our path
crooked and much longer than it might have been if we'd strung a line
and gone. But eventually we ended up in a small town in New Mexico and
at a small ranch house on the edge of the town.
It is nice to have parents; I missed my own deeply when I was reminded
of the sweet wonder of having people just plain glad to see their
children again, no matter what they'd done under any circumstances. Even
bringing a semi-invalid into their homes for an extended course of
treatment.
John Farrow was a tall man with gray at the temples and a pair of sharp
blue eyes that missed nothing. He was a fair perceptive who might have
been quite proficient if he had taken the full psi course at some
university. Mrs. Farrow was the kind of elderly woman that any man would
like to have for a mother. She was sweet and gentle but there was
neither foolish softness or fatuous nonsense about her. She was a
telepath and she knew her way around and let people know that she knew
what the score was. Farrow had a brother, James, who was not at home; he
lived in town with his wife but came out to the old homestead about once
every week on some errand or other.
They took me in as though I'd come home with their daughter for
sentimental reasons; Gloria sat with us in their living room and went
through the whole story, interrupted now and then by a remark aimed at
me. They inspected my hand and agreed that something must be done. They
were extremely interested in the Mekstrom problem and were amazed at
their daughter's feats of strength and endurance.
My hand, by this time, was beginning to throb again. The infection was
heading on a fine start down the pinky and middle fingers; the ring
finger was approaching the second joint to that point where the advance
stopped long enough for the infection to become complete before it
crossed the joint. The first waves of that particular pain were coming
at intervals and I knew that within a few hours the pain would become
waves of agony so deep that I would not be able to stand it.
Ultimately, Farrow got her brother James to come out from town with his
tools, and between us all we rigged up a small manipulator for my hand.
Farrow performed the medical operations from the kit in the back of her
car we'd stolen from the Medical Center.
Then after they'd put my hand through the next phase, Nurse Farrow
looked me over and gave the opinion that it was now approaching the time
for me to get the rest of the full treatment.
One evening I went to bed, to be in bed for four solid months.
* * * * *
I'd like to be able to give a blow by blow description of those four
solid months. Unfortunately, I was under dope so much of the time that I
know little about it. It was not pleasant. My arm laid like a log from
the Petrified Forest, strapped into the machine that moved the joints
with regular motion, and with each motion starting a dart of fire and
mangling pain up to the shoulder. Needles entered the veins at the elbow
and the armpit, and from bottles suspended almost to the ceiling to
provide a pressurehead, plasma and blood-sustenance was trickled in to
keep the arm alive.
Dimly I recall having the other arm strapped down and the waves of pain
that blasted at me from both sides. The only way I kept from going out
of my mind with the pain was living from hypo to hypo and waiting for
the blessed blackness that wiped out the agony; only to come out of it
hours later with my infection advanced to another point of pain. When
the infection reached my right shoulder, it stopped for a long time; the
infection rose up my left arm and also stopped at the shoulder. I came
out of the dope to find James and his father fitting one of the
manipulators to my right leg and through that I could feel the darting
pains in my calf and thigh.
At those few times when my mind was clear enough to let me use my
perception, I dug the room and found that I was lying in a veritable
forest of bottles and rubber tubes and a swathe of bandages.
Utterly helpless, I vaguely knew that I was being cared for in every
way. The periods of clarity were fewer, now, and shorter when they came.
I awoke once to find my throat paralyzed, and again to find that my jaw,
tongue, and lower face was a solid pincushion of darting needles of
fire. Later, my ears reported not a sound, and even later still I awoke
to find myself strapped into a portable resuscitator that moved my chest
up and down with an inexorable force.
That's about all I know of it. When the smoke cleared away completely
and the veil across my eyes was gone, it was Spring outside and I was a
Mekstrom.
* * * * *