Highways in Hiding | Page 5

don't know," he said. "I really don't know,
Steve. I wish I did."
"That makes two of us," I grunted. "Hasn't anybody thought of
arresting me for kidnapping, suspicion of murder, reckless driving and
cluttering up the highway with junk?"
"Yes," he said quietly. "The police were most thorough. They had two
of their top men look into you."
"What did they find?" I asked angrily. No man likes to have his mind
turned inside out and laid out flat so that all the little wheels, cables and
levers are open to the public gaze. On the other hand, since I was not
only innocent of any crime but as baffled as the rest of them, I'd have
gone to them willingly to let them dig, to see if they could dig past my
conscious mind into the real truth.

"They found that your story was substantially an honest one."
"Then why all this balderdash about shock, rejection, and so on?"
He shook his head. "None of us are supermen," he said simply. "Your
story was honest, you weren't lying. You believe every word of it. You
saw it, you went through it. That doesn't prove your story true."
"Now see here--"
"It does prove one thing; that you, Steve Cornell, did not have any
malicious, premeditated plans against Catherine Lewis. They've
checked everything from hell to breakfast, and so far all we can do is
make long-distance guesses as to what happened."
I snorted in my disgust. "That's a telepath for you. Everything so neatly
laid out in rows of slats like a snow fence. Me--I'm going to consult a
scholar and have him really dig me deep."
Thorndyke shook his head. "They had their top men, Steve. Scholar
Redfern and Scholar Berks. Both of them Rhine Scholars, magna cum
laude."
I blinked as I always do when I am flabbergasted. I've known a lot of
doctors of this and that, from medicine to languages. I've even known a
scholar or two, but none of them intimately. But when a doctor of psi is
invited to take his scholarte at Rhine, that's it, brother; I pass.
Thorndyke smiled. "You weren't too bad yourself, Steve. Ran twelfth in
your class at Illinois, didn't you?"
I nodded glumly. "I forgot to cover the facts. They'd called all the
bright boys out and collected them under one special-study roof. I
majored in mechanical ingenuity not psi. Hoped to get a D. Ing. out of
it, at least, but had to stop. Partly because I'm not ingenious enough and
partly because I ran out of cash."
Doctor Thorndyke nodded. "I know how it is," he said. I realized that

he was leading me away from the main subject gently, but I couldn't
see how to lead him back without starting another verbal hassle. He had
me cold. He could dig my mind and get the best way to lead me away,
while I couldn't read his. I gave up. It felt better, too, getting my mind
off this completely baffling puzzle even for a moment. He caught my
thoughts but his face didn't twitch a bit as he picked up his narrative
smoothly:
"I didn't make it either," he said unhappily. "I'm psi and good. But I'm
telepath and not esper. I weasled my way through pre-med and medical
by main force and awkwardness, so to speak." He grinned at me
sheepishly. "I'm not much different than you or any other psi. The
espers all think that perception is superior to the ability to read minds,
and vice versa. I was going to show 'em that a telepath can make
Scholar of Medicine. So I 'pathed my way through med by reading the
minds of my fellows, who were all good espers. I got so good that I
could read the mind of an esper watching me do a delicate dissecting
job, and move my hands according to his perception. I could diagnose
the deep ills with the best of them--so long as there was an esper in the
place."
"So what tripped you up?"
"Telepaths make out best dealing with people. Espers do better with
things."
"Isn't medicine a field that deals with people?"
He shook his head. "Not when a headache means spinal tumor, or
indigestion, or a bad cold. 'Doctor,' says the patient, 'I've a bad ache
along my left side just below the ribs,' and after you diagnose, it turns
out to be acute appendicitis. You see, Steve, the patient doesn't know
what's wrong with him. Only the symptoms. A telepath can follow the
patient's symptoms perfectly, but it takes an esper to dig in his guts and
perceive the tumor that's pressing on the spine or the striae on his
liver."
"Yeah."

"So I flopped on a couple of tests that