Highways in Hiding | Page 7

can tell them is that somehow you fouled your
drive, cracked up, and lost their daughter. Not even dead-for-sure.
Death, I think, we all could have faced. But this uncertainty was
something that gnawed at the soul's roots and left it rotting.
To stand there and watch the tears in the eyes of a woman as she asks
you, "But can't you remember, son?" is a little too much, and I don't
care to go into details.
The upshot of it was, after about ten days of lying awake nights and
wondering where she was and why. Watching her eyes peer out of a
metal casting at me from a position sidewise of my head. Nightmares,
either the one about us turning over and over and over, or Mrs. Lewis
pleading with me only to tell her the truth. Then having the police
inform me that they were marking this case down as "unexplained." I
gave up. I finally swore that I was going to find her and return with her,
or I was going to join her in whatever strange, unknown world she had
entered.
* * * * *
The first thing I did was to go back to the hospital in the hope that Dr.
Thorndyke might be able to add something. In my unconscious

ramblings there might be something that fell into a pattern if it could be
pieced together.
But this was a failure, too. The hospital super was sorry, but Dr.
Thorndyke had left for the Medical Research Center a couple of days
before. Nor could I get in touch with him because he had a six-week
interim vacation and planned a long, slow jaunt through Yellowstone,
with neither schedule nor forwarding addresses.
I was standing there on the steps hoping to wave down a cruising
coptercab when the door opened and a woman came out. I turned to
look and she recognized me. It was Miss Farrow, my former nurse.
"Why, Mr. Cornell, what are you doing back here?"
"Mostly looking for Thorndyke. He's not here."
"I know. Isn't it wonderful, though? He'll get his chance to study for his
scholarte now."
I nodded glumly. "Yeah," I said. It probably sounded resentful, but it is
hard to show cheer over the good fortune of someone else when your
own world has come unglued.
"Still hoping," she said. It was a statement and not a question.
I nodded slowly. "I'm hoping," I said. "Someone has the answer to this
puzzle. I'll have to find it myself. Everyone else has given up."
"I wish you luck," said Miss Farrow with a smile. "You certainly have
the determination."
I grunted. "It's about all I have. What I need is training. Here I am, a
mechanical engineer, about to tackle the job of a professional detective
and tracer of missing persons. About all I know about the job is what I
have read. One gets the idea that these writers must know something of
the job, the way they write about it. But once you're faced with it
yourself, you realize that the writer has planted his own clues."

Miss Farrow nodded. "One thing," she suggested, "have you talked to
the people who got you out from under your car yet?"
"No, I haven't. The police talked to them and claimed they knew
nothing. I doubt that I can ask them anything that the police have not
satisfied themselves about."
Miss Farrow looked up at me sidewise. "You won't find anything by
asking people who have never heard of you."
"I suppose not."
A coptercab came along at that moment, and probably sensing my
intention, he gave his horn a tap. I'd have liked to talk longer with Miss
Farrow, but a cab was what I wanted, so with a wave I took it and she
went on down the steps to her own business.
I had to pause long enough to buy a new car, but a few hours afterward
I was rolling along that same highway with my esper extended as far as
I could in all directions. I was driving slowly, this time both alert and
ready.
I went past the scene of the accident slowly and shut my mind off as I
saw the black-burned patch. The block was still hanging from an
overhead branch, and the rope that had burned off was still dangling,
about two feet of it, looped through the pulleys and ending in a tapered,
burned end.
I turned left into a driveway toward the home of the Harrisons and went
along a winding dirt road, growing more and more conscious of a dead
area ahead of me.
It was not a real dead zone, because I could still penetrate some of the
region. But as far as really digging any