Part 4 (1/2)
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 of the details of the rambling Harrison house, I could get more from my eyesight than from any sense of perception. But even if they couldn't find a really dead area, the Harrisons had done very well in finding one that made my sense of perception ineffective. It was sort of like looking through a light fog, and the closer I got to the house the thicker it became.
Just about the point where the dead area was first beginning to make its effect tell, I came upon a tall, browned man of about twenty-four who had been probing into the interior of a tractor up to the time he heard my car. He waved, and I stopped.
”Mr. Harrison?”
”I'm Phillip. And you are Mr. Cornell.”
”Call me Steve like everybody else,” I said. ”How'd you guess?”
”Recognized you,” he said with a grin. ”I'm the guy that pulled you out.”
”Thanks,” I said, offering a hand.
He chuckled. ”Steve, consider the hand taken and shook, because I've enough grime to muss up a regiment.”
”It won't bother me,” I said.
”Thanks, but it's still a gesture, and I appreciate it, but let's be sensible. I know you can wash, but let's shake later. What can I do for you?”
”I'd like a first-hand account, Phil.”
”Not much to tell. Dad and I were pulling stumps over about a thousand feet from the wreck. We heard the racket. I am esper enough to dig that distance with clarity, so we knew we'd better bring along the block and tackle. The tractor wouldn't go through. So we came on the double, Dad rigged the tackle and hoisted and I took a running dive, grabbed and hauled you out before the whole thing went _Whoos.h.!.+_ We were both lucky, Steve.”
I grunted a bit but managed to nod with a smile.
”I suppose you know that I'm still trying to find my fiancee?”
”I'd heard tell,” he said. He looked at me sharply. I'm a total blank as a telepath, like all espers, but I could tell what he was thinking.
”Everybody is convinced that Catherine was not with me,” I admitted.
”But I'm not. I know she was.”
He shook his head slowly. ”As soon as we heard the screech of brakes and rubber we esped the place,” he said quietly. ”We dug you, of course. But no one else. Even if she'd jumped as soon as that tree limb came into view, she could not have run far enough to be out of range. As for removing a bag, she'd have had to wait until the slam-bang was over to get it out, and by the time your car was finished rolling, Dad and I were on the way with help. She was not there, Steve.”
#You're a G.o.ddam liar!#
Phillip Harrison did not move a muscle. He was blank telepathically. I was esping the muscles in his stomach, under his loose clothing, for that first tensing sign of anger, but nothing showed. He had not been reading my mind.
I smiled thinly at Phil Harrison and shrugged.
He smiled back sympathetically, but behind it I could see that he was wis.h.i.+ng that I'd stop harping on a dead subject. ”I sincerely wish I could be of help,” he said. In that he was sincere. But somewhere, someone was not, and I wanted to find out who it was.
The impa.s.se looked as though it might go on forever unless I turned away and left. I had no desire to leave. Not that Phil could help me, but even though this was a dead end, I was loath to leave the place because it was the last place where I had been close to Catherine.