“Now Joan, we didn’t say that. It just would look like the devil for you to be barging about the country with a couple of men — ”
“Sissies! Tissyprissles! Pantywaists! Worried about your reputations.”
“No, we’re not. We’re worried about yours.”
“It won’t wash. No girl who lives alone has any reputation. She can be as pure as Ivory soap and the cats on the campus, both sexes, will take her to pieces anyway. What are you so scared of? We aren’t going to cross any state lines.”
Coburn and Huxley exchanged the secret look that men employ when confronted by the persistence of an unreasonable woman.
“Look out, Joan!” A big red Santa Fe bus took the shoulder on the opposite side of the highway and slithered past. Joan switched the tail of the grey sedan around an oil tanker truck and trailer on their own side of the road before replying. When she did, she turned her head to speak directly to Phil who was riding in the back seat.
“What’s the matter, Phil?”
“You darn near brought us into a head on collision with about twenty tons of the Santa Fe’s best rolling stock!”
“Don’t be nervous; I’ve been driving since I was sixteen and I’ve never had an accident.”
“I’m not surprised; you’ll never have but one. Anyhow,” Phil went on, “can’t you keep your eyes on the road? That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
“I don’t need to watch the road. Look.” She turned her head far around and showed him that her eyes were jammed shut. The needle of the speedometer hovered around ninety.
“Joan! Please!”
She opened her eyes and faced front once more. “But I don’t have to look in order to see.
You taught me that yourself, Smarty. Don’t you remember?”
“Yes, yes, but I never thought you’d apply it to driving a car!”
“Why not? I’m the safest driver you ever saw; I can see everything that’s on the road, even around a blind curve. If I need to, I read the other drivers’ minds to see what they are going to do next.”
“She’s right, Phil. The few times I’ve paid attention to her driving she’s been doing just exactly what I would have done in the same circumstances. That’s why I haven’t been nervous.”
“All right. All right,” Phil answered, “but would you two supermen keep in mind that there is a slightly nervous ordinary mortal in the back seat who can’t see around corners?”
“I’ll be good,” said Joan soberly. “I didn’t mean to scare you, Phil.”.”I’m interested,” resumed Ben, “in what you said about not looking toward anything you wanted to see. I can’t do it too satisfactorily. I remember once you said it made you dizzy to look away and still use direct perception.”
“It used to, Ben, but I got over it, and so will you. It’s just a matter of breaking old habits. To me, every direction is in ‘front’ — all around and up and down. I can focus my attention in any direction, or two or three directions at once. I can even pick a point of away from where I am physically, and look at the other side of things-but that is harder.”
“You two make me feel like the mother of the Ugly Duckling,” said Phil bitterly.
“Will you still think of me kindly when you have passed beyond human communication?”
“Poor Phil!” exclaimed Joan, with sincere sympathy in her voice. “You taught us, but no one has bothered to teach you. Tell you what, Ben, let’s stop tonight at an auto camp-pick a nice quiet one on the outskirts of Sacramento-and spend a couple of days doing for Phil what he has done for us.”
“Okay by me. It’s a good idea.”
“That’s mighty white of you, pardner,” Phil conceded, but it was obvious that he was pleased and mollified. “After you get through with me will I be able to drive a car on two wheels, too?”
“Why not learn to levitate?” Ben suggested. “It’s simpler-less expensive and nothing to get out of order.”
“Maybe we will some day,” returned Phil, quite seriously, “there’s no telling where this line of investigation may lead.”