‘No, Mother!’ It was Magee, his voice strong and vibrant.
‘Get me a pepper pill,’ he went on. ‘There’s -, ‘But Fader -‘
He cut her short. ‘I’ve got to get to the Doctor all right, but how the devil will I get there if I don’t walk?’
‘We would carry you.’
‘Thanks, Mother,’ he told her, his voice softened. ‘I know you would-but the police would be curious. Get me that pill.’
Dave followed her into the ‘fresher, and questioned her while she rummaged through the medicine chest. ‘Why don’t we just send for a doctor?’
‘There is only one doctor we can trust, and that’s the Doctor. Besides, none of the others are worth the powder to blast them.’
Magee was out again when they came back into the room. Mother Johnston slapped his face until he came around, blinking and cursing. Then she fed him the pill.
The powerful stimulant, improbable offspring of common coal tar, took hold almost at once. To all surface appearance Magee was a well man. He sat up and tried his own pulse, searching it out in his left wrist with steady, sensitive fingers. ‘Regular as a metronome,’ he announced, ‘the old ticker can stand that dosage all right.’
He waited while Mother Johnston applied sterile packs to his wounds, then said good-bye. MacKinnon looked at Mother Johnston. She nodded.
‘I’m going with you,’ he told the Fader.
‘What for? It will just double the risk.’
‘You’re in no fit shape to travel alone-stimulant, or no stimulant.’
‘Nuts. I’d have to look after you.’
‘I’m going with you.’
Magee shrugged his shoulders and capitulated.
Mother Johnston wiped her perspiring face, and kissed both of them.
Until they were well out of town their progress reminded MacKinnon of their nightmare flight of the previous evening. Thereafter they continued to the north-northwest by a highway which ran toward the foothills, and they left the highway only when necessary to avoid the sparse traffic. Once they were almost surprised by a police patrol car, equipped with blacklight and almost invisible, but the Fader sensed it in time and they crouched behind a low wall which separated the adjacent field from the road.
Dave inquired how he had known the patrol was near. Magee chuckled. ‘Damned if I know,’ he said, ‘but I believe I could smell a cop staked out in a herd of goats.’
The Fader talked less and less as the night progressed. His usually untroubled countenance became lined and old as the effect of the drug wore off. It seemed to Dave as if this unaccustomed expression gave him a clearer insight into the man’s character-that the mask of pain was his true face rather than the unworried features Magee habitually showed the world. He wondered for the ninth time what the Fader had done to cause a court to adjudge him socially insane.
This question was uppermost in his mind with respect to every person he met in Coventry. The answer was obvious in most cases; their types of instability were gross and showed up at once. Mother Johnston had been an enigma until she had explained it herself. She had followed her husband into Coventry. Now that she was a widow, she preferred to remain with the friends she knew and the customs and conditions she was adjusted to, rather than change for -another and possibly less pleasing environment.
Magee sat down beside the road. ‘It’s no use, kid,’ he admitted, ‘I can’t make it.’
‘The hell we can’t. I’ll carry you.’
Magee grinned faintly. ‘No, I mean it.’ Dave persisted. ‘How much farther is it?’
‘Matter of two or three miles, maybe.’
‘Climb aboard.’ He took Magee pickaback and started on. The first few hundred yards were not too difficult; Magee was forty pounds lighter than Dave. After that the strain of the additional load began to tell. His arms cramped from supporting Magee’s knees; his arches complained at the weight and the unnatural load distribution; and his breathing was made difficult by the clasp of Magee’s arms around his neck.
Two miles to go-maybe more. Let your weight fall forward, and your foot must follow it, else you fall to the ground. It’s automatic-as automatic as pulling teeth. How long is a mile? Nothing in a rocket ship, thirty seconds in a pleasure car, a ten minute crawl in a steel snail, fifteen minutes to trained troops in good condition. How far is it with a man on your back, on a rough road, when you are tired to start with?