long way from here."

I nodded and settled down to some fancy mile-getting. Farrow relaxed in
the seat, opened the glove compartment and took out a first aid kit. It
was only then I noticed that she was banged up quite a bit for a
Mekstrom. I'd not been too surprised when she emerged from the wreck;
I'd become used to the idea of the indestructibility of the Mekstrom. I
was a bit surprised at her being banged up; I'd become so used to their
damage-proof hide that the idea of minor cuts, scars, mars, and
abrasions hadn't occurred to me. Yes, that wreck would have mangled a
normal man into an unrecognizable mess of hamburger. Yet I'd expected a
Mekstrom to come through it unscathed.

On the other hand, the damage to Farrow's body was really minor. She
bled from a long gash on her thigh, from a wound on her right arm, and
from a myriad of little cuts on her face, neck, and shoulders.

So as I drove crazy-fast away from the Medical Center Nurse Farrow
relaxed in the seat and applied adhesive tape, compresses, and closed
the gashes with a batch of little skin clips in lieu of sutures. Then
she lit two cigarettes and handed one of them to me. "Okay now, Steve,"
she said easily. "Let's drive a little less crazily."

I pulled the car down to a flat hundred and felt the strain go out of
me.

"As I remember, there's one of the Highways not far from here--"

She shook her head. "No, Steve. We don't want the Highways in Hiding,
either."

At a mere hundred per I could let my esper do the road-sighting, so I
looked over at her. She was half-smiling, but beneath the little smile
was a firm look of self-confidence. "No," she said quietly, "We don't
want the Highways. If we go there, Phelps and his outfit will turn
heaven and earth to break it up, now that you've become so important.
You forget that the Medical Center is still being run to look legal and
aboveboard; while the Highways are still in Hiding. Phelps could make
quite a bitter case out of their reluctance to come out into the open."

"Well, where do we go?" I asked.

"West," she said simply. "West, into New Mexico. To my home."

This sort of startled me. Somehow I'd not connected Farrow with any
permanent home; as a nurse and later as one of the Medical Center, I'd
come to think of her as having no permanent home of her own. Yet like
the rest of us, Nurse Farrow had been brought up in a home with a mother
and a father and probably some sisters and brothers. Mine w