Escape to Witch Mountain (15 page)

Tony swallowed and tried to fight down a sick feeling.

Father O'Day said, “Have you been here long?”

“Nearly six years,” she told him.

“Well, this goes back at least ten years, so he may have moved away before you came. There's a possibility he lived in Misty Valley. Does it have a Post Office?”

She shook her head. “All their mail is addressed to here, and delivered by rural carrier. It's not even on a bus route.”

“Oh.” The priest's eyebrows went up slightly and he glanced at Tony.

Tony thought, so
that's
why we were told to come here. Aloud he said, “Maybe, if we went over to Misty Valley…”

The woman said, “Just a moment. Maybe Grover knows.” She turned and called, “Grover, didn't you have the mail route to Misty Valley before I came here?”

From somewhere behind a partition a muffled voice replied, “Shore did, ma'am. An' was I ever glad to give it up! That gap road in the winter was a pure fright.”

“Grover, do you remember anyone on your route named Castaway?”

Tony pressed his clenched hands together. His knuckles began to whiten.

The unseen Grover drawled, “Castaway. Yep, there was a feller named that. Foreign, he was. Used to work at the old Lodge over there an' pick up their mail. That's how I happened to know 'im.”

“Where is he now?” Father O'Day asked slowly.

“Gone to join his family. Had a big family, he told me once, but they was all sickly. Couldn't take the climate over here, an' they all died off. When I knowed Castaway, he was the only one left. Then I gave up my mail route, an' the Cooperative bought the Lodge. I hear he died a couple years later.”

Tony's mouth began to tremble and he turned his face away to hide his tears. It was as if, suddenly, the world had come to an end.

He felt the comforting touch of Father O'Day's big hand on his shoulder, and heard him say, “What's this Cooperative you mentioned?”

“Misty Valley Cooperative, they call it. Just a bunch of city folks who wanted to get back to the country. Lot of 'em's dumb, so it's easy to see why they wanted to get away together. They bought up everything over there, I hear, so I reckon they ain't hurting none for money.”

“Then all the Castaways are gone. But tell me this: do you know if there are any foreigners left over there who looked a little like the man you knew, or talked like him?”

“Nope,” said the unseen Grover. “They're all plain Americans like you an' me, even them as can't talk.”

“Thank you,” the priest said, and silently guided Tony back to the car.

Tony could hardly bear to look at Tia as he told her what they had learned.

For a while afterward they sat in a brooding silence. Finally Father O'Day muttered, “Since we've come this far, I feel we ought to go on over to Misty Valley…

“We—we can't go yet,” said Tony. “Winkie hopped out of the car while we were gone. He hasn't come back.”

The big man sighed. “Considering the kind of cat he is, I don't know whether that's a good sign or a bad one. Tia, how many were in that other lifeboat?”

“She says fifty,” Tony replied. “Ours was much smaller. It held only ten.”

“But
fifty!
” the priest exclaimed. He shook his head. “I should
have realized what it was like for them, coming to a strange new world, with strange new ills that turned out to be deadly…Still, it does seem that a few…”

Tony said, “Tia and I have
never
been sick. Not once.”

Something began to trickle through the back of his mind. He glanced at Tia, and saw that a curious look had come over her face.

Suddenly Tia whispered, “I've remembered something!
I'm
not the odd one, just because I
can't
talk. It's
you
who are odd—because you
can! “

“Huh?” He gaped at her incredulously. The trickle in the back of his mind took form as he realized what she had said. His people had had no difficulty learning English. The hard part had been to
speak
it so those who spoke it naturally could
hear
it. Only a few of his people had been able to do that, and he was one of them.

All at once he said, “Tia, that map of Uncle Bené's—let's see it!”

She had already taken the folder from the star box and was opening it across her knees. Father O'Day twisted about in his seat and scowled at the map.

“Hey, what's come over you two?” the big man asked.

“Our people can't be dead,” Tony said quickly, with rising excitement. “We—we think they've sort of covered up their tracks. Guess they had to. After Uncle Bené wrote to them, and they found out how we'd been treated, and what the world was like…”

“Eh? How d'you mean, Tony?”

“Well, if anybody managed to track them down, and even guessed at all the secrets they must know, like how to fly in space and all, think of the danger they'd be in.”

“Oh, good Lord!”

Tony's finger touched the smudged words
Kiált Cast
, that Uncle Bené had written at the edge of the folder.

“Cast has to mean Castaway,” he said. “What's the other word, Tia?”

The priest said, “I'm almost certain it's Hungarian—but why would he write in that language if he'd been studying English?”

Tia explained, and Tony said, “Our ship burned before we'd learned very much English. After we were captured we picked up a little of that European language. It must have been Hungarian. Anyway, when we didn't know the word for something in one language, we'd substitute a word from the other.” He stopped abruptly and looked at Tia, and added, “
Kiált—
does it mean
telephone?”

“He didn't know the word for telephone in either language, but what he wrote means
call
in English—so it's just as good.”

“Of course!
Call Castaway.
” It was so simple and obvious that Tony wondered why he hadn't thought of it sooner. Immediately he began searching the street for a public telephone sign. He did not expect a place so small to have a booth, but he saw one beyond the gift shop in front of a parking area. On the instant he was sliding out of the car.

“Tony!” said Father O'Day. “What—”

“I'm going to make a phone call.”

“But, Tony—”

“It's an idea—please pray we're right. Tia, explain it to him…” He turned and ran swiftly for the distant telephone booth.

Inside, he stood a few moments by the open door, trying to calm his excited breathing. Then he fished coins from his pocket and searched hastily through the book for the number he wanted. His heart started to pound furiously when he dialed.

The call went through quickly. In fact, the other receiver was lifted from the hook almost on the instant of the ring, as if someone had been waiting for it. But the man's voice that spoke into his ear was calm and unhurried.

“Misty Valley Cooperative.”

Tony swallowed, and the receiver trembled in his hand as he groped for words. “I—I'm trying to find someone named Castaway,” he blurted.

“Castaway?” the voice repeated in his ear. “I'll have to check on that. Who is calling, please?”

There was not the slightest indication that the speaker had ever heard the name before. His hopes went crashing again, but he managed to reply, “I—I'm Tony Castaway.”

At that moment, abruptly, he heard Tia's silent cry of warning: “Tony—watch out! Mr. Deranian's car has just crossed the bridge— it'll pass right by you!”

T
he shock of Tia's warning almost caused Tony to drop the receiver. He turned slightly, and out of the corner of his eye was able to glimpse a white sedan approaching slowly. Werner Karman was driving; Lucas Deranian sat beside him, his dark head thrust out of the window as he studied the cars in the parking lot. Behind the sedan came another very much like it that was filled with men.

Tony raised his right hand to the side of his head and hunched over the telephone book. The receiver in his left hand was vibrating strangely, but he hardly noticed it. All his attention was on the passing cars, which were creeping by hardly ten feet from the booth. It seemed impossible that six searchers could pass so close without one noticing him and investigating.

But they passed, and apparently no one looked at him twice. Then it came to him that only Mr. Deranian knew him by sight, and that his searchers would hardly expect to find him alone here on the street. More likely they were trying to locate Father O'Day's car. A muddy car, he hoped.

Suddenly he chilled as he saw that Mr. Deranian's sedan was swinging into the parking lot in front of him. At the same time he became aware of the vibration in the receiver, and he raised it to his ear.

“Toní! Toní!” a voice was saying urgently. “What has happened? Hurry—speak!”

For an incredulous moment Tony was incapable of replying. He
had never heard Tia's voice on the telephone, for the simple reason that Granny had been too poor to have one installed. Because of that, he had not known that a telephone could transmit the sounds that were coming through the receiver now. High, rapid sounds that were beyond the range of earthly ears. It might have been Uncle Bené speaking to him—but it was the same person who had answered at first.

“I—I didn't know!” he managed to say. “I was afraid I'd made a mistake—the way you sounded when I asked you about the Castaways. I—”

“I had to make sure who was calling. Thank the blessed stars you've found us! We've been searching for you and Tia for years—as soon as we heard what happened at Fairview we started patrolling the roads, trying to locate you. We have seven cars on the road, and I'm in contact with all of them. Are you in Stony Creek now?”

“Yes, sir. I—I'm in the phone booth in front of the parking lot. But I'm afraid I'm sort of trapped here. I mean, the men who've been after us—there are six of them in two cars—have just driven past, and one car has turned into the parking lot.”

“Were you noticed at all?”

“I'm sure I wasn't—but I'll be spotted for sure if I try to leave here.” Tony glanced quickly around the back of the booth, and said, “Mr. Deranian—he's the only one who knows us by sight—is parked not fifty feet from me. He's sitting in the car watching the street. As long as he's there I can't possibly…”

“We'll get you away safely, never fear! Just hold on while I call the cars.”

For a moment it seemed almost too good to be true. Tony peered down the street and saw that the second sedan had gone past Father O'Day's carefully washed car, apparently without noticing it, and
was now vanishing around a curve. Then he risked another glance at Lucas Deranian, and a sudden coldness went through him.

More than once in the past few days he'd wished that Tia and he, among their other abilities, knew how to make themselves invisible. Now he realized it would take more than that to discourage Mr. Deranian—or the implacable people who were paying him.

If Tia and he escaped, with the help of the Cooperative, it wouldn't be long before the Cooperative came under suspicion. Then its secret, its precious and incredible secret that the surviving members of his race had worked so hard to hide, would be discovered.

Tony's face became grim. He'd seen too much of the world not to know what would happen. His people would be robbed, hounded, persecuted, and placed in constant danger for the rest of their lives.

“I won't do that to them,” he muttered.

“Toní,” the voice in the receiver said quickly, “one of us is driving over the Stony Creek bridge, and another—”

“Please,” he interrupted, “tell 'em to stay away from me! I—I just realized what will happen. It'll be exactly as if I'd led that bunch straight to you. They'll find out everything. I—I don't know what to do about Tia—maybe you can figure out something—but as for me—”

“Toní!” the voice ordered. “Listen to me! You and Tia mean entirely too much to us even to dream of such a thing. Do exactly as we tell you, and
no
one will be in any danger. Understand?”

“But how—”

“There isn't time to tell you. There is too much to be arranged. First, where is Tia?”

“She's down the street, hiding in Father O'Day's car.” He described it hurriedly and gave its location.

“Good! This may simplify matters. Give me a quick review of Father O'Day. Just what is he, and why is he concerned in this? How much does he know about you? Can he be trusted absolutely?”

“He's the only person who would believe the truth about us, and he's been helping us since we ran away from that juvenile home we were in. He knows everything about us—and there's nobody living I'd trust more. He—”

“That's good enough,” the voice interrupted. “If you feel that way about him, we'll accept him without question. Now, you said that two cars were after you, and that the one with the man who knows you is in the parking lot. Where is the other one?”

“It went on through town—I can't see it. I'm sure the men in it were looking for Father O'Day's car—only they didn't recognize it because we washed all the mud off, and it looks so different—”

“Toní, call to Tia and have her tell Father O'Day we've worked out a plan, and to start driving toward you to pick you up. Quick, before the other car comes back!”