Restoree by Anne McCaffrey Read Free Book Online

sensitized flesh. The fence had always blotted out the environs of the asylum.
    “Farm, farm, farm,” Harlan panted. He was tall enough to see over the rolling fields that stretched out in all directions from the institution. He glanced up at the sun, squinting, but it was too near the zenith to be much help. He halted briefly, sniffing the slight breeze.
    “Sea!” he declared and abruptly turned off to the right, guiding me with a firm hand under my elbow.
    “Can’t we just find a road? It would lead us somewhere,” I gasped, struggling to keep my feet under me at the pace he set.
    “Road!” he flung at me contemptuously and trotted up the rise in front of us. He kept glancing back over his shoulder. I didn’t dare look back. It was all I could do to keep up with him.
    We ran through the fields until I had such a grabbing in my side, I could not run farther. He sensed, rather than inquired, about my condition and let me collapse in the shelter of the tall grain at the next rise. Keeping himself sheltered by the grain, he looked out in all directions, again sniffing the breeze.
    “We may have a little time before we’ll be turned up missing, Sara,” he said, dropping down beside me. “They’ll have their hands full, rounding up the patients. They may not even take a head count right away. They’ve gotten lax and overconfident. However, the situation of the asylum itself located right in the middle of farmlands, makes an air search ridiculously easy.” He stopped and grabbed up a handful of straw. “Of course. We’ve got part of our camouflage right here.” He laughed and started stuffing straw into his tunic so that the stalks stuck straight up behind his back and out across his shoulders. I followed his lead and, when my tunic parted over one shoulder, plastered myself hastily with the soft moist earth.
    “Good girl,” Harlan said and smeared his own skin with dirt where it showed whitely through. We looked like scarecrows after a week’s rain when we had finished.
    “Now, we will make for the sea. The moment you hear any noise at all, drop flat in the furrows,” and he pointed out the cultivation ridges. “The grain is tall enough and thick enough that we may not be visible when they’re going to look for running figures. And, they won’t expect me to make for the sea,” he added cryptically.
    He held out his hand to me and, taking a deep breath, I rose and we started out again.
    We had scarcely gone the length of that field when I heard something other than our laboring breath. Before I could react on my own, my face was in the dirt, Harlan’s body overlapping mine.
    Had the searchers been on foot, passing near us, I’m certain the sound of my heart would have given us away. The chirrop, chirrrop of a plane car neared, passed over us, retreated and cautiously we rose, checking to make sure another was not hovering. Running low we made it to the top of the next field. Even I could see that the land was sloping down gradually. The smell of the sea, tart and crisp, was strong enough for me to scent as I held my sweating face up to cool in the wind.
    I’m not sure I was grateful for the times we had to lie face down in the moist black soil, waiting till the searchers passed over us. I got my wind back each time, true, but the terror of waiting, unable to risk a glance above, was more breath-snatching than the exertion of flight. Six times we dropped, each time a little nearer to where the land dropped off to the sea. And then, there was the sea before us, a hundred feet down the high straight precipice on which we stood.
    My courage sank, for here, at the cliff edge, which seemed to curve for miles in each direction, the fields of tall grain ended. Fifty yards between sea and field was covered with only low straggling bush, inadequate cover for us walking strawstacks.
    Harlan caught my despairing appraisal and squeezed my hand reassuringly.
    “There are ways down to the beaches.”
    “And then