Hellstrom's Hive (15 page)

“Some of it.”

“I'd bet my bottom dollar that the doc is clean,” Kraft said.

“Would you?” Peruge asked. “How many missing-persons
cases have you really had in his area over, say, the past twenty-five years?”

With a sinking feeling, Kraft thought: He's seen all of the old records! Nils had been right about this one without even seeing him. The Outsiders had sent a sharp and prying mind this time. Peruge was aware of all the old mistakes the Hive had made. Bad, bad, bad. To hide his reaction, Kraft turned away, resumed his progress toward the farm buildings, now less than fifty yards ahead. “Depends on what you call a missing person,” he said. And, as he noted that Peruge still stood in the willow shadow, “Come on! We can't keep the doc waiting.”

Peruge followed, suppressing a smile. The deputy really was so transparent. Kraft had been shaken by the missing-persons barb. This was not just a plain, ordinary, run-of-the-mill deputy. Things were beginning to jell in Peruge's mind. Three agents had been wasted here, chasing a suspicion. Discovery of a deputy-who-wasn't-a-deputy gave those suspicions a new dimension. Something had been learned, after all. And Peruge thought: Hellstrom's learned what we're willing to pay for access to his Project 40. Now, we find out what he's willing to pay.

“I always thought a missing person was a missing person,” Peruge said, addressing Kraft's blocky back.

Kraft spoke without turning. “That all depends. Some people want to be missing. Guy runs out on his wife, or his job—I guess he's technically missing. But that's not what you're saying about your man. When I say ‘missing person,' I generally mean someone who's in real trouble.”

“And you don't think any real trouble could happen here?”

“This isn't the Old West anymore,” Kraft said. “This area is tamer than a lot of your cities. People don't even lock their doors most places around here. Too damn much trouble fishing around for the keys.” He grinned back over his shoulder in what he hoped was a disarming gesture. “Besides, we wear our pants kind of tight. Don't leave much room in our pockets.”

They were passing the farmhouse now. The barn loomed before them across a bare stretch of dirt perhaps sixty feet wide. An old fence divided the open area, but only the posts remained. The wire had been removed. There were yellowed curtains on the bay window of the farmhouse wing that jutted toward the creek, but the place held an oddly vacant air. Kraft wondered about that house. Empty? Why? Houses were supposed to be occupied. Did Hellstrom and his crew live there? Did they eat there? Why wasn't someone inside rattling pots and pans and things? He recalled Porter's reference to “negative signs.” A very penetrating observation. It wasn't so much what you could see around Hellstrom's farm as what you couldn't see.

There was another positive sign now, though—an acid odor. He thought first of photo chemicals, then rejected that answer. The smell was much more penetrating and biting. Something to do with Hellstrom's insects, perhaps?

A swinging door had been set into the old sliding door of the barn. The smaller door opened as Kraft and Peruge approached. Hellstrom himself stepped out. Peruge recognized the man from the photographs in the Agency's files. Hellstrom wore a white turtleneck shirt and gray trousers. His feet were tucked into open sandals. His rather sparse light hair appeared as though it had been tangled by the wind and then pushed into a semblance of order by hurried fingers.

“Hi, Linc,” Hellstrom called.

“Hi there, Doc.”

Kraft strode right up to Hellstrom, shook hands. Peruge, following close behind, received the odd impression of a rehearsed action. They shook hands with such a perfunctory sense of unfamiliarity.

Peruge moved to one side, choosing a position that gave him a view of the barn door Hellstrom had left standing partly open. Nothing was visible except darkness in the small gap remaining.

The action appeared to amuse Hellstrom. He grinned as Kraft introduced him to Peruge. Peruge found Hellstrom's hand cool, but rather dry. There was a sense of forced relaxation about the man, but no sign of excess perspiration in the palm. He had himself well under control, then.

“Are you interested in our studio?” Hellstrom asked, nodding toward the door and the direction of Peruge's gaze.

Peruge thought: Now, aren't you the cool one! He said, “I've never seen a movie studio.”

“Linc told me on the phone that you were looking for one of your employees who might be missing in our area,” Hellstrom said.

“Ahhh, yes.” Peruge wondered why he couldn't see anything beyond that open door. He'd seen Hollywood studios and remembered a sense of organized confusion: bright lights, dollies, cameras, people bustling about, then that frozen stillness of the moments when they were filming.

“Have you seen anyone nosing around here, Doc?” Kraft asked.

“Nothing but our own people,” Hellstrom said. “No strangers, at least recently. When did these people turn up missing?”

“About a week ago,” Peruge said, returning his attention to Hellstrom.

“That recently!” Hellstrom said. “My. Are you sure they aren't just extending their vacation without notice?”

“I'm just as sure as a man could be,” Peruge said.

“You're welcome to look around,” Hellstrom said. “We've been pretty busy in the studio lately, but we'd have noticed any strangers in the area. We keep a pretty close watch to see that no one bursts in on our work unexpectedly. I don't think you're going to find any sign of your people in our area.”

Kraft visibly relaxed, thinking: If Nils thinks they've cleaned up well enough, then it's clean.

“Oh?” Peruge pursed his lips. It came to him abruptly that
there were several levels to this conversation. He and Hellstrom knew it. Most likely the deputy did, too. The various parts of the interleaved message were distinct. Peruge was welcome to pry around, but he'd find nothing incriminating. No strangers could come upon Hellstrom's farm without being seen. Hellstrom remained confident that his
powerful connections
would keep the real contest submerged. Peruge, for his own part, had revealed to Hellstrom an awareness that people were missing in the immediate vicinity of the farm. In a way, Hellstrom had not denied this, but had merely pointed out how useless it would be to look for the missing people. How, then, were the real stakes to be introduced into the game?

Hellstrom said, “Deputy Kraft tells me you work for some kind of fireworks company.”

Ahhh,
Peruge thought with delight. “We have diversified interests in my firm, Mr. Hellstrom. We're also interested in metallurgy, especially new processes for exploitation. We're always on the hunt for potentially valuable inventions.”

Hellstrom stared at him for a moment. “Would you like to come in and see the studio? We're very busy right now, behind schedule on our latest epic.” He started to turn, hesitated as though at an afterthought. “Oh, I hope you're not carrying any radio or something of that kind. We use short-range radio in part of our mixing circuitry for the sound tracks. Other equipment can play hob with our work.”

You son of a bitch! Peruge thought. He folded his hands casually in front of him, left wrist in right palm, turned off the tiny wristwatch transmitter. And he thought: If you think you're going to keep me out of your little playpen, baby, you think again. I'm going in there and I may see more than you expect.

Hellstrom, noting the movement of Peruge's hands, and suspecting the reason, still found himself wondering at the man's curious statement about diversified interests, metallurgy, and new inventions. What could that have to do with Project 40?

The words of Trova Hellstrom.
Whatever we do in breeding for the specialists we require, we must always include the human being in our processes, preferring this to the intrusion of surgical instruments. The sexual stump can be condoned only as long as we include the body's original genetic materials in the practice. Anything that smacks of genetic surgery or engineering must be looked upon with the gravest misgivings. We are, first and foremost, human beings, and we must never loose ourselves from our animal ancestry. Whatever we are, we are not gods. And whatever this universe may be, it obviously rests heavily in dependence upon the accidental.

 

“He's not transmitting,” Janvert said, moving the control dials on his instruments. He sat in the curtained shadows of their van's interior, the receiver mounted in front of him on a shelf originally intended as part of the camper's kitchen. Nick Myerlie's buff and sweaty body was leaning over him, one red-knuckled hand on the counter beside the radio. The big man's heavy features carried a frown of deep concern.

“What do you think's happened to him?” Myerlie asked.

“I think he turned his transmitter off deliberately.”

“For God's sake! Why?”

“The last thing I received,” he tapped the tape recorder over the radio, “was Hellstrom saying something about not bringing any radio equipment into their studio.”

“That's risky damned business, turning off his transmitter,” said Myerlie.

“I'd have done the same,” Janvert said. “He has to get inside that studio.”

“But still—”

“Oh, shut up! Is Clovis still outside with her telescope?”

“Yes.” Myerlie sounded hurt. He knew Janvert was second-in-command on this case, but it was irritating to take such short-tempered treatment from a runt.

“See if she's seen anything.”

“That thing's only twenty-power and it's still pretty misty out there.”

“Go find out anyway. Tell her what's happened.”

“Right.”

The camper creaked and moved as Myerlie took his big body out the door.

Janvert, who had lifted one earphone away from his right ear to talk to Myerlie, replaced it now and stared at the receiver. What had Peruge meant by that last odd conversation? Metallurgy? New inventions?

The words of Trova Hellstrom.
Our future lies in an ultimate form of human domestication. All outside patterns of humankind must be seen, then, as wild forms. In our domestication process, we will necessarily introduce a multiplicity of diverse human types into our social scheme. No matter how much diversity this brings, the mutual interdependence and consequent sense of respect for our essential oneness must never be lost. Brood mother and prime male are different only in surface features from the lowliest worker. If the most exalted among us have any prayer, it must be one of thanksgiving that there are workers. It is salutary, when seeing a common worker, to think, there, but for leader foods and training, am I.

 

Entering the studio through a double-door system that explained why he had not been able to see inside the building from the yard, Peruge sensed something odd about the sounds and movements. That fetid animal smell was very strong in here, too. He ascribed it to a glass-fronted structure off to his left, behind which he could discern animals in cages. He identified mice, guinea pigs, and monkeys.

In all of the film companies Peruge had seen before, he had
observed a special quality of silence while group energies flowed up a mysterious channel into the camera lens. This place was different, though. No one tiptoed. Those who moved about walked with a casual silence that said they found this normal. The door baffles had eliminated that incessant humming so irritatingly noticeable outside, but in here there was a faint susurration to replace it.

Only one camera crew appeared to be working. They were set up in a corner to his right and were working very close to a glass container about three feet on a side. The glass reflected hot shards of light.

Hellstrom had warned Peruge not to talk until given permission, but Peruge pointed to the camera crew in the corner, lifted his eyebrows in a silent question.

Bending close, Hellstrom whispered, “We're capturing the articulation of insect body parts in a new way. Magnified views. The lens is actually inside that glass case which maintains a special climate for the subject insect.”

Peruge nodded, wondering why they must remain silent for that. Would they be doing sound-on-film for such a sequence? It didn't seem likely, but his acquaintance with film making was perfunctory at best, hurriedly augmented for this assignment, and he knew better than to speak his question aloud. Hellstrom would be delighted to have an excuse to throw him out. The man's nervousness had become increasingly obvious as they entered the studio.

Hellstrom leading and Kraft bringing up the rear, they struck out diagonally across the center of the studio area. As always when an Outsider was this close to the workings of the Hive head, Hellstrom found himself unable to suppress completely feelings of disquiet. The Hive's territorial conditioning went too deep. And Peruge reeked of Outsider smells. He did
not
belong in this place. Kraft, behind them, would be having an even
worse time of it. He had never before accompanied an Outsider into these precincts. The working crews were behaving with outward normalcy, however. They would
feel
this Outsider's presence as a constant rasping on their awareness, but front training dominated their reactions. All proceeded smoothly.

Peruge noticed the movement of people around them: across their diagonal path, beside them, off in the corners of the cavernous studio. Everyone appeared to be on normal business and none gave more than a casual glance to the trio crossing the open area, but Peruge could not avoid feeling that he was under the closest scrutiny. He looked upward. The bright lights being used in the lower part of the studio left the upper regions in deep shadows that his vision could not penetrate. Was that deliberate? Were they hiding something up above him?

As he watched, the swinging descent of a cage on the end of a boom caught his attention and he stumbled over a coil of cables. He would have fallen if Kraft had not leaped forward to catch his arm. The deputy restored Peruge to balance, put a finger to lips for silence. Kraft released Peruge's arm reluctantly. It felt more secure to have a controlling arm on this intruder. Kraft found himself torn by tormenting worries. Nils was playing with fire! There were voiceless workers out there on the studio floor. Naturally, they'd been conditioned for the menial tasks here, but their presence posed an explosive danger. What if one of them reacted to Peruge's Outsider chemistry? The man's smell was offensive!

Peruge, seeing his path clear for a few paces, glanced back at the descending boom cage. It had swung from the gloomy mystery of the upper reaches and was moving in oiled silence down to the camera setup in the corner. A woman in a white smock occupied the cage. She had startlingly pale skin accented by ebony hair tied at the neck in a simple chignon. The fluttering of her smock in the wind of the boom's movement suggested that she wore nothing under it.

Kraft pushed Peruge's arm, urging him to move faster. Reluctantly, Peruge picked up his pace. There had been something magnetically attractive about that pale-skinned woman and he could not get her image out of his mind. Her face had been a madonna oval beneath that black cap of hair. The arms protruding from the smock's short sleeves had been almost too fat, but suggesting sensuous softness rather than obesity.

Hellstrom stood now at a door in a structure that had been erected as a separate, flat-roofed building inside the studio. A wall climbed to the upper areas behind the flat roof. Peruge estimated that the wall split the barn in half lengthwise and wondered what lay behind it. He followed Hellstrom into a dimly lighted room where there was heavy glass from waist height to ceiling across two of the inner walls. One glass partition gave a view into a smaller studio where insects were flitting openly back and forth through blue light—pale, big-winged moths by their appearance. The other window framed a shadowy room where men and women worked at a long, curved bank of electronic instruments with small screens directly in front of each operator showing lilliputian movements. It reminded Peruge of a television control booth.

Kraft closed the door behind them and moved three paces into the room. He stood there now, arms folded across his breast as though guarding the entrance. There was another door in the far-right corner, Peruge noted, but that led into the shadowy room of electronic instruments. Again, Peruge felt that the entire setup did not quite fit his picture of a movie studio.

There was a small oblong wooden table with four chairs around it in the room and Hellstrom took a chair on the far side and spoke in a calm voice. “The men you're watching in there, Mr. Peruge, are mixing several sound sources for a combined track. It's rather delicate work.”

Peruge studied the people in the shadowy room, unable to pinpoint what struck him odd about them. Abruptly, he realized
that of the six men at the arc of instruments and three women standing on the far side of the arc, all but one looked enough alike to be from the same family. Again, he scanned the face illuminated by the low, wavering light. Five of the men and three of the women were alike, not only in the uniform white smocks, but in short blond hair and rather pinched faces dominated by large eyes. The women were distinguished only by rather obvious breasts and a slight softening of the features. The lone male who differed from the others was also blond and reminded Peruge of someone. He realized then that the odd man out looked like Hellstrom.

As all this flashed through Peruge's mind, the outer door opened behind Kraft and the young woman he had seen on the boom entered. At least, Peruge cautioned himself, she appeared to be that same young woman, but the people in the next-door booth made him wonder.

“Fancy,” Hellstrom said, speaking quickly in alarm. Why was she here? he asked himself. He hadn't sent for her and he didn't like the stalking feline expression on her face.

Kraft stepped aside grudgingly to allow her to pass.

Peruge watched her, noting the oval face, almost doll-like, the extremely sexy body that she moved with full awareness of its contours showing through the thin smock. She kept her attention on Hellstrom while speaking, but there was no doubt she was playing to Peruge.

“Ed sent me over,” she said. “He wants you to know that we have to reshoot that mosquito sequence. You're in it, you know. I told you we'd have to reshoot. The mosquitoes were disturbed, but you wouldn't listen to me.”

Abruptly, she appeared to notice Peruge, moved up to within a pace of him, and asked, “Who's this?”

“This is Mr. Peruge,” Hellstrom said, a deep note of caution in his voice. What was Fancy doing?

“Hello, Mr. Peruge,” she said, her voice lilting. She moved even closer to him. “I'm Fancy.”

Hellstrom watched her closely. What
was
she doing? He inhaled a deep breath through his nose, half anger, half probing, and detected that Fancy had shot herself up with breeding hypes. She was trying to arouse Peruge! Why? She was having an effect, too. Peruge was attracted to Fancy and unable to explain the sudden magnetism. No wild Outsider could understand the simple chemistry of the situation. Kraft, too, was caught momentarily by her powerful sexuality, but Hellstrom flashed a hand signal which alerted him. Kraft, long out of the Hive's daily contacts and constant reinforcements, took a few seconds to recover. Peruge, however, was not recovering.

Hellstrom wondered if he should let this continue. She was playing a dangerous game and acting without instructions. Granted, it would be desirable to have Peruge's genes in the Hive stocks, but…

Peruge stood in semishock. He could not recall ever being caught up in sexual excitement this swiftly and this thoroughly. The woman felt it, too. She was panting for him. He wondered distantly if these people had done something to him, but rejected that immediately. This was that oddly random chemistry one heard about. He realized, catching up with her words, that Fancy was asking if he were going to stay the night.

With an effort, Peruge said, “I'm staying in town.”

She glanced at Hellstrom. “Nils, why don't you invite Mr. Peruge to stay with us?”

“Mr. Peruge is here on business,” Hellstrom said. “I imagine he'd prefer staying in his own quarters.”

Peruge wanted nothing more than to stay the night with this compelling woman, but he began to sense inner alarm signals.

“You're just being stuffy,” Fancy said to Hellstrom. Again, she looked up into Peruge's eyes. “Are you in films, Mr. Peruge?”

He tried to fight free of that enveloping aura of sexuality, tried to think. “No. I'm—I'm, ah, looking for some friends, an
employee and his wife, really, who're missing around here someplace.”

“Oh, I hope nothing's happened to them,” she said.

Hellstrom rose from the table, crossed to Peruge's side. “Fancy, we
do
have a schedule to keep.”

Peruge tried to wet his lips with his tongue; his mouth felt dry, his body trembled. The delectable little witch! Was she told to make a play for him?

Hellstrom glanced at Kraft, wondered if they should do something physical to get Fancy out of the room. She'd really shot herself up, the crazy female! What was she doing? He spoke to her in a reasonable, but commanding tone. “Fancy, you'd better get back to the crew. Tell Saldo I want special attention paid to the most urgent problems first and tell Ed I'll be ready to reshoot the mosquito sequence tonight.”

Fancy drew back a step, relaxed. She had this Peruge on a string and she knew it. The man almost followed her as she moved away from him. He would keep. She said, “All you ever think about is work. Anybody would think you were just a plain old, common everyday worker.”

Hellstrom realized she was taunting him.

Fancy obeyed, though, her Hive training dominant. She turned slowly, went to the door with only a flicking glance at Kraft, opened the door, and paused in the doorway to look back at Peruge. She smiled at the Outsider then, sly and inviting, raised her eyebrows in another silent taunt directed at Hellstrom, and went out, closing the door softly behind her.

Peruge cleared his throat.

Hellstrom studied Peruge. The man was having trouble recovering, not surprising in view of how Fancy had armed herself for that attack. It had been an attack, Hellstrom realized. Pure attack. She was out to get Peruge, to breed him.

“That's a—very attractive woman,” Peruge said, his voice husky.

“Would you like to go over to the house for a cup of coffee?” Hellstrom asked, feeling a sudden sympathy for Peruge. The poor wild creature had no idea what had happened to him.

“That's very kind of you,” Peruge said, “but I thought we were going to look at your studio.”

“Didn't you see the studio out there?”

“Is that all there is to it?”

“Oh, we have the usual support facilities,” Hellstrom said. “Some of it's too technical for the casual visitor to understand, but we have a wardrobe section and one of the best editing labs in the business. Our collection of rare insects is without equal anywhere in the world. We could also screen some of our film for you if you'd like, just to show you what we do here, but not today, I'm afraid. The schedule is pretty tight. I hope you understand.”

Kraft took up his cue. “Are we delaying you, Doc? I know how important your work is. We just came up to find out if any of your people had seen Mr. Peruge's friends.”

“I'll certainly inquire about that,” Hellstrom said. “Why don't you come back and take lunch with us tomorrow, Mr. Peruge? Maybe I'll have something to report by then.”

“I'd like to do that,” Peruge said. “What time?”

“Would eleven be all right?”

“That'd be fine. Maybe some of your people would like to hear about my company then, too. We
do
have an intense interest in metallurgy and new inventions.”

There he goes again! Hellstrom thought. He said, “If you get here by eleven, that'll give you about an hour before lunch. I'll have someone show you around—editing, wardrobe, the insects.” He smiled pleasantly.