Hellstrom's Hive (16 page)

Will my guide be Fancy? Peruge wondered, feeling his heartbeat quicken. “I'll be looking forward to that. In the meantime, I hope you won't mind if I call in some help and have a look around the area myself?”

Hellstrom noted how Kraft's muscles tightened, and he spoke quickly. “Not right here on the farm, I hope, Mr. Peruge. We're getting ready to shoot some outside footage as long as this weather holds. It doesn't help much when people stumble over our setups and delay us. I hope you understand how costly such delays can be.”

“Oh, yes, I understand,” Peruge said. “I was thinking only of having a look at some of the range area around your farm. Carlos's letter made it clear that he was in this area. I thought we might see if we could turn up something.”

Aware of Hellstrom's mounting alarm, Kraft said, “We don't want you interfering with the official investigation, Mr. Peruge. Amateurs can completely destroy evidence without—”

“Oh, I'll have only the best professional help,” Peruge said. “You can count on that. They won't interfere one bit with the
official
investigation. And I'll make sure they don't bother Mr. Hellstrom at his movie making. You'll have nothing but admiration for the quality of professional help I'm calling in, Mr. Kraft.”

“Guess you don't care how much money you spend,” Kraft muttered.

“Expense is no object,” Peruge agreed. He was enjoying this suddenly. This pair was on the hook. They knew it, too. “We're going to find out what happened to our people.”

That challenge is plain enough, Hellstrom thought. “Of course, we sympathize with your concern. Our own immediate problems tend to dominate our attention. We can be pretty single-minded when our schedule is threatened.”

Peruge felt himself beginning to come down from the lift Fancy had given him and, now, alarm and anger began to take over. They'd tried to catch him with a little pussy! He said, “I understand how things are, Hellstrom. I'm going to tell my home office to employ all the professional manpower we can spare.”

Kraft stared at Hellstrom, seeking a cue.

Hellstrom spoke evenly, though. “We understand each other, I think, Mr. Peruge.” He glanced at Kraft. “You just keep intruders from interfering with us, eh, Linc?”

Kraft nodded. What did Nils mean? How could he stop an army of investigators? This Peruge was going to call in the FBI. The bastard had done everything but use their name!

“Until tomorrow, then,” Peruge said.

“Linc knows the way out,” Hellstrom said. “I hope you will forgive me if I don't see you out. I really must get on with my work.”

“Of course,” Peruge said. “I've already noticed how well Deputy Kraft knows his way around your farm.”

Hellstrom's eyes glittered as he shot a restraining signal at Kraft. “Local officials have never been barred from our land,” Hellstrom said. “We will see you tomorrow, Mr. Peruge.”

“You certainly will.”

Peruge moved ahead of Kraft to the door, opened it, and stepped out into a full collision with Fancy, who appeared to be returning. He caught an arm around her to keep her from falling. There was no doubt that she wore nothing under the smock. She ground into him as he jerked his arm away in shock.

Kraft pulled her away. “You all right, Fancy?”

“
I'm
fine,” she said, grinning at Peruge.

“That was clumsy of me,” Peruge said. “I'm sorry.”

“You needn't be,” she said.

Hellstrom spoke from behind them. “We've had enough commotion out here, Linc. Would you see Mr. Peruge out?”

They left hurriedly, Peruge in considerable confusion. He'd received the unmistakable impression that Fancy had been ready to flop him down and screw him right then and there!

Hellstrom waited until the outer door closed behind Kraft and Peruge, then turned an inquiring stare on Fancy.

“He's in the bag,” she said.

“Fancy, what
are
you doing?”

“I'm doing my homework.”

Hellstrom suddenly noted the thickening of Fancy's cheeks, the way her upper arms stretched the fabric of the smock. He said, “Fancy, do you see yourself as a brood mother?”

“We haven't had one since Trova,” she said.

“And you know why!”

“All that nonsense about a brood mother exciting the swarming drive!”

“It's not nonsense and you know it!”

“Some of us think it is. We think the Hive may swarm without a brood mother and that might be disastrous.”

“Fancy, don't you think we know our jobs? The Hive will have to produce at least ten thousand more workers before swarming pressures become apparent.”

“They're apparent right now,” she said. She rubbed her arms. “Some of us can feel them.”

Comment on the current film.
The film sequence shows an insect cell, the development of the egg, and, finally, the caterpillar emerging. How striking is this metaphor. We emerge from the parent body, those wild creatures who call themselves humankind. The message of this metaphor goes much deeper, however. It says we must prepare for our emergence. We are immature at this stage, our needs dominated by preparations for adulthood. When we emerge, it will be to take dominion over the surface of the earth. When we have achieved our adult form, we will eat to live rather than to grow.

 

Peruge heard the telephone ringing for a long time before the Chief answered. Peruge had been sitting on the edge of his motel bed after returning from lunch with Hellstrom. It had been an extremely disappointing lunch: no sign of Fancy, everything very
formal and shallow in the dining room of the old farmhouse, and absolutely no rise to his bait about new inventions. The Chief was not going to like this report.

The Chief 's voice came on the phone presently, alert and responsive despite the long delay in answering. The old man had not been asleep, then, but doing something he refused to interrupt even to answer what he often referred to as “that instrument from hell.”

“I told you I'd call as soon as I got back,” Peruge said.

“Where are you calling from?” the Chief asked.

“The motel, why?”

“Are you
sure
that phone's clean?”

“It's clean. I checked.”

“Let's scramble anyway.”

Peruge sighed, got out his equipment. Presently, he had the Chief 's voice in his ear with that distant flatness the scrambler imposed.

“Now, tell me what you found out,” the Chief ordered.

“They refuse to respond to any overture about metallurgy or new inventions.”

“Did you quote an offer?”

“I said I knew someone who'd pay up to a million for a promising new invention in that field.”

“That didn't tip them?”

“Nothing.”

“The board is beginning to pressure me,” the Chief said. “We're going to have to act soon, one way or another.”

“Hellstrom must have some price!” Peruge said.

“You think if you up the ante, he may bite?”

“I don't know for sure. What I'd like to do is send Janvert and probably Myerlie around to the south of Hellstrom's valley and look for signs of Carlos and Tymiena. I have a hunch they may have approached from the south. Lots of trees that way and you know how cautious Carlos was.”

“You send no one.”

“Chief, if we—”

“No.”

“But if we could put that kind of pressure on Hellstrom we might get him for much less. We could have this thing all sewed up and ready to move before the board gets—well, you know how they can be when they get suspicious.”

“You would teach your grandfather to suck eggs. I said
no!
”

Peruge began to sense complications. “Then what do you want me to do?”

“Tell me what you saw at Hellstrom's place.”

“Not much more than I saw yesterday.”

“Be specific.”

“In one sense, it's ordinary; very ordinary. Almost too ordinary. No laughter, smiles, relaxation; everything very serious and, well,
dedicated
. That's the word that kept occurring to me: dedicated.
That
is not ordinary. They put me in mind of a Chicom farm commune laboring to meet its harvest quota.”

“I don't think we're going to find a red in this woodpile,” the Chief said, “but that's something to keep in mind if we need to cover ourselves with glory. However, the matter is much more serious than you realize.”

“Oh?” Peruge was suddenly alert, intensely concentrated on the voice coming to him over the phone.

“I had a call from upstairs today,” the Chief said. “A special assistant to the Man. They wanted to know if we were the ones poking into Hellstrom's affairs.”

“Oh—oh!” Peruge nodded. That explained why Hellstrom had appeared so confidently in command of the situation. How did this little bug doctor get that kind of clout?

“What did you do?” Peruge asked.

“I lied,” the Chief said, his voice bland. “I said it must be somebody else because I hadn't heard about it. However, I promised to check because sometimes my people get a bit overzealous.”

Peruge stared at the wall in silence for a moment. Who was being set up here? He said, “We have Merrivale set up if we need a patsy.”

“That was one of the things I considered.”

One of the things! Peruge thought.

The Chief interrupted his development of that worry, asking, “Now, tell me what they're doing on that farm.”

“They're making movies about insects.”

“You told me that yesterday. Is that
all?
”

“I'm not sure what else they're doing, but I have some ideas about
where
they may be doing it. There's a basement in that barn-studio: wardrobe and some other crap down there, all disgustingly normal in appearance. But there's a tunnel from the barn to the house. They took me through it and we had lunch in the house. There were some very strange dames to wait on us, too, I tell you. Beautiful dolls, all four of them, but they don't talk—not even when you speak directly to them.”

“What?”

“They don't speak. They just serve table and go away. Hellstrom said it's because they're perfecting special accents and have been ordered by their voice coach not to say
anything
unless the coach is there to listen and correct them.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Does it? It struck me as odd.”

“Were you transmitting to Janvert and the others?”

“No. It was the same as yesterday. They were very nice about it and so-o-o reasonable. Radio for their sound tracks and so on. Would I please not cause problems?”

“I still don't like you going in there without radio. If something—maybe you'd better replace Janvert with Myerlie or DT as your second.”

“Relax. They as much as told me that I'd be all right if I played it cool.”

“How'd they do that?”

“Hellstrom explained in detail how angry he gets when people cause setbacks in their schedule. I was told to stick close to my guide and not stray.”

“Who was your guide?”

“Some little guy named Saldo, no bigger than Shorty Janvert. Very closemouthed. There was no sign of the dame they threw at me yesterday.”

“Dzule, are you sure you're not imagining—”

“I'm sure. Look, we're stymied. I need help. I want the highway patrol, the FBI, and anyone else we can dragoon into it crawling over those hills around Hellstrom's farm.”

“Dzule! Didn't you hear me when I told you about my call from upstairs?”

Peruge tried to swallow in a suddenly dry throat. The Chief could be very abrupt and final when his voice took on that calm, reasonable tone of correction. So there was more to that call from upstairs than just reported. The troops were stirred up.

“You cannot ask for help on a project that doesn't exist,” the Chief said.

Peruge said, “Did you know I'd transmitted a request through Signals for FBI help?”

“I intercepted that and cut it off. That request no longer exists.”

“Is there any way we could get an overflight to inspect that farm?”

“Why?”

“It's what I was starting to explain. There's this tunnel from the barn to the house. I'd like to know if there are more such tunnels under that area. Geological Survey has techniques to detect that kind of thing.”

“I don't think I could ask for that without tipping our hand. I'll look into it, though. There may be some other way. You're
suggesting they may have laboratories and such under the barn in tunnels?”

“Yes.”

“It's an idea. I've a couple of friends in the oil industry who owe us favors.”

“The board—”

“Dzule!” There was a warning note in that voice. It said, don't question my intelligence!

“I'm sorry, Chief,” Peruge said. “It's just that—well, I'm very uneasy about this thing. All afternoon, I kept wanting to get the hell out of there. There's a stinking animal smell about the place and—it's a very creepy place. The trouble is, I can't pin down a single thing to make me uneasy except the blatant facts of Porter and company.”

The Chief 's voice took on a patronizing, fatherly tone. “Dzule, my boy, don't go inventing trouble. If we can't get our hands on Hellstrom's invention and control the metallurgical process, this becomes a very straightforward case. I can discover that some of my
overzealous
boys have uncovered a hornet's nest of subversion. To do that, however, we need much more than we already possess.”

“Porter and—”

“They don't exist. You forget that my signature was on the orders.”

“Ahhh—yes, of course.”

“I can go upstairs and say we have this bit of a file, little more than a memorandum, really, that one of our boys found at the MIT library. I can
do
that, but only if I'm ready to defend the argument that it involves a private development of a major weapon system.”

“Unless we have more information, they'll make the same kinds of guesses we did.”

“Precisely!” the Chief said.

“I see. Then you want me to take this to an open negotiation with Hellstrom?”

“Indeed I do. Is there any reason why you think you cannot do that?”

“I can attempt it. I have a date to go back there tomorrow. I led them to believe I'll have an army of professional help to conduct a search of the area within a day or so, and they—”

“What are your preparations?”

“Janvert and his teams will be using line of sight to follow my movements while I'm outside the buildings. When I get inside, I most likely will be incommunicado. We will, of course, probe for a soft spot—a window or something that could act as a microphone for our laser pickup. However, I don't believe I should wait for that kind of contact before opening—”

“How do you propose to open the negotiations?”

“First, I'll lay it on heavily about the reserves I can call up. I'll admit that I represent a powerful agency in the government, but I won't identify us, naturally. After that—”

“No.”

“But—”

“We have three agents probably dead and they—”

“They don't exist. You said it yourself.”

“Except to us, Dzule. No. You will merely tell them that you represent people who are interested in Project 40. Let them worry about what reserves you may have. They've probably killed three people; that, or they're holding prisoners and—”

“Should I look into that possibility?”

“For God's sake! Of course not! But the chances are high they'll be more fearful of what they suspect than of what they know. For all they know, you could have the army, the navy and the Marine Corps standing by with the FBI in reserve. If you need leverage, mention our
missing
friends, but don't appear anxious to get them back. Refuse to negotiate on that score. We
want Project 40, nothing else. We don't want murderers or kidnappers or missing people. Is that clear?”

“Very.” And, an empty feeling growing within him, Peruge thought: What if I turn up missing? He thought he knew the answer to this question and he didn't like it.

“I'll get those oil people to do what they can,” the Chief said, “but only if it can be done without tipping our hand. Finding out
where
Hellstrom's people work doesn't strike me as too helpful at this point.”

“What if he refuses to negotiate?” Peruge asked.

“Don't provoke a showdown on it. We still have the board and its forces in reserve.”

“But they'd—”

“They'd take the whole thing and throw us a bone, yes. But a bone is better than nothing.”

“Project 40 could be entirely innocent.”

“You don't believe that,” the Chief said. “And it's your job to prove what we both
know
in this case.” The Chief cleared his throat, a loud, hacking noise over the scrambler. “As long as we have no proof, we don't have a damn thing. They could have the secret of the end of the world down there, as we led the board to believe, but we can't move unless we prove it. How many times do I have to say that?”

Peruge rubbed his left knee where he had bumped it against a lightstand in Hellstrom's studio. It wasn't like the Chief to repeat a point that many times. What was happening back there in the office? Was the Chief trying to send a subtle message that he couldn't speak openly.

“Do you want me to find a good excuse for us to pull out of this?” Peruge asked.

There was open relief in the Chief 's voice. “Only if it seems the
right
thing to do, my boy.”

Somebody's with him, Peruge realized. It had to be someone
accorded a degree of trust, somebody important, but someone who could not be told everything. Try as he might, Peruge could not fit anyone he knew into this description. It should be perfectly obvious to the Chief that his agent in the field had no intention of pulling out.
But he was fishing for that suggestion from me
. Which meant the someone in the Chief 's office was hearing both ends of the conversation. The cryptic nature of the hidden message in this conversation bespoke extreme caution at headquarters. A call from
upstairs
. How powerful a man was this Hellstrom?

“Can you say anything about the kinds of toes we may be stepping on?” Peruge asked.

“No.”

“Isn't it even possible to find out whether Hellstrom's influence has a purely political base—big contributions to the party, that sort of thing—or whether it's possible, for instance, that we're nosing into the affairs of another agency?”