Hellstrom's Hive (21 page)

“Yes.”

“Do you still think you were at fault in letting her out of the Hive?” Hellstrom asked.

“I—” He shrugged.

“It was the Hive working this out in spite of us,” Hellstrom said. “The whole Hive can react as a single organism or it can react delicately through any one of us. Remember that.”

“If you say so,” Saldo said. He didn't sound as though he believed it, however.

“I say so. Oh, and when you interrogate Fancy, I want you to be gentle with her.”

“Gentle? She endangered the—”

“She did not! She gave us our escape hatch. You will be gentle with her. And with the other females, too, the ones she names.”

“Yes, Nils.” Saldo felt that these orders went against reason, but he could not bring himself to outright disobedience of the prime male.

Hellstrom arose, moved around the desk, and headed out of the chamber.

“Will you be in your cell if I need you?” Saldo asked.

“Yes. Have me called the instant Peruge is sighted.”

The wisdom of Harl.
By the stance you take
against
the universe, it is possible to destroy yourself.

 

Instead of going directly to his cell, Hellstrom turned left into the main gallery outside the security chamber, turned left again down a side ramp and, at the ramp's end, when a car appeared, he entered the open gap of an express elevator. He jumped out of the moving car at level fifty-one into another wide gallery, but this one showed less activity than the upper chambers and conveyed a deep sense of cushioned stillness even in the activity it did possess. Here, those workers who moved about on supportive tasks went with cat-footed softness and a sense of silent importance.

Hellstrom weaved his way through them and it wasn't until he was actually walking through the widely arched entrance to the Project 40 lab that he began to review what he would tell the specialists.

Outsiders think this is an invention dealing with the making and forming of such metals as steel. They obtained this impression from studying only pages 17 through 41 of Report TRZ-88
_a
. They obviously are aware of the heat problem from knowing about only this tiny part of your work.

That should do it. Brief enough to satisfy the physical researchers' characteristic impatience with all interruptions, but containing the essential information plus his own primary observation.

Hellstrom stopped just inside the doorway of the cavernous domed lab to await a break in the activities that would allow his interruption. One did not intrude here except on the most urgent matters. These specialists were notoriously short-tempered.

Although he was sufficiently accustomed to working with the Hive's physical researchers not to react to their strangeness, Hellstrom often thought about the stir this breed would create if they were loosed among the wild Outsiders.

There were twenty of them at work on a massive, tubular object in the brilliantly floodlighted center of the lab, each researcher attended by a muscular symbiote. These physical researchers were precious to the Hive and so difficult to bring into being, so difficult to maintain even then. Their gigantic heads (fifteen inches from a snowy hairline to the bottom of a hairless chin, eleven inches across the brow above bulging blue eyes that stood out with a startling glitter in their black skins) dictated Caesarean birth for each of them. No female had ever borne more than three, inbreeding further complicated by many natural abortions in early pregnancy. Death of the mother at birth was common with these prized specialists, but the Hive paid that price willingly. They had proved their worth countless times and were a major reason the first colonists had ended their centuries of secretive migrations. These researchers must be concealed from Outsider eyes at all costs. Their work must be hidden, as well; it stamped the Hive-born with another kind of strangeness. The stunwand, of which Project 40 was an outgrowth, was only one of their creations. They had given the Hive's electronic instruments a marked edge in reliability, subtlety, and power. They had produced the newest refinements in food additives to set the neutered worker into a more secure niche.

The physical researchers were instantly recognizable. In addition to the magnificent braincase, the gene line that produced them carried characteristics that could not be separated from the sought-after specialization and marked them as even further differentiated from the original wild form. Their legs were stunted stumps, and each specialist required the constant attendance of a pale, muscular, chemically neutered worker bred especially for brawn and a pliable disposition. Because of the
useless legs, they were moved about on spidery wheeled carts or in the attendants' arms. Although the researchers' arms were not stunted, they were spindly and weak, with hands that bore long, delicate fingers. These specialists were genetically sterile as well, each one a single creation ending in its own flesh. Since their driving need for full intellect meant they could not have their emotions chemically tempered, they tended to a touchy irrascibility in their dealings with all other workers. Even their symbiote attendants came in for such attacks. However, they were gentle and showed a high degree of mutual consideration with their own fellow specialists, a characteristic the Hive had managed to breed into them after a series of conflicts had reduced the usefulness of the first of the breed.

One of the busily working specialists finally stopped and peered across the lab at Hellstrom. The worker signaled in Hive-sign, fingers shaping a “hurry-up” symbol against the tubular construction in a way that, in a flashing instant, said plainly, “Don't delay this.” In the same movement of hand and fingers, the specialist pressed the symbol against a dark forehead, saying just as plainly, “Your interruptive presence delays my thinking.”

Hellstrom hurried across the room. He recognized the specialist as one of the elders in this breed, a female whose skin bore numerous ropy scars from experiments gone awry. She was attended by a pale, bent-shouldered neuter-male whose arms and torso bulged with muscles. The attendant watched in cowed diffidence as Hellstrom flashed his report in abbreviated Hive-sign.

“What do we care what Outsiders believe?” she demanded.

“They were able to detect the heat problem from just these few pages,” Hellstrom signaled.

She spoke aloud then, knowing that voice could convey more of her angry irritation. “You think Outsiders can teach us?”

“We often learn from their mistakes,” Hellstrom said, refusing to respond to her anger.

“Be still a moment,” she ordered and closed her eyes.

Hellstrom knew those reference pages would be flashing in her mind, the data being correlated with their present work and Peruge's mistaken belief.

Presently, she opened her eyes and said, “Go away.”

“Does this help you?” Hellstrom asked.

“It helps,” she said. Dragging the admission out in a grudging growl, she added with a return of her former irritability, “Apparently your type can learn an occasional thing of value—when you have a lucky accident!”

Hellstrom managed to restrain a grin until he had turned away and was headed back across the lab. The sound of the work here seemed no different to him as he moved, but when he glanced back from the doorway, he saw several of the specialists clustered into a busily communicative group, their, hands darting and flashing in Hive-sign. He caught the symbol for “heat” several times, but most of the other symbols escaped him. The researchers had developed their own language for use among themselves, he knew. They would have this new data all sorted out and introduced into their project in a very short time.

Privately circulated memo to the Agency board.
DESTROY THIS IMMEDIATELY AFTER READING. There is more to the Hellstrom file than we have been shown. They are holding out on us. Our
other
source says the MIT papers contained at least three additional pages. These indicate that Project 40 involves a new and
far cheaper
process of manufacturing and forming steel and that it is not a weapon at all. As I have told you all time and again, I knew this pair would try something like this on their own someday. They are through as of now!

Mimeca Tichenum's report on Outside use of Hive stores
. Within a few seconds after injection of our breeder formula, the skin of the Outsider male becomes warm to the touch and somewhat flushed.
This is similar to the reaction of Hive males, but more pronounced, also more rapid. The reaction takes no more than five to ten seconds. The dissimilarities then become quite pronounced. The Outsider male sometimes displays an initial muscle rigidity, almost like shock, which holds him virtually immobile until the major breeder transformations have occurred. This is not consistent with all Outsider males. Almost immediately after the skin response and sometimes simultaneously, the male undergoes an extremely rigid erection which is never subdued by a single orgasm. A six-orgasm reaction is not unusual. On one occasion, I noted thirty-one. Concurrently, the male emits a bitter-smelling perspiration that appears to be characteristic in all cases and which I find extremely exciting. It appears to accelerate and heighten the full spectrum of female breeding responses. This bitter smell may represent a hormone in the same class as our XB5 formula which, you will recall, elicits a similar female response, although not as extreme as what I am describing. The smell is particularly noticeable around the male nipples which, in every case I have observed, have become swollen, very tense, and firm. Occasionally, I have noted severe trembling of the male's thigh, neck, and shoulder muscles. This appears to be autonomic and often coincides with grimaces of the face interspersed with what appear to be random head movements, moans, and groans. In general, I would say that those elements of the usual Hive breeding responses, conscious initially among our males, tend with Outsider males to be involuntary when subjects are injected with our male breeding hormones. My personal reaction (in which my sisters concur) is to find these Outsider responses immensely more stimulating than the usual Hive breeding responses.

 

It was twenty minutes to twelve and for the past half hour Hellstrom had been pacing the farmhouse dining room wondering if his preparations were adequate. The dining room had
been decorated originally as a front showpiece, a place to entertain the occasional Outside business contact. Dining room and living room could be seen through a dark wood archway. A long imitation Jacobean table occupied the center of the dining room with ten matching chairs around it. A newly polished glass chandelier glittered over the table. A breakfront china cabinet stacked with heavy blue crockery occupied almost all of one wall opposite the arch to the living room. Tall, many-paned bay windows with faded lace curtains drawn back from them opened at the end of the room into a view of willows along the creekbank and bits of brown grass beyond looking hot and dusty in the bright sunlight. A swinging door opened in a corner of the opposite wall, with a tiny glass inset near the top to give glimpses into the kitchen where specially trained workers busily prepared for an Outsider's visit.

Four places had been set at the kitchen end of the table—with the heavy blue ware and bone-handled utensils.

Adequate preparations! Hellstrom sneered at himself. Not superb and sure, but adequate.

The closer to the hour of Peruge's arrival, the more Hellstrom's earlier elation had worn thin and, now, Peruge was late.

Mimeca was helping in the kitchen. From time to time, Hellstrom glimpsed her through the glass inset in the door. She was enough like Fancy to be a gene sister, but Mimeca was from a parallel breeding strain, not the FANCY line. There was something about that dark hair and pale, faintly rosy skin that had linked itself genetically to other characteristics sought by the Hive: high fertility, independence of imagination, drive to succeed, Hive loyalty, intelligence…

Hellstrom glanced at the old-fashioned pendulum clock beside the door to the kitchen. A quarter to twelve and still no sign of Peruge. Why would he be late? He'd not been late before. What if he had decided not to come, but to take some other action? Could they already have discovered something incriminating
about that damned bicycle? Peruge was perfectly capable of showing up with the FBI. But with Mimeca playing the role of Fancy, they might yet confound the hunters. Fingerprints would not match. She had not been bred recently, and that could be proved by medical examination. He would insist on an Outside medical examination. That would serve the double purpose of getting every one of the intruders away from here.

He heard the outer door to the front hall open.

Could that be Peruge at last?

Hellstrom swiveled, strode through the archway into the living room with all of its early twentieth-century furnishings and carefully maintained musty smells. As quickly as he went, he was only halfway across the living room when a stranger entered two steps ahead of Saldo. The stranger was a diminutive male, an inch or so shorter than Saldo, with windblown brown hair and a cautiously reserved manner behind the eyes. There were dark lines around his eyes and deep creases in his forehead. He appeared to be in his early twenties except for the lines, but Hellstrom had sometimes found age difficult to determine with small Outsiders. The stranger wore tan work pants, heavy boots, a white turtleneck shirt of some light fabric that allowed reddish chest hairs to poke through. A brown buckram jacket with slash pockets had been pulled over this. The right-side pocket bulged as though it concealed a gun. Pale yellow grass seeds could be seen sticking in his trouser cuffs.

He stopped short when he saw Hellstrom and barked, “You're Hellstrom?”

Saldo, a pace behind the stranger, flashed a warning signal in Hive-sign.

Hellstrom felt his heartbeat quicken at the demanding, official tone in the man's voice, but before he could respond, Saldo spoke up. “Dr. Hellstrom, this is Mr. Janvert, an associate of Mr. Peruge's. Mr. Janvert parked his car down by the old sawmill turn and walked in across the meadow.”

Janvert kept his face grim, his manner probing. Things had moved very rapidly since Peruge's body had been discovered. There had been a necessary call to headquarters and the Chief himself had come on the line as soon as the word was passed.
The Chief himself!
Janvert could not suppress a puffed-up feeling at that conversation. “Mr. Janvert, we are all depending on you. This is the last straw!”
Mr.
Janvert, not Shorty. The Chief 's instructions had been brief, explicit, commanding.

Walked in? Hellstrom wondered. Reference to that route across the meadow bothered him. That was the path Depeaux had taken.

Saldo moved up to stand on Janvert's right, again flashed a warning signal, then said, “Mr. Janvert has shocking news. He tells me that Mr. Peruge is dead.”

The information momentarily stunned Hellstrom. He tried to assess this, his mind racing. Fancy? No, she'd said nothing about…He saw that some response was expected, allowed his surprise to come out naturally. “Dead? But—I was—” Hellstrom gestured toward the dining room, “expecting—I mean, we'd made another date for—what happened? How did he die?”

“We're still trying to find out,” Janvert said. “Your deputy tried to prevent us from taking the body, but we got a court order from a federal judge in Salem. Peruge's body is on its way to the University of Oregon Medical School in Portland.”

Janvert tried now to assess Hellstrom's response. That had to be genuine surprise—unless he was a consummate actor. He
was
a maker of movies.

“We'll have an autopsy report very soon,” Janvert said, as though Hellstrom had not made the logical connection.

Hellstrom pursed his lips. He didn't like the way this Janvert said “
your
deputy.” What had Linc done? Were there more mistakes to contend with now?

“If Deputy Kraft interfered, that's regrettable,” Hellstrom
said, “but that certainly has nothing to do with me. He is not
our
deputy.”

“Let's stop the bullshit,” Janvert said. “One of your dames spent last night with Peruge and she shot him full of some kind of dope. There was a bruise on his arm as big as a dollar. We're going to find out what that was. We're going to bring in the FBI, the Alcohol Tax people—they deal with narcotics crimes, you know—and we're going to open your farm up like a can of rotten worms!”

“Just a minute now!” Hellstrom said, trying to suppress his panic. Open up the farm! “What's this about someone spending the night with Mr. Peruge? Narcotics? What're you saying?”

“A hot little doll from your outfit by the name of Fancy,” Janvert said. “Fancy Kalotermi, I think her full name is. She spent last night with Peruge and she shot him full of—”

“This is nonsense!” Hellstrom interrupted. “Are you saying one of—Fancy? That she had some sort of sexual liaison with Mr. Peruge?”

“Did she ever! Peruge told me the whole story. She shot him full of dope and we're betting that's what killed him. We're going to question your Miss Kalotermi and the rest of your people. We're going to get to the bottom of this.”

Saldo cleared his throat, trying to distract Janvert, to give Hellstrom time to think. These words pointed in profoundly disturbing directions. Saldo felt all of his Hive defense reactions coming to full-alarm state. He had to restrain himself consciously from launching a physical attack on Janvert.

Janvert spared only a glance for Saldo. “You got something to add?”

Before Saldo could respond, Hellstrom said, “Who is this
we
you keep referring to, Mr. Janvert? I confess I don't understand at all. I'd taken a liking to Mr. Peruge and he—”

“Don't spare any of your
liking
for me,” Janvert said. “I don't go for the way you like people. As for your question, that has a simple answer. The FBI will be here presently and Alcohol Tax officers. If we think of any others who want to share in this investigation, we'll invite them.”

“But
you
have no official standing, Mr. Janvert, is that right?” Hellstrom asked.

Janvert took a moment to reassess Hellstrom. There had been an edge to that question he did not like, and he moved unconsciously a pace away from Saldo.

“Is that correct?” Hellstrom insisted.

Janvert set his jaw belligerently. “You'd better be damn careful about
my
official standing, Hellstrom. Your Miss Kalotermi rode a bicycle to Peruge's motel. That bicycle was the property of one Carlos Depeaux, another of our people we suspect you took a
liking
to.”

Stalling for time to think about this, Hellstrom said, “You're going too fast for me. Who is this—oh, yes, the employee Mr. Peruge was seeking. I don't understand about a bicycle, but—are you trying to tell me you also work for this fireworks company, Mr. Janvert?”

“You're going to see more than fireworks around here in a bit,” Janvert said. “Where is Miss Kalotermi?”

Hellstrom's mind was turning over possible responses at top speed. His first reaction was to be thankful he'd had the foresight to get Fancy out of sight and to substitute Mimeca. The very worst had happened. They'd traced that damned bicycle! Still stalling for time, he said, “I'm afraid I don't know exactly where Miss—”

Mimeca took this moment to step through the arch from the dining room. The kitchen door could be heard slapping closed behind her. She had not seen Peruge before and assumed Janvert was the luncheon guest.

“There you are,” she said. “Lunch is getting cold.”

“Well, here she is now,” Hellstrom said, flashing a signal for Mimeca to be silent. “Fancy, this is Mr. Janvert. He has brought us sorrowful news. Mr. Peruge is dead under circumstances that sound rather mysterious.”

“How awfull” she said, responding to another signal from Hellstrom to speak up.

Hellstrom looked at Janvert, wondering if the substitution would be accepted. Mimeca fitted Fancy's description very closely. Even their voices were similar.

Janvert glared at her and demanded, “Where the hell did you get that bicycle? What kind of dope did you use to kill Peruge?”

Mimeca put a hand to her mouth, startled. The anger mixed with fear that she could actually smell on Janvert, the sharp voice and unexpected questions, all of this confused her.

“Just a minute here!” Hellstrom signaled in Hive-sign to be silent and follow his lead. He faced her squarely, a stern look on his face, and spoke like a demanding parent. “Fancy, I want you to tell me the truth. Did you spend last night with Mr. Peruge at his motel?”

“With—” She shook her head dumbly from side to side. Hellstrom's alarm was a palpable thing and she could see Saldo actually trembling. Nils had said to tell the truth, though, and he reinforced this with a command in Hive-sign.

The silence in the room remained deep and charged while she framed her answer.

“I—of course not!” she said. “You both know that. I was here in the—” She broke off, throat suddenly dry. She'd almost said
Hive
. The extreme tensions in this room carried a deeply disturbing current. She had to get herself under better control.

“She was here in the house last night,” Saldo said. “I saw her myself.”

“So that's the way you're going to play it,” Janvert sneered. He stared at the woman, sensed a deeper disturbance under her
mask of confusion, confirming everything Peruge had said before dying. She had been down there at the motel. She had killed him and probably on orders from Hellstrom. It might be one hell of a job proving it, though. They had only Peruge's account and description of the woman. That was a touchy situation.

“There's going to be more law swarming over this place in a couple of hours than you've ever seen,” Janvert growled. “They are going to pick her up for questioning.” He pointed to Mimeca. “Don't try to hide her or sneak her away. Her fingerprints were all over that bicycle and all over Peruge's room. She's going to have some mighty interesting questions to answer.”