Hellstrom's Hive (7 page)

“Undoubtedly they're associated,” Hellstrom said.

“Could they be innocent intruders?” Old Harvey asked.

“Do you really entertain that idea?” Hellstrom asked.

There was a long pause. “Not likely, but possible.”

“I think they come from the same source as Porter,” Hellstrom said.

“Should we have our people in the East look into the Blue Devil Fireworks Corporation?” Old Harvey asked.

“No. That might betray the extent of our influence. I think extreme caution is indicated—especially if this pair has come to find out what happened to Porter.”

“Perhaps we acted too hastily with that one.”

“I've had my own misgivings on that score,” Hellstrom admitted.

“What is this agency that Porter represented?”

Hellstrom reflected on this question. It contained his own unease. Porter had talked profusely at the end. It had been disgusting and had hastened his transit into the choppers and the vats. Yet, the necessities of that incident could have clouded its content. No member of the Hive would ever have behaved that way, not even an ordinary worker, although they could speak no language intelligible Outside. Porter had said the agency would get them. The agency was all-powerful. “We know about you now! We'll get you!” Porter had been the first adult Outsider ever to see the inner workings of the Hive, and his hysterical revulsion at the ordinary things necessary for Hive life had shaken Hellstrom.

I responded to his hysteria with a hysteria of my own, Hellstrom thought. I must never do that again.

“We will question this pair more carefully,” Hellstrom said. “Perhaps they can tell us about this agency.”

“You think it wise to capture them?” Old Harvey asked.

“I think it necessary.”

“Perhaps other responses should be considered first.”

“What are you suggesting?” Hellstrom asked.

“Discreet inquiry by our people in the East, while we dissemble for these new intruders. Why should we not invite them in and let them watch our surface activities. They surely cannot prove we are responsible for the disappearance of their fellow.”

“We don't know that for certain,” Hellstrom said.

“Surely, their reaction would've been different if they knew we were responsible.”

“They know,” Hellstrom said. “They just don't know how or why. No amount of dissembling now will put them off. They'll keep worrying at us like ants at a carcass. We must dissemble, yes, but we must keep them off balance at the same time. I am keeping our people Outside informed, but my instructions remain that we exercise the utmost restraint and caution there. Better to sacrifice the Hive than to lose all.”

“In your considerations, please note that I disagree,” Old Harvey said.

“Your exception is noted and will not be ignored.”

“They are sure to send others,” Old Harvey said.

“I agree.”

“Each new team is likely to be more skilled, Nils.”

“No doubt of that. But great skill, as we've learned from our own specialists, tends to narrow the vision. I doubt very much that these first probes involve the central element of this agency that wishes to know about us. Soon, however, they will send someone who knows all of the things we wish to know about those who come prying into our affairs.”

Old Harvey's hesitation betrayed that he had not considered this possibility. Presently, he said, “You will try to capture and control such a one?”

“We must.”

“That's a dangerous gambit, Nils.”

“Circumstances dictate the risk.”

“I disagree even more,” Old Harvey said. “I have lived Outside, Nils. I know them. This is an extremely perilous course you plot.”

“Do you have an alternative with a lower potential risk?” Hellstrom asked. “Extend your plotline before answering. You must think of the ultimate consequences along the sequence of events dictated by our present response. We made a mistake with Porter. We thought him the kind of Outsider we have previously taken and consigned to the vats. It was the wisdom of the sweep leader that brought him to my close attention after his capture. The mistake at that point was mine, but the consequences involve us all. My own regrets do not change the situation one whit. Our problem is complicated by the fact that we cannot erase all of the back tracks that led Porter to us. We have been able to do that before without exception. Our previous successes lulled me into a false complacency. A long history of success does not insure correct decisions. I knew this and yet failed. I will entertain an action to depose me, but I will not change my present decision on a course of action, a course of action that includes knowledge of my past mistake.”

“Nils, I'm not suggesting that we depose—”

“Then obey my instructions,” Hellstrom said. “Although I am a male, I am chief in the Hive at my brood mother's command. She reckoned the importance of that choice and, thus far, her vision has remained close to actual events. While you're putting the sonic probes on that woman and her vehicle, check it for the possibility that she may have a child inside.”

Old Harvey sounded hurt. “I'm aware of our constant need for new blood, Nils. Your orders will be obeyed at once.”

Hellstrom released the communications key and Old Harvey's face disappeared from the screen. Old Harvey might be
very
old, with a Hive awareness dulled by that early history of
Outside life, but he knew how to obey against the dictates of his most basic fears. In this respect, he was completely trustworthy—more than could be said for most of the human species that had evolved Outside, conditioned as they were by the sharp limitations prevailing in what the Hive thought of as “wild societies.” Old Harvey was a good worker.

Hellstrom sighed, aware of the burden he carried: almost fifty thousand dependent workers going about their activities in the Hive warren. He listened with his whole being for a moment, probing for the sense that told him all remained normal in the Hive. It was like the low humming of harvesting bees on a hot afternoon. There was a restful sense to this normalcy and he needed it at times to restore him. But the Hive gave him back no such reassurance now. He felt he could actually sense the disquiet of his own commands spreading through the Hive and reflecting back onto himself. All was
not
well here.

The need for caution had always been a constant pressure on the Hive and every one of its inhabitants. He had his own fair share of this inbred caution, finely tuned by his brood mother and the ones she'd chosen to educate him. He had been against making the documentary movies at first. That was getting a bit close to home. But the Hive aphorism “Who could know more about insects than the Hive-born?” had overcome his objections and, finally, even he had entered the spirit of the film enterprise without reservations. The Hive always needed that ubiquitous energy symbol, money. The films brought a great deal of money to their Swiss accounts. That money focused on the Hive's remaining needs for Outside resources—the diamond bits for their drills, for instance. Unlike the wild societies, however, the Hive sought a harmony with its environment, cooperating to serve that environment, thus purchasing the environment's service to the Hive. Surely, that profound internal relationship that had always supported the Hive in the past would support them now. The films are not a mistake! he told himself. There was about them
even a sense of something poetically amusing: to frighten Outsiders in this guise, to show them reality in the form of films about the world's multi-farious insect populations, while a much deeper reality out of that insect mold would feed on the fears it had helped augment.

He reminded himself of the lines he had insisted be written into the script of their most recent film effort. “In the perfect society, there is neither emotion nor mercy; precious space cannot be wasted on those who have outlived their usefulness.”

This new Outsider intrusion made Hellstrom think now, however, of the bee wolf, whose predatory raids must be met with every resource a hive could muster. In the cooperative society, the fate of each could be the destiny of all.

I must go topside immediately, he told himself. I must take personal command at the center of our protective efforts.

Moving briskly, he went out to a nearby communal bath-washroom, showered along with several chemically neutered female workers, used a Hive-made depilatory on his face, and returned to his cell. There, he dressed in heavier Outside garments: tan trousers, a white cotton shirt and dark gray sweater, a light brown jacket over that. He put on socks and a pair of Hive-made leather shoes. As an afterthought, he took a small foreign pistol from a desk drawer and slipped it into his pocket. The Outsider weapon had greater range than a stunwand and would be familiar to the intruders, recognizable by them if a threat were needed.

He went out then, down the familiar galleries and corridors with their hum of Hive activities. The level's hydroponics rooms were on his way, their doors open to permit easy access for harvesters. He glanced in as he passed, noted now swiftly the routine was progressing. Hide baskets were being filled with soybeans, two workers to a basket. An Outsider might have interpreted the scene as one of confusion, but there was no squabbling, no conversation, no colliding workers, no spilled baskets.
Filled baskets were being slid smoothly into the dumbwaiter slots in the far wall, there to go up to processing. Any necessary signals were conveyed by silent hand motions. When examined in the light of Hive awareness, the giant rooms were a collection of evidence, all of which pointed to supremely efficient organization. These were chemically conditioned workers, effectively neutered, none of them hungry (feeding conveyors were only a few steps away down the main gallery), and they worked in the certain awareness that what they did was vital for the entire Hive.

Hellstrom's own progress past the harvesting became a kind of elegant dance through entering and emerging workers. No precise scheduling of crews was required here. Workers left when hungry or overcome by fatigue. Others entered to fill the gaps. All knew what was required of them.

At the elevator—one of the older, upper-level models visibly jerking past the open doorways—he was delayed a moment while a planting crew filed past him, headed for the hydroponics rooms with selected seed stock for replanting. There must be no delay in maintenance of the food cycle which lay at the very base of their survival.

Hellstrom stepped into the open gap of the elevator doorway when space appeared on an upbound car. The heavy animal odor of the Hive, which the scrubbing systems erased from vented air exchanged Outside, was strong in the elevator, a sign that leaks were developing far down in the shaft and would have to be repaired. Maintenance was a constant drain on them and could not be ignored even now. He made a mental note to inquire about shaft maintainance. Within two minutes, he was in the subbasement of the barn-studio, his attention concentrated once more on the immediate emergency.

We must not consign these new intruders to the vats too soon, he told himself.

From Nils Hellstrom's diary.
In the oral tradition that spanned more than a hundred years before our progenitors began their first written records, it was said that the refusal to waste any colony protein dated from our earliest beginnings. I have come to doubt this. Outsider reactions indicate this is no more than a pleasant myth. My brood mother likened this to the openness that we of the Hive have with each other. The vats were for her a beautiful metaphor of the uninhibited internal communication and, as she often said, “In this way, when one dies, no secret dies with her; whatever each has learned will be contributed to the success of the whole.” Nothing in the more than two hundred years of our written records calls the original myth into question, and I will not do so now in our open councils. Thus, I conceal something in the name of a myth which strengthens us. Perhaps, this is how religions begin.

 

In the Hive-head subbasement, caution became a visible thing. A ladder of Hive steel was anchored in one corner of the open area beneath the baffles and sound dampers of the floor supports. The ladder led upward through the baffles to a concealed trapdoor that emerged in a cubicle of a communal toilet in the barn's basement. A concealed screen at the top of the ladder slid into position when a worker climbed to that point. The screen revealed whether the cubicle was occupied. A remote locking system secured the cubicle's door when a worker from below was emerging.

There were secondary monitoring screens at the base of the ladder with a watchworker on duty there. The worker waved Hellstrom ahead, signaling that no Outsiders were in the studio area. The ladder was attached to a wall of one of the giant ventilation ducts that emerged in the barn roof. He felt the subtle vibrations as he climbed. He emerged from the cubicle presently
and into an empty washroom, which gave him passage into the studio's actual basement, a space of wardrobe stores, film stores, editing and processing facilities for film, dressing rooms and makeup areas, and props. By Outsider standards, it was all very normal. Workers were going about their activities in the area, but they ignored him. Ordinary stairs at the end of a long hallway gave entrance through a sound-baffle system into a double-doored lock passage and thence to the main studio which took up most of the barn's cavernous interior.

From the permanent minutes of the Hive Council.
Present computations indicate that the Hive will begin to feel swarming pressures when it passes a population of sixty thousand. Without some protections, as Project 40 would offer, we cannot permit such a swarming to occur. For all of the ingenuity provided us by our specialist, we are helpless before the combined might of the Outside, whose killing machines would crush us. The total dedication of our workers would make them fall by the thousands in the suicidal attempt to insure the future of our kind. But we are few and the Outsiders are many. The unreasoning brutality of nature's underlying plan must be stayed for this time of preparation. Someday, given the potency of a weapon such as Project 40, we will be able to emerge, and, if our workers die on that day, they will die with reason—through selflessness, not through greed.

 

“They are, as usual, firm and polite, but evasive,” Janvert said, turning from the telephone.

It was daylight outside Clovis's apartment now, and she had dressed in preparation for the specific summons they both knew would come soon.

“They told you to be patient,” Clovis said. She had returned to her favorite position on the long couch and sat with her feet tucked under her.

“And one thing more,” Janvert said. “Peruge himself
definitely
is going to head this team. Old Jollyvale doesn't like that one bit.”

“You think he wanted this one himself?”

“God, no! But he is operations director. With Peruge in the field, Jollyvale can't give orders. He's effectively no longer operations director. Now
that,
he doesn't like.”

“It's definite about Peruge?”

“No doubt.”

“That explains why they're not being very informative.”

“I suppose so.” Janvert crossed to the couch and sat beside her, taking her hand in his and rubbing the warm skin absently. “I'm scared,” he said. “I'm really scared for the first time in this shitty business. I've always known they didn't give one particle of a damn about us, but Peruge—” Janvert swallowed convulsively, “I think he takes a positive pride in how many people he can waste, and he doesn't care whose people they are, ours or theirs.”

“Don't let him know how you feel, for God's sake,” Clovis said.

“Oh, I won't. I'll be the usual happy-go-lucky Shorty, always ready with a quip and a smile.”

“Do you think we'll be going out today?”

“Tonight at the latest.”

“I've often wondered about Peruge,” she said. “I've wondered who he actually is. That funny damned name and everything.”

“At least he has a name,” Janvert said. “The Chief, now—”

“Don't even think it,” she warned.

“Haven't you ever wondered if we really work for the government?” he asked. “Or—whether our bosses represent an overgovernment behind the visible one.”

“If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, I don't want to know anything about it,” she said.

“That's a good, safe attitude,” he said. He dropped her hand, stood up, and returned to his restless pacing.

Clovis was right, of course. This place was bugged. They'd known precisely where to call for him. No helping that: when you worked to make the world a fishbowl, you lived in a fishbowl. The trick was to become one of the fish watchers.