Hellstrom's Hive Read online

  He depressed the stem on his wristwatch transmitter then and felt the faint throbbing against his skin that told him the teams at the Steens Mountain campsites were on the job and monitoring his signal. Everything was in order. Time to begin bearding Hellstrom in his den.

  The words of Nils Hellstrom.

  The living prototype of the computer was designed by nature long before man ever set foot on earth. It is nothing more nor less than the termite mound, one of the first experiments in social order. It is a living reminder that all may not be as man would wish it to be among the life forms that share this planet with him. We all know, of course, that compared with man, the insect does not display what we could describe as intelligence. But why should we feel proud about that? Where there is no intelligence, there may be no stupidity. And the termite mound stands there as a living accusation, a finger pointed at our pride. A computer is a mechanism programmed with a thousand tiny bits of information. It operates by juggling information into a form of logic. Think about it. Is a beautifully functioning society not a form of logic? I say that the creatures of such a mound, each a bit of the whole, move through their hidden circuits, a thousand tiny particles of information organizing themselves into an indisputable form of logic. Their source of power is a brood mother, a queen. She represents a great throbbing mass of energy, motivating all around her with insatiable need. Thus, our Hive rests firmly on its breeding chambers. Within the queen’s pulsating body lies the future of the mound. Within our breeding chambers lies our future and, in truth, the future of humankind.

  Kraft called the farm as soon as Peruge had broken the connection. He had Hellstrom on the line within a minute.

  “Nils, there’s a fellow at the motel named Peruge. Says he’s from the Blue Devil Fireworks Corporation and he’s looking for a missing salesman and the salesman’s wife. Missing in your area. Says he has a letter from the salesman which mentions Guarded Valley. Should we know anything about that?”

  “I told you to expect this,” Hellstrom said.

  “I know, but this fellow sounds very sharp. He’s already talked to the State Patrol and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he called in the FBI.”

  “Don’t you think you can handle him?”

  “I may’ve made him suspicious.”

  “How?”

  “I kept probing for some kind of admission from him that this wasn’t an ordinary missing-persons case. He’s on his way over here right now. Says he has a photograph of the missing couple. State Patrol has a copy, too. FBI is sure to get another one. Somebody’s bound to’ve seen this pair, and they’re going to center them right here.”

  “They won’t find anything at the farm,” Hellstrom said. He sounded sad and tired, and Kraft felt the first twinge of a deeper concern.

  “I sure hope you’re right. What should I do?”

  “Do? Cooperate with him in every way. Take the photograph. Come up here to inquire.”

  “Nils, I don’t like this. I hope you’re –”

  “I’m trying to keep the interface of our conflict as small as possible, Linc. That is my most urgent concern.”

  “Yes, but what if he asks to tag along?”

  “I hope he does.”

  “But –”

  “Bring him!”

  “Nils – if I bring him up there with me, I hope he’s coming back with me.”

  “That is our concern, Linc.”

  “Nils – I’m real worried. If he –”

  “I’ll handle it myself, Linc. We’ll have everything smooth and ordinary when you arrive.”

  “I sure hope so.”

  “How did he get to Fosterville, Linc?”

  “Rented car.”

  “Is he alone?”

  “I don’t think so. There’s several new campers up on the mountain.”

  “We noted the activity. Rented car, hmmm?”

  “Look, Nils, this guy had better not have an accident in that car. I got a funny feeling about this one. He’s big trouble.”

  “No doubt of it,” Hellstrom agreed. “They’ve sent in the first team.”

  From the Hive breeding record.

  This new group must be watched with extreme care. This includes all of the breeding batch designated Fractionated Actinomycin Nucleotide Complex Y (FANCY) series. Although they offer us a great potential in several specializations desperately needed by the Hive, they may harbor a strain of instability. This instability may be evidenced in a heightened breeding drive, in which case it can be diverted to the Hive’s advantage. However, other symptoms may crop up and should be reported to Breeding Central immediately.

  Hellstrom sat in reflective silence after the emergency meeting of his Council. He felt that the entire Hive had become something of what he imagined a hunted submarine to be: rigged for silent running. All power systems, including ventilation, were operating at minimums; water interchange with the deep underground river that ran their turbines and was their major water source had been put under special observation to prevent anything from entering it that might arouse Outside suspicions when that water reached the Snake River system.

  Hellstrom wondered how much Peruge and his cohorts knew about Project 40. It had been a question left unanswered by the Council meeting. The Outsiders could not know everything about Project 40, nor was it likely they knew anything about the Hive as yet. Hellstrom felt confident of this. At the barest suspicion that something like the Hive existed, they would be in here with an army. Some accommodation had to be reached with these Outsiders before they learned too much. The deaths were regrettable, but they had followed as an inevitable consequence of Porter’s death. That had been an error.

  We have lived too long in the security of our camouflage, he thought. We have become too bold. Making films did that, and all the necessary intimate arrangements with Outsiders that grew out of the films. We have underestimated the Outsiders.

  Hellstrom suppressed a weary sigh. He missed Old Harvey. The present security team was a good one, but Old Harvey had possessed a special ability, a balancing wisdom. The Hive needed him now more than ever, and all they had of Old Harvey’s legacy was his favorite protégé, Saldo. Was Saldo that which came out of the vats new? Saldo had undergone a profound maturing since the night of the hunt. The transformation appeared to Hellstrom in some ways like a metamorphosis. It was as though, on that fatal night, Saldo had really inherited Old Harvey’s wide experience and wisdom. Hellstrom knew he was leaning on Saldo for the same kinds of support he had learned to expect from Old Harvey. Whether Saldo could bear up to these demands remained to be seen. Thus far, he had shown bursts of brilliance and imagination, but still . . . Hellstrom shook his head. It was difficult to lean on a young and untried member of the new breed in a crisis such as this one. But who else did he have?

  The Council meeting had started at noon in a screening room that occupied one entire corner of the barn-studio. It was a room of outwardly conventional appearance: oval table flanked by massive chairs, Hive-made of heavy extrusion plastic to counterfeit teak. A pull-down screen filled one end of the room, a speaker on each side of it against the ceiling corners, and a small double-glass window at the other end leading into the projection room. The walls were baffled and hung with loosely draped heavy fabric to dampen random sounds.

  Saldo had remained behind the others at Hellstrom’s request. The bullet scar along his jawline had not completely healed. It stood out whitely against his dark skin. The hawkish features remained relaxed now, but there was a steady alertness in his brown eyes. Hellstrom recalled now that Saldo was also of the S2a-1 series on the female side. That made him one of Hellstrom’s cousins. The younger man had been picked from prime stock and subjected to all of the proper chemical reinforcements. And now, Saldo represented a nice convergence of the functional traits upon which the Hive relied so heavily.

  “We must be prepared at every level to respond quickly and thoroughly if anything goes wrong,” Hellstrom said, looking up and starting
the conversation as though Saldo had shared the preceding reverie. “I have sent messages to all of our special fronts Outside that they must be prepared to proceed on their own if we are lost. All records alluding to such fronts have been made ready for demolition.”

  “But have we anticipated every contingency?” Saldo asked.

  “The question I’ve been asking myself.”

  “I know.” And Saldo thought: Our prime male is too tired. He needs rest and we cannot give him that rest. Saldo felt in this moment extremely protective toward Hellstrom.

  “You were right to suggest that Peruge probably will be carrying special electronic equipment,” Hellstrom said. “At the very least, he’ll be transmitting his position and condition to monitors Outside. I’m sure of it.”

  “Those people on the mountain.”

  “To them, yes. We must know the nature of his equipment as soon as possible.”

  “I’ve made all the preparations for that,” Saldo said. “Nils, shouldn’t you get some rest?”

  “No time. Peruge is on his way and he’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

  “The what?”

  Hellstrom explained the allusion, then, “How many people do you think he has on the mountain?”

  “There are at least ten people camping up there. They could all be his.”

  “That many?” Hellstrom shook his head.

  Saldo nodded, sharing Hellstrom’s disquiet. The idea of at least ten people snooping into the Hive’s affairs created a profound disturbance of his inbred caution and conditioning.

  “Does Linc have anyone he can send up the mountain to play camper with those others?” Saldo asked.

  “He’s looking into it.”

  “Linc is bringing this Peruge personally, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. But we mustn’t assume that Peruge trusts Linc.”

  “Linc was no match for Peruge, that’s obvious,” Saldo said. “I heard his account.”

  “Learn from that,” Hellstrom said. “It’s good to have our own Outside fronts, including a deputy sheriff, but each one creates its own problems. The more we expose ourselves, even in seeming secrecy, the more danger we’re in.”

  Saldo tucked this lesson into his memory. One did not put out agents with complete impunity. The very existence of an agent carried its own message when that agent was exposed. If Peruge suspected Lincoln Kraft, that revealed something about the Hive. Saldo vowed to remember this when the present crisis was past. He had no doubt that they would surmount present difficulties. His trust in the prime male, Hellstrom, was profound.

  “Peruge may possess a device to reveal that we’re probing for his equipment,” Hellstrom said.

  “I have given instructions to monitor for that,” Saldo said.

  Hellstrom nodded, pleased. Thus far, Saldo had anticipated every contingency that had arisen in Hellstrom’s own mind – and some that had not. Prime breeding stock always showed its worth in the crunch. Saldo possessed a penetrating intelligence. The younger male would be of inestimable value to the Hive when he had been tempered and fully trained.

  “What excuse have you prepared if he detects our probes?” Hellstrom asked.

  “I want to discuss that with you. Suppose, for the film in progress, we are making a sound track with a great deal of complex mixing. It would be perfectly explainable electronic activity. The visit of this Peruge surely could not be expected to interrupt that. We have a schedule to keep. Any interference with Peruge’s equipment could be explained by this work.”

  Hellstrom nodded thoughtfully. “Excellent. And I ask him when he arrives if he has a radio, because –”

  “A radio would interfere with our equipment,” Saldo completed for him.

  “See to the cover preparations,” Hellstrom said.

  Saldo arose, stood with his fingertips touching the table, hesitating.

  “Yes?” Hellstrom asked.

  “Nils, are we sure the others didn’t have such equipment? I’ve been reviewing the tapes and records and –” He shrugged, obviously loath to criticize.

  “We searched them. There was nothing.”

  “That seems odd – the fact that they didn’t carry such equipment.”

  “They weren’t considered important enough,” Hellstrom said. “They were sent in to see if they would be killed.”

  “Ahhhhh –” Saldo’s expression betrayed both understanding and shock.

  “We should’ve understood that about Outsiders,” Hellstrom said. “They are not very good humans, the wild ones. They commonly waste their workers this way. The ones who intruded here were expendable stock. I know now that it would have been far wiser for us to confuse them and send them away with a believable story.”

  “It was a mistake to kill them?”

  “A mistake to make it necessary to kill them.”

  Saldo nodded his understanding of the fine distinction. “We made a mistake,” he said.

  “I made a mistake,” Hellstrom corrected him. “Too much success made me careless. We must always keep that possibility in mind: any of us can err.”

  The words of brood mother Trova Hellstrom.

  Let me introduce a word about the quality that we call caution. Where we say we have been and where we say the Hive is headed – somewhere in that mysterious future – are by necessity somewhat removed from what we imagine are facts. Our own interpretation always intervenes. What we say we are doing is inevitably modified by our own understanding and by the limits of our comprehension. First, we are partisan. We see everything in terms of Hive survival. Second, the universe has a way of appearing to be one thing when it is actually something else. In this light, caution becomes a reliance upon our deepest collective energies. We must trust the Hive itself to possess wisdom and to manifest that wisdom through us, its cells.

  When they reached that point on the lower road where Peruge could get his first look at Hellstrom’s farm, he asked Kraft to stop. The deputy brought his green and white station wagon to a skidding, dusty halt and peered questioningly at his passenger.

  “Something wrong, Mr. Peruge?”

  Peruge merely tightened his lips. Kraft interested him. The deputy could have been typecast for the role he played. It was almost as though someone had looked at him and said, “Now, this one, we’ll make him the deputy.” Kraft had a sunburned, western appearance, thick nose and beetling brows, pale yellow hair topped by a wide-brimmed western hat. His blocky features surmounted a blocky body that moved with a stiff-legged horseman’s walk. Peruge had seen several people on Fosterville’s one main street who looked vaguely like Lincoln Kraft.

  Kraft accepted Peruge’s silent appraisal without qualms, secure in the knowledge that he was a Hive hybrid whose appearance could not possibly excite questions about alien background. Kraft’s father had been a local rancher seduced in a gene-foray by a breeding female. Many Fosterville locals had remarked Kraft’s resemblance to the father.

  Now, Kraft cleared his throat. “Mr. Peruge, I said –”

  “I know what you said.”

  Peruge glanced at his wristwatch: a quarter to three. Every delay imaginable had been thrown in the way of this excursion: telephone calls, careful examination of the missing-persons report, a lengthy study of the photograph, question after question and a laborious assemblage of answers on paper, all executed in a slow and meticulous longhand. But here they were, finally, in sight of Hellstrom’s farm. Peruge felt his pulse quicken. The air carried a dry, cloying silence. Even the insects were still. Peruge sensed something out of character about the stillness. He grew aware slowly of the absence of insect sounds and asked Kraft about this.

  Kraft pushed his hat back, rubbed a sleeve across his forehead. “I expect someone’s used a spray.”

  “Really? Does Hellstrom do that sort of thing? I thought all the environmentalists were against sprays.”

  “How’d you know the doc was into ecology?”

  Sharp! Sharp! Peruge reminded himself. He said, “I didn’
t know it. I just assumed an entomologist would have that as one of his concerns.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe the doc isn’t spraying. This is rangeland right here.”

  “Somebody else could be doing it?”

  “Maybe. Or the doc could be doing something else. Did you have me stop just so you could listen?”

  “No. I want to get out and scout around the area and see if I can spot any sign of Carlos’s camper.”

  “Not much sense in that.” Kraft spoke quickly with an undertone of sharpness.

  “Oh? Why?”

  “If we decide he’s really been around here, we’ll do a thorough search.”

  “I thought I told you,” Peruge said. “I’ve already decided he was around here. I’d like to get out and have a little look at the area.”

  “Doc don’t like people wandering around his place!”

  “But you said this was rangeland. Does he control it?”

  “Not exactly, but –”

  “Then let’s have a look.” Peruge put a hand on the door.

  “You just wait a minute!” Kraft ordered.

  Peruge nodded silently. He’d found out what he wanted to know: Kraft was here to block any investigation by strangers.

  “All right,” Peruge said. “Does Hellstrom know we’re coming?”

  Kraft had put the station wagon in gear, prepared to resume their lurching progress toward the farm, but now he hesitated. Peruge’s demand that they stop had shocked him. The first thought had been that the Outsider had seen something suspicious, something overlooked by the Hive’s cleanup workers. Peruge’s attempts to get out and search the area had done nothing to ease that initial disquiet. Now, it occurred to Kraft that Peruge or his people might have tapped the telephone to the farm. But Hive Security was always wary of that; surely they’d have detected such intrusion.