Hellstrom''s Hive by Frank Herbert
“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-88a. 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, in breeding 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 irascibility 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 mor
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 were 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
“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.”