Hellstrom's Hive

Hellstrom had been awakened from his daysleep by a young female watchworker. Her observation screen had revealed the Outsider intruding on Hive territory. Hellstrom’s cell had been closed off for the privacy that a key worker could enjoy, and the young watchworker had come personally to Hellstrom, shaking his shoulder gently to awaken him. She had given him the information in the swift and silent gesture-language of the Hive.

The intruder could be observed on the hill above the Hive-head buildings. He was using binoculars to study the area. His approach had been noted far out by sensors in a perimeter tunnel. He had left a companion with a vehicle near the road to Fosterville. The entire message took three seconds.

With a sigh, Hellstrom slid from the foam-and-down warmth of his bed, flashed a hand signal indicating that he understood. The watchworker left the cell. Hellstrom crossed the floor’s smooth tiles, their coolness helping to awaken him, and he activated the bank of repeaters that gave him contact with the Hive’s security system sensors. He focused on the section the watchworker had indicated.

At first, Hellstrom had difficulty locating the Outside intruder in the tall grass. The light was always bad in that direction at this hour of the afternoon. He wondered if the watchworker could have been mistaken about the correct screen. The watchworkers got sensitive and twitchy at times, but he had yet to find one turning in a false alarm or making a major error.

Hellstrom studied the tall brown grass carefully. The panorama of dry grass in the hot afternoon light appeared unbroken. Abruptly, something moved in the grass at the ridgecrest. As though movement had created a new scene, he saw the intruder: the Outsider was a male clothed to match the grass so closely that it surely could not be accidental. More than seventy years of living the Hive life had made the necessity for concealment a reflex with Hellstrom. He had possessed the sense of caution long before he’d assumed a false age and moved out of the Hive to build an Outsider identity. Now, seeing the prying intruder, he moved briskly, slipped his feet into sandals, and draped a white lab smock over his body. As he moved, he glanced at the crystal-driven clock on his wall: 2:59 P.M. The clock, accurate to four seconds in a year, had been built by a brood mate whose breeding and training had sent her into the laboratories for life.

Hellstrom thought about the intruder. If this one waited as the others had, he could be taken in the dark. Hellstrom made a mental note to get the night sweep started early and with special preparations for this possibility. The Hive had to learn why these Outsiders were prying.

Before leaving his cell, Hellstrom studied the Hive’s outer perimeter on his repeaters and saw, far down in the valley, a van-camper with a woman seated beside it sketching on a tablet in her lap. He magnified the view, saw nervous tension in the woman’s shoulder muscles, an involuntary movement of the head that drew her gaze up the slopes leading to the Hive. She would have to be picked up, too. Why were they suspicious of the farm? Who was behind this? There was something professional about this intrusion which made Hellstrom’s heartbeat quicken.

He chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip while he searched inwardly for an instinct with which to meet this threat. The Hive was strong and hidden in a way that did not invite attention, but he knew how vulnerable it was, how little that strength would count against the shocked awareness of the Outsiders.

His gaze moved absently around his cell. It was one of the larger cubicles in the complex warren beneath the farm and the surrounding hills. It had been one of the first constructed by the original colonists who had brought their centuries-long migrations here under his brood mother’s guidance.

“It is time to stop running, my beloved workers. We, who have lived furtive double lives among the Outsiders for more than three hundred years, dissembling, always ready to move at the slightest suspicion, have come to the place that will shelter us and make us strong.”

She had claimed a vision guided her, a visit in her dreams from the blessed Mendel “whose words told us that the way we had always known was the true way.”

Hellstrom’s earliest education, the one he’d received before going Outside as a counterfeit teen-ager sent at last to get his “book learning,” had been filled with the thoughts of his brood mother.

“The best must breed with the best. In that way we produce the disparate workers we need for every task our Hive can confront.”

On that cold April day in 1876, when they had begun to dig out from the natural caverns beneath the farm, building their first Hive, she had told them, “We will perfect our way and thus become the ‘meek’ whose earth will one day welcome them.”

This cell he now occupied dated from that first digging, although the diggers and his brood mother had long ago gone into the vats. The cell was sixteen feet wide and twenty-two feet long, eight feet from floor to ceiling. It was not quite square at the rear to accommodate an arm of the original natural cavern. The cell could have had a door in that arm, but the decision had been made to put service conduits, piping, and other ducts there. From the original limestone labyrinth, the Hive had been extended downward more than a mile, reaching outward in a circle almost two miles in diameter below the three-thousand-foot level. It was a teeming warren of nearly fifty thousand workers (far beyond his brood mother’s hopes), closely integrated with their own factories, hydroponics gardens, laboratories, breeding centers, even an underground river that helped produce the power they required. No wall of the original cavern could be seen now. All walls were a uniform smooth gray of their own mucilaginous prestressed concrete.

In Hellstrom’s own cell, over the years, the tough gray wall space had been covered with various plans and sketches involved in the Hive’s growth. He had never taken them down, a wasteful idiosyncrasy the Hive tolerated in very few workers. His walls were now thick with pasted-over records of the Hive’s vitality.

Although he had more cell space than others, his furnishings were otherwise Hive-standard: a bed formed of the mucilage slabs with rawhide lacing under a foam pad, chairs of similar construction, a desk of mucilage supports for a ceramic top in rich glass-green, twelve metal filing cabinets of Outsider manufacture (Hive cabinets were sturdier, but he fancied these for their reminder value), the repeater console with its screens and direct line into the central computer. A wardrobe with Outsider clothing in one corner marked him as one of the key workers who fronted for the Hive in that threatening world beyond their perimeters. Except for two adjustable lamps, one over the desk and the other over the repeater console, the room was illuminated by coved radiating tubes along the intersection of ceiling and walls, a standard practice in all of the galleries, tunnels, and cells of the Hive.

He could have had one of the newer and more sophisticated cells in the lower levels, but Hellstrom preferred this place that he had occupied since the day his brood mother had gone to the vats—“becoming one with us all.”

Hellstrom strode back and forth on the tiles of his floor now, worrying about the intruder. Whom did that man represent? Certainly, he was not there out of casual curiosity. Hellstrom sensed a powerful Outside force slowly turning its deadly attention toward the Hive.

He knew he could not delay his response longer. The watchworkers would be irritably restless. They needed commands and a feeling that proper action was being taken. Hellstrom bent to his console, coded his instructions, and sent them into the relay system. Those instructions would be transmitted throughout the warren. Key workers would take preassigned actions. Every worker selected by the relay system through the Hive’s central computer would see gesture signals on a screen. The silent language of the Hive would bind them into a common defense.

In common with many of the key workers who would unite thus, Hellstrom knew how thin the Hive’s defenses really were. The knowledge sent fear through him now and he longed for the mental oblivion of the common worker who had few concerns beyond immediate tasks.

Driven by his fear, Hellstrom opened a filing drawer, extracted a folder tagged “Julius Porter.” The ordinary vat mark had been stamped on the outside of the folder to tell what had happened to Porter’s flesh, as though he had been discarded breeding stock whose records were kept as commentary on offspring, but Porter had no offspring in the Hive. He had merely brought a sense of mysterious threat which he had left largely unanswered. Something about the new intruder made Hellstrom think of Porter. Hellstrom trusted such instincts. He glanced through the closely spaced lines of information inscribed in Hive code. Porter had carried credentials identifying him as an employee of the Blue Devil Fireworks Corporation of Baltimore. He had babbled something finally about “the agency.” This agency had represented in his terrified mind something that would revenge him.

Agency.

Hellstrom regretted now that they had sent Porter so soon into the vats. That had been callous and careless.

The idea of using the pain of a fellow creature, however, went against Hive sensitivities. Pain was a recognizable phenomenon. When it occurred in a worker and could not be eased, that worker might go to the vats. Outsiders did not behave this way, though. This was a Hive peculiarity. One killed to eat, to survive. The killing might cause pain, but that was quickly ended. One did not prolong it. Ohhh—survival might dictate another course, but the Hive had avoided those ways.

Presently, Hellstrom put the folder aside, depressed a key at his repeater station. He asked for one of the security overseers in the aerie watchroom of the barn-studio. The instrument that carried his voice was of Hive construction and he admired its flat functionalism as he waited for a response. Presently, Old Harvey came on the screen above the instrument. His voice quavered slightly. Old Harvey would have to go into the vats before long, Hellstrom reflected, but that could be delayed because this man had talents that the Hive required, and never more desperately than right now. Old Harvey had been one of the first breeders. His seed was all through the Hive. But he was also knowledgeable in the ways of the Outside and an imaginative guardian of Hive security.

They spoke openly on the internal circuit. There wasn’t even the remotest chance that the Outsiders possessed instruments that could penetrate the Hive’s electronic barriers. In this field, Hive specialists already had moved far ahead of Outsiders.

“You know about the intruder, of course,” Hellstrom said.

Yes.”

“You’ve been watching him personally?”

“Yes. I sent the watchworker to call you.”

“What’s he been doing?”

“Just watching. With binoculars mostly.”

“Do we have anyone out?”

“No.”

“Any exterior activity scheduled?”

“Only a delivery—diamond bits for our level-fifty-one drills.”

“Don’t pick it up until you clear with me.”

“Right.”

“Is there any chance he’s carrying relay instruments that could monitor his activities from a distance?”

“Porter carried no such instruments.”

Hellstrom suppressed a feeling of irritation, but noted that Old Harvey had also made that unconscious connection. “I mean, have we checked?” Hellstrom asked.

“Not completely; we’re still in process of checking.”

“Ahh, you’re being thorough,” Hellstrom said.

“Of course.”

“Tell me as soon as you’re sure.”

“Yes.”

“What about aircraft?” Hellstrom asked. “Anything?”

“Two jets very high more than an hour ago.”

“Any indication of probes from the jets?”

“Nothing. They were commercial transports. Clean.”

“Does the intruder look as though he’s settled in for a long stay?”

“He has a knapsack and lunch. We think he’ll wait for nightfall before leaving. We’ve been hitting him with an occasional low-frequency burst to keep him jumpy.”

“Excellent.” Hellstrom nodded to himself. “Keep up the subsonics. If he’s nervous, he’ll make mistakes. But don’t use too much; you could drive him off before dark.”

“I understand,” Old Harvey said.

“Now, as to that woman waiting by the vehicle out near our perimeter: what do you make of her?”

“We’re keeping her under close surveillance. The intruder came from her direction. We think they’re associated.” He cleared his throat, a loud and rasping sound which said something distinct about his age. Hellstrom was made acutely aware that Old Harvey must be more than two hundred years old and that was very old for first colonists who’d not had the benefit of an entire lifetime under Hive regimen.

“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 throughout 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 Hiveborn?” 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 multifarious 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 maintenance. 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.

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.