Hellstrom's Hive

Entering the studio through a double-door system that explained why he had not been able to see inside the building from the yard, Peruge sensed something odd about the sounds and movements. That fetid animal smell was very strong in here, too. He ascribed it to a glass-fronted structure off to his left, behind which he could discern animals in cages. He identified mice, guinea pigs, and monkeys.

In all of the film companies Peruge had seen before, he had observed a special quality of silence while group energies flowed up a mysterious channel into the camera lens. This place was different, though. No one tiptoed. Those who moved about walked with a casual silence that said they found this normal. The door baffles had eliminated that incessant humming so irritatingly noticeable outside, but in here there was a faint susurration to replace it.

Only one camera crew appeared to be working. They were set up in a corner to his right and were working very close to a glass container about three feet on a side. The glass reflected hot shards of light.

Hellstrom had warned Peruge not to talk until given permission, but Peruge pointed to the camera crew in the corner, lifted his eyebrows in a silent question.

Bending close, Hellstrom whispered, “We’re capturing the articulation of insect body parts in a new way. Magnified views. The lens is actually inside that glass case which maintains a special climate for the subject insect.”

Peruge nodded, wondering why they must remain silent for that. Would they be doing sound-on-film for such a sequence? It didn’t seem likely, but his acquaintance with film making was perfunctory at best, hurriedly augmented for this assignment, and he knew better than to speak his question aloud. Hellstrom would be delighted to have an excuse to throw him out. The man’s nervousness had become increasingly obvious as they entered the studio.

Hellstrom leading and Kraft bringing up the rear, they struck out diagonally across the center of the studio area. As always when an Outsider was this close to the workings of the Hive head, Hellstrom found himself unable to suppress completely feelings of disquiet. The Hive’s territorial conditioning went too deep. And Peruge reeked of Outsider smells. He did not belong in this place. Kraft, behind them, would be having an even worse time of it. He had never before accompanied an Outsider into these precincts. The working crews were behaving with outward normalcy, however. They would feel this Outsider’s presence as a constant rasping on their awareness, but front training dominated their reactions. All proceeded smoothly.

Peruge noticed the movement of people around them: across their diagonal path, beside them, off in the corners of the cavernous studio. Everyone appeared to be on normal business and none gave more than a casual glance to the trio crossing the open area, but Peruge could not avoid feeling that he was under the closest scrutiny. He looked upward. The bright lights being used in the lower part of the studio left the upper regions in deep shadows that his vision could not penetrate. Was that deliberate? Were they hiding something up above him?

As he watched, the swinging descent of a cage on the end of a boom caught his attention and he stumbled over a coil of cables. He would have fallen if Kraft had not leaped forward to catch his arm. The deputy restored Peruge to balance, put a finger to lips for silence. Kraft released Peruge’s arm reluctantly. It felt more secure to have a controlling arm on this intruder. Kraft found himself torn by tormenting worries. Nils was playing with fire! There were voiceless workers out there on the studio floor. Naturally, they’d been conditioned for the menial tasks here, but their presence posed an explosive danger. What if one of them reacted to Peruge’s Outsider chemistry? The man’s smell was offensive!

Peruge, seeing his path clear for a few paces, glanced back at the descending boom cage. It had swung from the gloomy mystery of the upper reaches and was moving in oiled silence down to the camera setup in the corner. A woman in a white smock occupied the cage. She had startlingly pale skin accented by ebony hair tied at the neck in a simple chignon. The fluttering of her smock in the wind of the boom’s movement suggested that she wore nothing under it.

Kraft pushed Peruge’s arm, urging him to move faster. Reluctantly, Peruge picked up his pace. There had been something magnetically attractive about that pale-skinned woman and he could not get her image out of his mind. Her face had been a madonna oval beneath that black cap of hair. The arms protruding from the smock’s short sleeves had been almost too fat, but suggesting sensuous softness rather than obesity.

Hellstrom stood now at a door in a structure that had been erected as a separate, flat-roofed building inside the studio. A wall climbed to the upper areas behind the flat roof. Peruge estimated that the wall split the barn in half lengthwise and wondered what lay behind it. He followed Hellstrom into a dimly lighted room where there was heavy glass from waist height to ceiling across two of the inner walls. One glass partition gave a view into a smaller studio where insects were flitting openly back and forth through blue light—pale, big-winged moths by their appearance. The other window framed a shadowy room where men and women worked at a long, curved bank of electronic instruments with small screens directly in front of each operator showing Lilliputian movements. It reminded Peruge of a television control booth.

Kraft closed the door behind them and moved three paces into the room. He stood there now, arms folded across his breast as though guarding the entrance. There was another door in the far-right corner, Peruge noted, but that led into the shadowy room of electronic instruments. Again, Peruge felt that the entire setup did not quite fit his picture of a movie studio.

There was a small oblong wooden table with four chairs around it in the room and Hellstrom took a chair on the far side and spoke in a calm voice. “The men you’re watching in there, Mr. Peruge, are mixing several sound sources for a combined track. It’s rather delicate work.”

Peruge studied the people in the shadowy room, unable to pinpoint what struck him odd about them. Abruptly, he realized that of the six men at the arc of instruments and three women standing on the far side of the arc, all but one looked enough alike to be from the same family. Again, he scanned the faces illuminated by the low, wavering light. Five of the men and three of the women were alike, not only in the uniform white smocks, but in short blond hair and rather pinched faces dominated by large eyes. The women were distinguished only by rather obvious breasts and a slight softening of the features. The lone male who differed from the others was also blond and reminded Peruge of someone. He realized then that the odd man out looked like Hellstrom.

As all this flashed through Peruge’s mind, the outer door opened behind Kraft and the young woman he had seen on the boom entered. At least, Peruge cautioned himself, she appeared to be that same young woman, but the people in the next-door booth made him wonder.

“Fancy,” Hellstrom said, speaking quickly in alarm. Why was she here? he asked himself. He hadn’t sent for her and he didn’t like the stalking feline expression on her face.

Kraft stepped aside grudgingly to allow her to pass.

Peruge watched her, noting the oval face, almost doll-like, the extremely sexy body that she moved with full awareness of its contours showing through the thin smock. She kept her attention on Hellstrom while speaking, but there was no doubt she was playing to Peruge.

“Ed sent me over,” she said. “He wants you to know that we have to reshoot that mosquito sequence. You’re in it, you know. I told you we’d have to reshoot. The mosquitoes were disturbed, but you wouldn’t listen to me.”

Abruptly, she appeared to notice Peruge, moved up to within a pace of him, and asked, “Who’s this?”

“This is Mr. Peruge,” Hellstrom said, a deep note of caution in his voice. What was Fancy doing?

“Hello, Mr. Peruge,” she said, her voice lilting. She moved even closer to him. “I’m Fancy.”

Hellstrom watched her closely. What was she doing? He inhaled a deep breath through his nose, half anger, half probing, and detected that Fancy had shot herself up with breeding hypes. She was trying to arouse Peruge! Why? She was having an effect, too. Peruge was attracted to Fancy and unable to explain the sudden magnetism. No wild Outsider could understand the simple chemistry of the situation. Kraft, too, was caught momentarily by her powerful sexuality, but Hellstrom flashed a hand signal which alerted him. Kraft, long out of the Hive’s daily contacts and constant reinforcements, took a few seconds to recover. Peruge, however, was not recovering.

Hellstrom wondered if he should let this continue. She was playing a dangerous game and acting without instructions. Granted, it would be desirable to have Peruge’s genes in the Hive stocks, but . . .

Peruge stood in semishock. He could not recall ever being caught up in sexual excitement this swiftly and this thoroughly. The woman felt it, too. She was panting for him. He wondered distantly if these people had done something to him, but rejected that immediately. This was that oddly random chemistry one heard about. He realized, catching up with her words, that Fancy was asking if he were going to stay the night.

With an effort, Peruge said, “I’m staying in town.”

She glanced at Hellstrom. “Nils, why don’t you invite Mr. Peruge to stay with us?”

“Mr. Peruge is here on business,” Hellstrom said. “I imagine he’d prefer staying in his own quarters.”

Peruge wanted nothing more than to stay the night with this compelling woman, but he began to sense inner alarm signals.

“You’re just being stuffy,” Fancy said to Hellstrom. Again, she looked up into Peruge’s eyes. “Are you in films, Mr. Peruge?”

He tried to fight free of that enveloping aura of sexuality, tried to think. “No. I’m—I’m, ah, looking for some friends, an employee and his wife, really, who’re missing around here someplace.”

“Oh, I hope nothing’s happened to them,” she said.

Hellstrom rose from the table, crossed to Peruge’s side. “Fancy, we do have a schedule to keep.”

Peruge tried to wet his lips with his tongue; his mouth felt dry, his body trembled. The delectable little witch! Was she told to make a play for him?

Hellstrom glanced at Kraft, wondered if they should do something physical to get Fancy out of the room. She’d really shot herself up, the crazy female! What was she doing? He spoke to her in a reasonable, but commanding tone. “Fancy, you’d better get back to the crew. Tell Saldo I want special attention paid to the most urgent problems first and tell Ed I’ll be ready to reshoot the mosquito sequence tonight.”

Fancy drew back a step, relaxed. She had this Peruge on a string and she knew it. The man almost followed her as she moved away from him. He would keep. She said, “All you ever think about is work. Anybody would think you were just a plain old, common everyday worker.”

Hellstrom realized she was taunting him.

Fancy obeyed, though, her Hive training dominant. She turned slowly, went to the door with only a flicking glance at Kraft, opened the door, and paused in the doorway to look back at Peruge. She smiled at the Outsider then, sly and inviting, raised her eyebrows in another silent taunt directed at Hellstrom, and went out, closing the door softly behind her.

Peruge cleared his throat.

Hellstrom studied Peruge. The man was having trouble recovering, not surprising in view of how Fancy had armed herself for that attack. It had been an attack, Hellstrom realized. Pure attack. She was out to get Peruge, to breed him.

“That’s a—very attractive woman,” Peruge said, his voice husky.

“Would you like to go over to the house for a cup of coffee?” Hellstrom asked, feeling a sudden sympathy for Peruge. The poor wild creature had no idea what had happened to him.

“That’s very kind of you,” Peruge said, “but I thought we were going to look at your studio.”

“Didn’t you see the studio out there?”

“Is that all there is to it?”

“Oh, we have the usual support facilities,” Hellstrom said. “Some of it’s too technical for the casual visitor to understand, but we have a wardrobe section and one of the best editing labs in the business. Our collection of rare insects is without equal anywhere in the world. We could also screen some of our film for you if you’d like, just to show you what we do here, but not today, I’m afraid. The schedule is pretty tight. I hope you understand.”

Kraft took up his cue. “Are we delaying you, Doc? I know how important your work is. We just came up to find out if any of your people had seen Mr. Peruge’s friends.”

“I’ll certainly inquire about that,” Hellstrom said. “Why don’t you come back and take lunch with us tomorrow, Mr. Peruge? Maybe I’ll have something to report by then.”

“I’d like to do that,” Peruge said. “What time?”

“Would eleven be all right?”

“That’d be fine. Maybe some of your people would like to hear about my company then, too. We do have an intense interest in metallurgy and new inventions.”

There he goes again! Hellstrom thought. He said, “If you get here by eleven, that’ll give you about an hour before lunch. I’ll have some one show you around-editing, wardrobe, the insects.” He smiled pleasantly.

Will my guide be Fancy? Peruge wondered, feeling his heartbeat quicken. “I’ll be looking forward to that. In the meantime, I hope you won’t mind if I call in some help and have a look around the area myself?”

Hellstrom noted how Kraft’s muscles tightened, and he spoke quickly. “Not right here on the farm, I hope, Mr. Peruge. We’re getting ready to shoot some outside footage as long as this weather holds. It doesn’t help much when people stumble over our setups and delay us. I hope you understand how costly such delays can be.”

“Oh, yes, I understand,” Peruge said. “I was thinking only of having a look at some of the range area around your farm. Carlos’s letter made it clear that he was in this area. I thought we might see if we could turn up something.”

Aware of Hellstrom’s mounting alarm, Kraft said, “We don’t want you interfering with the official investigation, Mr. Peruge. Amateurs can completely destroy evidence without—”

“Oh, I’ll have only the best professional help,” Peruge said. “You can count on that. They won’t interfere one bit with the official investigation. And I’ll make sure they don’t bother Mr. Hellstrom at his movie making. You’ll have nothing but admiration for the quality of professional help I’m calling in, Mr. Kraft.”

“Guess you don’t care how much money you spend,” Kraft muttered.

“Expense is no object,” Peruge agreed. He was enjoying this suddenly. This pair was on the hook. They knew it, too. “We’re going to find out what happened to our people.”

That challenge is plain enough, Hellstrom thought. “Of course, we sympathize with your concern. Our own immediate problems tend to dominate our attention. We can be pretty single-minded when our schedule is threatened.”

Peruge felt himself beginning to come down from the lift Fancy had given him and, now, alarm and anger began to take over. They’d tried to catch him with a little pussy! He said, “I understand how things are, Hellstrom. I’m going to tell my home office to employ all the professional manpower we can spare.”

Kraft stared at Hellstrom, seeking a cue.

Hellstrom spoke evenly, though. “We understand each other, I think, Mr. Peruge.” He glanced at Kraft. “You just keep intruders from interfering with us, eh, Linc?”

Kraft nodded. What did Nils mean? How could he stop an army of investigators? This Peruge was going to call in the FBI. The bastard had done everything but use their name!

“Until tomorrow, then,” Peruge said.

“Linc knows the way out,” Hellstrom said. “I hope you will forgive me if I don’t see you out. I really must get on with my work.”

“Of course,” Peruge said. “I’ve already noticed how well Deputy Kraft knows his way around your farm.”

Hellstrom’s eyes glittered as he shot a restraining signal at Kraft. “‘Local officials have never been barred from our land,” Hellstrom said. “We will see you tomorrow, Mr. Peruge.”

“You certainly will.”

Peruge moved ahead of Kraft to the door, opened it, and stepped out into a full collision with Fancy, who appeared to be returning. He caught an arm around her to keep her from falling. There was no doubt that she wore nothing under the smock. She ground into him as he jerked his arm away in shock.

Kraft pulled her away. “You all right, Fancy?”

“I’m fine,” she said, grinning at Peruge.

“That was clumsy of me,” Peruge said. “I’m sorry.”

“You needn’t be,” she said.

Hellstrom spoke from behind them. “We’ve had enough commotion out here, Linc. Would you see Mr. Peruge out?”

They left hurriedly, Peruge in considerable confusion. He’d received the unmistakable impression that Fancy had been ready to flop him down and screw him right then and there!

Hellstrom waited until the outer door closed behind Kraft and Peruge, then turned an inquiring stare on Fancy.

“He’s in the bag,” she said.

“Fancy, what are you doing?”

“I’m doing my homework.”

Hellstrom suddenly noted the thickening of Fancy’s cheeks, the way her upper arms stretched the fabric of the smock. He said, “Fancy, do you see yourself as a brood mother?”

“We haven’t had one since Trova,” she said.

“And you know why!”

“All that nonsense about a brood mother exciting the swarming drive!”

“It’s not nonsense and you know it!”

“Some of us think it is. We think the Hive may swarm without a brood mother and that might be disastrous.”

“Fancy, don’t you think we know our jobs? The Hive will have to produce at least ten thousand more workers before swarming pressures become apparent.”

“They’re apparent right now,” she said. She rubbed her arms. “Some of us can feel them.”