Hellstrom's Hive

As he returned to the Hive down the long slope of the first gallery, Hellstrom listened for some sound or other message to reassure him that all was well here. No such message came to him. The Hive remained an entity; it still functioned, but the sense of profound disturbance reached all through it. That was the Hive’s nature: touch one part of it and all of its cells responded. The chemistry of their internal communication could not be denied. Key workers, driven by the urgency of their situation, emitted subtle pheromones, external hormones that spread through the common air. The Hive’s filters had been reduced to a minimum to conserve power. The pheromone signals remained for all to inhale and for all to share the common disturbance. Already, signs could be detected that said this situation could not continue without profound and possibly permanent effect on the totality.

His brood mother had warned him once, “Nils, the Hive can learn just as you learn. The totality can learn. If you fail to understand what the Hive learns, this could bring about destruction for us all.”

What was the Hive learning now? Hellstrom wondered.

Fancy’s behavior suggested something demanded by the Hive in its deepest needs. She spoke of swarming. Was that it? They had been working for more than forty years to delay swarming. Had that been a mistake? He was worried about Fancy and had just tried unsuccessfully to find her. She was supposed to be with the shooting crew, but she hadn’t been at her station and Ed had not known where to find her. Saldo had assured him that Fancy was under constant surveillance now, but still Hellstrom worried. Could the Hive create a natural brood mother? Fancy might be a logical choice for this role. What could the Council do if that happened? Should they send Fancy to the vats rather than risk an early swarming? He hated the thought of losing Fancy—that superb bloodline that had produced so many useful specialists. If they could only breed out the instability!

Provided it was instability.

Hellstrom came to the concrete arch that opened into the second-level feeding station and saw that Saldo awaited him there as ordered. Saldo could be depended on. This reassured Hellstrom. He realized how much he had come to depend on the younger male. Without speaking, Hellstrom moved to Saldo’s side. They entered the feeding station and fed together at the conveyor, drinking deeply of the common broth from the vats. Hellstrom always found a deep satisfaction from eating the food of the common workers. It was a satisfaction that the supplemental leader foods never gave him. The leader foods might double the expected Hive lifetime, but they lacked that one ingredient Hellstrom identified as “unifying force.”

Sometimes we need a lowest common denominator, he thought. This was never more apparent than in a time of crisis.

Saldo signaled that he was anxious to report, but Hellstrom gave the sign for patience, recognizing his own unwillingness to hear that report. While eating, Hellstrom had felt himself overcome by the realization of how fragile the Hive was. The domesticated world they sought for humankind seemed now no more than a thin-shelled egg about to be crushed. It was all so clear and sturdy in the Hive Manual, but so shimmering and weak in the execution. Although his mind searched for a clue, he could see no help in the manual . . .

“The Hive moves toward a nonverbal base for human existence. It is a major purpose of the Hive to find that base, then to build a new language fitted to our needs. First, in the light of that plain message from the insect world, we shed the errors of the past.”

They had not shed the errors of the past. They might never shed them. The path loomed so long, so exacting in its demands. No one had really imagined how long it might require, or how many pitfalls they might have to surmount. At first, three hundred or more years ago, back in the oral-tradition times, they had assumed “a hundred years or so.” How swiftly that error of the past had made itself known! The new truth had arisen, then: the Hive might have to endure for a thousand years or more, unless a dramatic death convulsion overcame the Outsiders. A thousand years until the earth lay domesticated under their dominion.

Hellstrom recalled thinking how the familiar Hive walls around him might crumble and be repaired hundreds of times before the Hive came into its own and the workers took control of the planet surface.

What a fantasy! These walls might endure no more than another few hours and never be rebuilt.

The necessity of breathing confidence into the Hive had never seemed so difficult. Reluctantly, Hellstrom signaled for Saldo to speak, noting with a sense of revulsion how obvious it was that the younger man thought a few words with the prime male would solve all problems.

“Fancy got the breeding hypes from Hive stores by stealing them,” Saldo said. “There’s no record of an official—”

“But why did she take them?” Hellstrom asked.

“To defy you, the Council, and the Hive,” Saldo said. He obviously thought the question demented.

“We must not be too quick to judge,” Hellstrom said.

“But she’s dangerous! She should—”

“She must be allowed to continue without interference,” Hellstrom said. “Perhaps the entire Hive actually speaks through her.”

“Trying to breed with this Peruge?”

“Why not? We’ve used that method of getting Outside blood many times. Peruge has been preselected for us by the wild Outside. He is living evidence of success.”

“Success at what price?”

“However we get the strong ones, you know we must get them. Perhaps Fancy knows better than any of us how to deal with this threat.”

“I don’t believe it! I think she’s using this talk of a swarm as an excuse to leave the Hive. You know how fond she is of Outsider foods and comforts.”

“There is that possibility,” Hellstrom agreed. “But why does she want to leave? I think your explanation too glib.”

Saldo appeared more abashed by the implied rebuke than it had warranted. He was silent for a moment. “Nils, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I do not understand it clearly myself, but Fancy’s behavior may not be as simple as you imagine.”

Saldo stared questioningly at Hellstrom’s face as though some line or flicker there might provide enlightenment. What did the prime male know that others did not? Hellstrom was an offspring of the elders, the first colonists of this, the first true Hive. Had he received special instructions from that mysterious source of wisdom—what to do in this kind of crisis? Saldo’s attention was caught by the activity to his left: the bowls of broth were moving on the conveyor as someone took a bowl from the end. Workers were feeding around them, taking no particular notice of the two superior specialists. It was natural that no special notice be taken. Common chemistry told the workers who belonged here and who did not. Bring in an Outsider, though, and unless the workers could see that the Outsider was under the control of their fellows, or unless the alien’s chemistry had been sufficiently masked, the intruder would go immediately into the vats, carried there by unspeaking workers who cared only that a dangerous mass of protein be removed. The workers’ responses now appeared all very normal, but Saldo began to experience in this moment some of Hellstrom’s sense that the Hive had been deeply wounded. There was a jerky stiffness to some of the movement, a belligerent thrust about the stride.

“Is there something wrong of which I am unaware?” Saldo asked.

Ahhh, the wisdom of this young male! Hellstrom thought, pride suffusing him.

“That may well be,” Hellstrom said. He turned, signaled for Saldo to follow, led the way out into the gallery. They took the first side ramp and the next lateral passage. They proceeded briskly to Hellstrom’s own cell. Inside, Hellstrom indicated a chair for Saldo, but stretched his own body on the bed. Ahhh! Blessed brood, but he was tired!

Obediently, Saldo sat down, glanced around. He had been in this cell before, but present circumstances made the place appear vaguely strange. A disturbing difference clamored for his attention, but he could not pinpoint it. Presently, he realized the difference was the reduced noise from the service tunnel behind the rear wall of the cell. The hushed minimum of Hive operation could not be escaped in this place. Perhaps that was why Hellstrom refused to move to better quarters. Subtle odors of disturbance could be detected in the air, too. All the messages of crisis came to focus here.

“Yes, there are things wrong that none of us know about,” Hellstrom said, picking up the conversation with an answer to the question Saldo had asked at the feeding station. “That is our problem, Saldo. Things will happen to alarm us and we must be prepared to deal with those things on their own terms. As the Outsiders say, we must hang loose. Do you understand?”

“No.” Saldo shook his head. “What kind of things do you mean?”

“If I could describe them, they would not fit the description of unknowns,” Hellstrom said, his voice sad. Moving only his eyes, keeping his hands clasped behind his head, Hellstrom glanced across at Saldo. The young male suddenly appeared as fragile as the Hive. What could Saldo’s imaginative resourcefulness really do to avert the disaster building around them? Saldo was only thirty-four years old. Hive education gave those years a specious sophistication, a false worldliness of a kind never seen Outside. Saldo’s naiveté was Hive naiveté. He did not know the kinds of liberties he might exercise Outside. He did not know what it was to be truly wild. Except vicariously through books and all the other trappings of Hive education, Saldo had little experience of the wild randomness that prevailed beyond the confines of the Hive. Given time, Saldo might gain that experience as Hellstrom had. The young male was the very type the Hive must send into the tempering caldron of wild humankind. But much of what he learned from his Outside ventures would bring him nightmares. He would, as every front specialist did, encyst those nightmares in a special unconscious core at the depths of his being.

Just as I have walled up my own worst experiences, Hellstrom thought.

There could be no complete and permanent denial of such memories short of the vats, though. They came stealing out through unexpected cracks in one’s defenses.

Taking Hellstrom’s long silence as rebuke, Saldo lowered his gaze. “We do not know all the kinds of things that may happen to us, but we must be prepared anyway. I see that now.”

Hellstrom felt like crying out: I am not perfect! I am not invincible!

Instead, he asked, “How is Project 40 coming?”

“How did you know I’d just inquired of it?” Saldo asked, awe in his tone. “I didn’t mention it.”

“All of us who carry the extra burden of awareness are inquiring regularly into Project 40,” Hellstrom chided. “What did you find?”

“Nothing new—really. Oh, they are building the new test model swiftly and it will—”

“Have they changed their opinion about its prospects?”

“They are raising new arguments about the generation of extremely high heat.”

“Is there more?”

Saldo lifted his gaze, studied Hellstrom. Despite the prime male’s obvious fatigue, there remained one more matter that could not be avoided.

“A band of hydroponics harvesters was found wandering in the upper levels about an hour ago,” Saldo said. “As nearly as we can determine, they were expressing a need to go to the surface.”

Hellstrom sat upright on the bed, shock suppressing his fatigue. “Why wasn’t I told immediately?”

“We handled it,” Saldo said. “It was blamed on the general disturbance. They’ve all been chemically adjusted and are back at work. I’ve instituted patrols in all of the galleries to prevent a recurrence. Have I done wrong?”

“No.” Hellstrom lay back on the bed.

Patrols! Of course, that was all they could do now. But this told how deeply disturbed the entire Hive had become. Fancy was right: the predictions about the swarming urge had not taken into account a crisis such as this one.

“Were there breeders among them?” Hellstrom asked.

“A few potentials, but they—”

“They were swarming,” Hellstrom said.

“Nils! Just a few workers from—”

“Nevertheless, they were swarming. It is in the calculations of our earliest written records. You know this. We have watched for it and tried to predict it from the first. And without our leadership being able to set the exact moment, we have reached a critical condition.”

“Nils, the—”

“You were going to speak about numbers. This is not a mere consequence of numbers. Total population in a given space figures in our calculations, but this is something else. Young workers and potential breeders, at the very least, find themselves driven to leave the Hive. They were striking out on their own. That is swarming.”

“How can we prevent a—”

“Perhaps we cannot.”

“But we can’t allow it now!”

“No. We must do our best to delay the swarming. To let them go now would destroy us. Have the filters turned back to maximum for a few hours and then adjust them to optimum.”

“Nils, a suspicious Outsider in our midst might—”

“We cannot do otherwise. Desperate measures are required. A quiet weeding of population may be indicated if this—”

“The vats?”

“Yes, if the pressure becomes too great.”

“The hydroponics workers who—”

“Watch them carefully,” Hellstrom said. “And the breeders—even Fancy and her sisters. A swarm will need breeders.”