Hellstrom's Hive

Peruge awoke in the gray dawn gloom, swimming up to consciousness from some faraway, energy-drained place. He turned his head to see the tangled confusion of his bed, came to the slow realization that he was alone in the bed and this should be important information. A bicycle with a coat thrown over the handlebars stood against the wall beside the door. There was a crumpled white garment on the floor between bed and door. He stared at the bicycle, wondering why he felt that a bicycle should be so important.

A bicycle?

Water splashed in the bathroom. Someone was humming.

Fancy!

He pushed himself to a sitting position, his mind as muddled as the bed. Fancy! For the love of God! What had she used on him? He had a foggy remembrance of what he thought were eighteen orgasms. An aphrodisiac? If so, it was more potent than anything in his wildest fantasies.

Water still splashed in the bathroom. She was taking a shower. God! How could she move?

He tried to reassemble the night in his memory, met only the wildest confusion, a recurrent image of writhing flesh. He thought: That was me! For God’s sake! That was me! What was that stuff Fancy had given him? Could that be Project 40, for the love of heaven? He wanted to laugh hysterically, but couldn’t summon the strength. The sound of splashing water came to an abrupt stop. His attention moved to the bathroom door. Movement there, the voice humming. Where did she get the strength?

The door opened and Fancy emerged, a towel wrapped around her loins, another towel in her hands with which she was drying her hair.

“Good morning, lover,” she said. And she thought: He looks completely used up.

He stared at her without speaking, memory searching.

“Didn’t you like breeding with me?” she asked.

That was it! That had been the thing he had tried to remember but couldn’t until she spoke. Breed with her? Could she be one of those kooky, turned-on members of the new generation: sex for procreation only?

“What’d you do to me?” he asked. His voice came out in a husky croaking which shocked him.

“Do? I just—”

He lifted his left arm to expose the area where she had injected him with that mysterious musky substance. Faint discoloration there revealed a subcutaneous bruise.

“Oh, that,” she said. “Didn’t you like it when you were hyped up?”

He levered himself back against the bed’s headrest, adjusted a pillow behind him. God, he was tired. “Hyped,” he said. “So you shot me with some kind of dope.”

“I only gave you an additional store of what every male has when he’s ready to breed,” she said, knowing her tone betrayed her own puzzlement. Outsiders were so strange about breeding.

Peruge’s head ached and he felt that her words increased the pain. Slowly, he turned, looked squarely at her. God! What a voluptuous body! He spoke painfully, but clearly, “What’s this breeding crap?”

“I know you use other words for what we did,” she explained, trying to sound reasonable, “but that’s what we like to call it—breeding.”

“We?”

“My—friends and I.”

“You breed with them?”

“Sometimes.”

Crazy communal hopheads! Could that be what Hellstrom was hiding: sex orgies and aphrodisiac drugs? Peruge felt a deep and sudden prurient envy. Suppose that was what these crazies did! Suppose they had regular parties such as the one he’d experienced with Fancy. It was wrong, of course. But what a hold an experience like that could get on a man! On a woman, too, no doubt.

It was criminal to do such things, but . . .

Fancy dropped her towels, began putting on her smock, seemingly with no more concern about her nudity than she’d experienced the night before.

Despite his headache and profound lassitude, Peruge marveled at her sensuous grace. She was all woman!

As she dressed, Fancy admitted to herself that she felt hungry and she wondered if Peruge had money to buy breakfast. She enjoyed the thought of exotic Outsider food, but she had not prepared herself with money from Hive stores before sneaking out. A warm coat, the male breeding hype, and the bicycle, but no money.

I was in a hurry, she thought, and she could not suppress a joyful giggle. The wild Outsider males were such fun when one hyped them, as though their suppressed breeding energies had been stored up for just such an occasion.

As he watched Fancy dress, Peruge found his original worries returning. What had driven her to his bed? Breeding? What nonsense! She had come into possession of an undoubted aphrodisiac, though. He couldn’t deny this. His own behavior in the night gave ample testimony to this.

Eighteen times!

Something was very sick up there at that farm.

Breeding!

“Have you had any babies?” he asked.

“Oh, several,” she said, then realized it had been wrong to admit this. Her own training in Outsider sex inhibitions had been explicit on that score. Her personal experiences had reinforced the training. Now, it was a potentially dangerous admission. Peruge had no way of knowing how old she was. Old enough to be his mother, no doubt. That Hive difference between appearance and age was one of the things that could never be shared with Outsiders. She felt an abrupt resurgence of Hive caution.

Her answer astonished him. “Several? Where are they?”

“Oh—with friends.” She tried to act casual and unconcerned, but now she was fully alert. Peruge must be diverted. “You want to breed some more?” she asked.

But Peruge was not to be shunted from this fascinating disclosure. “Don’t you have a husband?”

“Oh, no.”

“Who fathered your several children?” he asked, then realized he probably should have asked about fathers, plural.

His questions increased her nervousness. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Admitting that she’d borne children had been a mistake. Hive consciousness restored other memories of the night with Peruge, as well. The Outsider had made interesting admissions while in the throes of breeding ecstasy. There had been, for a time, a level of his deepest awareness completely open to her. Moving with an elaborate show of casualness, she crossed to the bicycle, took up the long fur coat, held it over her arm.

“Where are you going?” he demanded. He forced his legs off the edge of the bed, let them fall to the cold floor, which restored some of his energy. His head whirled with fatigue and there was now an aching in his chest. What the hell had been in that shot? She’d really used him up.

“I’m hungry,” she explained. “Can I leave the bicycle while I go out and eat? Maybe we can breed some more later.”

“Eat?” His stomach rebelled at the thought.

“There’s a cafe just down the street,” she said. “I’m very hungry—” she giggled, “after last night.”

She at least has to come back and get her damned bicycle, he thought. And he realized he was no match for her in his present weakened condition. He’d have a reception committee ready for her when she did return, though. They were going to unravel the mystery of Nils Hellstrom, and the beginning of the thread was named Fancy.

“Just down to the cafe,” he said, as though he were explaining it to himself. He recalled seeing the neon sign.

“I like an—breakfast,” she said and swallowed in a sudden chill. Nervousness had almost tripped her into saying an “Outsider” breakfast. Outsider was a word one did not use with Outsiders. She covered her slip, asking, “Do you have any money? I sneaked out in such a hurry last night I didn’t bring any.”

Peruge missed her stumbling phrase, gestured to his trousers on a chair across the room. “Hip pocket. Wallet.” He put his head in his hands. The effort of sitting up had taken a frightening amount of his reserves, and the chest pain and headache left him confused. He realized it was going to require a tremendous will to stand up. Maybe a cold shower would help. He heard Fancy fumbling for the money, couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Take it all! Damned bitch!

“I’m taking five dollars,” she said. “Is that all right?”

I often pay more, he thought. But she obviously was no regular whore, or she’d have taken more.

“Sure, anything you need.”

“Should I bring you coffee or something?” she asked. He really did look sick. She found herself worrying about him.

Peruge swallowed an upsurge of nausea, gestured weakly. “No—I, uh—I’ll get something later.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“All right, then.” His appearance worried her, but she reached for the door handle to let herself out. Perhaps he just needed a little more rest. She called cheerfully as she opened the door, “I’ll be right back.”

“Wait,” he said. He dropped his hands from his face, lifted his head with an application of conscious effort.

“Did you change your mind about my bringing you something?” she asked.

“No. I—just-wondered. So we bred. Do you expect to have a baby by me?”

“I certainly hope so. I’m right at the top of my fertility.” She smiled disarmingly and added, “I’m going to go eat now. I’ll be back before you know it. Everybody says I’m a fast eater.”

She went out, closing the door briskly behind her.

Fast breeder, too, he thought. Her answer only added to his confusion. What the hell had he run into? A baby? Was this what Carlos had discovered? He had a sudden vision of the dapper Carlos Depeaux held in some subterranean bondage by Fancy and her friends, a continual hyped-up orgy with that mysterious aphrodisiac for as long as it lasted. Or for as long as Carlos lasted. It’d be a continual orgy of breeding, babies on an assembly line. Somehow, he could not imagine Carlos in that role. Certainly, he couldn’t see Tymiena in it or even Porter. Tymiena had never struck him as the motherly type. And dry-as-dust Porter ran from intimate encounters with women.

Hellstrom was involved in something to do with sex, though, and it was probably dirty as hell.

Peruge rubbed a hand across his forehead. The motel had provided an in-room coffee maker with paper packets of instant brew. He lurched to his feet, found the equipment in the closet alcove beside the bathroom door, heated water, and made two cups. He drank it much too hot. His mouth felt scalded, but it gave him a lift and reduced the throbbing in his head. He could think a bit more clearly now. He put the front door on the chain latch and got out his transceiver.

The second signal burst at the mountains brought contact with Janvert. Peruge’s hands were unsteady, but he pulled a chair up to the window, rested the equipment on the sill, and set himself grimly to the task of reporting. They exchanged code-recognition signals and Peruge launched himself into the whole story of his night with Fancy, sparing nothing.

“Eighteen times?” Janvert sounded unbelieving.

“As nearly as I can remember.”

“You must’ve had some time.” The beam transceiver failed to mask Janvert’s tone of cynical amusement.

“Don’t give me any crap,” Peruge growled. “She shot me full of something, an aphrodisiac or something, and I was just a big, eager bundle of flesh. See if you can keep this on a professional level, will you? We have to find out what it was that she gave me.” He glanced down at the bruise on his arm.

“How do you propose doing that?”

“I’m going up there today. I may brace Hellstrom about it.”

“That might not be too wise. Have you checked with HQ?”

“The Chief wants—I’ve checked!” Christ! It was too difficult to explain that the Chief had ordered direct negotiations. This development couldn’t change that. It only added to the things to be introduced in the negotiations.

“You play it cool,” Janvert said. “Remember, we’ve three people missing already.”

Did Janvert take him for an idiot, for Christ’s sake?

Peruge massaged his right temple. God, his head felt empty, as empty as his body. She’d really drained him.

“How’d this dame get down from the farm?” Janvert asked. “Nightwatch didn’t report any car headlights out that way.”

“She rode a bicycle, for Christ’s sake! Didn’t I already tell you that?”

“No, you didn’t. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

“I’m just a little tired.”

“That I can understand.” There he went with the goddamned humor again! “So she rode a bicycle. You know, that’s interesting.”

“What’s interesting?”

“Carlos was a bicycle nut. The Portland office said he took a bike with him in the van. Remember?”

Peruge glanced back at the bicycle leaning against the wall. He did remember now that Shorty mentioned it. A bicycle. Was that possible? By any stretch of good fortune, could that set of flimsy wheels be linked to Depeaux? “Do we have a serial number or anything else to identify Carlos’s bicycle?” he asked.

“Maybe. There might even be fingerprints. Where’s this bicycle now?”

“Right here in the room with me. I’m bike-sitting while she gets breakfast.” He recalled his original resolve, then. Christ Almighty! His mind was going! “Shorty,” he barked, some of his old strength returning for a moment, “you get a team down here as soon as you can. Collect this bicycle, yes, but we have to get our hands on Fancy for a long and thorough interrogation.”

“That’s more like it,” Janvert said. “DT is right here listening to us and he’s all hot to go.”

“No!” DT had to stay there and keep an eye on Janvert. The Chief had been explicit about that. “Send Sampson’s team.”

“DT is seeing to it. They’ll be on their way in just a minute.”

“Tell them to hurry, will you? I only know one way of delaying this dame and, after last night, I’m really not up to it.”