Hellstrom's Hive

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.