Hellstrom's Hive

The night-shrouded countryside around the farm appeared asleep to Hellstrom as he scanned it from the aerie. Darkness blotted all of the familiar landscape and there was only the distant glimmer of Fosterville’s light on the horizon. The Hive beneath him had never felt more silent, more charged with the tensions of waiting. Although the oral tradition spoke of early confrontations when the whole Colony Movement (as it was called then) faced extinction, the Hive had never faced a greater crisis. The thing had happened in such natural stages that Hellstrom, looking back, experienced a sense of the inevitable. The Hive’s population of almost fifty thousand workers depended for their continued existence upon the decisions that Hellstrom and his aides made during the next few hours.

Hellstrom glanced over his shoulder at the swamp-fire glow of cathodes, the screens that watched over the Outsiders who’d come up from Fosterville just after dark. Three unmarked cars were parked out there in the rangeland now, little more than two miles away. A fourth car, identified as from the highway patrol, had been with them at first, but it was laboring its way around to the south of the valley now. The only track open to it there was the old Thimble Mine road and that came no closer than ten miles to the south of the valley unless its occupants took to the open country. Hellstrom suspected the vehicle might have four-wheel drive, but the character of the land to the south was such that the OHP car could not get closer than three miles from the Hive’s perimeter at best.

The aerie’s workers, sensing the weight of decision on Hellstrom, had lowered their voices and moved softly.

Should I use Janvert as a mediator? he wondered.

But mediation should begin from a position of strength and the Hive had only a bluff. The secret of the stunwand might be something valuable to offer. Janvert had seen it in action. He would know, too, about the Hive’s mastery of human chemistry. He had his own reactions to verify that. But Janvert could only become the Hive’s enemy if he went out as an envoy. He’d seen too much of the Hive to even consider neutrality.

Hellstrom glanced at the clock behind the arc of surveillance instruments: 11:29 P.M. It was almost tomorrow, and tomorrow was certain to see a showdown. He could sense that in many things, including the watchful waiting of the three cars parked between the Hive and Fosterville. Thinking about the occupants of those cars, Hellstrom felt a need to know what they were doing now. He returned to the observer station and asked a coordinating specialist, whose face looked deathly pale in the green gloom.

“They are remaining inside the cars,” the specialist said. “Their reporting schedules are staggered, about ten minutes apart for any given car. We are confident now that there are no more than two Outsiders in each car.”

Waiting for daylight, Hellstrom realized. He said as much.

“It’s the general opinion here,” the specialist said. “That middle car is only about twenty-five yards from one of the hidden exits, the one at the end of level-two gallery.”

“You’re suggesting we try to bring in the Outsiders?”

“It would give us answers to some questions.”

“It also might ignite a general attack. I think we’ve pushed our luck as far as it will go.” Hellstrom rubbed the back of his neck. He felt worn-out, running on nerve. “What about the car that’s going around to the south?”

“It’s stuck about where the old mine road starts to cross Muddy Bottom, about eight miles from our perimeter and at least twelve miles from the valley.”

“Thank you.” Hellstrom turned away.

The aerie was quieter now than it had been when he had arrived two hours before. There had been groups of security specialists passing through then, each being briefed for night sweep. All had faded away into the outside darkness now, nothing but signal points on the aerie’s instruments, glowing figures on the screens.

For perhaps the tenth time since taking up station in the aerie, Hellstrom thought: I should rest. I’ll need all of my senses alert by daylight. They will come upon us in the morning, I’m sure. I more than any should be ready for them. Many of us will probably die tomorrow. If I’m alert, perhaps I can save some.

He thought sadly of Lincoln Kraft, whose charred body (hardly enough left to bother taking to the vats) had been removed from the wreckage of one of the attackers’ vans. Kraft’s death made the day’s loss thirty-one.

Just a beginning.

The aerie had moved to a subdued murmur of questioning earlier. The words attack and prisoners had been repeated in many contexts. There’d even been a kind of adrenaline-pumped elation in the aerie, references to “the victory.”

Again, Hellstrom thought about the three prisoners the Hive now held. It seemed strange to be holding prisoners. Outsider adults seemed naturally to belong to the vats. Only very small children had ever been considered worthy of reshaping for the Hive’s uses. Now—now, there were new possibilities.

Janvert, the most puzzling of the three, had a background in law, Hellstrom had learned through careful questioning. Janvert might be ridiculously easy to wean from Outside ways, provided he could be sufficiently tempered to Hive chemistry. The female, Clovis Carr, was a carrier of aggressive characteristics that the Hive might turn to its advantage. The third one, whose identification papers said he was Daniel Thomas Alden, carried himself like a soldier. There could be valuable characteristics in all of them, but Janvert remained the most interesting. He was small, too, which was desirable in the Hive.

Hellstrom turned back to the observer stations, bent low over the second one from the right. “What about our patrol in the creek bottom?” he asked. “Have they anything new to report on the conversation from that car they’re watching?”

“The Outsiders are still puzzled, Nils. They call this a ‘very strange case’ and they refer occasionally to someone named Gammel, who apparently believes the case is a snafu. What’s a snafu?”

“A foul-up,” Hellstrom translated. “It’s military slang: situation normal all fouled up.”

“Something that has gone wrong, then?”

“Yes. Tell me if they hear anything new.”

Hellstrom straightened, thought of calling Saldo. The younger man had been sent to keep a discreet observation on Project 40, working from one end of the long gallery at level fifty. It was not a good vantage point, because the major work was being conducted toward the middle of the gallery, at least half a mile from the end, but the researchers had shown increasing irascibility after the earlier incident with an “interfering observer.” Hellstrom was counting on Saldo’s intelligence to manage the situation. It was a matter of desperation for them to know in the aerie if the situation in the lab showed new promise.

We could never get away with a bluff against the Outsiders, Hellstrom told himself. The Hive might gain a little time for itself, might be able to parlay the stunwands to create a temporary belief in a more potent weapon built on the same principle. But the Outsiders would demand a demonstration. And there was always Harl’s warning to consider. The threat to use an absolute weapon put the trigger in the hands of an opponent who might say, so use it! The weapon must be applicable at less than absolute energies, and that must be demonstrable, unmistakably demonstrable. The Outsiders had a saying that fit the situation aptly. “Don’t kid the kidders.” A bluff would not work for long. The Hive would be called—and then what?

The wild Outsiders were very strange, really. They tended not to believe in violence until it was inflicted upon them. They had a saying about this, too. “It can’t happen here.”

Perhaps this was inevitable in a world that based its societies on threat, violence, and illusions of absolute power. How could such people as Janvert be expected to think in more malleable terms, to think of life dependencies and the interlocked relationships of living systems, to think of inserting the human species into the great circle of life? Such concepts would be gibberish to Outsiders, even those who spoke for the new fad—ecology.