Hellstrom's Hive

By late afternoon, Depeaux had become almost obsessed with the desire to find something animal and alive in the valley. But nothing stirred there and the sun had moved several long notches toward the horizon.

Perhaps another vantage point, he thought.

The longer he stayed on the hill above the farm, the less he liked his cover story. Bird watcher, indeed! Why hadn’t Porter mentioned the absence of animal life? Insects, of course: the grass was alive with them, crawling, buzzing, flitting.

Depeaux slid and crawled away from the crest, got to his knees. His back ached from all of the unnatural movement. Grass burrs had invaded his collar, under his belt, under his stockings, up his sleeves. He managed a smile, half grimace, at his own discomfort; he could almost hear Merrivale commenting, Part of the price you pay for engaging in this line of work, old bean.

Son of a bitch!

Porter’s careful reports had indicated no guards posted outside the farm’s perimeter, but that was just one man’s account. Depeaux asked himself how he felt about his position in the open under the oak. You stayed alive in this business by trusting only your own senses ultimately—and Porter was missing. That represented an important piece of information. It could be innocent or ominous, but it was safer to believe the worst. At the worst, Porter was dead and the people of Hellstrom’s farm were responsible. Merrivale believed this. He’d made that clear, and the secretive bastard could have information to confirm it without any of his agents being the wiser.

“You will proceed with the utmost caution, keeping in mind at every juncture our need to determine precisely what has happened to Porter.”

The son of a bitch probably already knows, Depeaux told himself.

Something about the emptiness of the region spoke of hidden dangers. Depeaux reminded himself that agents who leaned too heavily on the reports of others often ended up dead, sometimes in painful and ugly fashion. What was it about this place?

He swept his gaze around his back trail, saw no sign of movement or watching eyes. A glance at his watch told him he had slightly more than two hours before sunset. Time to get to the head of the valley then and scan the length of it.

Bending low at the waist, Depeaux got to his feet and, in a crouching trot, moved swiftly toward the south below the concealing ridge. His breathing deepened easily with the effort and he thought for a moment that he wasn’t in such bad condition for a man of fifty-one. Swimming and long walks weren’t the worst recipe in the world, and he wished he were swimming that instant. It was dry and hot under the ridge, the grass full of nose-tickling dust. Desire for a swim did not bother him greatly. Such wishes had come often in the sixteen years since he’d moved up from an office clerk in the Agency. He usually passed off the fleeting desire to be elsewhere as an unconscious recognition of danger, but sometimes it could be attributed to no more than bodily discomfort.

When he’d been a mere clerk in the Baltimore office, Depeaux had enjoyed his daydreams about working as an agent. He’d filed final reports on agents “wasted in action” and had told himself that if he ever got to be an agent, he would be extremely cautious. That had not been a hard promise to keep. He was, by nature, careful and painstaking—“the perfect clerk,” some of his fellows carped. But it was painstaking care that had led him to commit the farm and its surroundings to memory, to note possible cover (little enough of that!), and the game trails through the tall grass indicated on aerial photos.

Game trails but no visible game sign, he reminded himself. What kind of game ran these paths? It was another note added to his increasing sense of caution.

Depeaux had once overheard Merrivale commenting to another agent, “The trouble with Carlos is he plays for survival.”

As though old Jollyvale didn’t do the same! Depeaux told himself. The man hadn’t reached his present eminence as operations director without an eye for the main line.

Depeaux could hear the faint trickling of the waterfall. A clump of madronas stood at the invisible line on Depeaux’s mental map, marking the northernmost reach of Hellstrom’s valley. Depeaux paused in the shade of the madronas and made another survey of his surroundings, paying special attention to his own back trail. Something about that open area—nothing moved in it, but Depeaux made a decision then and there to wait for darkness to cover his return across that space.

Thus far, it had not been too bad a go, he told himself. Just that faintly disquieting sense of an unknown danger. The second examination of the valley from this upper vantage point should not take too long. Perhaps he might reconsider and go back by daylight to the bicycle and an early check-in with Tymiena at the van. Perhaps. That first sense of decision to wait for darkness had gone deeply into him, though.

Play it safe, he reminded himself. Play for survival.

He turned left briskly, unslung his binoculars, and slipped up through a stand of oak and madrona to a clump of oily green bushes behind the rock face of the valley’s upper limit. The tinkling waterfall was quite noisy off through the undergrowth. At the bushes, Depeaux dropped to all fours, tucking the binoculars under his shirt and cinching the pack tightly against his right side. He went through the now-familiar stalking crawl, turning partly onto his left side to protect the binoculars and keep the pack off the ground. The bushes ended presently in a short rock lip which exposed a lengthwise view of Guarded Valley.

As he brought out the binoculars, Depeaux wondered idly where the “wild” Indians had been slaughtered. The noise of the waterfall was quite loud about fifty feet to his right. He rested on his elbows, brought up the binoculars.

The farm buildings were farther away from him this time and the large barn-studio concealed all but the western wing of the house. A crooked stretch of stream was clearly visible from this new vantage. Its surface remained mirror calm, as though stagnant, reflecting the trees and brush at its verge. The view opened up at the valley’s far end, revealing the rolling grasslands and clumps of trees, the patches of distant cattle.

Why wouldn’t the cattle venture nearer into the rich grass closer to the end of the valley? There was nothing visible to keep them away: no fence, no ditch—nothing.

Depeaux became aware of a vehicle moving in a dust cloud far off beyond the cattle. That was the narrow track he and Tymiena had taken. Who was coming down there? Would they see the van-camper? Tym would be out there with her paints drawing pictures of the stupid landscape, of course, but still . . . Depeaux focused his binoculars on the dust, made out presently a large covered truck. It was following the crazy meander track toward the valley and moving fast. He tried to locate Tymiena, but the hill to his left blocked off that vista, and they’d taken the camper into tree shade along a side road. The oncoming truck might not come close enough to see her. It made no difference, anyway, he told himself. A strange excitement gripped him.

He brought his attention back to the farm buildings. Surely, someone would come out and greet the truck. He would get his first look at the occupants of this odd place. He studied the scene intently.

Nothing moved within the valley.

They must hear the truck. He could hear it himself even from this greater distance and above the waterfall’s intrusion.

Where were the farm’s occupants?

The binoculars had collected dust again. Depeaux paused to reflect on the situation while he applied the linen cloth once more to the lenses. He knew it might appear ridiculous, but the absence of surface activity in the presence of so much evidence that people carried on an active life here filled him with disquiet. It wasn’t natural! Everything was so damned motionless in the valley. He experienced the skin-creeping sensation of being watched by countless eyes. When he rolled over and peered backward through the brush, he could see not one moving thing. Why did he expect trouble from these conditions? He did, though, and his inability to explain the expectation filled him with irritation. What were they hiding here?

Despite Merrivale’s attempts to present this case as a plum for the chosen agent, Depeaux had tasted the sourness of it from the beginning. Shorty Janvert obviously had shared that sense of something profoundly wrong. This thing was sour! And it was not the sourness of green fruit and easy pickings. It was a prickling of the senses that came from knowledge of something overripe and rotten, something stewed too long in its own sour juices.

The truck was just beyond the valley now, making its final climb up the easy slope to the north fence. Depeaux brought his binoculars to bear on it once more, saw two white-clad figures in the cab. They were visible only dimly through sun reflections on the windshield.

And still, no one came from the farm buildings.

The truck turned close to the north fence, revealing large words on its fiat white side: N. Hellstrom, Inc. The machine made a wide turn until it was heading away from the farm, stopped then, and backed up to the gate. Two blond young men emerged from the cab. They trotted briskly to the rear, dropped the gate that extended to a ramp on rollers. They clambered up into the open cave of the bed, slid a tall yellow and gray box from the shadows there. The box appeared heavy from the way they strained. They tipped it onto the gate’s rollers, let it slide swiftly to a jolting, dusty stop on the ground.

What the hell was in that box? It was big enough for a coffin.

The men hopped down, strained against the box until they brought it teetering upright. They walked it then to a position clear of the tail gate, closed up the truck, got back into the cab, and drove away.

The box remained about ten feet outside the north gate.

Depeaux examined the surface of the box through his binoculars. It was taller than the men from the truck and it was heavy. It appeared to be made of wood and was bound by what seemed to be flat metal straps that ran around it from the top to the bottom.

A delivery, Depeaux mused. What in hell could be delivered to this farm in a box that shape?

Hellstrom had his own truck to bring things to the farm, but he didn’t worry about his deliveries waiting in the sun outside his gate. There might be nothing unusual about that, on the surface of it. The Agency’s dossier carried considerable information about Hellstrom’s film company. That was the N. Hellstrom, Inc. Hellstrom was both owner and manager. He made documentary films about insects. Sometimes, Hellstrom’s film efforts were incorporated into quite substantial productions which were distributed through other companies in Hollywood and New York. It was all easily explained until you sat on this hillside and watched the operation, as Depeaux was doing now and as Porter had done before him. What had become of Porter? And why wouldn’t Merrivale permit a straightforward missing person investigation?

There was something else about Hellstrom’s operation.

His nonoperation.