From the Hive Manual.
The neutered worker is the true source of freedom in any society. Even the wild society has its neutered workers, the neutering being maintained behind a mask of actual fertility from which real offspring come. But such offspring have no share in the free creative life of the wild society and thus are effectively neutered. Such workers can always be recognized. They are not burdened with intellect, with unrestricted emotion, or with individual identity. They are lost in a mass of creatures like themselves. In this, neither our Hive nor the insects are giving the universe anything new. What the insects have and what we are copying is a society formed in such a way that its workers toil together to create the illusive Utopia—the perfect society.
It took Hellstrom’s number-two camera crew almost six hours to shoot the new lab sequence with mice and wasps. Even then, Hellstrom was not satisfied that they had the proper effect on film. He had become very sensitive to the artistic merit of what they created. He expected the rushes to be far short of what he had hoped for in this sequence. The demands for excellence he was making now went far beyond the implicit knowledge that quality brought more income to the Hive. He wanted quality for the thing itself, just as he wanted it for every aspect of the Hive.
Quality of specialists, quality of life, quality of creations—all were interrelated.
Hellstrom had the boom lift him to the aerie after they finished shooting, trying to conceal his worries over the latest reports on the night sweep. Because he had been in this sequence, he had been tied to the set during the most important part of the sweep. It was still many hours to dawn and the problem had not been solved: the female who had accompanied their captive intruder remained at large.
One of the Hive’s chief concerns had always been to produce workers who could “front” for them with the Outside, incorruptible workers who would not betray even by chance what lay beneath Guarded Valley and its surrounding hills. Hellstrom wondered now if they might not have uncovered a breeding defect somewhere in the personnel charged with the sweeps. The male intruder had been picked up easily beyond the bordering trees of the west meadow. A sweep detail had enveloped the van-camper almost immediately afterward, but somehow they had missed the female. It didn’t seem possible that she could escape, but none of the sweepworkers had even smelled her trail.
Many key security workers were in the aerie command post when Hellstrom entered. They noted his entrance, but stayed at their jobs. Hellstrom scanned the dimly lighted room with its arc of repeater screens, its little clutches of workers discussing the problem. Saldo was there, dark in the manner of his breeder mother, Fancy, but with the harsh hawk features of his Outsider father. (That was one thing Fancy did well, Hellstrom reminded himself. She bred Outside at every opportunity and the resultant new genes were prized by the Hive.) Old Harvey’s post at the security console had been taken over by a younger male of Fancy’s line. He took the name of Timothy Hannsen in his Outside guise. Hannsen had been chosen as a front because of penetrating good looks that tended to overpower the conscious balance of Outsider females. He also had a sharply incisive mind which made him particularly valuable in a crisis. That was true of many in Fancy’s line, but particularly so of Saldo. Hellstrom had high hopes for Saldo, who had been taken on as a special educational charge by Old Harvey.
Hellstrom paused inside the door to gauge conditions in the aerie. Should he take over? They would defer to him at the slightest indication that he was assuming command. Brood mother Trova’s decision had never been really questioned. They always sensed how much more potent was his commitment to the Hive, how much more effective his decisions. They might disagree at times, and occasionally even prevail over him, but there remained a subtle air of deference even when they voted him down in the Council. And when, as often happened, his view later proved to have been the correct one, his hold on them became even stronger. It was a situation toward which Hellstrom maintained a constant mistrust.
No worker is perfect, he told himself. The Hive itself must be supreme in all things.
Old Harvey stood against the wall at Hellstrom’s left, arms folded, his face underlighted by the glowing screens, giving the illusion that he had been cast from green stone. There was movement in his eyes, though. Old Harvey was watching the room critically. Hellstrom crossed to his side, glanced once at the dewlapped old face, then at the consoles. “Any sign of her yet?”
“No.”
“Didn’t we have her under constant infrasurveillance?”
“Radar and sonics, too,” Old Harvey muttered.
“Did she have instruments to detect us?”
“She tried to use her radio, but we jammed it.”
“That alerted her, then?”
“Probably.” Old Harvey sounded tired and displeased.
“But no other instruments?”
“The vehicle had a small radar-type speed-trap warning device. I think she may have detected our surveillance that way, too.”
“But how could she slip through our sweep?”
“They’re reviewing the tapes again. They think she could’ve gone searching for her companion and been lost in the general confusion our sweep created on the instruments.”
“The sweep would’ve picked her up despite that.”
Old Harvey turned, looked directly at him. “So I told them.”
“And they overruled you.”
Old Harvey nodded.
“What do they believe happened?” Hellstrom asked.
“She took a calculated risk and went right into the midst of our searchers.”
“Her smell would’ve given her away!”
“So I said, and they agreed. They then suggested she slipped away from the truck to the north, using it as a shield. Their thought is that she walked softly to hide her movements in the background static. There was a time gap between darkness and when our sweep reached her vicinity. She could’ve done it. She had two choices: get away or slip up on us from another direction. They think she’s out there stalking us.”
“And you don’t agree with that?” Hellstrom asked.
“Not that one,” Old Harvey said.
“Why?”
“She wouldn’t slip up on us.”
“But why?”
“We hit her hard with the low frequency. She was twitchy and nervous all afternoon, much too nervous to come for us.”
“How do you know what her reserves of courage might be?”
“Not that one, Nils. I watched her.”
“She didn’t look like your type, Harvey.”
“Make your joke, Nils. I watched her most of the afternoon.”
“So this is no more than your opinion from personal observation?”
“Yes.”
“Why aren’t you pressing that opinion?”
“I did.”
“Given your choice, what action would you take?”
“You really want to know?”
“I do, or I wouldn’t ask.”
“First, I think she’s slipped down to the northeast among those cattle in the pasture. I’m guessing that she knows cattle. There was something about her—” He wet his lips with his tongue. “If she knows cattle, she could move among them with no problems. They’d mask her smell; they’d provide all the cover she needs.”
“No one here agrees with you?”
“They say those are range cattle and they’d have spooked at the first smell of her. We’d have detected that.”
“And your response?”
“A lot of spooking depends on whether a cow can smell your fear. We know that. We do it ourselves. If she wasn’t afraid of them and moved softly—well, we can’t just close our eyes to that possibility.”