“Shortly after dark at the latest,” he’d said. “You be a good wife and paint your pretty pictures while I go look for birds. When I come back, I’ll teach you all about the birds and the bees.”
“Carlos!”
“Ahhh, my love, someday I shall teach you to say that exquisite name with true passion.” And the bastard had chucked her under the chin as he took his leave.
Tymiena had watched him zigzag his way up the grass-brown slope into the trees. The day was already warm and filled with that special kind of insect-singing stillness that spoke of more heat to come. Sighing, she had taken out her watercolor materials. She actually was quite a good watercolorist and, occasionally, during the long day she had experienced real involvement in capturing the essence of the autumn fields. The golden browns were particularly warm and inviting.
Shortly after midday, she put her painting aside temporarily and fixed herself a light lunch of sliced hard-boiled eggs and yogurt cold from the camper’s icebox. During the break, although the camper’s interior was oven hot, she stayed inside to check over the instruments. To her surprise, the speed-trap warning, which could be turned on its base and had a null indicator, showed radar activity in the direction of the farm. There was a clear signal aimed at the camper.
Radar surveillance of her from the farm?
She interpreted this as a danger sign and thought of going after Carlos to call him back. An alternative was to warm up the radio and report this development to headquarters. She knew with a sure instinct that headquarters would make light of it. And Carlos had ordered her to stay with the camper. In the end, she opted for neither course. Her own indecision added a frustrating accent to the nervousness that afflicted her throughout the afternoon. The sense of danger accumulated. She felt that something was warning her to get out of there. Leave the camper and get out of there! The camper was a big, fat target.
In the half-light of dusk, she folded up her painting tablet, dropped it and her paints on the cab seat, and slipped into the seat. It took a moment to warm up the radio and she checked the signal monitor, found a search resonance fanning across her own frequency. When she keyed her transmitter, the search resonance homed on her signal and jammed it. The monitor howled with the interference. She slapped the off switch, stared up the dusky hillside toward the farm. The place was not visible from this parking spot, but she felt it out there as a malevolent presence.
There was still no sign of Carlos.
Darkness would be on her within minutes. She felt nervously for the little automatic in its wrist holster.
What the hell was delaying Carlos?
She turned off all of the camper’s lights, sat in the settling darkness. Radar from the farm’s direction. They jammed her radio. This case had turned nasty. She stood up, moved softly to the rear door, slipped out on the side opposite the farm. The van itself would shield her from that searching beam. She dropped to all fours and worked her way swiftly into the tall grass. She had seen cows far down in the pasture below her and she headed for them with a sure instinct. She had grown up on a Wyoming cattle ranch and, although she preferred approaching cattle on horseback, she felt no threat from them. The threat was behind her, somewhere up at Hellstrom’s farm. The cows would offer her a masking confusion, concealment from that radar sweep. If Carlos returned, he’d turn on the camper’s lights. She would see that from a safe distance in the pastureland. Somehow, she did not expect Carlos to return. This whole situation did not make sense, and it had not made sense from the beginning, but she trusted her own instinct for self-preservation.
The words of Nils Hellstrom.
This primeval planet Earth is an arena of continual contest where only the most versatile and resourceful endure. On this testing ground where the mighty dinosaur staggered and fell, one silent witness hangs on. This witness remains our guide to human survival. This witness, the insect, has a three-hundred-million-year head start on mankind, but we will overtake him. He dominates our earth today and exploits his dominion well. With each new generation come new experiments in shape and function, transforming him into specters as limitless as the imagination of the insane. Yet, what this witness can do, we of the Hive can do because we are witness of him.
Old Harvey led his troop from a concealed perimeter exit at the northern edge of the Hive. Sod rolled back, a stump with a mucilage-sealed earth plug folded outward on a silent hinge, and the troop emerged into the night. They were lightly clad in dark gray and the night was cold, but they ignored the chill. Each carried a stunwand and wore a night-vision mask with a powerful infrared emitter (of Hive manufacture) around its rim. They looked like a troop of skin divers and the wands were like strange double-ended spears.
The stump-plug was seated securely before they left it, all sign of their passage removed.
They fanned out over the field and moved northward.
Old Harvey had chosen twenty-three of the key workers, mostly aggressive males, and he had seen to it that the females received hormones to hype them before he’d issued his careful instructions.
They wanted this Outsider female alive. Nils needed the information she carried. She was probably down among the cows. The cows could be frightened off with a low stun, but none were to be killed. This was not a sweep; it was a search. Only the Outsider female would go eventually into the vats from this venture, but that would come after she had given up the necessary information.
It had been a long time since Old Harvey had participated in a hunt and he felt the excitement of it pumping in his veins. There was life in this old worker yet!
He signaled for Saldo to take the left flank and moved out to the right himself. The night air tasted of many scents in his nostrils. There were the cattle, the dust in the tall grass, the raw earth, and the subtle esters of insects, a touch of tree resin. It was all there in his sensitive nostrils, but he could not separate out an odor that said the Outsider female was ahead of him. If she were there, the nightsight would reveal her.
Saldo had moved immediately to his assigned position and Old Harvey relaxed on that score. The young man was green, but his potential was enormous. The regular reports to Hellstrom pleased them both mightily. Saldo was among the twenty or so who might someday step into Hellstrom’s sandals. He was one of the smaller, energy-saving new breed, dark and slim, filled with a nervous energy and willingness to please, but with his own mind showing more strongly each day. He would be a power in the Hive someday, or he might even take a swarm of his own out to start a new hive.
The searchers had spread into a wide fan, walking openly down into the pastureland. Old Harvey noted that it was a good night for this search. Clouds were beginning to cover the sky, obscuring the late-rising waning moon. The cattle could be seen easily in the nightsight reflection. He kept his eyes on the scattered clumps of trees, however, ignoring the cattle for the moment. They passed one small herd with minimal disturbance of the animals, although the warm smell of the cows excited the hunter drive in the entire troop. Saldo and two others searched through the herd, making sure the animals screened no Outsider.
Hunt excitement could not be denied, though. It was evidenced by an increasing nervousness in the troop and an outflow of external hormones that began to spook the cattle. More and more, individual cows and then whole groups of them snorted and ran off with a panicked thumping.