“Why were you sent here?” he asked.
“I wasn’t sent!”
“Then what were you doing here?”
She seized this opportunity to elaborate on her cover story: the long hours Carlos usually worked, the rare vacations, his interest in birds, her own interest in landscape painting. There was a certain delicate practicality about her account, a sense of domesticity she found herself almost wishing were true. Carlos hadn’t been such a bad sort in spite of . . . She broke off her account as this thought intruded. It confused her. There was internal significance in such a thought. Why would she think about Carlos in the past tense? Carlos was dead! She felt certain of this. What had that character over there in the dark said to give her this feeling of certainty? She trusted her instincts and felt fear rising like a tide of bile.
Hellstrom saw the emotion on his instruments, tried to divert her. “Are you hungry?” he asked.
She found it difficult to speak at first, then responded in spite of a dry mouth. “No, but my ankle hurts terribly.”
“We’ll take care of that pretty soon,” he reassured her. “Tell me, Mrs. Depeaux, if you were frightened, why did you not drive down to Fosterville in your camper?”
That’s what I should’ve done! she told herself. But she suspected this character and his friends had been prepared for such an attempt and that wouldn’t have succeeded, either. She said, “I must’ve done something wrong. It wouldn’t start.”
“That’s odd,” he said. “It started immediately for us.”
So they had the camper, too! All evidence of Depeaux and Grinelli would be gone by now. Carlos and Tymiena, both dead. A tear trickled down the edge of her left cheek.
“Are you a communist agent?” she husked.
In spite of himself, Hellstrom chuckled. “What an odd question from a simple housewife!”
His amusement filled her with bracing anger. “You’re the one who keeps talking about agents and the State Department!” she flared. “What’s going on here?”
“You are not what you appear to be, Mrs. Depeaux,” Hellstrom said. “There is even some doubt in my mind as to whether you actually are Mrs. Depeaux.” Ahhh, that hit a nerve! he noted. So they were just working together and not married. “I suspect you did—do not even care much for Carlos.”
Did not care! she thought. That’s what he was going to say! He caught himself. The lie came out!
She began to think back over this unseen man’s every reference to Carlos. The dead felt no pain. There was a sense of over-and-done-with about every mention of Carlos. She revised her assessment of her own situation. Darkness could have more significance than hiding the identity of her interrogator. It could be a deliberate ploy to confuse her, lower her defenses. She began exploring her bindings, straining against them. They were damnably tight!
“You do not answer me,” Hellstrom said.
“Why should I? I think you’re awful!”
“Is your agency an arm of the government’s executive branch?”
“No!”
He read otherwise in her responses, but it was a tempered reading. The answer probably was that she believed this to be the case but harbored her own doubts. He noted she was twisting frantically, trying to escape her bonds. Didn’t she believe he could see her?
“Why does the government investigate us?” he asked.
She refused to answer. The bindings were deceptive. They felt like leather and appeared to give when she strained against them, but when she stopped struggling even for an instant, they felt as tight as ever.
“You work for an agency associated with the executive arm of government,” he said. “It is a matter of curiosity that such an agency should pry into our affairs. What interest could the government have in us?”
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” she asked.
She gave up struggling, felt completely exhausted. Her mind teetered on the edge of hysteria. They were going to kill her. They’d killed Carlos and were going to kill her. Something had gone very sour. It was the very thing she’d sensed in this assignment from the first. That damn fool, Merrivale! He never got anything right! And Carlos—the dope of dopes! Carlos had probably walked right into a trap. They’d caught him and he’d spilled his guts. That was obvious. This questioner knew too many things already. Carlos had babbled and they’d killed him anyway.
Hellstrom’s instruments revealed her approach to hysteria. The fear disturbed him. He knew it was partly his own sensitivity to her subtle bodily excretions. She was broadcasting terror for anyone Hive-trained to receive. No worker could escape such awareness. He didn’t even need his instruments. This room would have to be flushed out later. They’d had to do the same thing after interrogating Depeaux. Any workers who encountered such emissions would be disturbed. He still had his duty to the Hive, though. Perhaps in her fear she would reveal what he most wanted to know.
“You work for the government,” he said. “We know this. You were sent here to pry into our affairs. What did you expect to find?”
“I wasn’t!” she screamed. “I wasn’t! I wasn’t! I wasn’t! Carlos just told me we were going on vacation. What’ve you done with Carlos?”
“You’re lying,” he said. “I know you are lying and you certainly must realize by now that your lies are not working with me. It will go better with you if you tell me the truth.”
“You’re going to kill me anyway,” she whispered.
Damn! Hellstrom thought.
His brood mother had warned him that this crisis within a crisis might come in his lifetime. His workers had tortured a wild human. It had been done far outside the concept of mercy. Such a concept had not even entered the workers’ awareness as they went about their business of extracting information necessary for the Hive’s survival. But such actions left their mark on the entire Hive. There were no more innocents anywhere in the Hive. We’ve moved a step closer to the insects we mimic, he thought. And he wondered why the thought saddened him. He suspected that any life form that inflicted unnecessary pain tended to find its consciousness eroding. Without consciousness to reflect back upon life, all life might lose its sense of purpose.
In sudden anger, he snarled, “Tell me about Project 40!”
She gasped. They knew everything! What did they do to Carlos to make him tell everything? She felt icy with terror.
“Tell me!” he barked.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The instruments told him what he needed to know. “It will go very badly with you if you do not tell me,” he explained. “I wish to spare you that. Tell me about Project 40.”
“But I don’t know anything about it,” she moaned.
The instruments accorded this the value of an almost truth. “You know some things about it,” he said. “Tell me those things.”
“Why don’t you just go ahead and kill me?” she asked.
Hellstrom found himself working through a haze of deep sadness, almost despair. Powerful wild humans Outside knew about Project 40! How could that be? What did they know? This female was little more than a pawn in a larger game, but she might yet provide a valuable clue.
“You must tell me what you know,” he said. “If you do, I promise to treat you gently.”
“I don’t trust you,” she said.
“You have no one else to trust.”
“They’ll come looking for me!”
“But they will not find you. Now, tell me what you know about Project 40.”
“It’s just a name,” she said, wilting. What was the use? They knew everything else.
“Where did you encounter this name?”
“There were papers. They were left on a table at MIT and one of our people copied them.”
Stunned, Hellstrom closed his eyes. “What was in those papers?” he asked.