“This is not fair,” Merrivale husked. “It is simply not fair.”
“I’d like you to recount as much as you remember of your last conversation with Tymiena,” Peruge said. “Everything.”
Merrivale took a moment to regain his composure. “Everything?”
“Everything.”
“Very well.” Merrivale had a neatly organized mind which could reproduce most conversations from memory. He was hampered this time, however, by the necessity of screening every scrap through a self-protective analysis. Unconsciously, he lost his fake British accent as he proceeded. Peruge found this amusing.
Presently, Peruge interrupted, “So she went looking for Carlos.”
“Yes. Carlos was in Archives, I believe.” Merrivale wiped perspiration from his forehead.
“It’s too bad we don’t have her here to question,” Peruge said.
“I’ve told you everything!” Merrivale protested.
“Oh, I believe you,” Peruge said. He shook his head. “But—still there was something. She’d read the reports and—” He shrugged.
“Agents do die in the line of duty,” Merrivale argued.
“Of course, of course,” Peruge said. “It’s perfectly ordinary.”
Merrivale scowled, obviously thinking the facts were being twisted to damn him.
“Carlos had no similar objections?” Peruge asked.
“None whatsoever.”
Peruge pursed his lips in thought. Damnable business! So the little clerk had finally bought it. His legendary caution had failed him at last. Unless that caution had somehow pulled him through. Carlos might still be alive. Somehow, Peruge did not give much weight to that possibility. The first pawn had been taken, then the second and the third. Now, it was time for a more powerful piece. He said, “Did Carlos and Tymiena quarrel about this job?”
“Perhaps.”
“What does that mean?”
“They were always snapping at each other. Who noticed after a while?”
“And we don’t have them here to ask,” Peruge mused.
“I don’t need reminders of that.”
“Do you recall what Carlos said when you last saw him?”
“Certainly; he told me he’d report within forty-eight hours of his arrival on the scene.”
“That long? Did they have radio?”
“There was one in the van they picked up in Portland.”
“And no reports from them after that?”
“They called in to check the equipment. That was from Klamath Falls. Portland relayed.”
“Forty-eight hours,” Peruge muttered. “Why?”
“He wanted time to get set up on the scene, to reconnoiter the area, choose his observation site.”
“Yes, but—”
“That was not an unreasonable delay.”
“But Carlos was always so cautious.”
“This speaks of caution,” Merrivale objected.
“Why didn’t you order him to make more frequent periodic calls?”
“It did not seem indicated.”
Peruge shook his head from side to side. It was diabolic. A pack of amateurs would not have left this many loose ends and blunders behind them. Merrivale would admit no mistakes, though. And the man had those explicit orders to fall back on. Embarrassing. He would have to be shunted aside, though. He’d have to be stored somewhere, ready for the axe to fall. Merrivale was a miserable incompetent. There was no excuse for him. He was just the kind of man they needed right now, someone to point to when the really embarrassing questions were asked.
With angry abruptness, Peruge pushed himself out of the chair, stood glowering down at Merrivale, who appeared thoroughly cowed.
“You’re a fool, Merrivale,” Peruge said in a cold, hard voice. “You’ve always been a fool and always will be. We have a full report from DT on Tymiena’s objections. She wanted a backup team. She wanted frequent radio contact. You specifically told her not to bother Portland-relay unless it was something vital. You told her she was to take her orders from Carlos and not to question them. You ordered her not to mount any official inquiry into Porter. Under no circumstances was she to move out from under her cover. Those were your instructions—” Peruge pointed to the folder on Merrivale’s desk, “and you had read that!”
Merrivale sat in shocked silence at the outburst. For one horrible moment, he appeared about to cry. His eyes glistened with unshed tears. Shocked awareness of that possibility cooled him, though, and he managed to respond with a semblance of his accent intact.
“I say! You don’t leave your opinions in any doubt!”
Later, on the telephone from the airport, Peruge said, “I suppose we ought to be grateful to him. There’s no doubt now of the situation we’re in.”
“What do you mean by that?” the Chief asked, his voice hoarsely disgruntled.
“I mean, we went in not knowing Hellstrom’s situation. Now, we know it. He’s willing to play for high stakes.”
“As though we weren’t.”
“Well, I’ve settled with Merrivale, at any rate. I ordered him to stand by for reassignment.”
“He won’t do anything stupid?”
“Hasn’t he done enough stupid things already?”
“You know what I mean, dammit!”
“I think he’ll obey his orders to the letter,” Peruge said.
“But you upset him badly.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No doubt of it.” This was an unfamiliar tack, and Peruge hesitated, staring thoughtfully at his scrambler cap on the telephone.
“He’s been on the phone to me,” the Chief said. “He complained about you bitterly. Then he said he was putting our written instructions to him in a safe place. He also made a point of telling me he had given Janvert the special Signal Corps number and code letters, as per our instructions for supervising agents. He even quoted the section to me from some set of orders we gave him years ago.”
After a long silence, Peruge said, “We might have to take stronger measures with him.”
“Yes, there’s always that,” the Chief said.
The words of Nils Hellstrom.
Unlike man, whose physical limitations are dictated from the moment of his birth, the insect is born with the ability to actually improve upon his body. When the insect reaches the limits of his capability, he miraculously transforms into an entirely new being. In this metamorphosis, I find the most basic pattern for my understanding of the Hive. To me, the Hive is a cocoon from which the new human will emerge.
Hellstrom sat thinking in his cell. His eyes were absently aware of the charts and diagrams pasted on the walls, the reassuring standby-blink of his repeater console. But he was not actually seeing these things. They’ll send in the first team now, he thought. They were just probing before. Now, we’ll get the real experts and from them we may learn enough to save ourselves.
It had been a long night and a longer day. He had managed to get a two-hour nap, but the Hive was tense and twanging with crisis awareness. Body chemistry told the workers what was happening if nothing else told them.
When he’d returned to the cell a little more than two hours before, Hellstrom had been so tired he had tossed his Outsider jacket onto a chair and flopped on the bed in his clothes. Something heavy in a pocket of the jacket had dragged the jacket into a mound on the floor beside the chair. He could see the lump of the heavy object in his pocket and wondered idly what he’d left there. Abruptly, he remembered the Outsider pistol he’d picked up before leaving his cell—how long ago? It seemed not only another lifetime ago, but in another universe. Everything had changed. Powerful Outside forces had developed an interest in something that was sure to lead them to the Hive.