Hellstrom nodded thoughtfully. “Excellent. And I ask him when he arrives if he has a radio, because—”
“A radio would interfere with our equipment,” Saldo completed for him.
“See to the cover preparations,” Hellstrom said.
Saldo arose, stood with his fingertips touching the table, hesitating.
“Yes?” Hellstrom asked.
“Nils, are we sure the others didn’t have such equipment? I’ve been reviewing the tapes and records and—” He shrugged, obviously loath to criticize.
“We searched them. There was nothing.”
“That seems odd—the fact that they didn’t carry such equipment.”
“They weren’t considered important enough,” Hellstrom said. “They were sent in to see if they would be killed.”
“Ahhhhh—” Saldo’s expression betrayed both understanding and shock.
“We should’ve understood that about Outsiders,” Hellstrom said. “They are not very good humans, the wild ones. They commonly waste their workers this way. The ones who intruded here were expendable stock. I know now that it would have been far wiser for us to confuse them and send them away with a believable story.”
“It was a mistake to kill them?”
“A mistake to make it necessary to kill them.”
Saldo nodded his understanding of the fine distinction. “We made a mistake,” he said.
“I made a mistake,” Hellstrom corrected him. “Too much success made me careless. We must always keep that possibility in mind: any of us can err.”
The words of brood mother Trova Hellstrom.
Let me introduce a word about the quality that we call caution. Where we say we have been and where we say the Hive is headed—somewhere in that mysterious future—are by necessity somewhat removed from what we imagine are facts. Our own interpretation always intervenes. What we say we are doing is inevitably modified by our own understanding and by the limits of our comprehension. First, we are partisan. We see everything in terms of Hive survival. Second, the universe has a way of appearing to be one thing when it is actually something else. In this light, caution becomes a reliance upon our deepest collective energies. We must trust the Hive itself to possess wisdom and to manifest that wisdom through us, its cells.
When they reached that point on the lower road where Peruge could get his first look at Hellstrom’s farm, he asked Kraft to stop. The deputy brought his green and white station wagon to a skidding, dusty halt and peered questioningly at his passenger.
“Something wrong, Mr. Peruge?”
Peruge merely tightened his lips. Kraft interested him. The deputy could have been typecast for the role he played. It was almost as though someone had looked at him and said, “Now, this one, we’ll make him the deputy.” Kraft had a sunburned, western appearance, thick nose and beetling brows, pale yellow hair topped by a wide-brimmed western hat. His blocky features surmounted a blocky body that moved with a stiff-legged horseman’s walk. Peruge had seen several people on Fosterville’s one main street who looked vaguely like Lincoln Kraft.
Kraft accepted Peruge’s silent appraisal without qualms, secure in the knowledge that he was a Hive hybrid whose appearance could not possibly excite questions about alien background. Kraft’s father had been a local rancher seduced in a gene-foray by a breeding female. Many Fosterville locals had remarked Kraft’s resemblance to the father.
Now, Kraft cleared his throat. “Mr. Peruge, I said—”
“I know what you said.”
Peruge glanced at his wristwatch: a quarter to three. Every delay imaginable had been thrown in the way of this excursion: telephone calls, careful examination of the missing-persons report, a lengthy study of the photograph, question after question and a laborious assemblage of answers on paper, all executed in a slow and meticulous longhand. But here they were, finally, in sight of Hellstrom’s farm. Peruge felt his pulse quicken. The air carried a dry, cloying silence. Even the insects were still. Peruge sensed something out of character about the stillness. He grew aware slowly of the absence of insect sounds and asked Kraft about this.
Kraft pushed his hat back, rubbed a sleeve across his forehead. “I expect someone’s used a spray.”
“Really? Does Hellstrom do that sort of thing? I thought all the environmentalists were against sprays.”
“How’d you know the doc was into ecology?”
Sharp! Sharp! Peruge reminded himself. He said, “I didn’t know it. I just assumed an entomologist would have that as one of his concerns.”
“Yeah? Well, maybe the doc isn’t spraying. This is rangeland right here.”
“Somebody else could be doing it?”
“Maybe. Or the doc could be doing something else. Did you have me stop just so you could listen?”
“No. I want to get out and scout around the area and see if I can spot any sign of Carlos’s camper.”
“Not much sense in that.” Kraft spoke quickly with an undertone of sharpness.
“Oh? Why?”
“If we decide he’s really been around here, we’ll do a thorough search.”
“I thought I told you,” Peruge said. “I’ve already decided he was around here. I’d like to get out and have a little look at the area.”
“Doc don’t like people wandering around his place!”
“But you said this was rangeland. Does he control it?”
“Not exactly, but—”
“Then let’s have a look.” Peruge put a hand on the door.
“You just wait a minute!” Kraft ordered.
Peruge nodded silently. He’d found out what he wanted to know: Kraft was here to block any investigation by strangers.
“All right,” Peruge said. “Does Hellstrom know we’re coming?”
Kraft had put the station wagon in gear, prepared to resume their lurching progress toward the farm, but now he hesitated. Peruge’s demand that they stop had shocked him. The first thought had been that the Outsider had seen something suspicious, something overlooked by the Hive’s cleanup workers. Peruge’s attempts to get out and search the area had done nothing to ease that initial disquiet. Now, it occurred to Kraft that Peruge or his people might have tapped the telephone to the farm. But Hive Security was always wary of that; surely they’d have detected such intrusion.
“Matter of fact, he does know,” Kraft said. “I called to make sure the doc was here himself. Sometimes he goes gadding off to mighty strange places. And I wanted to clear it that we were coming. You know how these scientists are.”
“No. How are they?”
“They do experiments sometimes. Outsiders go blundering in and upset everything.”
“Is that why you don’t want me to get out here?”
Kraft spoke with obvious relief. “Sure it is. Besides, the doc makes movies up here all the time. He gets a bit testy if you ruin his pictures. We try to be good neighbors.”
“You’d think he’d put out guards or something.”
“No-o-o. The locals all know about his work. We steer clear of his place.”
“How testy does he get if one ruins his experiments or his movies?” Peruge asked. “Does he—ahhh, shoot?”
“Nothing like that! Doc wouldn’t really hurt anybody. But he can be mighty rough mouthed when he wants. He’s got important friends, too. Pays to be on his good side.”
That he has, Peruge thought. And that could explain the strange behavior of the local law. Kraft’s job must be a sinecure. He’d be careful not to lose it.
Peruge said, “Okay. Let’s go see if we can find Dr. Hellstrom’s good side.”