The words of Trova Hellstrom.
Whatever we do in breeding for the specialists we require, we must always include the human being in our processes, preferring this to the intrusion of surgical instruments. The sexual stump can be condoned only as long as we include the body’s original genetic materials in the practice. Anything that smacks of genetic surgery or engineering must be looked upon with the gravest misgivings. We are, first and foremost, human beings, and we must never loose ourselves from our animal ancestry. Whatever we are, we are not gods. And whatever this universe may be, it obviously rests heavily in dependence upon the accidental.
“He’s not transmitting,” Janvert said, moving the control dials on his instruments. He sat in the curtained shadows of their van’s interior, the receiver mounted in front of him on a shelf originally intended as part of the camper’s kitchen. Nick Myerlie’s bluff and sweaty body was leaning over him, one red-knuckled hand on the counter beside the radio. The big man’s heavy features carried a frown of deep concern.
“What do you think’s happened to him?” Myerlie asked.
“I think he turned his transmitter off deliberately.”
“For God’s sake! Why?”
“The last thing I received,” he tapped the tape recorder over the radio, “was Hellstrom saying something about not bringing any radio equipment into their studio.”
“That’s risky damned business, turning off his transmitter,” said Myerlie.
“I’d have done the same,” Janvert said. “He has to get inside that studio.”
“But still—”
“Oh, shut up! Is Clovis still outside with her telescope?”
“Yes.” Myerlie sounded hurt. He knew Janvert was second-in-command on this case, but it was irritating to take such short-tempered treatment from a runt.
“See if she’s seen anything.”
“That thing’s only twenty-power and it’s still pretty misty out there.”
“Go find out anyway. Tell her what’s happened.”
“Right.”
The camper creaked and moved as Myerlie took his big body out the door.
Janvert, who had lifted one earphone away from his right ear to talk to Myerlie, replaced it now and stared at the receiver. What had Peruge meant by that last odd conversation? Metallurgy? New inventions?
The words of Trova Hellstrom.
Our future lies in an ultimate form of human domestication. All Outside patterns of humankind must be seen, then, as wild forms. In our domestication process, we will necessarily introduce a multiplicity of diverse human types into our social scheme. No matter how much diversity this brings, the mutual interdependence and consequent sense of respect for our essential oneness must never be lost. Brood mother and prime male are different only in surface features from the lowliest worker. If the most exalted among us have any prayer, it must be one of thanksgiving that there are workers. It is salutary, when seeing a common worker, to think, there, but for leader foods and training, am I.
Entering the studio through a double-door system that explained why he had not been able to see inside the building from the yard, Peruge sensed something odd about the sounds and movements. That fetid animal smell was very strong in here, too. He ascribed it to a glass-fronted structure off to his left, behind which he could discern animals in cages. He identified mice, guinea pigs, and monkeys.
In all of the film companies Peruge had seen before, he had observed a special quality of silence while group energies flowed up a mysterious channel into the camera lens. This place was different, though. No one tiptoed. Those who moved about walked with a casual silence that said they found this normal. The door baffles had eliminated that incessant humming so irritatingly noticeable outside, but in here there was a faint susurration to replace it.
Only one camera crew appeared to be working. They were set up in a corner to his right and were working very close to a glass container about three feet on a side. The glass reflected hot shards of light.
Hellstrom had warned Peruge not to talk until given permission, but Peruge pointed to the camera crew in the corner, lifted his eyebrows in a silent question.
Bending close, Hellstrom whispered, “We’re capturing the articulation of insect body parts in a new way. Magnified views. The lens is actually inside that glass case which maintains a special climate for the subject insect.”
Peruge nodded, wondering why they must remain silent for that. Would they be doing sound-on-film for such a sequence? It didn’t seem likely, but his acquaintance with film making was perfunctory at best, hurriedly augmented for this assignment, and he knew better than to speak his question aloud. Hellstrom would be delighted to have an excuse to throw him out. The man’s nervousness had become increasingly obvious as they entered the studio.
Hellstrom leading and Kraft bringing up the rear, they struck out diagonally across the center of the studio area. As always when an Outsider was this close to the workings of the Hive head, Hellstrom found himself unable to suppress completely feelings of disquiet. The Hive’s territorial conditioning went too deep. And Peruge reeked of Outsider smells. He did not belong in this place. Kraft, behind them, would be having an even worse time of it. He had never before accompanied an Outsider into these precincts. The working crews were behaving with outward normalcy, however. They would feel this Outsider’s presence as a constant rasping on their awareness, but front training dominated their reactions. All proceeded smoothly.
Peruge noticed the movement of people around them: across their diagonal path, beside them, off in the corners of the cavernous studio. Everyone appeared to be on normal business and none gave more than a casual glance to the trio crossing the open area, but Peruge could not avoid feeling that he was under the closest scrutiny. He looked upward. The bright lights being used in the lower part of the studio left the upper regions in deep shadows that his vision could not penetrate. Was that deliberate? Were they hiding something up above him?
As he watched, the swinging descent of a cage on the end of a boom caught his attention and he stumbled over a coil of cables. He would have fallen if Kraft had not leaped forward to catch his arm. The deputy restored Peruge to balance, put a finger to lips for silence. Kraft released Peruge’s arm reluctantly. It felt more secure to have a controlling arm on this intruder. Kraft found himself torn by tormenting worries. Nils was playing with fire! There were voiceless workers out there on the studio floor. Naturally, they’d been conditioned for the menial tasks here, but their presence posed an explosive danger. What if one of them reacted to Peruge’s Outsider chemistry? The man’s smell was offensive!
Peruge, seeing his path clear for a few paces, glanced back at the descending boom cage. It had swung from the gloomy mystery of the upper reaches and was moving in oiled silence down to the camera setup in the corner. A woman in a white smock occupied the cage. She had startlingly pale skin accented by ebony hair tied at the neck in a simple chignon. The fluttering of her smock in the wind of the boom’s movement suggested that she wore nothing under it.
Kraft pushed Peruge’s arm, urging him to move faster. Reluctantly, Peruge picked up his pace. There had been something magnetically attractive about that pale-skinned woman and he could not get her image out of his mind. Her face had been a madonna oval beneath that black cap of hair. The arms protruding from the smock’s short sleeves had been almost too fat, but suggesting sensuous softness rather than obesity.
Hellstrom stood now at a door in a structure that had been erected as a separate, flat-roofed building inside the studio. A wall climbed to the upper areas behind the flat roof. Peruge estimated that the wall split the barn in half lengthwise and wondered what lay behind it. He followed Hellstrom into a dimly lighted room where there was heavy glass from waist height to ceiling across two of the inner walls. One glass partition gave a view into a smaller studio where insects were flitting openly back and forth through blue light—pale, big-winged moths by their appearance. The other window framed a shadowy room where men and women worked at a long, curved bank of electronic instruments with small screens directly in front of each operator showing Lilliputian movements. It reminded Peruge of a television control booth.