Kraft closed the door behind them and moved three paces into the room. He stood there now, arms folded across his breast as though guarding the entrance. There was another door in the far-right corner, Peruge noted, but that led into the shadowy room of electronic instruments. Again, Peruge felt that the entire setup did not quite fit his picture of a movie studio.
There was a small oblong wooden table with four chairs around it in the room and Hellstrom took a chair on the far side and spoke in a calm voice. “The men you’re watching in there, Mr. Peruge, are mixing several sound sources for a combined track. It’s rather delicate work.”
Peruge studied the people in the shadowy room, unable to pinpoint what struck him odd about them. Abruptly, he realized that of the six men at the arc of instruments and three women standing on the far side of the arc, all but one looked enough alike to be from the same family. Again, he scanned the faces illuminated by the low, wavering light. Five of the men and three of the women were alike, not only in the uniform white smocks, but in short blond hair and rather pinched faces dominated by large eyes. The women were distinguished only by rather obvious breasts and a slight softening of the features. The lone male who differed from the others was also blond and reminded Peruge of someone. He realized then that the odd man out looked like Hellstrom.
As all this flashed through Peruge’s mind, the outer door opened behind Kraft and the young woman he had seen on the boom entered. At least, Peruge cautioned himself, she appeared to be that same young woman, but the people in the next-door booth made him wonder.
“Fancy,” Hellstrom said, speaking quickly in alarm. Why was she here? he asked himself. He hadn’t sent for her and he didn’t like the stalking feline expression on her face.
Kraft stepped aside grudgingly to allow her to pass.
Peruge watched her, noting the oval face, almost doll-like, the extremely sexy body that she moved with full awareness of its contours showing through the thin smock. She kept her attention on Hellstrom while speaking, but there was no doubt she was playing to Peruge.
“Ed sent me over,” she said. “He wants you to know that we have to reshoot that mosquito sequence. You’re in it, you know. I told you we’d have to reshoot. The mosquitoes were disturbed, but you wouldn’t listen to me.”
Abruptly, she appeared to notice Peruge, moved up to within a pace of him, and asked, “Who’s this?”
“This is Mr. Peruge,” Hellstrom said, a deep note of caution in his voice. What was Fancy doing?
“Hello, Mr. Peruge,” she said, her voice lilting. She moved even closer to him. “I’m Fancy.”
Hellstrom watched her closely. What was she doing? He inhaled a deep breath through his nose, half anger, half probing, and detected that Fancy had shot herself up with breeding hypes. She was trying to arouse Peruge! Why? She was having an effect, too. Peruge was attracted to Fancy and unable to explain the sudden magnetism. No wild Outsider could understand the simple chemistry of the situation. Kraft, too, was caught momentarily by her powerful sexuality, but Hellstrom flashed a hand signal which alerted him. Kraft, long out of the Hive’s daily contacts and constant reinforcements, took a few seconds to recover. Peruge, however, was not recovering.
Hellstrom wondered if he should let this continue. She was playing a dangerous game and acting without instructions. Granted, it would be desirable to have Peruge’s genes in the Hive stocks, but . . .
Peruge stood in semishock. He could not recall ever being caught up in sexual excitement this swiftly and this thoroughly. The woman felt it, too. She was panting for him. He wondered distantly if these people had done something to him, but rejected that immediately. This was that oddly random chemistry one heard about. He realized, catching up with her words, that Fancy was asking if he were going to stay the night.
With an effort, Peruge said, “I’m staying in town.”
She glanced at Hellstrom. “Nils, why don’t you invite Mr. Peruge to stay with us?”
“Mr. Peruge is here on business,” Hellstrom said. “I imagine he’d prefer staying in his own quarters.”
Peruge wanted nothing more than to stay the night with this compelling woman, but he began to sense inner alarm signals.
“You’re just being stuffy,” Fancy said to Hellstrom. Again, she looked up into Peruge’s eyes. “Are you in films, Mr. Peruge?”
He tried to fight free of that enveloping aura of sexuality, tried to think. “No. I’m—I’m, ah, looking for some friends, an employee and his wife, really, who’re missing around here someplace.”
“Oh, I hope nothing’s happened to them,” she said.
Hellstrom rose from the table, crossed to Peruge’s side. “Fancy, we do have a schedule to keep.”
Peruge tried to wet his lips with his tongue; his mouth felt dry, his body trembled. The delectable little witch! Was she told to make a play for him?
Hellstrom glanced at Kraft, wondered if they should do something physical to get Fancy out of the room. She’d really shot herself up, the crazy female! What was she doing? He spoke to her in a reasonable, but commanding tone. “Fancy, you’d better get back to the crew. Tell Saldo I want special attention paid to the most urgent problems first and tell Ed I’ll be ready to reshoot the mosquito sequence tonight.”
Fancy drew back a step, relaxed. She had this Peruge on a string and she knew it. The man almost followed her as she moved away from him. He would keep. She said, “All you ever think about is work. Anybody would think you were just a plain old, common everyday worker.”
Hellstrom realized she was taunting him.
Fancy obeyed, though, her Hive training dominant. She turned slowly, went to the door with only a flicking glance at Kraft, opened the door, and paused in the doorway to look back at Peruge. She smiled at the Outsider then, sly and inviting, raised her eyebrows in another silent taunt directed at Hellstrom, and went out, closing the door softly behind her.
Peruge cleared his throat.
Hellstrom studied Peruge. The man was having trouble recovering, not surprising in view of how Fancy had armed herself for that attack. It had been an attack, Hellstrom realized. Pure attack. She was out to get Peruge, to breed him.
“That’s a—very attractive woman,” Peruge said, his voice husky.
“Would you like to go over to the house for a cup of coffee?” Hellstrom asked, feeling a sudden sympathy for Peruge. The poor wild creature had no idea what had happened to him.
“That’s very kind of you,” Peruge said, “but I thought we were going to look at your studio.”
“Didn’t you see the studio out there?”
“Is that all there is to it?”
“Oh, we have the usual support facilities,” Hellstrom said. “Some of it’s too technical for the casual visitor to understand, but we have a wardrobe section and one of the best editing labs in the business. Our collection of rare insects is without equal anywhere in the world. We could also screen some of our film for you if you’d like, just to show you what we do here, but not today, I’m afraid. The schedule is pretty tight. I hope you understand.”