Just as I have walled up my own worst experiences, Hellstrom thought.
There could be no complete and permanent denial of such memories short of the vats, though. They came stealing out through unexpected cracks in one’s defenses.
Taking Hellstrom’s long silence as rebuke, Saldo lowered his gaze. “We do not know all the kinds of things that may happen to us, but we must be prepared anyway. I see that now.”
Hellstrom felt like crying out: I am not perfect! I am not invincible!
Instead, he asked, “How is Project 40 coming?”
“How did you know I’d just inquired of it?” Saldo asked, awe in his tone. “I didn’t mention it.”
“All of us who carry the extra burden of awareness are inquiring regularly into Project 40,” Hellstrom chided. “What did you find?”
“Nothing new—really. Oh, they are building the new test model swiftly and it will—”
“Have they changed their opinion about its prospects?”
“They are raising new arguments about the generation of extremely high heat.”
“Is there more?”
Saldo lifted his gaze, studied Hellstrom. Despite the prime male’s obvious fatigue, there remained one more matter that could not be avoided.
“A band of hydroponics harvesters was found wandering in the upper levels about an hour ago,” Saldo said. “As nearly as we can determine, they were expressing a need to go to the surface.”
Hellstrom sat upright on the bed, shock suppressing his fatigue. “Why wasn’t I told immediately?”
“We handled it,” Saldo said. “It was blamed on the general disturbance. They’ve all been chemically adjusted and are back at work. I’ve instituted patrols in all of the galleries to prevent a recurrence. Have I done wrong?”
“No.” Hellstrom lay back on the bed.
Patrols! Of course, that was all they could do now. But this told how deeply disturbed the entire Hive had become. Fancy was right: the predictions about the swarming urge had not taken into account a crisis such as this one.
“Were there breeders among them?” Hellstrom asked.
“A few potentials, but they—”
“They were swarming,” Hellstrom said.
“Nils! Just a few workers from—”
“Nevertheless, they were swarming. It is in the calculations of our earliest written records. You know this. We have watched for it and tried to predict it from the first. And without our leadership being able to set the exact moment, we have reached a critical condition.”
“Nils, the—”
“You were going to speak about numbers. This is not a mere consequence of numbers. Total population in a given space figures in our calculations, but this is something else. Young workers and potential breeders, at the very least, find themselves driven to leave the Hive. They were striking out on their own. That is swarming.”
“How can we prevent a—”
“Perhaps we cannot.”
“But we can’t allow it now!”
“No. We must do our best to delay the swarming. To let them go now would destroy us. Have the filters turned back to maximum for a few hours and then adjust them to optimum.”
“Nils, a suspicious Outsider in our midst might—”
“We cannot do otherwise. Desperate measures are required. A quiet weeding of population may be indicated if this—”
“The vats?”
“Yes, if the pressure becomes too great.”
“The hydroponics workers who—”
“Watch them carefully,” Hellstrom said. “And the breeders—even Fancy and her sisters. A swarm will need breeders.”
Peruge’s private instruction to Daniel Thomas (DT) Alden.
Janvert has come into possession of the special Signal Corps number and code required to call the president. If you see any attempt by Janvert to make such a call, any secretive attempt to use a telephone, you are to stop him, using whatever force you find necessary.
Peruge tuned in a symphony concert on the motel room’s radio under the mistaken idea that it might distract him. Time and again, he found himself returning to contemplation of that disturbing woman at Hellstrom’s farm.
Fancy.
What an odd name that was.
This motel had been chosen because it provided him with a room whose rear windows gave line-of-sight communication with the Steens Mountain camps where his backup teams had stationed themselves in the guise of vacationers. Peruge knew he had but to signal out that rear window and he could be in direct touch with any one of the three teams. The laser transceiver would catch their voices as clearly as if they stood in the room with him.
It bothered Peruge that he had allowed Shorty Janvert to remain in charge of the teams on the mountain. Damn that slimy-minded Merrivale!
This was not a reassuring situation and, as night gathered over the brown countryside beyond his room, Peruge reviewed his instructions and his preparations.
Had it been wise to restrict Janvert by the explicit order, “You’re to report everything to headquarters before initiating nonspecified movements during those periods when I’m out of communication on that farm.”
The specified movements were extremely few and limited in scope: trips to Fosterville for groceries and visual check on Lincoln Kraft; shift of campsite to meet necessities of protecting the overall cover; visits between camps to transfer the watch and maintain constant surveillance . . .
Thus far, Janvert had given no overt indication of untrustworthiness. His communications fitted all of the reliability requirements.
“Does the Chief know you’re going in there without communications?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t like that.”
“I’m the one to worry about that, not you,” Peruge had countered. Who did Janvert think he was?
“I’d like to see inside that place myself,” Janvert said.
“You’re not to make any such attempt without specific advice from headquarters and then only if I have been out of communication beyond a preset time limit.”
“I don’t doubt your capabilities,” Janvert said, his tone remarkably conciliatory. “I’m just worried about all the things we don’t know in this case. Hellstrom displays a remarkable lack of respect for our persons.”
Peruge suspected Janvert of trying to fabricate a tone of real concern where none existed; he felt impatient with such embroidery.
“The farm is my problem,” Peruge said. “Your problem is to observe and report.”
“Fat chance we get to observe while you’re in there without a transmitter.”
“You still can’t find a weak spot in their armor?”
“I’d have told you first thing if I had!”
“Don’t get upset about it. I know you’re trying.”
“There’s not a sound behind those walls. They must have a sophisticated damper system of some kind. Plenty of odd sounds in the valley, but nothing we can really identify. Machinery, mostly, and it sounds like heavy machinery. I suspect they have equipment sufficient to’ve spotted our probes. Sampson and Rio are moving their rig to grid position G-6 some time tonight. They did most of the probing.”
“You’re staying put?”
“Yes.”
Janvert was taking all of the right precautions. Peruge thought: Why do I distrust him? Would the little runt always live under the cloud generated by his reluctant recruitment? Peruge felt angry with himself. It was disloyal to entertain the thoughts flowing through his mind. What was the Chief really doing?