“Our surveillance workers did not know what was happening until it was too late,” Saldo explained. “Fancy had emerged earlier and they were lulled into a sense of complacency. A closed truck drove up. Four men went into Peruge’s room and two of them emerged with the bicycle. They were driving away before our people could get across the street and try to stop them. We pursued, but they were prepared for that and we were not. Another truck blocked our pursuit and let them get away. They were at the airport and the bicycle was gone before we could catch up.”
Hellstrom closed his eyes. His mind felt clotted with foreboding. He opened his eyes and said, “And all this time, Fancy was down the street at the restaurant eating Outsider foods.”
“We’ve always known how she is about that,” Saldo said. “It’s a defect.” He made the vat sign, eyebrows raised questioningly.
“No.” Hellstrom shook his head. “Don’t be too quick to discount her value to us. Fancy’s not yet ready for the vats. Where is she right now?”
“Still at the restaurant.”
“I thought I ordered her brought in.”
Saldo shrugged.
Of course, Hellstrom thought. The workers were fond of Fancy and many of them knew about her defect. What harm was there in letting her finish a meal of exotic Outsider food? Fondness could be a defect, too. “Have her picked up and brought back immediately,” he ordered.
“I should’ve ordered that myself at once,” Saldo admitted. “No excuse. I was at my station monitoring our communications with town when—no excuse. All I thought of was hurrying down the gallery to you.”
“I understand.” Hellstrom indicated a communications console ahead of him.
Saldo moved to the station quickly, relayed Hellstrom’s order. It felt good to be taking positive action, but his deeper disturbance was not eased. What did Hellstrom mean with his mysterious allusions to Fancy’s value? How could she possibly help save the Hive with such behavior? But the older ones often did know things denied to the younger. Most of the Hive’s workers knew this. It did not seem possible that Fancy was helping, but the possibility could not be denied in the face of Hellstrom’s positive assertion.
The words of Nils Hellstrom.
There is another respect in which we must guard against becoming too much like the insects upon whom we pattern our design for human survival. The insect has been called a walking digestive tract. This is not without reason. To support his own life, an insect will consume as much as a hundred times his own weight each day-which to each of us would be like eating an entire cow, a herd of thirty each month. And as the insect population grows, each individual naturally needs more. To those who have witnessed the insect’s profligate display of appetite, the outcome is clear. If allowed to continue on his reproductive rampage, the insect would defoliate the earth. Thus, with our lesson from the insect, comes a clear warning. If the race for food is to be the deciding conflict, let no one say it came without this warning. From the beginning of time, wild humans have stood helpless, watching the very soil they nurtured give birth to a competitor that could out eat them. Just as we must not let our teacher the insect consume what we require for survival, we must not launch a similar rampage of our own. The pace of our planet’s growing cycle cannot be denied. It is possible for insects or for man to destroy in a single week what could have fed millions for an entire year.
“We lifted all of the prints we could en route and put everything on a chartered plane to Portland,” Janvert said over the laser transceiver. “The preliminary report says some of the prints match those of the dame’s that we lifted in your room. Have our boys picked her up yet?”
“She got away,” Peruge growled.
Clad only in a light robe, he sat in front of the window, looking out at the morning light on the mountain and trying to keep his mind focused on the report. It was becoming increasingly difficult. His chest ached with a demanding persistence, and every movement took so much energy he wondered each time if there would be any reserves left.
“What happened?” Janvert asked. “Did our team slip up?”
“No. I should’ve sent them to the cafe. We saw her come out and head back here, but three men drove up and intercepted her.”
“They grabbed her?”
“There was no struggle. Fancy just jumped into the car with them and they drove off. Our people just weren’t in place. The delay van that helped us get away with the bike wasn’t back yet. Sampson ran out when we saw what was happening, but it all happened too quickly.”
“Back at the farm, eh?”
“I’m sure of it,” said Peruge.
“Did you get a license number?”
“Too far away, but it makes little difference.”
“So she just went along with them?”
“That’s how it looked from here. Sampson thought she looked unhappy about it, but she didn’t argue.”
“Probably unhappy that she couldn’t come back and play with you some more,” Janvert said.
“Stuff that!” Peruge snapped, then put a hand to his head. His brain felt blocked off, not working at all the way it should. There were so many details, and he could feel things slipping away from him. He really needed to take a cold shower, snap out of this fog, and get ready to return to the farm.
“I’ve been referring to the files,” Janvert said. “This Fancy fits the description of the Fancy Kalotermi who’s an officer of Hellstrom’s corporation.”
“I know, I know,” Peruge sighed.
“You feeling all right?” Janvert asked. “You’re sounding a little off your feed. Maybe that shot she gave you—”
“I’m okay!”
“You don’t sound like it. We don’t know what was in that stuff she used to charge you up last night. Maybe you’d better go out for a physical and we send in the second team.”
“Meaning you,” Peruge growled.
“Why should you have all the fun?” Janvert asked.
“I told you to stuff that! I’m all right. I’ll take a shower and get ready to go pretty soon. We have to find out how she did that.”
“I want to be the first to know,” Janvert quipped.
That fool! Peruge raged, rubbing his head. God, how his head ached—and his chest. He had to go out on a job as touchy as this one, and nothing but that fool up there to back him! It was too late to change that now. Peruge felt his hand tremble against his forehead.
“You still there?” Janvert asked.
Peruge winced at the sound. “I’m here.”
“Wouldn’t it be a gas if this Project 40 turned out to be an aphrodisiac?”
Shorty was impossible! He was like some perfect antithesis of everything Peruge needed right now. There was no doubt of the malice in Janvert’s responses, no doubt of the man’s unreliability. What could be done to change that now, though? The teams were scattered all over the area. And he had to be up at that damned farm in a couple of hours. He didn’t know how he was going to do that, but it had to be done. For just a moment, he tried to consider whether Janvert’s cynical banter might contain a small seed of good sense. What had that shot contained? Christ! If he could get a corner on that, it’d make more than ten metallurgical processes! Make a fortune under the counter.
“You’re taking an awful long time between answers,” Janvert said. “I’m going to send Clovis down to have a look at you. She’s had some nursing experience and—”