“Does this help you?” Hellstrom asked.
“It helps,” she said. Dragging the admission out in a grudging growl, she added with a return of her former irritability, “Apparently your type can learn an occasional thing of value—when you have a lucky accident!”
Hellstrom managed to restrain a grin until he had turned away and was headed back across the lab. The sound of the work here seemed no different to him as he moved, but when he glanced back from the doorway, he saw several of the specialists clustered into a busily communicative group, their hands darting and flashing in Hive-sign. He caught the symbol for “heat” several times, but most of the other symbols escaped him. The researchers had developed their own language for use among themselves, he knew. They would have this new data all sorted out and introduced into their project in a very short time.
Privately circulated memo to the Agency board.
DESTROY THIS IMMEDIATELY AFTER READING. There is more to the Hellstrom file than we have been shown. They are holding out on us. Our other source says the MIT papers contained at least three additional pages. These indicate that Project 40 involves a new and far cheaper process of manufacturing and forming steel and that it is not a weapon at all. As I have told you all time and again, I knew this pair would try something like this on their own someday. They are through as of now!
Mimeca Tichenum’s report on Outside use of Hive stores.
Within a few seconds after injection of our breeder formula, the skin of the Outsider male becomes warm to the touch and somewhat flushed. This is similar to the reaction of Hive males, but more pronounced, also more rapid. The reaction takes no more than five to ten seconds. The dissimilarities then become quite pronounced. The Outsider male sometimes displays an initial muscle rigidity, almost like shock, which holds him virtually immobile until the major breeder transformations have occurred. This is not consistent with all Outsider males. Almost immediately after the skin response and sometimes simultaneously, the male undergoes an extremely rigid erection which is never subdued by a single orgasm. A six-orgasm reaction is not unusual. On one occasion, I noted thirty-one. Concurrently, the male emits a bitter-smelling perspiration that appears to be characteristic in all cases and which I find extremely exciting. It appears to accelerate and heighten the full spectrum of female breeding responses. This bitter smell may represent a hormone in the same class as our XB5 formula which, you will recall, elicits a similar female response, although not as extreme as what I am describing. The smell is particularly noticeable around the male nipples which, in every case I have observed, have become swollen, very tense, and firm. Occasionally, I have noted severe trembling of the male’s thigh, neck, and shoulder muscles. This appears to be autonomic and often coincides with grimaces of the face interspersed with what appear to be random head movements, moans, and groans. In general, I would say that those elements of the usual Hive breeding responses, conscious initially among our males, tend with Outsider males to be involuntary when subjects are injected with our male breeding hormones. My personal reaction (in which my sisters concur) is to find these Outsider responses immensely more stimulating than the usual Hive breeding responses.
It was twenty minutes to twelve and for the past half hour Hellstrom had been pacing the farmhouse dining room wondering if his preparations were adequate. The dining room had been decorated originally as a front showpiece, a place to entertain the occasional Outside business contact. Dining room and living room could be seen through a dark wood archway. A long imitation Jacobean table occupied the center of the dining room with ten matching chairs around it. A newly polished glass chandelier glittered over the table. A breakfront china cabinet stacked with heavy blue crockery occupied almost all of one wall opposite the arch to the living room. Tall, many-paned bay windows with faded lace curtains drawn back from them opened at the end of the room into a view of willows along the creekbank and bits of brown grass beyond looking hot and dusty in the bright sunlight. A swinging door opened in a corner of the opposite wall, with a tiny glass inset near the top to give glimpses into the kitchen were specially trained workers busily prepared for an Outsider’s visit.
Four places had been set at the kitchen end of the table—with the heavy blue ware and bone-handled utensils.
Adequate preparations! Hellstrom sneered at himself. Not superb and sure, but adequate.
The closer to the hour of Peruge’s arrival, the more Hellstrom’s earlier elation had worn thin and, now, Peruge was late.
Mimeca was helping in the kitchen. From time to time, Hellstrom glimpsed her through the glass inset in the door. She was enough like Fancy to be a gene sister, but Mimeca was from a parallel breeding strain, not the FANCY line. There was something about that dark hair and pale, faintly rosy skin that had linked itself genetically to other characteristics sought by the Hive: high fertility, independence of imagination, drive to succeed, Hive loyalty, intelligence . . .
Hellstrom glanced at the old-fashioned pendulum clock beside the door to the kitchen. A quarter to twelve and still no sign of Peruge. Why would he be late? He’d not been late before. What if he had decided not to come, but to take some other action? Could they already have discovered something incriminating about that damned bicycle? Peruge was perfectly capable of showing up with the FBI. But with Mimeca playing the role of Fancy, they might yet confound the hunters. Fingerprints would not match. She had not been bred recently, and that could be proved by medical examination. He would insist on an Outside medical examination. That would serve the double purpose of getting every one of the intruders away from here.
He heard the outer door to the front hall open.
Could that be Peruge at last?
Hellstrom swiveled, strode through the archway into the living room with all of its early twentieth-century furnishings and carefully maintained musty smells. As quickly as he went, he was only halfway across the living room when a stranger entered two steps ahead of Saldo. The stranger was a diminutive male, an inch or so shorter than Saldo, with windblown brown hair and a cautiously reserved manner behind the eyes. There were dark lines around his eyes and deep creases in his forehead. He appeared to be in his early twenties except for the lines, but Hellstrom had sometimes found age difficult to determine with small Outsiders. The stranger wore tan work pants, heavy boots, a white turtleneck shirt of some light fabric that allowed reddish chest hairs to poke through. A brown buckram jacket with slash pockets had been pulled over this. The right-side pocket bulged as though it concealed a gun. Pale yellow grass seeds could be seen sticking in his trouser cuffs.
He stopped short when he saw Hellstrom and barked, “You’re Hellstrom?”
Saldo, a pace behind the stranger, flashed a warning signal in Hive-sign.
Hellstrom felt his heartbeat quicken at the demanding, official tone in the man’s voice, but before he could respond, Saldo spoke up. “Dr. Hellstrom, this is Mr. Janvert, an associate of Mr. Peruge’s. Mr. Janvert parked his car down by the old sawmill turn and walked in across the meadow.”
Janvert kept his face grim, his manner probing. Things had moved very rapidly since Peruge’s body had been discovered. There had been a necessary call to headquarters and the Chief himself had come on the line as soon as the word was passed. The Chief himself! Janvert could not suppress a puffed-up feeling at that conversation. “Mr. Janvert, we are all depending on you. This is the last straw!” Mr. Janvert, not Shorty. The Chief’s instructions had been brief, explicit, commanding.