He thought sadly of Lincoln Kraft, whose charred body (hardly enough left to bother taking to the vats) had been removed from the wreckage of one of the attackers’ vans. Kraft’s death made the day’s loss thirty-one.
Just a beginning.
The aerie had moved to a subdued murmur of questioning earlier. The words attack and prisoners had been repeated in many contexts. There’d even been a kind of adrenaline-pumped elation in the aerie, references to “the victory.”
Again, Hellstrom thought about the three prisoners the Hive now held. It seemed strange to be holding prisoners. Outsider adults seemed naturally to belong to the vats. Only very small children had ever been considered worthy of reshaping for the Hive’s uses. Now—now, there were new possibilities.
Janvert, the most puzzling of the three, had a background in law, Hellstrom had learned through careful questioning. Janvert might be ridiculously easy to wean from Outside ways, provided he could be sufficiently tempered to Hive chemistry. The female, Clovis Carr, was a carrier of aggressive characteristics that the Hive might turn to its advantage. The third one, whose identification papers said he was Daniel Thomas Alden, carried himself like a soldier. There could be valuable characteristics in all of them, but Janvert remained the most interesting. He was small, too, which was desirable in the Hive.
Hellstrom turned back to the observer stations, bent low over the second one from the right. “What about our patrol in the creek bottom?” he asked. “Have they anything new to report on the conversation from that car they’re watching?”
“The Outsiders are still puzzled, Nils. They call this a ‘very strange case’ and they refer occasionally to someone named Gammel, who apparently believes the case is a snafu. What’s a snafu?”
“A foul-up,” Hellstrom translated. “It’s military slang: situation normal all fouled up.”
“Something that has gone wrong, then?”
“Yes. Tell me if they hear anything new.”
Hellstrom straightened, thought of calling Saldo. The younger man had been sent to keep a discreet observation on Project 40, working from one end of the long gallery at level fifty. It was not a good vantage point, because the major work was being conducted toward the middle of the gallery, at least half a mile from the end, but the researchers had shown increasing irascibility after the earlier incident with an “interfering observer.” Hellstrom was counting on Saldo’s intelligence to manage the situation. It was a matter of desperation for them to know in the aerie if the situation in the lab showed new promise.
We could never get away with a bluff against the Outsiders, Hellstrom told himself. The Hive might gain a little time for itself, might be able to parlay the stunwands to create a temporary belief in a more potent weapon built on the same principle. But the Outsiders would demand a demonstration. And there was always Harl’s warning to consider. The threat to use an absolute weapon put the trigger in the hands of an opponent who might say, so use it! The weapon must be applicable at less than absolute energies, and that must be demonstrable, unmistakably demonstrable. The Outsiders had a saying that fit the situation aptly. “Don’t kid the kidders.” A bluff would not work for long. The Hive would be called—and then what?
The wild Outsiders were very strange, really. They tended not to believe in violence until it was inflicted upon them. They had a saying about this, too. “It can’t happen here.”
Perhaps this was inevitable in a world that based its societies on threat, violence, and illusions of absolute power. How could such people as Janvert be expected to think in more malleable terms, to think of life dependencies and the interlocked relationships of living systems, to think of inserting the human species into the great circle of life? Such concepts would be gibberish to Outsiders, even those who spoke for the new fad—ecology.
From Joseph Merrivale’s private notes.
As per the instructions handed to me at JFK Airport, I arrived late Sunday in Lakeview to establish a preliminary liaison with FBI-SAIC Waverly Gammel, who had set up a base in Fosterville. He took me to Fosterville where we arrived at 2318 hours. Gammel reported having taken no action except minimal surveillance of target area from distance of approximately two miles and involving only four vehicles with nine men. According to Gammel, this was in compliance with his instructions, a statement not in accord with what I was led to believe at the action briefing. Gammel reports no word from any of our team that entered the target area earlier on this date. Gammel evinces doubts that this case involves narcotics. He has seen the preliminary report on the Peruge autopsy. I must protest my dependence on another agency for the manpower to prosecute this case. Divided authority is producing a situation fraught with potential embarrassments and inconveniences. The loose working agreement under which I must perform my duties can only exacerbate present difficulties. Since many actions have already been taken in the field on this case without my knowledge or agreement, I must lodge my formal protest at the earliest opportunity. My capacity in the present contretemps bodes ill for our responsibilities. I must make it clear that none of the conduct in this case has accorded with my own understanding of the decisions required to resolve the situation.
Saldo made record time coming up from the Hive’s 5,000-foot level where the researchers had moved their operations. There were fast elevators only in the so-called new galleries below 3,100 feet, but even these became progressively slower the higher he went. The work in the new galleries delayed him slightly at 3,800 feet, but he bulled his way through, making a note to ask Hellstrom if that work could not be put on minimum standby during the present crisis.
He had left a young assistant at the relocated lab, seated at the southeast end of the long gallery with the secret weapon Saldo had commandeered: the binoculars once used by the Outsider, Depeaux. The binoculars revealed a spate of activity by the researchers which Saldo interpreted as readiness for a test of the system. He dared not approach the specialists, though. Hellstrom’s orders had been explicit on that score. Only Hellstrom might change that now and, knowing the urgency, Saldo went to argue for a small interruption of the lab work.
It was almost midnight when the boom cage deposited him on the catwalk outside the aerie. A guardworker there passed him with only a casual glance of recognition. The inner room was dim and oddly hushed as he passed through the baffle, and he saw that most of the Hive’s leadership cadre had taken over the night duty with Hellstrom, who stood at the room’s north end, a blocky figure against the dark outline of the louvered window. Saldo found he did not have the highest regard for the leadership qualities of most of those present, excepting Hellstrom, and sometimes even Hellstrom. Some of these workers should be conserving their strength for the morrow. He knew this inner reaction reflected a pattern bred and conditioned into him, but the knowledge subtracted little from his assessment of his own personal qualities. Hellstrom—and at least half of those present—should be resting now.
Saldo had known he would find Hellstrom here, though, and he found nothing inconsistent in the recognition that he, too, would have been standing there at that window to the north were he in Hellstrom’s place.
Hellstrom turned and recognized Saldo making his way through the green gloom. “Saldo!” he said. “Is there something to report?”
Saldo moved close to Hellstrom and, speaking in a low voice, explained why he had left the lab.
“Are you sure they’re about to test it?”
“It looks that way. They’ve been stringing the power cables for several hours. They didn’t bother with power cables on the other models until they were about to test.”