Hellstrom stood in the aerie beneath a Hive-sign display that translated “Use everything—waste nothing.” It was past 3:00 A.M., and he had gone beyond wishing he could get a brief sleep. Now, he only prayed for rest of any kind.
“See those changes in the air pressure,” an observer behind him said. “He’s into the emergency ventilator system again. How is he doing that? Quick! Send the alarm. Where’s the nearest search team?”
“Why aren’t we blocking off that system, level by level, or at least every other level?” Hellstrom asked resignedly.
“We only have enough teams to keep a ten-level guard on the system,” a male voice to his left said.
Hellstrom peered through the green gloom of the aerie, trying to identify who’d spoken. Had that been Ed? Was he back from checking the Outside patrols already?
Damn that Janvert! The man was diabolical in his ingenuity. Dead and injured workers, behavior disruptions from the disturbance of his passage, the growing turmoil left in the wake of running searchers—everything was conspiring to upset the entire Hive. They would be years finding and clearing up all of the traces of this night. Janvert was terrified, of course, and the chemistry of his terror was spreading through the Hive. As more and more workers read that subtle signal from a human who, according to his other chemical markers, seemed one of them, their fears moved like an outspreading wave. It could damned well provoke a crisis if he wasn’t caught soon.
It had been a mistake not to increase his guard as they brought him back to normalcy.
My mistake, Hellstrom told himself bitterly.
The chemistry of fellowship was, indeed, a double-edged blade. It cut both ways. Those guarding him had been lulled by it unconsciously. When had a worker ever attacked his fellows?
He listened to the observer stations coordinating this new turn in the search. Their hunt juices were up and he sensed the excitement in their voices. It was almost as though they didn’t want to catch Janvert too soon.
Hellstrom sighed and said, “Get the female captive up here.”
Someone off in the gloom said, “She’s still unconscious.”
That was Ed for sure, Hellstrom told himself. He said, “Well, revive her and get her up here!”
Hive-sign display over the central vat chamber.
It is right and holy that we yield up our bodies when we die, that the compounds of our transient lives are not lost to that greater force manifested in our Hive.
At the eighth switchback door on his upward flight, Janvert brought himself to a stumbling, panting halt, slumping against the door. He could feel its coolness through his hair as he pressed his head against it, looking down at his bare feet. God, it was hot in the tunnel! And the stink was worse. He felt he could not move another step without rest. His heart was pounding, his chest ached, sweat poured from his body. He wondered if he dared venture back into the main tunnels and search for an elevator. He pressed an ear against the door, listened, could hear no special activity on the other side. This worried him. Were they waiting there for him to emerge?
Only faint sounds of machinery and an omnipresent sense of human movement came to him. An odd sense of almost silence beyond this door, though. Again, he pressed an ear against it, heard nothing he could identify as a direct menace.
There would be more people out there, though, these weird denizens of Hellstrom’s hive. How many were there? Ten thousand? Not one of them on the census rolls. He knew this. The whole place conveyed a secretive sense of purposes that cut across everything outside in the sharpest and most outrageous ways. Here were people who lived by rules that denied everything the outside society believed. Did they have a god in here? He recalled Hellstrom saying grace. Sham! Pure sham!
It was a damned crawling, revolting hive.
The last words of Trova Hellstrom.
The defeat of the Outsiders is assured by their arrogance. They defy powers greater than themselves. We in the Hive are the true creatures of reason. We will wait patiently in the manner of the insects, with a logic that perhaps no wild Outsider will ever understand, because the insects have taught us that the true winner in the race for survival is the last to finish that race.
Janvert guessed he’d waited five minutes before fear overcame his fatigue. He wasn’t really rested, but he had to go on. He was breathing easier, but the ache remained in his legs; there was a lancing pain in his side when he took too deep a breath, and the arches of his feet felt as though knives were cutting them, a consequence of running barefoot. He knew his body could take little more of this driving punishment before collapse. He had to go out there and find an elevator. He straightened, intending to open the door, and the corner of his left eye caught a flicker of movement down the tunnel. Pursuers carrying guns rounded the corner below him, but their weapons were not raised as they climbed, and they reacted with a brief moment of shock that saved Janvert. His weapon had been held across his left arm as he reached for the door’s wheel latch and he had only to press the stud, which his hand did almost of itself. The figures below him collapsed as the bap-hum filled the tunnel.
In falling, one of the pursuers raised a pistol and fired one shot that hit a light fixture below Janvert and sent a searing shard of some shattered material into his cheek. His left hand, clapped reflexively against the wound, came away with the glittering shard and a bright smear of blood.
Janvert had no way of knowing if the weapon in his hand worked through walls, but the deepest panic he’d known thus far dictated his next actions. He lifted the weapon, depressed the stud on it, and fanned it across the door in front of him before opening it.
Six figures lay in a tangled sprawl beyond the door as it opened, and one of them held a nickel-plated .45 automatic with carved ivory grips. Janvert lifted it from relaxed fingers as he stepped into the room. He glanced around, saw what appeared to be a long, narrow barracks with triple-tiered bunks around the walls. The only occupants were the six figures on the floor—all males, all nude, all but one bald, and all of them breathing. So the weapon only knocked people out when a solid barrier attenuated its force. Janvert nodded to himself. He had a weapon in each hand now, and one of them felt reassuringly familiar.
Hive translation from “The Wisdom of the Wild.”
The path to species extinction begins with the proud belief that in each individual there is a mentalistic being—an ego or personality, spirit, anima, character, soul, or mind—and that this separated incarnation is somehow free.
“Now he has a gun,” Hellstrom said. “That’s great! That’s just great. Is he a superman? Less than half an hour ago he was in the central breeder section. I was assured we had him trapped there and now—now I’m told he has knocked out two entire search teams eight levels higher!”
Hellstrom sat almost at the middle of the aerie’s observation arc, directly behind the observer at the center position. The chair he occupied was his one concession to a body demanding relief from its mounting fatigue. He had been active now for most of twenty-six hours and the aerie clock showed just past 4:00 A.M.
“What are your orders?” the observer in front of him asked.
Hellstrom stared at the observer’s head outlined against the glowing screen. My orders?
“What makes anyone believe my orders have changed?” he asked. “You are to capture him!”