Hellstrom's Hive

Merrivale stood on the balcony outside his second-floor motel room waiting for daylight. It was cold, but he had dressed in a Highlands-made gray woolen sweater with a high turtleneck. It was thick enough to protect him even when he leaned against the iron balustrade. He puffed thoughtfully on a cigarette, listening to night sounds. There were distant footsteps out in the parking lot and a murmur of voices from a room down the balcony where a light had come on a few minutes ago.

A door below him opened, sending yellow light in a great splashing fan across the courtyard to the blue edge of the swimming pool. A man strode out into the light, peered upward.

Merrivale, looking down, recognized Gammel and expected the FBI man might have a report on the earth shock. The quake, a distant rumbling that had filled his room with primitive fears, had awakened Merrivale almost forty-five minutes earlier. Gammel already had been awake and in the room downstairs they were using as a command post. Merrivale had him on the house telephone in a few seconds, demanding, “What was that?”

“Felt like an earthquake. We’re checking out whether there was any damage. You okay?”

Merrivale had turned on his bedside light. There was power, at least. He glanced around his room. “Yes, I’m fine. Doesn’t seem to be any damage here at all.”

Some of the motel’s other tenants had been on the balcony and in the courtyard when Merrivale went out, but most had returned to their rooms by now.

Gammel, recognizing Merrivale on the balcony, motioned for him to come down. “Hurry it up.”

Merrivale stubbed out his cigarette, crushed it underfoot, and headed down the balcony toward the stairs. There was something tensely alarming in Gammel’s manner.

Merrivale made it down to the first-floor room in a swift ten seconds, taking the stairs two at a time, not bothering about noise. He plunged through the door Gammel was holding open from the inside, heard the door slam behind him.

It wasn’t until he was fully into the room, seeing the three men clustered around a table that held a radio transceiver and a telephone with the receiver off the hook, that Merrivale began to get a full sense of how truly wrong things had gone.

There was a bed against the wall behind the table, its covers thrown off and dragged part way into the room. An ash tray had fallen off the table and lay ignored in its spilled contents. One of the men around the table still wore pajamas, although Gammel and the others were fully dressed. Light came from two floor lamps pulled close to the table. All of the men, including Gammel, were focused in some way on the telephone with its receiver off. Two of the men were actually staring at the phone. The man in pajamas was looking from the phone to Merrivale, back to the phone, and to Merrivale. Gammel was pointing at the instrument while he glared at Merrivale.

“Dammit to hell! They knew our number!” Gammel blared.

“What?” Merrivale was taken aback by the accusatory tone.

“We had that phone put in late yesterday,” Gammel explained. “It’s a private line.”

“I don’t understand,” Merrivale said. He studied Gammel’s rocky face, seeking a clue to this odd conversation.

“It was Hellstrom calling us,” Gammel said. “He says he has one of your people with him - and—do you have an Eddie Janvert?”

“Shorty? Shorty led the team that—”

Gammel put a hand to lips to shut him off.

Merrivale nodded.

Gammel said, “Hellstrom tells me we’d better listen to your man or they will blow this town and half the state of Oregon off the planet.”

“What?”

“He says that wasn’t an earthquake we all felt. It was some weapon he claims can rip the planet apart. How trustworthy is your man Janvert?”

Merrivale answered automatically, “Completely!” Immediately, he wished he had not said that. It had been a thoughtless response to a question that demanded he defend the Agency’s capabilities. Janvert might not be completely trustworthy, or it might be necessary to show doubt of his actual trustworthiness. Too late now, though. His answer had trapped him, reduced the range of possible responses.

“Janvert is on that phone and wants to talk to you,” Gammel said. “He tells me he can verify Hellstrom’s threat and that he can explain why one of our cars is failing to respond on the radio.”

Merrivale stalled for time to assess the situation. “I thought you told me the phone to the farm was out of order. Are they calling from the farm?”

“As far as we know. One of my men is out right now trying to work a trace. Hellstrom apparently had the phone fixed himself, or it—”

“Janvert says our people are merely unconscious, but he refused to say why or explain. He insisted we get you first. I told him you might be asleep, but—” Gammel nodded at the telephone.

Merrivale swallowed in a dry throat. Blow up half the state? Poppycock! He crossed to the phone with as much confidence as he could muster, picked it up, spoke in his best British accent. “Merrivale here.”

Gammel moved to a tape recorder spinning away behind the transceiver, jacked an earphone into it, and listened, nodding for Merrivale to continue.

That’s old Jollyvale all right, Janvert thought as he heard the voice. Wonder why they sent him?

Clovis stood directly across from Janvert, still frightened, but no longer sobbing. He found it odd that her nudity didn’t excite him.

Janvert nodded to Hellstrom, who stood a pace away in the gloomy room above the barn-studio. Hellstrom’s face appeared deathly pale in the green light that came from banks of what appeared to Janvert as TV screens.

“Tell him,” Hellstrom said.

Merrivale’s voice was being broadcast to the entire aerie room from a speaker on the control bank.

“Hello, Joe,” Janvert said, deliberately using Merrivale’s first name for the first time. “This is Eddie Janvert. I’m sure you recognize my voice, but I’ll identify myself further if you want. I’m the one you gave the president’s Signal Corps number and code to, remember?”

Damn him! Merrivale thought, resenting that admission as much as the familiar tone and use of his first name. It was Janvert, though. No doubt of it.

“Tell me what is going on,” Merrivale said.

“Unless you want this whole planet to become one giant morgue, you’d better listen carefully to what I tell you and you’d better believe me,” Janvert said.

“Now, see here, Shorty,” Merrivale said. “What’s all this nonsense they’ve been telling me about blowing up—”

“You shut up and listen!” Janvert snapped. “You hear me? Hellstrom has a weapon that makes an atom bomb look like a child’s popgun. Those guys in the car, those FBI agents your buddy was worried about—they were knocked out by a little hand version of this weapon. That hand-held weapon can kill people at a distance or just knock them out. Believe me, I’ve seen it. Now, you—”

“Shorty,” Merrivale interrupted, “I think you’d better let me come up there and—”

“Oh, you’ll come up here all right,” Janvert said, “but if you have any doubts, get rid of them. And if you try to attack this place again—well, if I even suspect you might do that, I’m going to use that number and code you gave me and I’m going to call the president to give him a full—”

“Now, Shorty! Your government wouldn’t—”

“Fuck the government! Hellstrom’s weapon is zeroed in right now on the Capitol. They’ve already demonstrated its effectiveness. Why don’t you check that?”

“Check what? That little earthquake we—”

“The new island off the coast of Japan,” Janvert said. “Hellstrom’s people have a tap on the Pentagon’s satellite teletype relay. They know about it and there’s a seismic sea wave warning all around the Pacific Basin already.”

“What in the bloody hell are you talking about, Shorty?” Merrivale demanded. As he spoke, Merrivale bent over the table, clawed a notepad and pencil into position, and scrawled, “Gammel—check that!” Gammel bent to read the note, nodded, and pointed to it for another of the agents to obey, then whispered an explanation.

Janvert was talking again, his voice coming out clear and precise as though he were trying to explain something to a disobedient child. “I warned you to listen carefully,” Janvert said. “Hellstrom’s hive is just one tiny extrusion from a giant complex of tunnels. Those tunnels spread out to hell and they go down more than five thousand feet. They are lined with a special concrete that Hellstrom says is proof against a fission bomb. I believe him. There are some fifty thousand people living in these tunnels. Believe me—please believe me.”

Merrivale found his attention caught in fascination by the spinning reels on Gammel’s tape recorder, lifted his gaze to meet a look of shock in the SAIC’s eyes.

Merrivale thought: Bloody hell! If Shorty’s right, this isn’t a job for us, it’s a job for the military. Somehow, Shorty was to be believed. It just wasn’t possible that a statement so shocking could be false. Merrivale bent to the notepad and wrote, “Call army.”

Glancing at the words, Gammel hesitated, then motioned another of his aides to read it and obey. The aide looked at the pad, stared questioningly at Gammel, who nodded vigorously to reinforce the command, then motioned for the man to bend close. Gammel whispered for a moment and the aide’s face paled. He dashed out of the room.

“As unbelievable as your story sounds,” Merrivale said, “I will take your word for it at the moment. However, you must know what I will have to do in response. This is far too big a situation for me to—”

“You son of a bitch! If you attack, the whole planet’s done for!”

Merrivale froze in shock, the phone pressed against his ear, detecting a glint of shared response in Gammel’s eyes. That was not how one addressed a superior!

In the Hive aerie, Hellstrom leaned close to Janvert and whispered, “Tell him the Hive wishes to negotiate. Temporize. Ask him why he hasn’t investigated with the Pentagon about the new island. Tell him we are quite ready to vaporize an area of several hundred square miles around Washington, D.C., if he needs further demonstrations.”

Janvert relayed this message.

“Have you seen this weapon?” Merrivale asked.

“Yes!”

“Describe it”

“Are you nuts? They won’t let me describe it. But I’ve seen it and I’ve seen the little hand version of it.”

The first aide Gammel had sent from the room returned, whispered hoarsely in the SAIC’s ear. Gammel scribbled on the notepad, “Pentagon confirms. They sending assault team.”

Merrivale said, “Shorty, do you really believe they can do this?”

“I’ve been telling you nothing else, goddammit! Haven’t you checked with the Pentagon yet?”

“Shorty, I hate to say this, but it seems to me that several fission bombs, one right on top of the other into—”

“You goddamned idiot! Will you stop making stupid suggestions like that?”

Merrivale glared at the base of the telephone. “Shorty, I must ask that you moderate your tone and your passions. This—this hive, as you call it, sounds like the very kind of subversion that we must—”

“I’m calling the president!” Janvert said. “You know I can do it. You gave me the Signal Corps number and code yourself. He’ll answer, too. You and the Agency can go plumb straight to—”

“Shorty!” Merrivale was outraged and abruptly fearful. This thing was getting completely out of hand. Janvert’s fanciful warnings might have some substance in them—the military would find out about that quickly enough—but a call to the president would have widespread repercussions. Heads would roll. They bloody well would!

“Calm yourself, Shorty,” Merrivale said. “Now, listen to me. What assurance do I have that you’re telling me the truth? You describe a pretty desperate situation which I find extremely difficult to believe. If it is anything even remotely resembling what you describe, however, it clearly calls for a military solution and I’ve no alternative but to—”

“You asshole!” Janvert snapped. “Haven’t you understood a single thing I’ve said? There won’t be any world for your damned military solution to take place on if you make one wrong move now! There won’t be anything! These people can blow the planet apart, or pulverize any piece of it they choose. You couldn’t break through to them in time to prevent that. The planet’s at stake—the whole planet, do you understand me?”

Gammel reached out, grabbed Merrivale’s telephone arm, and shook it to demand attention. Merrivale looked at him.

Gammel held up a sheet of paper on which he had written, “Go along with him. Ask personal inspection visit. Until we’re sure, we cannot take chances.”

Merrivale pursed his lips in thought. Go along with him? That was madness. Blow up the world, indeed! He said, “Shorty, I’m sure my own profound doubts about this—”

Abruptly, Gammel dropped his earphones, grabbed the telephone out of Merrivale’s hand, thrust him aside, and motioned for two of his aides to hold Merrivale.

“Janvert,” Gammel said, “this is Waverly Gammel. I spoke to you a few minutes ago when you first called. I’m a senior agent with the FBI. I’ve been listening to your conversation and I, for one, am ready to go along with—”

“They’re just stalling!” Merrivale shouted, struggling with the agents who held him. “They’re bluffing, you fool! They can’t—”

Gammel put a hand over the receiver and addressed his men. “Take him outside and shut the door.” He returned to his conversation with Janvert, explaining, “That was Merrivale. I’ve had him forcibly removed. Under the circumstances, I suspect he must be insane. I am going to come out to that—that hive myself and I am going to look at whatever it is you can show me to substantiate this weird story. I will ask that any action from this end be delayed until I report back, but I will put a time limit on that. Do you understand all of that, Janvert?”

“You sound like somebody with a few smarts, Gammel,” Janvert said. “I thank God for that. Just a minute.”

Hellstrom bent close to Janvert, spoke in a low voice.

Janvert said, “Hellstrom says you can come out here under those terms and will be permitted to report back in person. It’s my opinion that you can trust him.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Gammel said. “Tell me exactly where I report at that farm.”

“Just come to the barn,” Janvert said. “That’s where it all begins.”

As Janvert replaced the telephone in its cradle, Hellstrom turned away, wondering why he no longer felt tired. The Hive was going to get its big block of time. That seemed obvious. There were a few among the wild Outsiders who could be reasoned with—people such as this Janvert and the agent on the telephone. Such people would understand the implications of the Hive’s new stinger. They would recognize the need for change. Things were going to change in this world, too. Hellstrom knew what his own course had to be. He would bargain with the Outsider government for conditions under which the Hive could continue its mimic existence unobserved by the wild masses. The secrecy could not last indefinitely, of course. The Hive itself would see to that. They were going to swarm before long and there was nothing the Outsiders could do to prevent that swarming. Swarm would follow swarm thereafter and the wild ones would be assimilated and pushed back into smaller and smaller portions of the planet they shared now with tomorrow’s humans.