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moved and they startled a big black and white cow that had wandered onto the
verge. It galumphed ahead of them for several hundred feet before diving off
into the open grassland beside the road.
Considerably subdued and now frightened at the position he might be in if he
had no cooperation at all from the FBI, Merrivale said, "I'm truly sorry if
I've offended you. As you can imagine, I've been under somewhat of a strain.
First the Chief's death and then the orders to take over here personally. No
sleep really since this all started."
"Have you eaten?"
"On the plane from Chicago."
"We can get you something at our headquarters in the motel." Gammel reached
for the microphone under the dash. "I'll have them lay on coffee and
sandwiches. What would you --"
"No need for that," Merrivale said, feeling somewhat better. Gammel obviously
was trying to get them back on a friendly footing. That made sense.
Merrivale cleared his throat. "What sort of action plan have you devised?"
"We do only a minimum in the dark. We wait for morning and reconnoiter in
daylight and under constant radio contact with base. That's clearly indicated
until we find out what the hell has happened up there. We can't trust the
local law yet. I've even been told to play it cool with the
OHP. Our primary concern is to clarify some of this water that's been badly
muddied up to now."
Muddied by our people, of course, Merrivale thought. The FBI were still a
bunch of bloody snobs.
He said, "Nothing more tonight?"
"It didn't strike me as advisable to run any more risks than absolutely
necessary. We'll have more muscle by morning, anyway."
Merrivale brightened. "More people?"
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Two marine choppers coming up from San Francisco."
"You ordered them?"
"We're still covering for you," Gammel said. He turned, grinned. "They are
for surveillance and/or transportation only. We stretched our good-will
account considerably to get them with no better explanation than we could give
at the time."
"Very well," Merrivale said. "Portland told me you had no telephone contact
with the farm. Is that situation the same?"
"The line's out," Gammel said. "Probably cut by your people when they went
in. We'll have a repair crew out in the morning. Our own people, of course."
"I see. Then I concur with your field decisions, subject, naturally, to
review when we reach your headquarters. They may have more recent
information."
"They'd have called me," Gammel said. He tapped the radio under the dash,
thinking: They've sent a stuffed shirt. He's a patsy for sure and the poor
bastard may not even know it.
From the Hive Manual. As a biological mechanism, human reproduction is not
terribly efficient.
When compared to insects, humans appear grossly inefficient. The insect and
all the lower life forms are dedicated to species survival. Survival comes
through reproduction, through mating.
Males and females of all life forms other than man are drawn together in the
direct and singular interest of reproduction. For the wild forms of
humankind, however, unless the setting is right, the perfume is right, the
music is sweet -- and unless at least one partner feels loved (a singularly
unstable concept) by the other -- the reproductive act may never occur. We of
the Hive are dedicated, therefore, to freeing our workers from the concept of
romance. The act of procreation must occur as simply, as naturally, and as
obliviously as eating. Neither beauty, romance, nor love must figure in Hive
reproduction -- only the demands of survival.
The night-shrouded countryside around the farm appeared asleep to Hellstrom as
he scanned it from the aerie. Darkness blotted all of the familiar landscape
and there was only the distant glimmer of Fosterville's light on the horizon.
The Hive beneath him had never felt more silent, more charged with the
tensions of waiting. Although the oral tradition spoke of early
confrontations when the whole Colony Movement (as it was called then) faced
extinction, the Hive had never faced a greater crisis. The thing had happened
in such natural stages that Hellstrom,
looking back, experienced a sense of the inevitable. The Hive's population of
almost fifty thousand workers depended for their continued existence upon the
decisions that Hellstrom and his aides made during the next few hours.
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