A dumbwaiter system!
Shoulders sagging, he came to a halt, stared at the wall. There was no door along its entire length – only these openings with produce whipping upward. There were flat shelves on a conveyor; some of them came past him empty. Containers went onto the shelves. The openings were about three feet square and the moving shelves didn’t appear to be much larger. Could he get in there onto one of those shelves? They moved upward at frightening speed. He could hear sounds of tumult growing in the tunnel behind him. What other chance did he have? He couldn’t go back.
Janvert summoned a small reserve of strength, backed off several steps, and watched for an empty carrier. When one appeared, he dove for the opening, rolling himself around the weapon clutched in his hands. The instant his head entered the opening, the carrier slowed and he landed hard. The shelf swayed under him, but he compressed himself into a fetal ball, managed to stay aboard. His left shoulder rubbed the back wall as the carrier gathered speed, and he left a trail of skin before he could jerk away. He peered up and around.
The dumbwaiter system operated in a long slot between gray walls, an area illuminated only by light from the feeder openings. He could make out many carriers moving swiftly upward around him and there was an acrid fruit smell overriding the other stinks. He passed more openings, glimpsed a startled face at one – a woman carrying a basket piled high with yellow fruit that looked like tiny pumpkins. Janvert peered upward, trying to find out how the system terminated. Did it disgorge into chopping machinery? Was there a bloody mincer arrangement up there, a sorting system, or conveyors?
A wide line of light was becoming visible far above him and he could hear the increasing roar of machinery up there. It drowned out the whistling, clanking, hissing of the conveyor he was riding. The wide line of light was nearer – nearer – he tensed himself and was caught by surprise as a trip system tipped his shelf at the top of the lift, dumping him into a bin piled high with yellow carrots.
Clutching the bin’s top with his left hand, Janvert righted himself, clambered over the edge into a room of long, waist-high troughs that flowed with bubbling pulp of many colors. Workers moved all through the area dumping bins of produce into the troughs.
It was easily six feet to the floor and Janvert landed with a slippery squishing that sent him lurching into a female who had come up to the conveyor outlet with an empty bin on wheels. Janvert’s momentum sent her sprawling. He kept her down with a burst from his weapon, charged forward, slipping and skidding. There was pulped tomato on his feet and the floor itself carried a skimming of multicolored debris from the processing that continued all around him.
He passed another group before reaching a doorway, but their food-spattered appearance differed little from his and they paid no attention to him. Janvert plunged through the door, was hit by a cold shock of water spraying from overhead nozzles. He gasped, splashing through the water, and was almost clean when he emerged on the far side through another door into a wide, dimly lighted tunnel. Water was draining off him, off the captured weapon in his hand, collecting in a puddle under him, but there were similar puddles all around.
Janvert glanced left – the long vista of a tunnel down there, but few people and none of them appeared interested in him. He looked to his right, saw a spidery stairway similar to the one at the underground river. The stairs went upward into gloom and that was his direction. Janvert turned, slogged toward the stairs, began climbing, drawing himself up by sliding his left hand on the rail and pulling. His mouth was hanging open with fatigue and the aftermath of that shocking shower.
At the fifth rung on the stairs, he saw legs appear at the top. He fired his weapon without pausing, kept it humming as he climbed the remaining steps. Five sprawled figures lay on a platform where the stairs ended. He limped around them, his gaze fastened on a door beyond them. The door had only a bar latch which he lifted. The hinges were on the inside to the right. He pulled the bar. The door creaked open, revealing a dank dirt passage and the upthrusting roots of a tree stump that the door’s movement had pushed outward and down. Janvert dragged himself past the stump into starlit darkness, heard the door creaking closed behind him. The stump tipped back into its concealing position with only a faint thump.
Janvert stood shivering in cold night air.
It took him a moment to realize that he had escaped from Hellstrom’s madhouse human hive. He peered upward: stars. No doubt of it – he was outside. But where? The starlight gave him few clues to his surroundings. He could see a faint suggestion of trees directly ahead. He groped for the stump that masked the exit. His fingers encountered a hard surface which a fingernail told him was real wood. His eyes were adjusting, though, and escape from the tunnels had tapped a source of energy he hadn’t known existed. There was a faint glow in the sky slightly to his left and he guessed that would be Fosterville. He tried to recall the distance. Ten miles? His overworked body would never make that on bare feet. The area in front of him appeared to be a grassy slope with dark spots in it.
Most of the water had dried from his body, but he still trembled with the cold. He knew he couldn’t delay any longer. Those bodies behind him would be found. Hellstrom’s people would be out here after him all too soon. He had to put distance between himself and that camouflaged exit. No matter how he did it, he had to get back to civilization and tell what he had seen.
Taking the sky glow as his compass point, Janvert set out down the slope. He clutched the captured weapon in his right hand. This thing was his passport to belief when he told his story. A demonstration of this weapon on a convenient animal would silence all doubt.
The rough ground hurt his bare feet, caught his toes with unseen rocks and roots. He stumbled, hobbled, ran full into a low wooden fence, and fell across it into the dust of a narrow road.
Janvert picked himself up, studied what he could see of the road in the starlight. It appeared to angle down to his left in the general direction of what he thought was Fosterville. He turned in that direction, stumbled down the dusty track, panting, not trying to be quiet. He was too worn-out for that. The road dipped into a shallow swale and he lost the sky glow for a moment, but had it again at the next rise.
The dust kicked up by his feet tickled his nose. There was a breeze like a feather touch on his right cheek and down his arm and his bare flank. The track dipped once more and turned gently to the right into a deeper darkness that suggested trees. He missed part of the turn, stubbed the little toe on his left foot against the edge of a rut. He hissed a curse, knelt, and gripped the injured member until the pain eased. As he knelt, he saw a sudden flickering of light in the darkness directly ahead. By reflex, Janvert brought up the captured weapon, pointed it, and fired-a single humming burst.
The light vanished.
He straightened, groped his way forward with his left hand outstretched, the weapon held close to his right side. His outstretched hand was too high to meet the next obstruction, and he fell across a cold metallic surface, the weapon scraping it with a noisy clatter that froze him for the moment it took to realize he was sprawled half across the hood of a car.
A car!
He eased himself back, skinned his elbow on a hood ornament, then guided himself with his free hand around the left side of the car. At the window, his fingers explored an open crack at the top and he smelled tobacco smoke. He tried to peer through the window, but it was too dark. There was a rhythmic wheezing inside, though. He groped for the door handle, jerked the door open in a startling flash of light from the automatic switch. The light revealed two men in business suits, neat white shirts and ties, slumped unconscious in the front seat. The driver held a smoldering cigarette which was charring a circle in the left leg of his pants. Janvert took the cigarette and dropped it in the dust by his feet, crushed out the burning cloth with one hand.
The man lighting a cigarette – the flicker of light at which he’d fired. This weapon didn’t kill from a distance, then. Walls and distance made it le
ss than fatal, and it obviously had a limited range beyond that.
Janvert shook the driver’s shoulder, got only a lolling head for response. They were out cold. The movement opened the man’s coat, though, revealing a shoulder holster and a snub-nosed magnum pistol. Janvert took the gun and then saw the radio beneath the dash.
These weren’t Hellstrom’s people! These were cops!
What the drone said (Hive axiom).
You Outsiders! It’s your children we’re after, not you! We’ll get them, too, over your dead bodies.
“How can he be Outside?” Hellstrom demanded, outrage amplifying the sudden surge of fear that swept over him. He whirled from the dark north end of the gloomy aerie, strode across the room to the female at the observer console who’d called out to him.
“He is,” she said. “See! There!” She pointed to the screen glowing with green brilliance in front of her. The screen showed Janvert’s figure, its outline shimmering in the scattered radiation of night-vision projection. Janvert was creeping along a dusty road.
“That’s the north perimeter,” Hellstrom whispered, recognizing the outline of the landscape beyond Janvert. “How did he get out there?” Reluctant admiration for this incredible male warred in Hellstrom with a swelling rage. Janvert was Outside!
“We’re getting reports of a disturbance at level three,” an observer at Hellstrom’s left called.
“He’s found one of the hidden doors out of level three,” Hellstrom said. “How did he get that far? He’ll be at that car with its watchers in seconds! The car’s right down in those trees.” He pointed at the screen. “Have the watchers heard him yet?”
“We have a pursuit team out after him,” an observer on the left called. “They’ll be a few minutes, though. They were on five and we routed them through the upper exits.”
The observer in front of Hellstrom said, “I got an interference flash just before I saw him, as though he’d used his weapon. Could he have knocked out the watchers in that car?”
“Or killed them,” Hellstrom said. “Poetic justice if he did. Who’s observing that car?”
“The team was pulled back an hour ago to help search for the escaped captive,” someone behind him said.
Hellstrom nodded. Of course! He’d given the order himself.
“There hasn’t been any conversation in that car for some time,” the observer just to his left said. “I have the pickup on the tree above the car.” The observer tapped the shiny ivory plug in her right ear. “I can hear Janvert approaching – the watchers in the car sound unconscious. They’re wheezing the way Outsiders always do when you stun them heavily.”
“Maybe it’s a break for us at last,” Hellstrom said. “How far away is the pursuit team?”
“Five minutes at the most,” someone behind him said.
“Get backup squads out onto the rangeland between him and the town,” Hellstrom said. “Just in case –”
“What about the other watchers?” the observer in front of him asked.
“Tell our workers not to attract attention to themselves! Devil take that Janvert! The Hive needs breeders that resourceful.”
How had the man escaped from the Hive?
The observer on his left said, “He’s almost at the car.”
An observer farther down the arc said, “Here’s the report on how he got out.” She turned, her face in eerie side light from the screens, and told him briefly what the cleanup teams had found at level three.
He rode a food conveyor! Hellstrom thought.
The Outsider took risks no ordinary worker would think of taking. The implications in that would have to be considered more thoroughly – later.
“The captive female,” Hellstrom said. “Has she been shown what will happen to her if she fails?”
Someone behind him spoke with obvious distaste, “She’s been shown, Nils.”
Hellstrom nodded. They didn’t like this, of course. He didn’t like it himself. But it was necessity and all of them could see that now.
“Bring her in here,” Hellstrom said.
They had to drag her into the range of the dim lights at the observation screens and then hold her upright when they stopped.
Hellstrom suppressed his own revulsion, spoke slowly and distinctly as though to a newly hatched child, and all the time he felt that he was sacrificing himself for the Hive.
“Clovis Carr,” he said. “That is the name you gave us. Do you still identify with it?”
She stared through the gloom at the greenish death pallor of Hellstrom’s skin. This is a nightmare, she told herself. I’ll wake up and find out it’s all been a nightmare.
Hellstrom saw the recognition that use of her name aroused. “In a moment, Miss Carr, your friend Janvert will come within range of a remote speaker we have out there.” He pointed to the screen. “I will attract Mr. Janvert’s attention then, and it will be up to you to get him back here if you can. I deeply regret that we must cause you this mental anguish, but you can see the necessity. Will you try?”
She nodded, her face a pale mask of terror in the green light. Try? Sure! Play right along with the nightmare.
“Very good,” Hellstrom said. “You must think in a positive way, Miss Carr. You must think success. I believe you can do this.”
Again she nodded, but it was as though she had no conscious control over her muscles.
From the Hive Manual.
The society itself must be considered as living material. The same ethics and morality that concern us when we interfere with the sacred flesh of an individual cell must concern us equally when we intrude into the processes of the society.
Janvert was reaching for the radio microphone, hardly believing he had that token of civilization within his grasp, when a voice boomed at him from high over his right shoulder.
“Janvert!”
He jerked back, slamming the door to shut off the car’s dome light, dodged to the front of the car and crouched there, pointing his weapon up into the darkness.
“Janvert, I know you can hear me.”
The voice came from up in the trees, but it was too dark to show any detail to Janvert. He held himself locked in indecision. What a fool he’d been to leave the car’s dome light on!
“I am speaking to you through a remote system, Janvert,” the voice said. “There is an electronic device in a tree near you. It will pick up your answer and transmit it to me. You must answer me now.”
A loudspeaker!
Still, Janvert crouched in silence. It was a trick. They wanted him to speak just to locate him.
“We have someone here who wants to speak to you,” the voice said. “Listen carefully, Janvert.”
At first, Janvert failed to recognize the new voice issuing from the speaker. There was such a throat-strained quality in the words, as though each required superhuman effort. It was a woman, though, and then she said, “Eddie! It’s Clovis. Please answer me!”
Clovis was the only one who called him Eddie. The others all used that hated Shorty. He stared up through the darkness. Clovis?
“Eddie,” she said, “if you don’t come back, they’re going to take me down to a – a place where – where they – cut off your legs and the rest –” She was sobbing now. “Your legs and the rest of your body at the waist and – oh, God! Eddie, I’m so frightened. Eddie! Please answer me! Please come back!”
Janvert recalled that room of stumped bodies, the multicolored tubes, the hideously accentuated sexuality. Abruptly, he experienced a flashing memory: the severed head on the tunnel floor, the gore, his own feet trampling through red fruit, his body spattered with . . .
He doubled over, vomited.
Clovis’s voice went on and on, pleading with him.
“Eddie, please, can you hear me? Please! Don’t let them do that to me. Oh, God! Why doesn’t he answer?”
I can’t answer her, Janvert thought.
But he had to respond. He had to do something. The air was full of the nauseating
smell of his own vomit and his chest ached, but his head felt cleared. He straightened, supporting himself with a hand on the car’s hood.
“Hellstrom!” he called.
“Right here.” It was the first voice Janvert had heard.
“How can I trust you?” Janvert asked. He started working his way back to the car’s door. He had to get to that radio.
“We will harm neither you nor Miss Carr if you return,” Hellstrom said. “We do not lie about such things, Mr. Janvert. You will be placed under necessary restraints, but neither of you will be harmed. We will permit the two of you to associate and have any relationship you wish, but if you do not return to us immediately, we will carry out our threat. We will do so with the deepest regret, but we will do it. Our own attitudes toward a procreative stump are much different from yours, Mr. Janvert. Believe me.”
“I believe you,” Janvert said. He was at the car’s door now, hesitating. If he opened the door and grabbed for the microphone, what would they do up there? They must have searchers out here by now. They had that speaker in the tree. They had some way of knowing what he was doing. He had to take precautions, then. He lifted the captured weapon, intending to spray the area around him randomly before opening the door. He didn’t allow himself to think about Clovis. But that room . . . His finger on the firing stud refused to move. That room with the stubs of bodies! Again, he felt nausea clutching him.
Clovis could still be heard over the speaker. She was crying somewhere in the background, sobbing and calling his name. “Eddie – Eddie – Eddie – please help me. Make it stop –”
Janvert closed his eyes. What can I do?
As the thought pulsed in his mind, he felt a tingling on his back and right side, heard a distant humming that followed him all the way down to the dusty ground beside the car, but he no longer heard it by the time he was stretched in the dust.