The Tower and the Hive

by MCCAFFREY, ANNE

  “I remember exactly,” Gallahue replied briskly. “For it was the day when the Phobos Moon Base managed to activate the refugee sphere they were examining.” She gave a shrug. “There could not possibly have been a connection, but she went into a state of frenzy, charging about her quarters. It was the most active she had ever been. She also started emitting what must be her mating pheromones, for the two males, generally as languid as she, got quite excited—for them—and vied to stuff food into her maw and then to fertilize her by agitated stroking of her egg-bulb.”

  “Yes, I vividly remember that report, Commander Gallahue,” Sam said. “I’ve studied all you’ve had to say about the queen.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. That was the only occasion when she was fed from vat six,” Whila Gallahue added thoughtfully. “We were given supplies for her from the stored vats of that captured sphere, you know. She usually accepted food from vats three and four.”

  “We took samples from the foodstuffs stored on Arcadia, but nothing there resembles the compound from vat six. Yet another anomaly.” Sam shook his head.

  “Perhaps not,” Stg said, entering the conversation. “Both Human and Mrdini require different food when engaged in martial activities. That has been noted. Why not Hiver queens?”

  “If I may?” Verla Mitab from the Xh-33 Moon Base raised a tentative finger.

  “Go on,” Jeff said encouragingly.

  “Well, sirs, ma’am, I think part of it is what they eat,” she said, “because I’ve done two tours on the Xh-33 Moon Base, and by the time the base was ready, they were growing a different main crop in their fields. I noticed that when I played ’ back the probe recordings the young Prime Rojer Lyon took.” She nodded half apologetically at Rowan and Jeff. “And they also harvested more often. Another thing I noticed on my second tour”—she was talking as fast as she could to prevent an interruption—“was the way the workers started acting.”

  “What way?” Admiral Tohl asked kindly, bouncing his fingertips together.

  “Well, you know how the field workers march out in pairs?”

  Sam was not the only one who nodded.

  “Well, they stopped doing that. They started coming out one by one. They’d form pairs when they got enough space to do so. And it got worse.”

  “How?” Jeff smiled encouragingly and she suddenly relaxed.

  “It was like they had to push past... obstacles. Commander Makako sent a probe down, but all we saw was more bodies. Only...” She paused again, and cocked her head in a puzzled fashion. “What we saw was not too many workers trying to get out. It was many bodies moving around so the workers could actually exit. Then”—she blinked—“when the workers came back in, it looked as if the others, who never came out of the Hive, were taking the food from their backs before they could get it to the ramps or storage like they should have done.”

  “Did you send another probe in to investigate the anomaly?” Admiral Tohl inquired.

  She shrugged. “Several more and in different Hives, but none had enough light to give us details beyond a sort of seething mass of bodies. And Commander Makako didn’t want to send in a lighted probe.”

  “Probably just as wise that she didn’t,” Tohl said, “though in hindsight I could wish that she had.”

  “As I recall it,” the Rowan said quickly, “remotes were installed in quite a few Hives, weren’t they?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Verla Mitab replied. “Once the base was established, we were told to put remotes in fifty Hives on each continent. But just in the queens’ quarters. Those green boards of theirs gave us enough light to see what the queens were doing. And all they were doing was being fed and stroked to fertilize more eggs.”

  “How many males did each queen have?” Stg asked, leaning forward. “Where did the eggs go?”

  “Oh, eight or nine. We could see that they were sort of... courting her like. You know, trying to be the only one she’d take food from. We never did see what hatched from the eggs. The scurriers would take them out once they’d been ... done.”

  “That was standard behavior in all the Hives you could observe?” asked Gallahue.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Undoubtedly the queens were building up their forces in secret,” Tohl suggested. “I would hazard the guess that the ... press of creatures that slowed the workers on their dutiful way to the fields... were the warrior mutations that followed the queen to war, having somehow been fitted with maces instead of shovels.”

  “How did the queens mutate?” Gallahue asked. There was no immediate answer. Then she added, “Diet? Only on that one occasion did the Heinlein queen eat from vat six.”

  “How long did that last?” Tohl asked.

  “Six days only, though the two males kept forcing food into her mouth. She’d let it dribble away from her maw,” Gallahue said.

  “The males kept forcing her to eat?” Jeff asked, sitting upright. “Maybe the queen isn’t the guiding force in her Hive that we thought she was. Could the males pressure her by feeding her a special diet... to produce the mutated warrior types?”

  Glances were exchanged by the xenbees.

  “Anything could happen with Hive queens,” Gktmglnt said in a voice nearly as deep and dark as Gallahue’s.

  “Wait a minute,” Jeff said, putting his elbows on the conference table. “How many males did you say the Xh-33 queens had?” he asked Verla Mitab.

  “At least eight, sometimes nine.”

  “Big ones?”

  “Yes sir, bigger certainly than any from Lieutenant Weiman’s Arcadia reports.” Verla gave him a little smile.

  “Big enough then to coerce an Xh-33 queen, big as they are,” Jeff said.

  “But it was the queens that led the battles,” Verla said in protest. “The males formed up like a sort of honor guard, to protect her. It was the mace holders who did the actual fighting.”

  “Until the queen was dead, or issued the ‘flee’ pheromones,” Stg said.

  “Flee pheromones?” Jeff asked.

  “Yes sir,” said Lieutenant Commander Jan Voorhees, speaking for the first time. “That suggests”—he turned his gaze from Jeff to the other xenbees at the table—“that the Hivers once did have natural enemies, since ‘flee’ pheromones imply an automatic stimulus-response behavior.”

  “Too bad we don’t know what scares ’em,” said Admiral Tohl with a wicked grin.

  Gktmglnt nodded agreement.

  “A flee pheromone?” Gallahue repeated, pointing at Voorhees. “I hadn’t thought of that possibility in Hivers.”

  “How could you, ma’am, with just a quiescent queen that has been separated from its normal society?” Voorhees said in a courteous tone.

  “True,” she admitted, “but a flee pheromone is apparent in many Earth-type creatures like termites, ants and bees. That’s not to suggest that Hive queens are hymenopterous, of course, merely that they also can produce flee pheromones.”

  “Accepted,” Jan Voorhees said. “However, Stg and I noticed distinctive variations in every site where a queen was killed. We also noticed that a dead queen’s remaining warrior types, as well as her males, ran away. Of course, some of them just ran into the forces from another Hive.”

  “How did they tell who was friend or foe?” the Rowan asked.

  “Each queen also generates her own specialized pheromone so her minions can identify her.” Voorhees rolled his eyes. “It was murder trying to differentiate, but we did manage to identify quite a few of the Hives of dead queens by the residuals.”

  “Remarkable,” Sam said, remembering how many pheromones he’d had to log from the Arcadian queens. “Arcadian queens are not quite as ... intense, shall we say, as the readings you report on Xh-33.”

  Jan Voorhees stared at Sam, pushing out his chin. “What did you say?”

  “I said the Arcadian queens do not emanate the same powerful pheromones that the Xh-33 queens do or did.”

  He locked eyes with Voorhees as both, evidently s
imultaneously, made the shift to a conclusion.

  “Can we substitute the pacific Arcadian pheromones for the aggressive ones of Xh-33?” Jan cried, almost hopping out of his seat.

  “I would have thought that was an obvious solution,” the Rowan said, her chin propped in her left hand.

  “Obvious perhaps,” Sam said, shaking his head, “but very difficult to implement. We would have to eliminate the identifying pheromones of an Xh-33 queen and substitute the Arcadian queen’s. If that would even work.”

  “Difficult to do,” Voorhees said, staring thoughtfully at Sam Weiman.

  “But not impossible,” said Stg.

  “This one agrees with Stg.” Grm spoke formally, its poll eye glistening. It turned almost apologetically to Sam sitting beside it.

  “You would have to duplicate the pheromones exactly to get the required effect,” Gallahue said, shaking her head over that difficulty.

  “Ma’am, with the practice Stg and I have just had, it’s a case of accurately reading the GCs,” Voorhees said, almost boasting of his prowess.

  “That is not simple,” Stg said, heaving a big sigh.

  “Look, do I understand you correctly?” Jeff began. “You are suggesting that if we can accurately duplicate the Arcadian queen pheromones, we might pacify the Xh-33 queens? What’s left of them?”

  “The pacific pheromones could be sprayed on the surface and renewed frequently,” Voorhees was saying, more to the other xenbees than in answer to Jeff. “It might just work. We could give it a try. What have we to lose?” He looked from Gallahue to Sam; he blinked at Gktmglnt and held Admiral Tohl’s gaze.

  The Admiral swung his glance to Commander Gallahue.

  “It is a possibility,” she said, though she obviously still had reservations.

  “In the meantime,” Jeff said, “I have had an urgent message from Perry on the Asimov. The weather pattern is shifting. Captain Osullivan has asked for permission to seed the clouds for rain. I will need your permission, Admiral Tohl, honorable Gktmglnt. The aggressive pheromones must be diluted before reaching the other continents on Xh-33.”

  The two High Councillors made eye contact. Gktmglnt inclined its poll permissively and the Admiral gave a sharp nod of his head.

  “By all means, seed the clouds and prevent more battles.”

  “Then we have bought time to investigate the Arcadian possibility,” Jeff said.

  “But not yet an answer to the main problem,” said Gktmglnt in a lugubrious tone. “There are so many occupied Hiver worlds.”

  “There is an Arcadia,” Sam ventured to say. “Maybe there are more.”

  “We can but hope,” the Rowan said pessimistically.

  “Shall we then go a step farther,” Admiral Tohl said, gesturing toward Commander Gallahue, who had made the suggestion, before he turned to Gktmglnt, “and ask the Asimov to implement a clean sweep of the Main Continent’s vacated premises?”

  “To resettle the queens is a good idea,” the Mrdini agreed, nodding its head with great dignity. “It will be interesting to note how long that expedient keeps Xh-33 peaceful.”

  Jeff cocked his head, an attitude that suggested he was listening to a telepathed message. The others remained respectfully silent.

  “The Columbia is just now entering the Ciudad Rodrigo system. Perhaps their examination of that Hiver-occupied planet will give us fresh insights, or confirm what we already know. Do we by any chance know whether or not one of the xenbees ever took GC readings on the big sphere? Three of the escape pods were activated and those queens fled, so the Hivers must have known they weren’t going to outrun the nova wave.”

  Commander Gallahue smiled. “I do believe the Vadim xenbee records show that GC readings were taken, along with every conceivable analytic material the Alliance specialists have.” She tapped rapidly on her notepad. “I thought so. Yes, the readings, though faint, are available. Mostly of corrosion. Perhaps not enough to use for an additional point of reference.”

  Jeff rose to his feet. “Perhaps you would all care to continue discussing plans in a secure conference area?”

  The xenbees certainly did.

  “We have begun to control our destinies,” Gktmglnt said, lifting its large self to its feet, causing Grm to cower away from the mass. “That is good. Our good fight continues.” It bowed to Jeff and those assembled, the approving gaze of its poll eye lingering slightly longer on the two Mrdini participants. IF YOU WOULD BE SO GOOD, PRIME RAVEN, TO RETURN THIS PERSON TO ITS OFFICE, THERE IS MUCH TO BE DONE.

  IT IS MY PLEASURE TO ASSIST YOU, HONORABLE GKTMGLNT. Jeff bowed formally. The Mrdini High Councillor disappeared. “Anyone else? Admiral? To your office?” When the Admiral nodded, he disappeared and Jeff turned to the others. “I believe that Gollee has secured a conference room for you, one with laboratory facilities attached.” He smiled at the xenbees. “You’ve been exceedingly helpful. My warm thanks and good day.”

  “Very good of—” was all Commander Gallahue could say before she disappeared, along with the other six.

  twelve

  Captain Osullivan ordered the Main Continent cleaned up, using teams from each of the nine ships in Fourth Fleet.

  “That’s so we all smell as bad,” the com officer on the A.S. Beijing was heard to say to the com officer of the A.S. Strongbow. The comment was wisely ignored.

  The removal of all the dead Hivers would require combined efforts, since the safest way to dispose of so much carnage was to vaporize it. While that left strong odors behind until the prevailing winds dispersed them, the pheromones matched none that might activate a queen’s response.

  “Not that many queens survived that horrendous battle,” Captain Osullivan remarked. “What effect will that have on the real estate we’ll be selling to queens we want to settle there, Mr. Voorhees?”

  “Some vegetation thrives on being burned out once in a while,” Voorhees replied. “Whether that holds true for this planet I don’t know, sir, but I do know that the longer we delay getting rid of the corpses, the longer it’s going to take to prepare the vacant facilities for new residents.”

  The battlegrounds had to be plowed and decontaminated to remove the taint of the body fluids spilled so futilely. Not many viable crops remained unscathed, but what there were were fertilized with the dung kept in the queens’ facilities for that purpose. The stored eggs in each facility were vacuumed out of their repositories and those were flung into the seas and lakes for whatever denizens lurked there.

  “Too bad the Hivers don’t fancy fish,” one of the CPOs on that detail was heard to remark. “Lots of aquatic types.”

  The next job, preparing the vacated quarters for new residents, was made easier by Commander Makako’s records of every queen facility on the entire planet. By pointing out the sites of the most recent “boundary” skirmishes, she could show the xenbees where to find the most aggressive ones. These would be kept busy enough in their new quarters to forget about extending their holdings. Her observers had also identified several young queens who had only begun to lay eggs and develop an entourage.

  The best job, according to the scuttlebutt of Fourth Fleet, was following the Nose around. Jeff had explained to Pierre Laney the urgency and importance of applying his unique Talent to the minute, but important, differences of smell in queens’ quarters. If the relocation was to work effectively, the queen must think she was still in her original quarters. Once Laney was assured that he was in no personal danger, and how important it was to replicate the distinctive aura in each facility, he accepted the job, and the enormous fee that went with it.

  A spare man in his forties, he had indeed a remarkable nose, in size and appearance, for it was, as Cyrano de Bergerac had described his, a veritable rock, a crag, a cape ... a peninsula... of a nose, reddened, with capillaries fanning out on both cheeks. He totally ignored any stares it caused, evidently well accustomed to every kind of reaction, but when he first came on board the Asimov, he had a habit of taking a quick snif
f of each area he passed through.

  “I can find my way about anywhere in total darkness entirely by scent,” Laney confided in Captain Osullivan, for he was naturally included in the captain’s mess. His manner was always gracious and he was as good a listener as a nose. “Some places are more interesting”—he tapped the tip of his thick nose—“than others.”

  “We’re grateful for your willingness to serve,” Captain Osullivan said.

  “A change is as good as a rest,” was Pierre’s reply, with a broad smile. “I’ve never been on a spaceship before. For that matter, I’ve never been off Earth.”

  He never got tired either, in his relentless tour of the deodorized facilities. He carried a wrist pad on which he made notations.

  “Chemical formulas for the distinctive aromas,” he replied to Voorhecs’s query. “However, I rarely forget one.”

  “Never thought of these,” Voorhees murmured, gesturing around him at the empty queen quarters that they were currently evaluating, “as aromatic.”

  “Oh, they are, whether or not they are also pleasant to smell or so faint that only I can differentiate. Aroma does imply nice, as does scent. Aromatic suggests something stronger. But reek, smell, stink, pong, stench, fetor, redolence, all evoke memories in our minds of other times and places where our olfactory sense has met with that... flavor... on a previous occasion. Think on it,” Pierre Laney suggested. “Aroma, smell, fragrance, whatever...” And he gave a Gallic twist of his hand. “The mind”—he tapped his proboscis—“and the schnozzola remember.”

  “Schnozzola?” Voorhees echoed, his eyes protruding in astonishment.

  “Schnozzola,” Pierre echoed with a dignified nod of his head. “An ancient comedian with a beak like mine”—he caressed it with an affectionate finger—“made an advantage out of what others would have called a disfigurement. Now, of course”—another Gallic wave of his hand—“physical perfection can be easily achieved.” He shrugged in a dismissal of physical perfection as the ideal. “Now do I get to see the occupied Hives?” he asked.

  Voorhees respectfully gestured for Pierre to precede him out into the fresher air, wondering how the queens had turned on the air-circulation device that Thian had mentioned.