Hellstrom's Hive by Frank Herbert

Author:Frank Herbert
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: SciFi-Masterwork, Science Fiction, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780575101098
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2011-07-13T14:00:00+00:00

“I’ll get those oil people to do what they can,” the Chief said, “but only if it can be done without tipping our hand. Finding out where Hellstrom’s people work doesn’t strike me as too helpful at this point.”

“What if he refuses to negotiate?” Peruge asked.

“Don’t provoke a showdown on it. We still have the board and its forces in reserve.”

“But they’d –”

“They’d take the whole thing and throw us a bone, yes. But a bone is better than nothing.”

“Project 40 could be entirely innocent.”

“You don’t believe that,” the Chief said. “And it’s your job to prove what we both know in this case.” The Chief cleared his throat, a loud, hacking noise over the scrambler. “As long as we have no proof, we don’t have a damn thing. They could have the secret of the end of the world down there, as we led the board to believe, but we can’t move unless we prove it. How many times do I have to say that?”

Peruge rubbed his left knee where he had bumped it against a lightstand in Hellstrom’s studio. It wasn’t like the Chief to repeat a point that many times. What was happening back there in the office? Was the Chief trying to send a subtle message that he couldn’t speak openly?

“Do you want me to find a good excuse for us to pull out of this?” Peruge asked.

There was open relief in the Chief’s voice. “Only if it seems the right thing to do, my boy.”

Somebody’s with him, Peruge realized. It had to be someone accorded a degree of trust, somebody important, but someone who could not be told everything. Try as he might, Peruge could not fit anyone he knew into this description. It should be perfectly obvious to the Chief that his agent in the field had no intention of pulling out. But he was fishing for that suggestion from me. Which meant the someone in the Chief’s office was hearing both ends of the conversation. The cryptic nature of the hidden message in this conversation bespoke extreme caution at headquarters. A call from upstairs. How powerful a man was this Hellstrom?

“Can you say anything about the kinds of toes we may be stepping on?” Peruge asked.

“No.”

“Isn’t it even possible to find out whether Hellstrom’s influence has a purely political base – big contributions to the party, that sort of thing – or whether it’s possible, for instance, that we’re nosing into the affairs of another agency?”

“You’re beginning to understand the problem as I now see it,” the Chief said.

So it’s somebody from another agency with him now, Peruge thought. That could only mean it was one of the Chief’s own people who’d been infiltrated into the other agency. It could mean there were two agencies interested in Hellstrom, or it could mean Hellstrom’s Project 40 was the product of another agency. Investigators could be tripping over each other if this thing were stirred up enough.

“I get the message,” Peruge said.

“When you meet Hellstrom,” the Chief said, “don’t introduce this other possibility yourself.

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