Hive

Hayes sighed. “Yeah, and if you can’t do that, then how about we drag the lot of those things about ten miles out and cut ‘em a nice little berth in the ice, let Gates worry about ‘em come spring.”

“No,” LaHune said. “That is utterly ridiculous and I refuse to entertain it.”

Hayes was beaten and he knew it. Maybe the campaign had been over before it even began. “What’s your thing, LaHune? I mean, c’mon, I know you don’t like being here and you don’t like us as a group. So why the hell are you here? I don’t see you as a team player . . . at least on any team I’d be rooting for. So what’s your thing? Are you NSF or are you something else?”

A slight blush of color touched LaHune’s cheeks, retreated like a flower deciding it was just too damn frosty to bloom. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do,” Hayes said. “I think you know exactly what I mean. Why are you here? You don’t belong in a place like this and we both know it. You’re not the type. I heard you spent a summer at McMurdo, but other than that, nothing. You know, ever since I got here, I’ve had a bad feeling and when I’m around you it gets worse. What’s this all about?”

LaHune closed his day calendar. “It’s about what you think it’s about or, should I say, what you should be thinking it’s about. Kharkhov Station is a scientific installation running a variety of projects through the winter under the auspices of the National Science Foundation.”

But Hayes didn’t believe it.

He tried to reach into LaHune’s mind, but there was nothing. Maybe the reawakened telepathy had been temporary and maybe there was just nothing inside LaHune to read. He only knew one thing and he knew it deep down in his guts: LaHune had a secret agenda here. He’d suspected it for awhile, but now he was sure of it.

And with that in mind, it was time to go fishing.

“C’mon, LaHune, spill it. Are you really NSF or are you something else? NASA or JPL? Something like that. We all know they got their hands in on that lake drilling project . . . are you part of that?”

“You’re spinning conspiracies now, Hayes.”

“You’re right, I am. Because I can’t shake the feeling that there’s some subtext here, something under the surface I’m not reading. I was there when Gates told you over the radio about those mummies he found, the ruins . . . you didn’t look at all surprised. Did you know they’d be there? And does it all tie in with what’s down in that fucking lake? Because, maybe I’m crazy, but this all smells funny. You cutting us off from the world for what you say are security reasons . . . security of what? Jesus, LaHune, you’re running this like a covert operation.”

“I’m running it the way I’m being told to run it,” LaHune said. “The NSF does not want any crank stories about aliens and pre-human cities leaking out before we know more.”

“Fuck that, LaHune. I don’t care if we found the Ark of the goddamn Covenant or Jesus’ piss-stained underwear, there’s no reason for a clamp-down like this.”

LaHune just stared at him.

His eyes were spooky, Hayes found himself thinking, almost artificial-looking. There was something unnerving about them that made your skin want to crawl. Those eyes were sterile, antiseptic . . . dead and flat and empty. Whatever mind existed behind them must have been rigidly controlled, brainwashed and inhuman. The mind of an ant or a wasp, incapable of thinking beyond the mind-set of its superiors. Yeah, LaHune would shut off the generators if he was ordered to do so, watch the crew freeze to death and not feel a single twinge of guilt. That’s the kind of guy he was. Like some asshole robotic general ordering men to their death even when he knew it was wrong. Morally and ethically wrong.

Had LaHune always been like this? Or had he only recently sold his soul to the machine? Hayes had to wonder, just like he wondered how much they had paid him to betray the people at Kharkhov. And was it in silver like Judas Iscariot?

“I’m not going to sit here and entertain your paranoid fantasies, Hayes. But let me make myself clear on one point,” he said and seemed to mean it. “You start spreading any of this nonsense around and it’ll go bad for you, real bad.”

Hayes stood up. “What’re you gonna do? Send me to fucking Antarctica?”

LaHune just stared blankly.

15

Maybe mid-afternoon, his guts still tangled in a knot from the whole mess, Hayes stopped by to see Doc Sharkey. He stood in the doorway of the infirmary while she administered a tetanus shot to a welder named Koricki who slit open his palm on a shard of rusty metal.

“There,” Sharkey said. “No lockjaw for you, my friend.”

Koricki pulled his sleeve down, examined the bandage on his palm. “Shit, I won’t be able to use my hand for a week . . . damn, there goes half my love life right down the toilet. Anything you can prescribe for that, Doc?”

She managed a grin. “On your way.”

Koricki passed Hayes, dropped him a wink. “Can’t blame a guy for trying, eh, Jimmy?”