Hive

Hayes stood there for some time, smiling at what Koricki had said and unable to stop. The smile was pretty much skin deep and the muscles refused to pull out of it.

“Well? Are you going to come in or stand there and hold up the door frame?” Sharkey wanted to know.

Hayes went in there and sat across from her at her little desk. He did not say anything.

“You look like hell, Jimmy.”

“Thanks.”

But it wasn’t some offhand smartassed comment like one of the boys would drop at him and neither was it a medical opinion . . . it was something else, maybe something like real concern. Regardless, Hayes knew she was right . . . his face was a fright mask. Eyes bloodshot, skin sallow and loose, a tic in the corner of his lips. His hands were shaking and his heart kept speeding up and slowing like it couldn’t find its rhythm. And, oh yeah, he hadn’t slept more than an hour in the last twenty-four.

“You were up all night?”

Hayes nodded. “You could say that, all right.”

“Why didn’t you come see me?” she asked, leaving the suggestion of that maybe lay a little too long. “I . . . I could have given you something . . . I mean, heh, something to help you sleep.”

But the thinly-concealed innuendo and numerous Freudian slips were completely lost on Hayes and that was pretty much obvious.

“How’s Lind?” he asked.

“He’s sleeping. He was up a few hours ago, had breakfast, went back out again. He seemed pretty lucid, though. I’m hopeful.”

“Me, too.”

She studied him with those flashing blue eyes. “I’m ready to listen anytime you’re ready to talk.”

And she was and he knew it. But was he ready? That was the question. In all those paperback novels that got passed around the station during the winter the characters always seemed to feel some awful story they had to relate got easier with the re-telling, but Hayes wasn’t so sure about that. He’d already told LaHune a good piece of it and as he thought about what he had to say, it only sounded loonier to him. But he did it. He marched straight through it like Sherman through Georgia and even clued her into the telepathy bit, seeing Lind’s dreams.

“Okay,” he said when he was done, his hands bunched into fists. “Should I just go take the cot next to Lind or what?”

She looked at him for a long time and there was nothing critical in that look, concern, yes, but nothing negative. “Two weeks ago I would have put you under medication.”

“But now?”

“Now I’m not sure what to do,” she admitted. “Something’s happening here and we both know it.”

“But do you believe me?”

She sighed, looked unhappy. “Yes . . . yes, I suppose I do.”

And maybe it would have been easier if she hadn’t. Things like this were so much easier when you could simply dismiss them. You got abducted by an alien and they stuck something up your ass? Yeah, okay. Your house is haunted? Uh-huh, I bet it is. Casual, thoughtless dismissal saved you from a world of hurt. But that was how the human mind worked . . . it was skeptical because it had to be skeptical, it saved itself a lot of fear and torment that way, a lot of sleepless nights. Because when you believed, you honestly believed . . . well, that meant you had to do something about it, right?

“You believe,” Hayes said, “but you’d rather not? Is that it?”

“That’s it exactly.” She drummed her fingers on the desktop, looked like she needed to be doing something with them. “Because in my position, I just can’t sit on something like this. The health of the entire crew here is my responsibility. I have to do something, except there really is nothing I can do.”

“How right you are. I already tried our lord and master, but that was pointless.”

“I could go to him, too, but I would need something concrete . . . even then . . . well, you know how LaHune is.” She opened her desk and took out a little microcassette recorder. “I wonder if you would go through it all again so we have a record? It might be important to have some documentation and your admission, on tape, that LaHune totally blew you off.”

Hayes did not want to do that, but he did. He cleared his throat, brought it all back in his head and said what had to be said. It took about fifteen minutes to get all the facts straight.

“I’m glad you left out the conspiracy bit,” Sharkey said. Then she held up a hand to him. “Please don’t take that the wrong way, but it just wouldn’t sound right on the tape. Maybe LaHune does have some secret agenda. If he does and he’s involved in something way over our heads, we’ll never get him to admit as such. All we can do is sit back and wait.”

It made sense. Hayes believed it, though. He didn’t know how he knew it to be fact, but he did and nobody could tell him otherwise.

“Are you still . . . still experiencing the telepathy?”

Hayes shook his head. “No, I think it was a brief surge. But I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if other people around here start getting it, too.”

“Lind’s in there,” Sharkey said, pointing to the door that led into the little sick bay. “Do you think if you - “

“I’m not up to it.”