Hive by Tim Curran Read Free Book Online Page A

cutting us off like this is just plain stupid. What with those weird mummies and Lind’s breakdown, the crew down here are thinking funny things, you know? They sit around and do their bit, pretend like none of it’s bothering them, but it is. You can see it behind their eyes. They’re getting paranoid and scared. They’re sensing something and its eating their guts out, only they don’t dare admit to it and you can’t blame them.”
    Hayes would never have said any of this to anyone else, but it was true. What you generally had at a station like Kharkhov during the winter was a lot of boredom. There was work to be done, sure, but the pace was nowhere near as frenetic as you saw during the summer. This year the boredom had been replaced by something else . . . a nervous tension, a sense of expectancy, the knowledge that the ball was going to drop. Hayes could feel it. Although the crew wandered around with stupid smiles on their faces and went through the motions, it was all an act. You peeled those smiles off and underneath you were going to see people on the edge, people cringing, people confused and worried and, yes, scared.
    The atmosphere at a winter station locked down by the cold and snow and perpetual darkness was never exactly yippy-skippy, let’s-have-ourselves-a-parade, but even on bad years when you threw together a group that simply did not get along, it was not like this. There was not this sense of brooding apprehension, that almost spiritual sort of taint hanging in the air.
    â€œWhat’re you thinking, Doc?” Hayes asked, seeing Sharkey’s blue eyes focused off into space.
    She shrugged. “I’m just wondering if I’m going to have enough happy pills to get these people to spring.”
    â€œPills won’t cut it,” Hayes told her.
    Sharkey smiled, looked into his eyes. “I was just thinking, Jimmy, how easy it would be for the NSF to dump a group of us down here and then throw something odd at us like this, see how we handled it. A sort of feasibility study. A group of people fairly diverse in that they come from the working class right up to the scientific elite. See how we react to certain things.”
    â€œYou saying they invented those mummies? Those ruins?”
    â€œNo, of course not. But it would be an interesting opportunity for the powers that be to take advantage of. Us stranded down here, facing philosophical and psychological challenges brought about by our isolation and the discovery of Gates’ mummies.”
    â€œDoc, really, don’t be feeding my paranoia.”
    She laughed. “Oh, I’m just speculating here.”
    â€œSure, but it sounds right to me. The bunch of us riding out this fucking winter, our lines of communication severed. Those goddamn mummies out there that are scaring the shit out of everyone . . . whether they’re willing to admit it or not.”
    â€œYes, exactly. And with our good Mr. LaHune as the control. Because, you know, if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be surprised if a mob decided to gather up Gates’ mummies and burn them like alien witches.”
    Sharkey laughed nervously as if to dismiss it all, but Hayes wasn’t ready to dismiss it. He wasn’t much on conspiracies and the like, but those mummies
were
having a very negative effect on the crew. They were getting under peoples’ skins, making them imagine the worst possible things and runaway imaginations were a bad thing when you were trapped down at the bottom of the world. A mass-paranoia becoming a mass-insanity could become savage and devastating at the drop of a hat.
    â€œIf LaHune has any brains,” Hayes said, “then he’ll open this place back up, let these people chat with the outside world. It can’t be good for them to be internalizing this shit, chewing on it and swallowing it whole, letting it boil in their bellies.”
    â€œIt’s not,” Sharkey said.