Hive by Tim Curran Page B

so fucked up about all of this. Morale has gone right into the pisser and LaHune doesn’t seem to give a shit. He’s clamping down, playing it close to the vest and spooky and that isn’t helping a thing.”
    â€œHe’s the cloak-and-dagger type,” Cutchen added, something behind his eyes pretty much saying that he could elaborate on that, but wasn’t about to.
    Sharkey sighed. “He . . . well, he just doesn’t understand people, I’m afraid. What they need and what they want and what makes them happy.”
    â€œSee, that’s what bugs me about the guy, the fact that he could care less, that he doesn’t give a shit about the state of mind at his own goddamn station, the one he’s supposed to be running. That just rubs me wrong. But, then again, LaHune has been rubbing me wrong since I got here. He has no business running a place like this.” Hayes paused, studying a few contractors leaning against the wall and smoking cigarettes, looking bitter, their eyes dead. “Most of the people down here are vets, they’ve wintered through before. I know all three of us have and many times. Normally, the NSF picks an administrator with people skills, not a fucking mannequin like LaHune. A guy who’s equally at home with the techies and the support personnel. A guy who can talk ice cores and sedimentation, turn around and talk beer and baseball and overhauling a Hemi. The sort of guy who can play both ends, keep people happy and keep the place running, make sure the work gets done and people have what they need, when they need it. That’s why I don’t get LaHune. He has no business down here.”
    â€œWell, somebody thought he did,” Sharkey said.
    â€œYeah, and I’m starting to wonder
who
that might be.”
    Nobody bit on that one and Hayes was okay with that. He’d already reeled off his conspiracy theories for Sharkey and she had warned him to be careful talking like that. That such things would just feed the blaze that was already smoldering at Kharkhov.
    Cutchen wasn’t stupid, though. He could read between the lines and the way he looked over at Hayes told him that he was doing just that.
    â€œWhat I don’t get,” he said after a time, “is why Gates would leave his mummies in there to decay like that. It just doesn’t wash with me. If they’re what he’s saying . . . or not saying . . . then I can’t see this opportunity coming his way again.”
    Sharkey tensed a bit because she knew what Hayes was going to say.
    â€œMaybe he didn’t realize what he was doing,” Hayes said, true to form. “Maybe he wasn’t in his right mind anymore than Meiner was in his when he decided to keep those things company in the dark. Yeah, maybe, like Meiner, Gates didn’t have a choice. Maybe he was doing what those things wanted him to do . . . letting them thaw, letting their minds wake up all the way.”
    Cutchen just sat there. He grinned at first thinking it was a gag, but the grin disappeared quickly enough. He looked over at Sharkey, his eyes seeming to say,
what in the hell is this guy talking about?

18
    â€œW hat we’re doing here,” Dr. Gundry was saying to Hayes inside the drilling tower the next morning, “is to drill down nearly a mile to Lake Vordog. We’ll stop drilling about a hundred feet above it and let the cryobot melt its way down the rest of the way. Why? Why not just drill all the way through? Simple. We don’t want to contaminate that lake in any way, shape, or form. Remember, Mr. Hayes -”
    â€œJimmy’s fine, just Jimmy.”
    â€œRight. Anyway, Jimmy, Vordog is a pristine body of water, un-contaminated by microorganisms from above and has been for nearly forty-million years. Last thing we want is for some of our bugs to get into that water. The ecosystem down there may be radically different from any other on earth and we can’t