"Frank Herbert - Hellstrom's Hive" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

had made specific mention of this. Depeaux had expected to approach from a different direction,
however, and find his own cover. But there had been, finally, only the tall brown grass to conceal
his stalking climb across a wide pastureland and up to the hill.

The sandwich finished and half his water gone, Depeaux sealed the bottle, restored it and the rest of
the food to his pack. For a moment, he peered along his back trail to see if anyone had followed.
There was no sign, but he couldn't put down an uneasy feeling that he was watched. The lowering
sun was picking up his trail with a shadow line, too. No helping that; the crushed grass represented
a track, and it could be traced.

He had driven through the town of Fosterville at 3:00 A.M., curious about the sleeping community
where, so he was told, they generally refused to answer questions about the farm. There had been a
new motel on the outskirts and Tymiena had suggested they spend a night there before
reconnoitering the farm, but Depeaux was playing a hunch on this case. What if there were
watchers in the town to report strangers to the farm?



The Farm.

It had been capitalized in all of the Agency's reports for some time, from quite a while before Porter
had turned up missing. Depeaux had driven on to a turnoff several miles below the valley and had
left Tymiena there shortly before dawn. Now, he was a bird watcher, but there were no birds
visible.

Depeaux returned to the gap in the grass and had another look into the valley. There had been a
massacre of Indians here in the late 1860's -- farmers killing off the remnants of a "wild" tribe to
remove a threat to grazing stock. As a marker of that all but forgotten day, the valley had been
named "Guarded." According to a historical footnote Depeaux had located, the original name of
the valley was Running Water, after the Indian name. Generations of white farming, however, had
depleted the water table and now the water did not run year round.

As he studied the valley, Depeaux thought about the record of human nature carried in such names.
A casual observer passing this way without doing his homework might think the valley had
achieved its name because of its setting. Guarded Valley was a closed-in place with apparently
only one real avenue of easy access. The hillsides were steep, a cliff marked the upper end, and
only to the north did the valley open out. Appearances could be deceptive, though, Depeaux
reminded himself. He had reached his vantage point successfully; his binoculars might just as well
be a violent weapon. In a sense, they were: a subtle weapon aimed at the destruction of Guarded
Valley.

For Depeaux, that pattern of destruction had begun when Joseph Merrivale, the Agency's
operations director, had called him in for an assignment conference. Merrivale, a native of Chicago
who affected a heavy English accent, had begun by grinning at Carlos and saying, "You may have
to waste a few of your fellow humans on this one."

They all knew, of course, how much Depeaux hated personal violence.