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

From Hellstrom's Hive Manual. The significant evolutionary achievement of the insects, more than
a hundred million years ago, was the reproductive neuter. This fixed the colony as the unit of
natural selection and removed all previous limits on the amount of specialization (expressed as
caste differences) that a colony could tolerate. It is clear that if we vertebrates can take the same
route, our individual members with their vastly larger brains will become incomparably superior
specialists. No other species will be able to stand against us, ever -- not even the old human species
from which we will evolve our new humans.



The short man with the deceptively youthful face listened attentively as Merrivale briefed Depeaux.
It was early on a Monday morning, not yet nine o'clock, and the short man, Edward Janvert, had
been surprised that an assignment conference could be called that early on such brief notice. There
was trouble somewhere in the Agency, he suspected.

Janvert, who was called Shorty by most of his associates and who managed to conceal his hatred of
the name, was only four feet nine inches tall and had passed as a teen-ager on more than one
Agency assignment. The furniture in Merrivale's office was never small enough for him, however,
and he was squirming on a big leather chair within a half hour.

It was a subtle case, Janvert observed presently, the type he had learned to distrust. Their target
was an entomologist, a Dr. Nils Hellstrom, and it was clear from Merrivale's careful choice of
words that Hellstrom had friends in high places. There were always so many toes around to be
avoided in this business. You couldn't separate politics from the Agency's version of a traditional
security investigation, and these investigations inevitably took on economic overtones.

When he'd called Janvert, Merrivale had said only that it was necessary to keep a second team in
reserve for possible assistance in this case. Someone had to be ready to step in on a moment's
notice.

They expect casualties, Janvert told himself.

He glanced covertly at Clovis Carr, whose almost boyish figure was dwarfed in another of
Merrivale's big wing chairs. Janvert suspected Merrivale had decorated the office to give it the air
of an expensive British club, something to go with his bogus accent.

Do they know about Clovis and me? Janvert wondered, his attention wandering under the onslaught
of Merrivale's rambling style. To the Agency, love was a weapon to be used whenever it was
needed. Janvert tried to keep his gaze away from Clovis, but he kept glancing back at her in spite
of himself. She was short, only half an inch taller than himself, a wiry brunette with a pert oval
face and a pale northern complexion that turned to burn at the drop of a sunbeam. There were
times when Janvert felt his love for her as an actual physical pain.
Merrivale was describing what he called "Hellstrom's cover," which turned out to be the making of
documentary films about insects.

"Deucedly curious, don't you think?" Merrivale asked.

For not the first time during his four years in the Agency Janvert wished he were out of it. He had
come while a third-year law student working the summer as a clerk in the Justice Department. In
that capacity, he had found a file folder accidentally left on a table of his division's law library.