The shadow war

by Glen Scott Allen

  "You see the poor fellow moving across the backs of its fellows?" They could see the wounded bee crawling across others in the hive, in great agitation. "This is much as any worker does when returning with the report of a find. And, just as in that dance of honey, this dance of, well, dismemberment includes pauses where, normally, the bee would stop and hum." Here, she emitted a quite cheery little hum. "You see?

  "But of course this bee has nothing to hum with, which makes its dance quite exceptional… see there, now?" She pointed again into the chamber. She noticed their reluctance. "Come closer, gentlemen. I assure you there's no danger."

  They moved closer to the shield and leaned in. The bee she'd placed in the hive was scrambling around now in awkward figure eights, and the other bees seemed to be taking notice of it. They formed an uneven circle around the wounded bee, a small space cleared of contact.

  "Now, there certainly is no denying the vigor of the wounded bee's dance. I was looking for some indication of how the communal sense of bees would respond to a purely individual situation: a single, wounded bee, speaking energetically, if somewhat ungrammatically, of its own dire predicament."

  She turned to face them, held up a finger in emphasis.

  " But what I had failed to take into account was Mr. Mandeville's book and his idea that there is no individual among bees. A thing exists to them as something that either benefits the entire swarm or threatens it. There is no in between."

  By now the circle around the wounded bee was growing smaller, tightening around the space in which it frantically gyrated.

  "You see, gentlemen, how they first move away, then close in? Well, at first I was so taken by this response of the swarm, I forgot about my wounded bee. And when I remembered him again, he wasn't there. He had simply disappeared."

  As she said this, the two men looked into the chamber-and indeed, the wingless bee was nowhere to be seen among the swarm.

  She leaned toward them.

  "Here," she said. "Have a look." She handed Wolfe a large magnifying glass. He placed it against the shield, put his eye close.

  "I don't-," he said.

  "Look carefully," she said.

  Wolfe paused, then. "Is that-?"

  "Yes, indeed," said Edith. "Mr. Wainwright, would you care to see?"

  Wolfe backed away, handed Benjamin the magnifying lens. Benjamin placed it against the shield, as he'd seen Wolfe do.

  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the magnified bees, their compound eyes enormous, the thousands of hairs along their bodies and legs. Then he noticed something alien in the mandibles of one bee. He looked to Edith.

  "What I saw then is what you see now," she said, looking into his eyes. "Bits and pieces of my wingless sacrifice in the mandibles of other bees: here a leg, there a section of stripped fuzz…"

  Benjamin handed the glass back, not wishing to look again.

  "You see, gentlemen? They've quite literally torn him limb from limb."

  She crossed her hands against her white lab smock, waiting for their response.

  They were both silent for a moment. Then Wolfe asked, "And you gave this same… demonstration to Dr. Fletcher?"

  "Oh yes. He was intensely interested. Which is why later, when I thought of the Mandeville book, I decided to trot it over to him. And that's when I discovered the corpus delicti. "

  "Well," began Wolfe. And then he seemed to have nothing to say, still shaken by the demonstration. "Well, Edith, thank you for this… enlightening session." They started to leave, then Wolfe stopped and turned to her.

  "One other question." He flashed that charming smile. "What kinds of bees are you working with?"

  "Why, Apis mellifera scutellata, of course. They're such an… energetic species. One tends to get results faster."

  "Apis…?" said Wolfe vaguely.

  " Mellifera scutellata, " completed Edith. "For Africanized bee. Of course they're popularly known as killer bees, but that name, as regards their dealings with human beings, is quite ridiculous. Of course, in this instance," and she motioned toward the chamber where they'd just witnessed the almost ritualistic cannibalization of the de-winged bee, "it seems appropriate, doesn't it?" She smiled.

  "Doesn't that…," Benjamin began. "Well, aren't you a little… frightened to be working with them?"

  "I've been working with these little fellows for quite some time, young man. And just in case-" She pointed to a large red button set into the wall next to the lab door.

  "An alarm?" asked Wolfe.

  "That button activates an alarm, yes, but it also causes a gas to be sprayed into the laboratory. From those." She pointed to the ceiling, to what looked like fire sprinklers.

  "But wouldn't the gas-," began Wolfe.

  "It's instantly fatal to the bees, but merely irritating to humans. A bit like tear gas, I understand." She saw the looks of doubt on their faces. "Don't worry about me, gentlemen. I respect my bees, but I don't fool myself that they respect me."

  "Yes," said Wolfe. "Well, thank you, Edith. Thank you for your time."

  "Not at all," she said, already turning back to her work.

  Nodding good-bye, Benjamin followed Wolfe out the swinging doors of the laboratory.

  CHAPTER 9

  A few moments after speaking with Edith, Wolfe and Benjamin were outside in the quad, sitting on a bench beneath a tremendous sycamore tree.

  Benjamin looked farther out to the west, to the low, rolling hills, covered with similar trees in their fall splendor. The trimmed hedges, bright flowers, warm-colored leaves all seemed a world away from the metal and plastic and methodical cruelty they'd just left.

  "Well, that was…," Benjamin began.

  "Yes," agreed Wolfe. "It was indeed."

  "But useful? She said Jeremy told her nothing about his work. Bees and nuclear war? Swarm intelligence? Despite what she said about the Pentagon's interest, I still don't see how they connect."

  Wolfe frowned. "Apparently Fletcher did. If we could get at his computer files, perhaps we would, too."

  Benjamin squinted over at Wolfe.

  "Look, I'm certainly not telling you how to do your job, but it's just… well, you seem to be investigating this incident as though it was a murder, not a security leak."

  Wolfe looked at him without reaction. "And?"

  "And why do I get the feeling you don't really believe Jeremy leaked anything to anyone?"

  Wolfe frowned at him. "Oh, but he did," he said. "Just not yet."

  "Not yet?" The grotesque session with Mrs. Gadenhower had left him little patience for playing games. "What does that mean?"

  "Ah," Wolfe observed, ignoring Benjamin's question and looking down the path. "Here's someone who probably agrees with me."

  Benjamin turned, saw a figure approaching them on the path. The man was very tall, very solidly built, with closely cropped very blond hair. He was dressed in a dark suit and tie and wearing sunglasses. He strode purposefully but without hurry toward them.

  "Samuel," he said, extending his hand. Wolfe stood and took it and they shook hands somewhat abruptly. "And this must be Benjamin." Benjamin rose and shook his hand also. "Eric Hauser," he said. His grip was strong, brief. "Campus security."

  "Campus?" Benjamin asked.

  "That's what we call our little community, the campus," said Hauser, smiling broadly.

  "An ivy-covered retreat, far from the strife and worries of the civilian world," added Wolfe. "Out where a man can hear himself think."

  Hauser looked at him. "That's what they're paid to do, Samuel."

  "And paid very well," Wolfe answered. "And, I assume, they carry full life insurance?"

  "Look, Samuel," Hauser glanced nervously at Benjamin, "I know we've had our differences in the past. But I'm sure you understand why Dr. Fletcher's… untimely death, as tragic as it was, can't be allowed to tarnish the reputation of the Foundation. Why we need this all settled as quickly as possible." Wolfe didn't respond. "If there's anything I can do to help your
inquiry along-"

  "Now that you mention it," Wolfe said, "there is. We'd like to get a list of all the computer registration numbers on the… campus. Who has what shiny toys, that sort of thing."

  "Everyone?" asked Hauser. "I don't see how that's possibly relevant."

  "Wouldn't you say a missing computer would be relevant? I know it would certainly worry other government beneficiaries."

  Hauser looked dubious. "Dr. Fletcher's computer is missing?"

  Wolfe smiled. "How do we know what's missing until we know what everyone's supposed to have?"

  Hauser stared at Wolfe, his friendly manner of earlier evaporated.

  "I'll have to check with Arthur about that," he said frostily.

  "Fine," said Wolfe. "And tell him, every hour you're checking with him is an hour closer to our deadline. And his."

  Hauser seemed about to say something to Wolfe, but stopped himself. He smiled at Benjamin and said, "Good to meet you, Mr. Wainwright," and continued on down the pathway.

  After he'd left, Benjamin turned to Wolfe.

  "You two have a history?"

  "In a manner of speaking," Wolfe said, still looking after Hauser's retreating figure.

  Benjamin lost his patience.

  "Look, everyone we've met, everywhere you go here, there seems to be history. How can I help you sort something out when I don't even know what it is we're looking for? Or why they picked us to look for it."

  Wolfe looked at him, suddenly very serious.

  "Not why us, Benjamin. Why me. "

  Benjamin looked slightly hurt. Wolfe patted his arm.

  "I'm sorry. Don't take me too seriously. Not until I tell you to, anyway." He smiled that charming smile.

  Benjamin suddenly felt quite fond of Samuel Wolfe; he also felt for the first time that he could trust Wolfe, completely.

  "I need to check on a few things with Arthur," said Wolfe. "I'll meet you back in your room in, say, an hour?"

  Benjamin nodded, and Wolfe walked off in the same direction Hauser had taken.

  When he got back to his room, Benjamin was surprised to find a maid there. The bed was made, the room looked straightened up-but he wondered why the maid was there now, rather than in the morning. She had a vacuum cleaner out and was pushing the sweeper back and forth across the bare floor. She was just about to shove it under the bed when he entered.

  "Excuse me," he said.

  She turned, frightened and caught off guard.

  "I'm sorry," he said, "but could you do that later? I'd really like to take a nap."

  "Of course," she said. She switched off the vacuum, rolled the cord up, and, with a "Good afternoon, sir," she left.

  Benjamin retrieved his briefcase from the dresser, opened it. Inside was a thick, leather-bound journal. Its neatly ruled pages were filled with notes in a small, precise handwriting, and the journal itself was stuffed with sheets of paper, Xerox copies, pictures… it looked just like what it was: a fanatically methodical academic's scrapbook. Or, as his father had called it, his "treasury."

  Benjamin took the journal, sat down in a chair at the small table, opened the cover.

  Journal of Dr. Thomas Woodrow Wainwright was written there in the same precise hand.

  The writing was so like his father: solid, staid, respectable. And slightly obsessive in its neatness.

  Yet, for all his compulsiveness, there'd been nothing arrogant about his father. In fact, the two things he disliked most in others were arrogance and intolerance.

  "They go hand in hand, Benjamin," his father had said once. They'd been discussing one of his colleagues at Georgetown, an academic with a brilliant career-one built almost entirely by demolishing the careers of others. "Believing you have the flawless answer," he'd said, "is perhaps the biggest flaw of all."

  Benjamin felt the usual twinge of regret that his father hadn't lived to see him complete his own degree, start his own career…

  He shook off the sentiment. He began flipping through pages, looking for the copies of the few known letters of Harlan Bainbridge which he knew his father had copied verbatim into the notebook.

  The first was a letter Harlan had written to his aunt soon after his group arrived on the land Coddington had purchased where they might begin their "New Jerusalem," their utopian Prayer Town, a place far beyond all other English settlements of the time. Above the letter his father had written Establishes claim to land; chronicles exodus from New Jersey, and then the text of the letter: Honor'd Aunte- -I've sent this with Elder Sassamon in greate haste, and he is trusted and that God's Speed did see him to you is my prayer-for the papers here be disposed as quickly as you mighte seeke a counsel with the Capetown Elders, that they may Recognise and Grante our Claime.

  – Nosce teipsum reade the Scriptures, and this done, and trusting in the Wisdome of the Lord, so with my few and trusted people this Lent just passe'd fled much as Brother Bradford fled the Dutch truse with Spain, the Inquisition promising too near and hot a fire for his heels-and, passeing through the County of Mattekeesets and thought to abide meantimes in the Plantation of Providence, onely to find there no reall peace from Persecution and in feare of Salus Populi and againe, as the wandering Israelites, faceing West-so made discovery of this place by the Savages called Pettaquamscutt, but with the agreement of the whole community drawne as the Christian settlement of Bainbridge Plantation.

  [an entire half page was illegible]

  … but the Savages revere this place as welle, and their pagan gods be of a like not so tamne as weake, and they did in tragick form reape the Smallpox this winter laste as great as that of 1634.

  – Unto you I commit theese papers, and so do I here note on this day of Our Lord, March 15th, Sixteen Hundred and Sixty-Six.

  Your Trusted Nephew

  The Right Reverend Harlan P. Bainbridge

  At Bainbridge Plantation, his sign

  How typical of the Puritans, Benjamin mused, to assume a smallpox epidemic was a punishment visited upon the Natives by a Christian God offended by their pagan forms of worship; when in fact the smallpox, Benjamin knew, had come from infected blankets given to those Natives by those same "righteous" settlers. Also typical was Harlan's portrayal of himself as a latter-day Moses leading his small congregation to the Promised Land. How frustrating it must have been for him to discover that the Wampanoags thought the land had already been promised to them.

  The journal continued with entries about further communiques between Harlan and his aunt, most reporting the slow-but-steady progress as Harlan's group established the Bainbridge Plantation and began to work toward Harlan's utopian goal. His father had noted, for instance, that Harlan's group was one of the first in the region to actually sign treaties with the Natives and to begin bartering with them on a regular basis.

  The second full Bainbridge letter was the last one he'd ever written, penned sometime before the plantation's destruction. Above this letter, his father had written Fears sabotage-from C.E.P.? Benjamin had never deciphered what his father had meant by that abbreviation. Thomas had all sorts of shorthand symbols he employed in his notes, working always to be more efficient, but he kept no glossary or index of them. He shook his head in frustration at his father's unique obsessions and read on: Honor'd Aunte- -Despite all the Perfidies practiced upon us by those who beare the marke of Puramis as Satan beares the Trident forke, The Lord has ordained that we shoulde establishe the Commandments of Piety and Efficiencie in all acts stemming frome and displaieing their respecte for God and His selfe-made workes, which, in their echo of our Creater, canne be not but sensicall, propere, and prosperous.

  – The heathens may worshipe their god 'neath any randome sycamore, but a Christian knows Nature to be a chapel, which conceals not the ugly face of Death, but the abundante manifestations of a Supreme God, in whose Bosom we freely place our Truste and Fate; and we suffere not to be disheartened nor dissuaded from our Course by those who hide in Shadow and sow Feare on all Mankinde…

  [res
t of the letter missing]

  And that was it. While there were still many entries about the Puritans and their growing success in the New World, Benjamin knew there was nothing further about Bainbridge, either pater or fils. But as he was closing the journal he noticed, for the first time, a single, very faint mark in the margin next to the word Puramis. It looked partially erased. Leaning down so his face almost touched the paper, he saw that it was a small triangle, with what might have been a single dot in its center.

  It might have been another of his father's shorthand codes, but Benjamin couldn't remember ever having seen this one anywhere else in his notes.

  It was then a knock came at his door. He looked at the clock on the table-almost an hour had passed while he was reading his father's journal. Before he could say anything, the door opened and Wolfe entered. He was wearing an immaculate white dinner jacket.

  "Chop chop," he said. "We're wanted for dinner."

  "Dinner? Uh, why don't you go on without me. I'm a little busy here. And I haven't changed…"

  "You're fine. Hurry, we don't want to miss the cocktail hour. I'll wait in the hall."

  Benjamin went into the small bathroom, splashed some water onto his face, combed his hair and straightened his tie, then went back into the bedroom. He found his shoes where he'd tossed them next to the bed, put them on.

  As he bent down to tie his shoes, he saw something under the bed. He squatted down and reached, slid it out from under the bed with two fingers.

  It was a yellow piece of paper with blue lines-a page from a small legal pad, folded in the middle. He was about to open it when Wolfe shouted from the hallway.

  "Benjamin! I hear the ice clinking!"

  Benjamin threw the paper, still folded, on the bedside table, switched the lamp off, and left.

  CHAPTER 10

  The dozen or more round tables in the dining room had been set with white tablecloths, gardenia centerpieces, candles, and white china. At the head of the room the massive antique table was covered with a deep red tablecloth. The crystal chandeliers were aglow, there was a modest fire in the fireplace, and light reflected from the gilt-edged mirror over the fireplace and the deep brown walnut wainscoting.