Half Past Human

Nebula Award: Best Novel nominee (1972).

The rebel gene in man is hard to eliminate...

And so it was Tinker, a hive-liver, who secretly set up a receiver, who got messages from Outside, who knew there was something out there more than the great harvesting machines, and who, when the time came, elected to leave the Hive taking his illegal wife and child with him.

Because whatever else happened, Outside, where there were unimaginable threats, there were also unimaginable hopes.