Kaspar's Box

IV: A SUMMONS FROM THE DARK

“Okay, girls, where are you at?” Murphy’s voice came, friendly and fatherly sounding with a medium brogue through the ship’s general public address system. “This is yer old friend Captain Murphy here, and after ye pulled that neat disappearin’ trick the folks here they decided to make a deal. You can’t stay hid forever in any case. What if one of them wee ones was to decide to get born while nobody could see? No doctors, no midwives, no nothin’ around to make sure the wee ones don’t croak and the mother don’t bleed to death. Now, you know you can trust the old captain. They’re gonna let us go. Take us down where we was goin’ in the first place. All of us, fast, in one of their comfy shuttles. Now, I know you can hear me. God knows everybody else can. We’re in one of the ship’s lounges right now and we’ll stay there. All the maps on the walls will blink showin’ where we are, and they all show where you are, so just come on down. I swear this is on the up-and-up. They just want to be rid of us.”

He switched off the PA and settled back in his chair, a pint of synthetic dark ale in one hand. He took a swig, and the foam seemed to crust on his upper lip.

“You think they’ll buy it? That they’ll trust you?” Lieutenant Commander Mohr asked him, more than a little worried. Murphy had the feeling that the security officer wasn’t nearly as confident of the inviolability of his secret computers and files as he made out he was.

“Well, they’ll probably think about it for a bit,” Murphy replied, “but, then, one of them baby contractions will nip ’em in the tummy and they’ll get real tired out real fast and start thinkin’ it over. I expect they’ll eventually come here just to check it out before they show themselves, but, yes, if we’re straight with them, then they’ll be straight with us. I’m pretty sure of that.”

Mohr nodded. “I hope you’re right. And I really do want them off this ship, all three and you, as fast as is practical. In fact, the Admiralty itself pretty well ordered it. As soon as we insure that they’re in good shape, I’m packing you all off with one of my best pilots and Sergeant Maslovic as company. They’ll get you down to Barnum’s World all right. After that, it’s up to you.”

“I have a feelin’ you may have some problems once they’re down there, at least in keepin’ ’em in view, but we’ll see,” Murphy told him. “I’m well out of this, I think. At least their delivery will net me enough to get me to a junkyard planet like Sepuchus where I can put together another ship. Maybe a wee bit faster one.”

“No wonder your ship’s so banged up! You bought it at salvage?”

“Well, I bought the hulk at salvage, and the rest of the parts bit by bit. It’s actually quite practical, you see. Cheap but serviceable, I can repair it with standardized parts most anywhere if need be, and nobody pays much attention to rustbuckets like that. Beats me why you even bothered to haul me in this time. Pickin’s must be slim.”

Mohr shrugged. “It’s less that than the principle of the thing. We let you get away with it, suddenly everybody tries and we wind up in a series of mini wars just to keep operating. And I have to tell you, Murphy, that pirates and privateers are multiplying like cockroaches. Things are getting worse and worse. It’s all breaking down, and one day it’s going to be victims and prey and then nothing much at all. You can see it coming.”

“Perhaps. I think we’re better’n that,” the old captain told him. “Me, I think it’s about time this nasty little system fell apart so it could be replaced with something better, something that works. We got thirty, forty colonies that could be self-sufficient in food and a lot of supplies if they could kick the habit of dependin’ on other worlds for things and start doin’ more of it themselves. So long as they think of themselves as colonies, though, they’re gonna be stuck, and eventually every pig will sink into the mud and drown. No, Commander, we got to stop this whole colonial stuff. It’s time for the kids to realize they grew up.”

“You’re talking about anarchy.”

“I’m talkin’ about independence! We change or we die. That’s the way it’s always been.”

“Then who protects these new independent worlds from the ruthless killers who’ll sweep in the moment there’s no navy to at least threaten them?”

“They protect themselves! They do it or they die! Faced with that, they’ll protect themselves, believe you me. And it may cost a world or two. They have to see that they got no choice but to fight for their own. It’s tough, but that’s the way of it.”

“Pretty ruthless, Murphy. You’re talking about possibly millions of innocent lives.”

“That may be true, but you just said it yourself. It’s breakin’ down, it is. It can’t be held and your big ships can’t defend the whole of it. They learn to do it, or they die fast and messy or slow and messier. They’ll learn.” He looked at the clock and changed his tone.

“I think it’s time I whisper more sweet nothin’s to me darlin’s,” he sighed, and turned towards the intercom.

“C’mon, me sweet darlin’s. Can’t keep the nice folk here waitin’. Besides, I don’t know about you, but I’m more’n ready to blow this joint and get back to some free land. I’m gettin’ kinda bored just sittin’ here and waitin’, and if we miss our stop, well, then, we might be stuck on this tub for a long, long time.”

He paused for a moment. “Anything?”

“No,” Mohr sighed. “I think—what the hell?”

He was looking over Murphy’s shoulder at a data screen, and suddenly the screen had gone black. Now, in it, appeared shimmering almost cartoon-like outlines of the three missing girls. With just the outlines and an otherwise blank background, it was impossible to figure out where they were.

“Well, well! How are you, darlin’s?” Murphy beamed.

“How do we know this ain’t no trick?” came an eerie set of voices, all three speaking in perfect unison.

“Oh, c’mon. I know it’s not, but think about it. You got them over a barrel, darlin’s. They want you off, and me with you. What’s the choice? I mean, you can stay like ye are, whatever that is, and then what? The wee ones are born and there’s either messy problems or ye ain’t gonna be thinkin’ ’bout hidin’ out nohow. They ain’t gonna kill you, neither. They don’t know what’d happen to their pretty ship if they tried. So come on up, get somethin’ here to eat and drink, take a rest and get a shower and some clean clothes, and then we’ll be off.”

“In your ship?”

“Well, no, but don’t let that worry you none. I ain’t gonna lose as much as it seems. They’ll take us on one of their small ships, nice and comfy and much faster than I could do it. And once down, do you really care about them?”

The girls seemed to be thinking it over, or, more correctly, the collective mind seemed to mull over the choices. The trouble was, Murphy reflected, even all three of them together couldn’t get a deep thought and haul it out if it took three days. The problem was, were he in their position, he doubted if he would trust any of them, least of all him, to do more than dissect them to see how they did their little trick.

Finally, they seemed to come up with some sort of risky compromise, which was, after all, the best they could do in any event.

“Cap’n Murphy?”

“I’m here, darlin’s.”

“You tell ’em to get that little ship ready now. You tell ’em we leave now. You and us.”

“Well, darlin’s, we’re more than a wee bit out of the neighborhood yet. It’d still be a long flight, and they’re gonna hav’ta drive ’cause I couldn’t handle a jobbie like that. Too fancy for an old trader like me. And they ain’t gonna let it go unless they got some folks aboard to make sure it stays in their hands and comes back. Now, that’s only reasonable.”

“No! Just you and us!”

“I told you. The ship won’t even listen to me, and, besides, the laws, even on Barnum’s World, require somebody real to be in charge when it docks. There’ll be four of us and two of them. That’s not unreasonable. And I’ll be makin’ sure they don’t do no double-crossin’.”

They were silent again for a moment, but he felt better now. They weren’t thinking about not going anymore, only making the safest deal. Finally they answered, “All right, but just one of them.”

“They say two. That’s not very many considerin’ how many they got on this big bugger. They need one to pilot, one to deal with the folks on Barnum’s World to make sure they allow us to come down. I been there many a time, girls. Just me, or just us, we might talk ’em into it, but with a navy shuttle we’ll need somebody with permissions and such. They ain’t that trustin’ of the navy, you see.”

He realized that this made very little sense, but if it sounded reasonable and within their control, they might go for it.

“But we go now.” It wasn’t a question.

“If we must, yes. It’ll take longer and be less comfy, but we can go now. Let me ask the folks here.” He turned and looked at Mohr, who nodded. “Twenty minutes. We’ll use number twenty-four. It’s got its own gate drive but is also fitted out as a lifeboat, so it has basic supplies and such. It should do. Shall I alert the crew?”

“By all means.” Murphy turned back to the intercom. “Okay, darlin’s, ye drive a hard bargain but they’re buyin’ it. The man here’s callin’ his folks now. The problem is, I don’t know where you are so I don’t know how to tell you to get down there.”

“We can get there,” the girls replied. “The spirit of the ship will guide us.”

The spirit of the ship? Suddenly he realized that they meant the central computer that was running just about the whole show. To them, it was just another person, albeit a supernatural one, whose mind they were partly controlling. All those tests and practices to get a damned pilot’s license and these little girls do it by ordering the disembodied voice in the heavens. Jesus!

Mohr came back into the room and looked over at him. “You want to come with me? I’ll take you down there. I’m having a real argument with the captain and the exec over this, but short of risking the entire ship I don’t see any other way but this. Maslovic’s on his way as well, and I’ve alerted Lieutenant Chung, one of our best fighter pilots from the destroyer Agrippa to take her kit and proceed to the shuttle. She’s been briefed and knows the situation if not the whole score. Best if as few of the crew as possible ever know the kind of power these girls showed.”

Murphy nodded. “I see. Gonna be hard to keep it silent, though, I think. You better watch it with this ship’s command and control computer, too, Commander. You don’t know what thoughts them little darlin’s put in its metaphysical head.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Mohr assured him. “But there shouldn’t be any problem if we keep our end of the bargain, and I fully intend to do so. Good luck, Captain. And if you find out anything valuable about the people behind all this, there’s a great deal of reward potential. You remember that.”

“I kind of think that, havin’ seen what these little girls can do, I’m best off mindin’ me own business, Commander. And mindin’ it as far away from Barnum’s World and Tara Hibernius as well as I can. This is a kind of power I’d rather not think much on, or for long. If these girls can do this, imagine what the folks behind ’em, the ones with the big brains, can do! No, I think this is time to mind me own business.”

The security chief shrugged. “Suit yourself. It’s my duty to find out how to stop this sort of thing from happening to us again, and maybe whether or not it’s a part of something nastier that we should know about. Maybe it’s not. Well and good if not, but that’s what I’m supposed to do. It’s why I’m here.” He put out a hand and Murphy took it and shook it.

“Well, good luck, Commander. I don’t know which one of us is goin’ into the worst situation,” Murphy replied. “But at least I’m goin’ someplace.”

Finding Shuttle 24 was not all that difficult, but it did take some time to get to on the vast frigate.

As Mohr said, the shuttles did double duty as emergency lifeboats, and because of that they were laid out like lifeboats along every other deck from top to bottom and from stem to stern, each with an airlock entrance and a separate small launch bay. Each was angled slightly, so that it needed only the emergency code or a pilot to shoot it out at high velocity into space, whereupon it could be either piloted by the human aboard or go on automatic if in lifeboat mode. Mohr had not been lying when he said that a pilot was needed if they were to get to Barnum’s World; on automatic, it would simply head for the nearest inhabited world, and if no such world were in its range, it would head for the nearest stable wormgate and go through it and go through the procedure again. If more than half the supplies were used up, it would put everyone aboard into a cryogenic state whether they wanted to be or not and continue on, possibly forever, certainly until it found something in its programming.

With a pilot aboard it became a shuttle. The pilot generally brought a detailed flight plan from the central computer with him or her and simply inserted it, adjusting only as circumstances required. In this case, though, they hadn’t trusted the computers aboard the frigate to do a solid plan, and so the pilot would have to complete it on the shuttle and make daily adjustments. From this point, Barnum’s World required two jumps and would be about eighty hours subjective time at the highest speed the shuttle was capable of making. The larger ships weren’t likely to follow at that rate; they would be a week or more behind at full throttle. This was going to be a long time with the three witches, subject to their powers and whims.

When Murphy finally got to the bay, the outer lock was open and lit up from within. He had no idea who had made it and who hadn’t, but he was kind of hoping to be the last one inside.

He wasn’t. Maslovic was there, in a new, clean uniform and looking more official, but that was it, or so it seemed. He came to near attention when Murphy entered, a marked difference from the way he’d greeted them as head of the boarding party when they’d been taken aboard not all that long ago.

“At ease, Sergeant. I’m nobody’s captain here. Nobody else here yet?”

“No, sir. At least so far as I know. The pilot is on her way and should be here any minute. As for the other passengers… Well, I hope they’ll let us know because we certainly can’t leave without them!”

“Well, we could, but it would make your navy pretty unhappy, and I doubt if even me girls would like it after they finished playin’ their games. They could have them babies any time now, and I don’t think any of ’em wants to have ’em on board your big, antiseptic ship.”

He looked around the shuttle and nodded approvingly to himself. “The bunks should be more than adequate, and there’s decent toilet facilities I see.” He moved from the aft compartment to the center and found a comfortable middle room, as it were, with a padded leatherette bench seat going completely around the walls and breaking only for the fore and aft doorways, all flanking a rather cleverly designed segmented table with inserts that could be raised, lowered, tilted, inverted, and moved every which way. More bunks of a more basic sort could be strung from the ceiling. Cut into the side bulkheads, one side mirroring the other, were compartments that clearly slid back.

“Serving bays,” the sergeant told him. “We’ll get our food there and drink through there. It’s mostly made from various wastes using a separate computer-controlled device with matter to energy to matter conversion, but the food it produces is nearly identical to what we get in the galleys and is really not that bad. Drinks are from those inserts there. You simply say what you want and it will make it for you. There’s a great deal of recycling here, but some loss each turn, which is why there is a limit to how long we can go. Still, we’re set for weeks here if need be, and we don’t need nearly that long.”

Murphy nodded. “I think it best we don’t mention the process and origins of the food and drink, Sergeant. Let’s let it just be magic, all right?”

The marine froze for a moment, not quite understanding what the old man was saying, and then realized the context. “Oh, yes, sir. I see. Yes, we want everyone to be happy and relaxed here.”

Murphy smiled. “I think we might just get along here for the duration, Sergeant. So, do you know this pilot?”

“Yes, sir. Picked her myself out of the group. Very skilled. When we have things we must do with some, er, delicacy, she’s who we pick. I’m not sure anybody’s ready for this trio of yours, but if anybody is, Lieutenant Chung would be. She’s had some ground experience, mostly in finding and selecting the best things we need for repairs and replacements, but she shouldn’t be thrown by a different sort of culture, no slight intended, sir.”

“None taken. Your people have gone a different way than most, but I suppose it works. You’re still basically extortionists, but it’s an elegant sort of extortion, the kind that even you think is a public service. I suppose I can live with that. I deal mostly with ones who just pick it up by choice or as a job of opportunity.”

“So our protection is extortion while your smuggling is just unrestrained business. That right?”

“That’s about it, laddie. But the big difference is that to you this is the end, the purpose of things, while to me the gatherin’ of money and whatever it brings is just the means to an end. You’ll never even understand the sort of dreams we mortal folk have.”

“Just because we’re built differently and to different purposes doesn’t mean we can’t understand such things,” the sergeant noted.

Murphy gave a low chuckle and muttered to himself, “Aye. I had a neutered dog once.”

“Sir?”

“Never mind. Nothin’ of importance. But where is—ah! Looks like our pilot has arrived.”

Lieutenant Chung was smaller and thinner by far than Maslovic or any of the others Murphy had seen aboard. Not that she had a figure; she reminded Murphy less of a warrior caste than of a girl permanently frozen before reaching puberty, and, like all the others, she was hairless. But if most of the navy types were built for weight lifting and fighting, the pilot class were acrobats, built for lightning-fast action and reaction, with perfect balance and genetically heightened senses, all the better to meld with their machines almost as if one and the same. He also suspected she wasn’t as helpless as her tiny form suggested. That same lightning quickness and superior senses made for ideal experts in the martial arts.

Her voice, too, was high and seemed more a child’s voice, yet the tone and confidence it projected suggested a lot of experience.

The sergeant came to attention but did not salute. You didn’t salute inside when on a mission. He towered over her; Murphy figured that three or four of the pilots could be made out of the protoplasm in that tough marine. Still, he was properly and professionally deferential. She was, after all, an officer.

“Stand easy, Sergeant,” she said crisply, putting down her own kit. “Is everyone here?”

“No, sir. The three passengers have yet to arrive,” Maslovic told her.

She nodded. “Very well. I’ll get everything prepped up front. Then we’ll wait. They’ll either show up or they won’t.”

The pilot went forward to the flight deck and began going through the preflight sequence. The deck had two large chairs, either one of which could have swallowed her, and a complex set of instruments, screens, and control pads. Each chair also had a headset of light mesh that would conform itself to just about any size head. While now attached to the seat back, it actually came off and was normally worn much like a cap. Chung reached up, brought it down, examined it closely, then put it on and sat back in the chair, eyes closed, hands pressed together in a fashion that made it look as if she were praying.

She remained like this for a couple of minutes, and then, without her moving an apparent muscle, the interior lights blinked and there was a sense of low vibration. In front of her, the previously inert and rather featureless console came to life, the lights and screens now actively showing data, diagrams, lines of coded numbers, and all sorts of other information that was meaningless even to an experienced pilot like Murphy. Slowly, methodically, things went on and off throughout the shuttle, from air vents to the food server controls and doors, the lights and hatches.

Murphy understood the drill and said, “Well, she seems in good shape. All we need are passengers.”

Maslovic started for a moment, then remembered that the old man, for all his looks and manners, was in fact a licensed interstellar pilot himself. “Could you fly her in a pinch?”

“Oh, probably, but I wouldn’t know what half the stuff was. Probably dump fuel in the coffee dispenser and go orbital upside down and backwards after putting us all into cryogenic suspension accidentally. And, of course, it wouldn’t recognize me in any event. No, I take ’em out of orbit, feed ’em the navigation data, stick ’em on autopilot and sit around until we get there. The likes of an old freighter, it ain’t that hard. This, now—this is a speedster. I got to say I don’t feel comfortable in ships that are most definitely smarter than I am.”

Maslovic looked around at the food service ports. “Would you like something while we wait? Who knows how long it’s going to be before the others arrive?”

“I don’t think they have the recipe in there for what I need this trip,” the old captain responded. “Unless that thing can dispense a good, fillin’ dark ale that would feel comfy in an Irishman’s gut, I guess I’ll pass for now.”

Maslovic shrugged. “Let’s see.” He turned and said to the console, “Ale, seven percent, malt brewed, very dark.”

There was a tinny kind of whistling sound from the port, and then a bell sounded and the small drink compartment door slid back. Inside was a large molded cup with a bubble top on it. The sergeant took it out and handed it to Murphy, who looked at the drink suspiciously. He removed the lid, since they had gravity and no potential motion problems, sniffed it, then sipped it. There was foam on the top. Surprised at what he tasted, he gave an approving nod and quite literally downed the entire cup in one continuous series of swallows.

Maslovic was impressed, not so much by the drink as by the manner. You had to have long practice to gulp down a heavy brew like that.

“Not bad at all,” the old captain said approvingly. “Where the devil did they get that recipe? I’ve had better, but it’s pretty good.”

“We have data and formulas for just about every known cuisine, food and drink both, in the big ship, and this is just a subset. We ourselves don’t generally eat or drink too much exotic, but the ability is there. We have to cater to guests now and then, and we’ve also found that the formulas are often quite welcome on some of the colonial worlds. It breaks the ice, I think the old term is.”

“Indeed it does! The only thing that it needs is to understand that you drink ale in liters, not in dainty little cups!”

“Well, I doubt if those kinds of liter-or-more vessels would fit in there, but you have a nearly unlimited supply so it’s all the same, isn’t it?”

“Not quite, laddie, but it’ll do. Damn! Wonder where in the world them girls are. I hope they didn’t get lost or decide to get into more trouble instead of gettin’ outta here. They couldn’t have been much farther away than I was!”

There was the sudden sound of girlish laughter in the air, both right there and yet as if from afar, raising the hairs on the back of Murphy’s neck. As he stiffened and tried to look around, the main hatch connecting the shuttle to the frigate closed and locked with a hissing sound, and then the outer lock did the same. Murphy looked back through the aft hatch, past the bedroom area, and saw that the main door was now closed and sealed and had a red light flashing on top of it. The light steadied after a moment, and there was a second loud hissing sound, like air brakes being applied. The air quite clearly was being pumped out of the lock.

“I think our guests have arrived,” Sergeant Maslovic commented dryly.

Murphy looked around. “Girls? That you? C’mon, now! Your old captain’s got an old man’s heart. He can’t take but so much of this spooky business! Come! Give me a hug I can see and let’s be off this cold place!”

He didn’t get the hug, although he wasn’t sure if he’d feel comfortable getting one from some unseen presence anyway. He did get more ghostly giggles, and it was Maslovic, who seemed far less nervous than the old captain, who said to thin air, “Lieutenant, our guests have arrived. I believe they want us to depart before they’ll show themselves and things get back to normal.”

“Buckle in or hold on,” the voice of the pilot came at them over the intercom. “Five… four… three… two… one… Launch!”

Murphy and the sergeant both hoped that the girls were holding on as well, as the ship suddenly shot forward and away from the big frigate like a cannonball with too much powder, pushing them back and to the side. Murphy’s thankfully empty cup of ale sped off the table and hit the wall just to the left of the aft hatch. They both could feel the thrust pinning them against the bulkhead. Then, suddenly, the acceleration cut off, and they had the rapid and uneasy feeling of weightlessness.

“Engaging gravitational field at slowly rising rate to fifty percent of norm,” the pilot announced, and almost immediately they could feel weight returning to them, although not at the level that it had been before. Assuming the girls hadn’t all just gone into labor at the shock of the launch, though, it would be a lot easier on them for the rest of the run to be at half weight, and might minimize some potential complications. Still, the pilot had taken a risk with that launch.

Murphy let out a deep breath and rubbed the back of his neck for a moment. The launch was surprise enough, and he hadn’t been too gentle in meeting that bulkhead because of it. He was also finding it harder to get used to the sudden half gravity than he should have. Maybe it was the ale, he told himself, or maybe he was just getting old after all.

“Girls! You all right?” he called out as soon as he got his wits back. “C’mon, girls! Show yourselves! We got a long way to go here, and we don’t want any mishaps!”

For a while it seemed as if nothing happened, and Murphy grew worried that perhaps they hadn’t been in the room, or, if they had, that they’d been knocked about too badly by the takeoff. He hoped not. It wouldn’t only be messy, it would make them madder than hell.

“Girls?” he called out, growing suddenly worried.

Maslovic gestured to the center table in the lounge with his head and eyes, and Murphy looked and saw what the sergeant had noticed.

Slowly, deliberately, somebody was using some kind of paint or marker to draw a crude design on that shiny clean tabletop.

At first it was more or less a closed circle, and then inside of it a five-pointed star with some odd symbols that looked mostly like swashes inside the outer portion between each star point.

Murphy and Maslovic both stared hard now, not at the design but inside it, and above it, and, to their mutual surprise, they could actually see the three witches, sort of. They seemed to flicker in and out, and parts of them flashed here and there. Finally, though, they attained a more permanent solidity, and the two men could hear them chanting in some unknown tongue.

They looked bedraggled and downright filthy, their hair in tangles, their bodies stained with not only whatever they’d used to paint themselves a day or so earlier but also grease and all sorts of other stuff. There were some fresh scrapes, too, and the red-haired one had a cut on her leg that was still bleeding slightly. Others had small cuts and scratches all over that had healed, and were in a few cases already beginning to bruise.

They also stank of piss and shit and body odors and more. Clearly they hadn’t cleaned themselves up in any way since they’d gone missing, and it was going to make them tough company unless they decided to do so on their own here.

Now all three were standing within the ancient symbol, eyes closed, as the chant came to a rhythmic but definite end.

It was as if they were suddenly out of a trance and back to normal. They let go holding hands, opened their eyes, and looked around. “Ew! Something stinks!” said the red-headed Irish O’Brian, her nose up and contorting her face.

“You said it,” Mary Margaret, the brown-haired one, agreed. Brigit, the blonde, simply said, “Bleah!” in a tone that left no doubt as to her meaning.

“Ah, girls! So happy to see you again!” Murphy said effusively. “But I’m afraid that the stench you’re smellin’ is your own ordinarily sweet selves.”

Mary Margaret looked at each of her companions and then at as much of herself as she could see. “Oh my gawd!” she exclaimed.

“Jeez!” Irish chimed in. “We need baths, and bad!”

“No baths here, darlin’s,” Murphy told them, “but there’s a shower here and a place to clean up and make yourselves presentable again. If you wanted more you shoulda come in while we was still on the big ship, but this is what you asked.”

“Shit! How was we to know?” Irish O’Brian responded. “Well, look, if you two can help us down off this thing, at least we can try and clean up!”

The sergeant got to his feet. “Allow me,” he said pleasantly. In turn, each of the trio came towards him and he picked them up like they weighed nothing at all and put them down on the deck.

“Wow! Feels like I don’t weigh nothin a-tall,” Mary Margaret commented, sort of stomping up and down with her bare feet on the deck. “Neat!”

“It’ll be more comfortable this way,” Murphy assured them. “Now, look, I’ll show you where the toilet is, and you go back there and get clean and nice, and then we’ll all sit here and have somethin’ to eat and talk a bit. We got a long while to go to get to Barnum’s World yet. Three days most likely. No rush.”

For him, though, they couldn’t get there fast enough.

It did not bother either of the military people aboard that the three girls wore just about nothing on the trip, but it made Murphy uncomfortable and he couldn’t even say why. Certainly he wasn’t sexually attracted to them; even if they weren’t so hugely pregnant, he found himself more frightened of them than anything else, something he hadn’t even thought about before being intercepted by the navy. Possibly it was that demonstration of power they’d done; but, he reflected, it was more like being uncomfortable because he felt helpless and surrounded by three idiots with loaded weapons.

Interestingly, though, they barely remembered the experience, and could not explain how they’d done what they’d done. It did not, however, bother them much. Ignorance was true bliss sometimes, even when you didn’t know that what you did was so remarkable.

At least with all that time to Barnum’s World they didn’t have much to do but eat, sleep, and talk. It was tough to get them to stay on that or any subject for long, but slowly Maslovic began getting some information from them that seemed useful, and Murphy got more than he thought was healthy for him. There was, for example, the eerie feeling in his gut that, even in this small shuttle, what everyone was saying and doing was somehow being monitored and recorded and analyzed. Not by the navy—he expected that, and did not fear it one bit. No, by someone or something else, the ones behind this strangeness.

It’s them damned medals, he decided. I don’t care if they’re worth a fortune or what, there’s something unnatural about ’em.

They had allowed the trio to eat, and they’d had really massive appetites, although for some combinations that not even Murphy could tolerate thinking hard about, and then they’d slept for ten solid hours each. They seemed to sleep a lot, which Murphy put down to their condition. He was most frightened that one or more of the young women would decide to have her kid then and there. He knew the two military people weren’t prepared for such a thing, and he was damned sure he wasn’t.

It was easiest when one or another of them would come to the lounge leaving the other two still asleep. This happened quite a lot after that initial sleep-off, although if it was the blonde-haired Moran, you couldn’t get a full sentence out of her if you tried. O’Brian never stopped talking, which was quite typical of people who had little to say, and McBride seemed the most normal of the bunch although no brighter, willing to engage in small talk or not as needed. She also seemed the most curious about the navy pair, which allowed for a give-and-take exchange of information. Over a few sessions, Maslovic in particular was able to get pretty direct with the brown-haired self-described witch.

“Where’d you learn to do that magic spell that caused the vanishing trick?” he asked her casually as she ate. Murphy sat away from them, curious but not exactly motivated to join in.

“Tip told us how,” McBride responded with that slightly off-kilter view of conversation they all shared and which had nearly driven the senior officers of the Thermopylae nuts.

“Tip? Who’s Tip? A kind of spirit?”

She nodded, munching on a potato pancake and sipping very dark tea mixed half and half with cream and sugar. “Tip can’t do things in our plane without us, we can’t do nothin’ neat here without him and his friends givin’ us the power and all.”

“Tip talks only to you, then? Not to Moran or O’Brian?”

“See? There y’go again! Why do you and the driver up there always use only the family names? Don’t you have another name?”

“What? You mean like you?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I mean, I got three names, and only one isn’t just me. And there’s Brigit Maureen and then there’s Colleen Megan, and she even has a name all her own that everybody uses instead of them.”

“Irish, you mean? Why do you need all those names?”

She shrugged. “ ’Cause I guess there’s only so many names and we don’t want to have nobody else’s, that’s why. Don’t always work even then. I mean, I can’t count the number of Mary Margarets back home. I always thought I wanted me own name, like Irish done, only I never come up with none I really liked.”

“We have ranks and we have numbers,” the sergeant explained. “The numbers are never the same so we can always be ourselves. The rank changes if we do a good job, but the number is unique. The number’s all we really need, but it’s just too much of a mouthful to say, particularly when you’re in a hurry. Easier to say ‘Sarge,’ or, if there’s more than one of my rank, ‘Maslovic,’ instead of, oh, ‘Hurry up, M2174-34K77-41CK!’ See what I mean?”

She laughed. “That’s funny. But we gets our family names from our das. When we was goin’ ’round your big ship, we saw lots of you folks with none of them fancy if borin’ clothes on, and you don’t have no das or mums. How could you?” She sighed. “I’ll be glad when the wee one comes out and I can wear pretty clothes again.”

She was starting to drift away from the thread, so he brought it back.

“Oh, we have parents, if that’s what you mean. We just don’t know who they are. But the family name of my parents is Maslovic, which is why the name’s there. Some of my looks, and I guess more, come from them. I’ve met other Maslovics aboard and we kind of look similar.”

“But how can you have close family when you ain’t got no dicks or wombs? Don’t make no sense.”

“It’s done by doctors and machines,” he told her. “It’s less dangerous and completely controlled, so there’s little chance of us not coming out right.”

“And a damn sight less fun, seems t’me,” she muttered, finishing her food.

Murphy had always thought that as well, like the military types were more machines than humans, unable to feel the same emotions as “normal” people. Now he still wasn’t sure what their lives were like internally, but he was beginning to wonder if others like the girls weren’t just as much manufactured to somebody’s order and requirements.

Hell, it almost made you paranoid thinking that maybe somebody actually made you, too, and he wasn’t thinking about God when that awful idea crept into his mind.

Maslovic had no such worries. He and Chung not only knew that they were designed, they felt great comfort in that. It was who or what was perverting the same technology that had them worried here.

“You were telling us about Tip,” the sergeant said, as breezy and conversational as if he were just killing time.

“Yeah, well, what’s to tell?” she responded. “I mean, like, Tip is just Tip, that’s all.”

The security officer looked around. “Well, now, let’s see. Is he some sort of invisible entity? Some kind of creature who speaks only to you?”

She giggled. “Of course not, silly! Little kids got make-believe little friends. Tip’s different. We’re kinda like, married, in a way. Y’know, like Irish’s got Tad and Brigit’s got Tod.”

“So there are three of them? And where are they if not in the air like spirits of old? Inside your body?”

“This is gettin’ borin’, it is. I don’t wanta talk about this no more right now. I’m just so tired. I think maybe I should sleep some more. How much longer to this world you’re takin’ us to?”

“We’re better than halfway there,” Maslovic assured her. “Not much longer now.”

But by this time Mary Margaret McBride had forgotten even the question, and she was on her feet and making her way back aft to the bunks.

When she’d gone, Maslovic looked over at Murphy. “You’re the expert on these people,” he said. “Is she crazy?”

“Most probably, although who’s to say if it’s them or us?” the old captain retorted. “Still and all, I think there’s somethin’ to it. I been goin’ nuts starin’ at them jewels the girls got round their necks. They’re not just good-lookin’ gems cut right, they’re more than that. I seen their like before. Not for real, I don’t think, but in pictures and such. Some museums and real rich folk got ’em. Them’s Magi stones. The livin’ gems said to come from the legendary Three Kings.”

That got the sergeant’s interest. “Indeed? Exotic stones from—where?”

“The Three Kings, man! Everybody’s heard of the Three Kings. They may not be real, or if they are they’re almost certainly not what folks think they are, but they’re the stuff of legend, just like the three originals. Of course, you probably ain’t heard of them, either.”

“Not particularly. I wish I had my complete reference databases handy, though. I hate being the last to know when somebody throws in a curve.”

“Well, I can only tell you what everybody seems to know. Three planets around some gigantic ringed star, supposedly discovered during the Age of Exploration a couple hundred years ago by one of the missionary monks who was half man and half scouting ship. Sent back the news of great treasure and miraculous living and all that stuff, and he said there was lots of evidence of advanced alien life. Named ’em after the three kings who brought gifts to the baby Jesus. Said anybody who could get there and keep clear of the snake would find riches beyond compare.”

“Pardon? The what?”

“The snake, man! Serpent. The incarnation of the Beast who got humanity to sin and heaped that sin upon all its descendants. The devil, if you will. The sort these three girls claim to be their god or whatever.”

“Interesting. There are so many mythic religions I admit I know little of any. Doesn’t seem relevant unless it’s a key to solving something practical. Still, it sounds like I could do with some information on this sect.”

“’Sect’ he calls it!” Murphy muttered, genuinely appalled at the dismissal. “Faith of me fathers it is, boy. You navy boys know Vaticanus and its influence and orders, I think.”

“Ah! That one! I know a little. Enough, I think. Sorry, no offense meant. It’s just not in our nature to take seriously old men in the sky and stuff like that. Okay, so this missionary and scout reported riches on three worlds, lots of powerful aliens, and so forth. Why didn’t somebody follow up and see if anything was really there instead of making it some kind of fairy tale?”

“Aye, that’s the rub. The coordinates for stabilizing wormgates were jumbled. Made no sense. And only part of the detailed information came through. Enough to make it a riddle, not enough for even the best minds and computers and all to solve. And the old boy was never heard from again.”

“So now we have cults like this one the girls belong to because of some lost colonial coordinates? Amazing!”

Murphy shook his head from side to side. “No, it ain’t that simple, y’see. Somebody a long time ago thought they solved the riddle and went off in one of them big scientific and speculative expeditions. Fancy ship, fancy equipment, well heeled. Nobody heard from it until after the Great Silence. Then, one day, it suddenly reappeared from someplace in the Draco Sector. The Dragon, another of the devil’s disguises. The whole ship was in perfect shape, but there wasn’t anybody aboard and all the data records had been wiped clean.”

“You mean erased?”

“Or maybe just fried. Who knows? But it had pictures of some pretty worlds, a bunch of really oddball little mechanical thingies, some sort of artifacts of alien design and unknown purpose and origin, and it had a stash of them gems. The very gems like the ones around these three girls’ pretty necks.”

Maslovic gave a soft, low whistle. “And did they later find more of them?”

“Oh, ’twas said that somebody did, and that a few more fell into the hands of a big-time evangelist—a protestant one at that! And he went off chasin’ ’em a few decades ago and they never heard from him no more, neither. Which leaves us with just the hundred or so from that original mystery ship, unless there’s ones nobody knows about. Rare, beautiful, and among the most expensive gems in the known universe. And three of ’em seem to have wound up around our darlin’s pretty necks.”

“You’re sure they’re real and not fakes? Imitations? I imagine there’s a lot of those considering the legends and the rarity.”

Murphy nodded. “Oh, tons I’m sure. But ’tis said you always can tell a fake one from a real one. Not just the quality, but the effect.”

“The what?”

“The effect. ’Tis said that when you look into ’em you get visions and weird feelin’s and all. Nothin’ specific, mind. And eventually you get an overload and somethin’ scares you. Somethin’ that lives inside the gems or somethin’ like that. In any case, no fake has that!”

Maslovic leaned back and thought a moment. “Tad, Tod, and Tip. Three demons in three gems. If they are real, then if you or I stare into one, we should meet someone, eh?”

“You meet ’em. I’m perfectly content to be ignorant this time,” said Murphy.

Irish O’Brian never seemed any smarter than the other two, just far more suspicious of everything and everybody. She also wasn’t all that happy to hear how much Mary Margaret had told them just sitting around, although she seemed more disgusted than surprised.

“Why does it bother you that we talk to the others?” Maslovic asked her in that same friendly conversational tone he’d used so successfully on the other.

“It just does, that’s all,” O’Brian responded. “We’re a team. A sisterhood. It’s not good that we blab about to strangers without the rest of us bein’ there, so to speak.”

“What’re we gonna do, lass? Trick ye into the secrets of the universe or somethin’?” Murphy put in. “We’re just as bored as everybody else. You always was friendly to me, so why not to them, too? It’s all goin’ your way.”

She looked over at the sergeant with a look of distrust. “I dunno, Cap. I just don’t trust ’em no farther than I can throw ’em, that’s all. They ain’t like us, y’know. They’d probably get along just fine with the folks back home. If them stuffed brains could figure out a way to have kids without sex they’d jump on it. But to really do it… You ain’t real human if you don’t got no sex.”

“I can’t know how different we are, really,” Maslovic admitted. “I’ve never been somebody like you or the captain, so how can I? But I feel human.”

“Well, you ain’t. Got to be cold inside with your balls chopped off and all. And that weird one up front. Don’t she never move?”

“Lieutenant Chung’s the pilot. She monitors everything on the ship and gets us safely where we’re going,” the sergeant explained. “To do that best, she actually plugs in and becomes part of the ship. In a way, we’re kind of riding inside her now.”

O’Brien made an ugly face. “Ugh! That’s what I mean. You don’t know what’s human and what’s machine. It’s all the same to you ’cause you don’t feel inside. Not like people. I mean, the captain here, he never was connected up like that to his ship.”

“That’s true enough,” Murphy responded. “But that’s ’cause I never got the implants in me head to make it all work. If I had one big, fancy ship with all the modern stuff I might’a done it, but them old junkers… Who’d want to become one o’ them?”

O’Brian looked around the lounge from eye level to ceiling. “So can your pilot see us now? And hear us?”

“Absolutely,” Maslovic told her.

“And in the back, too?”

“She’s the ship, like I told you. She and the ship are one. You wouldn’t want the gravity to go funny when you flush the toilet in the head, would you? Or have the air go bad, or any one of a million things that she can keep in her head and do something about because she’s part of the ship? Space will never be anywhere that’s really safe, you know. You’re always one tiny thing wrong from death.”

O’Brian shivered. “I don’na wan’ta think on it.”

“Well, that’s why she’s doing what she’s doing. So we don’t have to think about it or worry about it. And, unlike some people who actually become permanently part of their ships, she can disconnect when we’re in port and become a real person again.”

“There are folks who make themselves into the machines?” Irish O’Brian was appalled at the thought. “They do it by choice?”

He nodded. “Many do. Particularly the ones who are scouts searching beyond anywhere we know for new worlds and new life. Not just navy people, although the big ship you were on, the one we came from, has three minds permanently a part of their system.”

“Oh, my god! And you wonder why we don’t like the way things are goin’ here?”

The sergeant shrugged. “Who’s ‘we’? Your sisterhood? The religion you’re serving? Just curious.”

Irish O’Brian gave a sly smile. “Ah, but you’ll not be gettin’ me to speak more of that. None of your tricks there, if you please! We got our secrets, y’know.”

“Okay, then, let’s talk about something else.” Maslovic seemed to be thinking a moment, as if deciding what to talk about. His eyes came to her neck after a bit, and he brightened and asked, “What’s that gem around your neck? Or is that some kind of religious secret, too?”

O’Brian’s hand went to the large gem and seemed to cover it from his gaze for a moment, then she relented. “It’s a relic, y’might say. A kind of way of sayin’ who and what we are, like them Holy Joes back home what think they got the direct word of God straight from Heaven to their holy book. They wear their crosses and their medals. We got ours.”

“It’s an excellent imitation of a Magi stone,” the sergeant remarked, as if he’d heard of them before an hour or so previous and knew all about them.

“Imitation! I’ll have you know this is the real thing! ’Twouldn’t do to have no fake around our necks!”

Maslovic chuckled. “Now, come on. I don’t doubt that you believe it’s real, but everybody knows that there are only a few hundred of those in the whole known galaxy, and most of them are in the hands of museums, governments, and the very rich. How could you have a real one, let alone three, coming from a primitive world like Tara Hibernius?”

Her left hand went to the gem and held it up defiantly to him, still on the neck chain. “You see? It’s real.”

“Even I know that those things give off some kind of rays that affect people deep inside,” the sergeant pressed. Murphy kept silent but decided to watch his back from now on around the military man; he was pretty damned good!

“You want to see if it’s real? C’mon over here. I know you ain’t got no feelin’ for me tits, so come close and look straight into it! You don’t hav’ta hold it, just get close and look inside! You’ll see!”

“Maybe he won’t,” Murphy put in. “Even if it is a real one, how can a machine feel what them things are said to give off? Or is that nothin’ but the blarney?”

Maslovic slid over very close to her and let her angle the gem towards him. It was quite impressive, more elaborate than any gemstone, real or artificial, that he’d ever seen or studied about. It was as large as a hen’s egg, colored as if a translucent emerald with a center of some darker material substance that, when viewed from different angles, seemed to form, well…

“Can I hold it?” he asked her. “You can keep it on the necklace around your neck. I just want to feel it.”

“Gettin’ to ya, huh? All right, but mind your manners!”

He reached out and turned the sparkling emerald-colored gem so that its slightly flattened face was towards him and stared into the darker area.

The deep green exterior sparkled with each capture of the light and seemed to flash and move with every breath the girl took, or every slight movement his hand caused.

The darker area inside was also green, but a green so dense and deep it seemed like some sort of liquid, swirling and going down much farther than the gem itself was deep.

And in that dark area, pictures began to form.

Maslovic couldn’t decide if those pictures were in fact real and emanating from the stone or somehow in his mind, caused by some sort of radiation from the stone, but they nonetheless seemed very real if also very surreal, as if actual shapes and places were being viewed through some dense liquid lens.

The images were strange, bizarre. Human figures twisted into grotesque shapes, creatures very nonhuman twisting and writhing and swarming, all superimposed against alien landscapes, distorted scenes of people and unknown animals in lush but unknown tropical bush; a swirling hell of intense storms and volcanic fire; and, finally, a barren, dark landscape with structures, structures clearly not in current use but rather the remnants of ancient cataclysm.

The sets of impressions never came fully into solid focus for all their sense of three dimensions and movement, nor did the various parts ever blend with one another, but rather continued changing in a constant series of superimpositions. It was endlessly fascinating, yet totally mystifying. Was he seeing something real in there, or perhaps many realities, or was this being dragged from his subconscious or, just as possible, from the nightmares of Irish O’Brian and perhaps even Patrick Murphy? He couldn’t tell, but if they were from anyone’s subconscious, then they were disturbing indeed, and if they showed some twisted realities, then it was more disturbing still.

Slowly he became aware that one of the images was not changing radically, but rather in distance and perspective only. It was the dark world of wreckage and the sense of death and gloom, and slowly, ever so slowly, the image was coming to the foreground as the point of view resolved on some sort of eerie cavern.

He felt himself pulled down towards the cavern, and then, just inside in the darkness, there was… another.

He let out a sharp, short cry and dropped the gem, which settled back against Irish O’Brian’s cleavage, and he backed away. It took him several seconds to compose himself again, breathe normally, and regain complete control of himself. Captain Murphy was looking at him, curious and puzzled at one and the same time, but Irish O’Brian had a smirk on her face that was almost unbearable.

“So you met dear Tad, didn’t you?” she asked with a sense of total satisfaction.