Kaspar's Box

They could not have seemed more opposite had they planned their meeting. There was Kim, a tall, muscular man with shiny pale skin and a uniform that somehow was so clean and perfectly tailored that, even on the captain, it looked as if it had never been worn; and Murphy, hairy, with cracked and burnt complexion, a uniform that looked far too worn almost to being worn out, and a kind of aura that suggested that flies should have been buzzing around the old man's head.

Kim looked at the old freebooter with some disgust, but finished reading the console in front of him before formally acknowledging the other's existence. Finally, he looked up, leaned back, and asked, "You were once a priest?"

Murphy laughed. "I hadn't expected that one to be first out of your mouth, Captain. Let's just say the Vatican in any incarnation and I haven't been on speakin' terms in a long, long time, and I ain't heard much from God lately. No matter what they say on Vaticanus, I am convinced that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are somewhere on the other side of the Great Silence. Still, it's a useful identity at times, I admit. People tend to trust a priest, dumb as they are."

"Such as handing over their daughters to your care?"

Murphy found that even more amusing. "Ah, yes. Irish and Mary Margaret and Brigit, I suppose you're talkin' about. No, they aren't with me because their families trusted me with 'em. They're with me 'cause they all paid me good to get 'em as far away from their families as fast as possible, all of 'em havin' got themselves knocked up, as it were, and unfit on pleasant little Tara Hibernius for regular lives after that. Or, that's their story, anyways. Me, I got to wonder why anybody, particularly folks what can afford even the likes of me, would get themselves accidentally knocked up when it's a simple monthly pill or potion and you don't have to worry about that unless you want to. Me, I think they got themselves knocked up so's their parents would have to pay their way someplace else. To avoid the disgrace, y'see."

Kim shook his head. "No, I don't see."

"Ah, you navy types," Murphy sighed. "You make yours in bottles after the computer mucks with 'em and you then throw away the equipment like it's an appendix or tonsils or something else disposable. Meanin' no offense, but you folks are raised almost like machines in a nice, sterile, controlled environment where there's no real questions 'cept maybe how far in rank you'll get. That's the trouble with you military types. You just got to follow orders."

"That is a problem in your eyes?"

"Sure. No lying, cheating, stealing, no con men, no deception or sin to speak of. Kind of permanent adolescents who think being bad is sneakin' off and havin' a forbidden beer or a funny joke not to let the toilet flush. The culture these girls come from is different. It was founded by folks who wanted a simpler, more primitive life, one devoted to the soil and the soul and to their misbegotten nostalgia for traditions and culture that not only are long gone, they probably never were. Lots of colonies like that out here once upon a time. That's why so many of 'em are in trouble. So they work the land in the ways their hardscrabble ancestors did back on the Aud Sod, or at least a kind of traditional working excusin' the robotics and chemistry and all, and the fact that they eat like pigs with what they grow rather than starve and never once knew the meanin' of the word 'famine.' But, never mind. It's a whole world of fifth-generation play actors who really think they're livin' the simple life and that makes 'em clean of spirit and closer to God or somethin' like that. A land where all the boys and girls are conscious virgins and all the marriages are perfect and there's no unhappiness. And they gather at the pub and they drink pints of perfect dark stout and they sing authentic fake Irish folk tunes and they play the pipes at weddings and funerals and everybody's the perfect Catholic saint." He stopped for a moment and saw Kim's blank stare. "And you don't have a bloody clue what I'm talkin' about, just like them legal and psychologist folks, do you?"

"Not exactly. I believe in plain speaking and being straightforward."

"Indeed? Well, it's hypocrisy, Captain. You know the word? One of dozens, maybe hundreds of worlds where everybody pretends to be what everybody else thinks they should be but nobody really is. And these girls' parents, they got fed up with it but they got noplace else to go. So they create a situation where the girls can't remain hypocrites and they ship 'em out to someplace where maybe they got a chance at a life."