Kaspar's Box

"And you accused us of being thieves, I believe? What you are saying sounds both insane and quite sad. What are these young women to become with no family or friends and new young mothers without resources? It won't do, Murphy. A good story, but it just won't do. We may not burden ourselves with the old ways of reproduction, but I know enough to know that at the first evidence of pregnancy any of them could have taken a simple pill and had done with it."

Murphy sighed. "I was afraid I couldn't make you get it," he said, trying to find an alternate way in. "There are no such pills in God's country. It's a monstrous crime to even possess them. Oh, sure, it's done, but in their own way, their culture and their parents' culture is as rigid to them as your military culture is to your people. These girls got pregnant in that culture, they were dead. The only way out for them was to give themselves and their children to the church and become nuns. 'Missionary work' is the euphemism that's used to explain where a young woman went. Oh, they have birth control, although it's illegal, but something went wrong. They shouldn't all have gotten preggers from a roll or two in the hay. So, either the families wanted them out or the church was short on nuns. Maybe both. But, given the choice of the nunnery or me, they took me. And I was takin' them to one or another place where they could have some kind of support and future. A place or places where it simply wouldn't matter. And that's when you stepped in."

Captain Kim shook his head in disbelief. "I still believe you are not telling me the truth, or at least not most of it, but I'm not here to judge you nor to save the souls of young women. But I do know that you've been running all sorts of elaborate contraband back and forth between these benighted worlds in this sector since I was a lieutenant, and you knew that there was a fee to be paid, and you have a very long history of not paying that fee, Captain Murphy. In fact, you've run from and successfully evaded Navy collectors for the past several years now. I don't care what you do or what you run to these poor people down there, but I do care that you have decided to work outside our system. We can't have that, Murphy. This fleet depends to a large degree on our fees and levies. There's no more spare parts for critical systems, and nothing to make them. Keeping things maintained and running costs an increasing amount of money. If everyone doesn't pay their share, then this fleet will simply grind to a halt, impotent, unable to do its mission."

"And what mission is that, sir, if I might be so bold as to ask?"

"Protection! Pirates raid and steal from traders both honest and dishonest like yourself all the time, and they don't care if they kill. Legitimate trade alone keeps those colonial planets running, even at more basic levels, since they have the same problems with parts, supplies, and repairs that we do. Billions of people depend on things they can't grow or make, or whatever getting to where they're needed. We're the only ones keeping it working. The only ones who could keep it working. You know that, Captain."

"I know you say that, probably even believe it," Murply responded. "But it's a losing battle even if you do it honestly. Piracy and political and religious fanaticism are rampant and getting worse as things grow harder for people here and supplies run down. You not only can't stop it with this little independent navy of yours, you hardly even try. You spend all your time collecting your fees even while those characters invade whole colonies, raping and looting. Since I think you have a strong code of honor, I don't think you even see it, but I don't know anybody who doesn't hate you and fear you. They can't tell the difference between you and the bad guys, Captain. That's what I mean about being machines. You have a system that's blind to reality and you still go through the motions and justify your actions even though they're entirely motivated by self-preservation urges having nothing to do with your so-called 'mission.' You just keep doing it because that's what you're programmed to do."

"I don't think we're quite as soulless as you make us out to be. I admit we can do less and less and things are going down and that we're like a small child holding up the collapsing wall and getting more and more tired as we do so and the weight of the wall comes down on us, but what is your alternative? Lose all sense of duty and honor, quit, watch it fall from a drunken amoral haze or some drugged stupor and say the hell with everybody? That's your problem, Murphy. You're so busy looking at us as machines that your total loss of faith prevents you from looking in the mirror and seeing what I see here before me now."

"Indeed? And what is that?"

"An empty suit. A dead man who doesn't have the sense to know he's already in Hell. So what am I to do with you, Murphy? You and your… cargo?"