Kaspar's Box

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.