Kaspar's Box

His relief was short-lived, though, when he saw that they were under no apparent spells but dressed quite differently, and followed by a robot cart carrying a ton of packages. They themselves had on loose but rather colorful one-piece dresses, wide, floppy brim hats, fancy designer sunglasses, and nice-looking sandals. They also appeared to have discovered the application of makeup, were wearing earrings and finger rings, wearing painted lips and painted nails.

"Good god! How'd you get all that?" he asked nervously. "You didn't spend every single bit of credit I got, did you?"

"Oh, of course not!" Irish laughed, sounding tired but happy. "We didn't spend nothin' at all for these!"

Murphy frowned. "Then how…? I mean, they got print and retinal checks and you need the money or else here! Or did you just walk out with it while makin' nobody see you or somethin' like that?"

"Oh, nothing like that," Mary Margaret laughed. "We just did like everybody else. We picked what we wanted, we gave 'em our finger and looked through their eyepiece or whatever it is, and it said we was okay. Worked every place we went."

He sat back down, a bit dumbfounded. "Heh! Best damn security system for payment and credit I know, and you girls just breeze right past it 'cause the machines all think they know you and want to make you happy! Sweet Jesus! As hard as I had to work to steal things over me many years!"

"We didn't steal," Irish O'Brian insisted. "We just did what everybody else did for payment and it was good. So who loses? The shops got paid, right? So if there's no money there, it's the government's own fault for giving it to us!"

"I wanta try on that stuff but I'm beat," Mary Margaret McBride put in.

"Me, too," chipped in Brigit Moran.

Irish came over to the old captain and kissed him on the forehead. "So can you be a dear man and put them things someplace here for us? I think it's bedtime."

You didn't argue with these gals, that was clear. He let them go in, get their showers, and stake out their bed places and get settled, then he quietly made certain that the connecting door was completely shut and went back to the comm console.

"Manual mode. Keyboard, please," he said quietly.

In front of him a holographic keyboard appeared. Few could read and write these days, or needed to do either, but there were times when that was a real advantage for someone who could.

With his index finger he tapped out, "Order of Saint Phineas, Dir." The same listing came up as before. This time, however, he input, "Call. Low volume."

A weak electronic signal buzzed on and off several times. Then a woman's voice answered, "This is the main number of the Order of Saint Phineas. Leave your message and contact information and someone will get back to you."

He waited for the tone, then said softly, "Captain Patrick Murphy, Hotel Aden, suite five five four. I am in early with cargo for you. Please contact me and arrange delivery or pickup. Message ends."

He suspected that they already knew he was here, and probably just about all that had happened, via those stones or whatever they were, but it never hurt to go through the motions. Now there was nothing left to do but to wait for contact.

Truth be told, he almost would miss the girls. If he could get them to trust him with that power of theirs, there was no limit to what they could do, and the fantasy of a man his age with three very pretty companions wasn't at all unpleasant to him. Still, they'd probably get him in more trouble than he'd ever been in in his whole life just by being their own sweet ditzy selves and, besides, it was beginning to look more and more like the very last folk you'd want to cross would be these Phineas people.

Still, all the previous deliveries had been a bit older, a bit smarter, and generally just one or two at a time. He really wondered what the future held for these girls, or if they had one once he delivered them. Clearly it wasn't the trio that this Order was interested in, it was what they carried in their bellies. This was a huge, mostly wild, and very unpopulated world where folks could disappear forever and never be missed, in spite of all those state-of-the-art police controls. Once relieved of their babies and their fancy gem gadgets, they were just three pretty, helpless, far-too-young girls, fit for cleaning up the place or making bushmen a bit less lonely or, if all else failed, providing a nice dinner for some of them creepy crawly types out in the wild.

He began to feel depressed. Not so much at their fate, but at the very clear evidence that, after all those years and all that shady living, he was somehow developing at least an embryonic conscience.

The communicator rang softly. He jumped, startled at the sound, then said simply, "Murphy."

"Ten hundred tomorrow morning," said a woman's voice, not the same one as in the message. " Tanzania Park. North entrance, then to the Great Apes pavilion. Bring your delivery."

"How will I know your person?" he asked.