Kaspar's Box

Their angle, again, was overhead and offset, but there was no mistaking the three of them. Each had been cleaned up, their hair was nicely fluffed and brushed, and each wore a robe whose color roughly matched the colors of the three Magi stones they had. None seemed to be very comfortable walking even the short distance, and it seemed to Murphy at least that they hesitated as they reached the aerobus's open doorway, but each in turn ducked down a bit and entered. The medics or midwifes, whatever they were, then got back in and, finally, the two from the house started to enter the vehicle as well. Then Macouri stopped, turned, and asked Schwartz in a voice that sounded sinister and gravelly, "You have secured the place, my dear?

"Absolutely, darling," she responded in a deep, businesslike tone. "If you're that worried, call and leave someone."

"No, we'll be gone too long to make that practical. I just have that feeling we're being watched, that's all. I shouldn't like unwanted visitors in there while we were away for so long."

"Oh, relax. It would scare the living daylights out of any silly policeman who tried. Come! I'm anxious to be off!"

Macouri nodded and sighed. "Very well, my dear. I suppose you're right." He turned and entered, followed by his companion, and the door slid silently closed.

Within a minute or two, Murphy could hear the low whine of the engine and feel the vibration even a block and a half down, and the aerobus lifted up and quickly moved off and away into the darkness.

"Darch?" Maslovic asked.

The man at the main panels shrugged. "No problem. They're showing up just fine. Going to be a long trip for them, though. They're heading out over the ocean. We're going to need our own wings to catch them, Chief."

"We'll manage. Broz, you heard Schwartz on that house. Sounds like it's pretty well rigged."

"We'll send the other ferret over now. Our best bet is to go in right away and remotely, even if the systems are all on. The odds are that anything serious that might require their attention or draw their alarms would be better triggered when they're making their trip than after they get where they're going, get settled in, and can call their security computer and maybe friends and associates."

"Fine with me," the sergeant replied. "Let's get moving. I really am curious about that place, and this suits me fine. Captain, grab a chair from the other room and bring it in. This may take a while."

"I got nowhere else to be right now," Murphy replied. "And 'tis curious I am as well about all this business."

"Second ferret's away," Broz called from the back.

Maslovic nodded. "Okay, then. Here we go."

* * *

It usually wasn't as easy to get a ferret into an allegedly unoccupied house as this was, but in spite of the junglelike animal life that was all over the city and much of the world for that matter, most of the houses that were tightly built still had weak points to be exploited, from slight warping and settling causing small gaps in the foundation to exhaust ports around the upper stories that were blocked mostly by heavy mesh screens and used by the automated systems to exchange air in otherwise climate controlled environments. It was one of these that proved the way in.

The military ferrets could have cut the screen, but in earlier scouting the operators had discovered two small duct ports where the mesh had come loose and could be easily pushed in to allow entry by something the size and plasticity of the ferrets. While there were some dangers following them down into the house, most notably lasers guided by sensors whose sole purpose was to zap any wildlife that might find similar openings inside, they tended to be of a standard sort for which electronic countermeasures were already in the ferrets along with routines to deploy them. The sensors were easily fooled by the simplest of mechanisms-making them see and focus on some suspicious small moving object away from the ferret and then targeting the lasers there while the ferrets darted by on the opposite side.

"Too easy," Murphy muttered.

Broz, the self-styled Commander of the Ferrets, shrugged. "Not easy at all. Probably cost a bloody fortune. What good's a ferret if it can't get by the simple systems designed to swat cockroaches?"

"Maybe. Still and all, didn't you say the lady was some kind of security expert?"

"Efficiency," Maslovic put in. "You don't set bombs and dogs to kill flies. You put your security where it will best secure what you need to secure. If we'd come in over the walls ourselves or through the doors, I think we'd have quite a mess right now, but the ferrets are not us. They'll have something that can detect them, I suspect, but not yet. Ferrets, after all, can only report, they can't carry out the family jewels."

Ferret One was already pushing through the vents built into a top-floor room and now looked down upon it. A quick scan showed it to be on the right side of the house, third floor, and most likely a bedroom.