Kaspar's Box

The rich man gave a self-satisfied smile. "The same thing as you do, Sergeant. Power. In my culture money can be the means to power, and I use it, but it's not everything. But all religious beliefs come down to a worship of power, sir! Your superiors have power over you. You have power over your specialists. Your organization has a certain kind of power over the remaining world governments, until at least they collapse. The Hindus among others worship many gods because each represents a certain aspect of power. The god of Abraham, whether it be Christian or Moslem or Jew or whatever, represents the ultimate power. That's what makes the old boy God, isn't it? All that guff about love thy neighbor and charity and all that is mere window dressing. You accept and live by the Seven Pillars or you go to Hell. You obey the Law and the Commandments or God will strike you down. Accept Jesus as the Son of God or roast forever in the Lake of Fire. Eat a hamburger and be reincarnated as a flea. Do it the military way or you'll wind up in the brig or worse. It's all the same."

"And you feed your own power god with innocent blood."

"Nobody is innocent! And one can always look on those others as having been destined for just such a role. None that we have ever selected has ever had a higher purpose, or much of any purpose, until we gave them meaning. Poor, ignorant, backward, at best mercilessly exploited, at worst forgotten and ignored. They're born, abandoned, manage to survive for a relatively short life doing nothing but scrounging to stay alive, and then they die in squalor and are cremated and dumped in a nameless grave kept out of sight and out of town just for that purpose. Your kind doesn't care about them, nor does anyone else. But we care. Oh, don't look so shocked! The military of humankind has a history as well as a present day incarnation. How many innocent civilians have died in bombings, strafings, shellings, and for just being in the way of military operations? You justify them as mistakes, or, my favorite, 'collateral damage.' If you get the chance, you say a little prayer for them or apologize to the survivors but you push them out of your mind. Unavoidable. Accidental. As if guns shoot themselves. We never treat people like that. No, Sergeant, it won't do. You'll hang me and hold your nose and categorically refuse to accept that there's really not a blade of grass difference between us in the end."

"And those three young women? Were they going to be sacrifices?"

Macouri shrugged. "Possibly. Probably not. They have other potential."

"What was in their bellies, Macouri? If not babies, then what?"

The little man gave him almost a smirk in return. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you, nor would it matter very much. But it wasn't any natural breeding project like I suspect you all believed at the start. No, no. Nothing as crass as that. We would hardly need the girls to do that now, would we?"

Maslovic decided that he'd had about enough for now. "Let's take a break, Georgi old pal. We'll see if the others had anything more to say."

Macouri yawned and stretched. "Captial idea, old boy. But you'll get nothing out of them. The girls don't really know much, and the others would never give it voluntarily and we've all had our little heads wired so that you can't dig it out. And you won't be able to cajole them, either. You see, they are much more frightened of what happens if they tell than of anything, even death, that you might threaten them with. And we've already demonstrated, I believe, that we're hardly helpless even in this monster ship of yours."

"We'll see. But nobody's going to get close to those crystal devices, not this time," the intelligence man warned him. "And thanks to that demonstration, your money's worthless here. It's not a game any more, 'old boy.' The very best you can hope for here is to live the most unremittingly boring and lonely life imaginable. Lonely, but never alone."

Macouri laughed. "Rather melodramatic of you, I think. Would it surprise you to be told that all of us, at least all but the young guests, can get out of here any time we choose? And it's beyond your power to stop us?"

"I know you could trigger that little bomb in your brain. It so happens I have a somewhat similar device in mine, just in case," Maslovic responded. "But I won't unless there is absolutely no hope, nor will you."

"My dear boy! If I triggered it now, it would join me to the greatest power in the universe!"