Kaspar's Box

Maslovic thought it over. "But under that logic, the girls themselves would be the object of the exercise. But there are lots of young women down there on Barnum's World and, in fact, the one thing we don't have any shortages of are people. So why smuggle them in? What possible value could they have?"

"I been thinkin' about that, and I come up with a theory. Maybe them girls got a talent. They sure ain't got a lot of education, and I ain't sure how much brains they're hidin' or if they're hidin' any a-tall, but you don't need to be a mental wizard if you got a useful talent. Somethin' you're just better at, or somethin' you're born with. I been tryin' to figure out what the hell Tara Hibernius had that would be worth this kind of trouble to smuggle someplace in that little an amount and I can't come up with nothin'. But pregnant girls-hell, they're the most helpless, least threatenin' folks you'll ever find. Nobody's gonna be scared of 'em but they're gonna be a lot safer travelin' out in the real world. It may even be just some kind of tricky gizmo or substance that made even them believe it, which would give 'em real reasons like I told you that first time to make 'em want to run like hell and get on an old tub with an old reprobate like me."

Maslovic thought it over. "You know, Macouri said something like that. He said that the way you insure people's absolute faithfulness is to have them be scared of something so awful that even death and torture are preferable. So if those three were really put in danger of their lives, in fear of even staying among their own people, it would make it far easier for them to turn their backs on family, friends, the only land they ever knew. Makes sense. And you said that young girls weren't the usual travelers?"

"Nope. Mostly men. Some women, but not them type."

"Then that has to be it. Which begs the next question: what makes those three unique enough and valuable enough to go to all that trouble and expense?"

Chung looked over at the sergeant. "You did the research on those weird alien stones?"

"Enough, after I got the captain's lead," Maslovic told her. "Why?"

"Any reports of people with them coming up with strange powers? Any revolutions or crimes of the century? Any major suicides or murders, for that matter, out of statistical norms?"

"No. None that I can think of. Darch, you did a lot of that. Anything?"

"Nothing."

"We're all ears, then, Lieutenant."

She shifted in her seat, a loner unused to this kind of central role. "I am, as much as anything, more than just a human. I'm a human cyborg interface module. I am only truly whole and one when I'm united with a ship or other piece of piloted hardware like the van. But if we put those controls on any of you, even with extensive training, the best you'd do would be okay. You would never combine as one with the machines as I do almost as a matter of course. You would simply use the interface to give orders faster, to control the machinery. The captain, I think, knows what I mean if you all do not."

The old man nodded. "Aye. I've handled them things now and then but I don't like 'em."

"Well, aren't there a fair number of rich people like Macouri with those stones? Some sort of status symbol?"

"Yes, okay."

"And even more, I bet, in the hands of government and scientific researchers. Brilliant people, I'm talking about. And not a one of them, or any three of them, could take over and control a naval cruiser's main computer. A computer using proprietary languages and codes, impossibly complex, and a device for which they'd have no knowledge of nor understanding of how it worked. And these three illiterate farm girls from nowhere just do it like it's second nature. You see what I mean? Even I would have a lot of trouble handling that kind of complex interface, not to mention disabling all the protections, breaking through all those complex firewalls and security traps. Only the Admiralty together manage that, and they knew what it is and how it works and all the codes and bypasses."

"Power," Maslovic muttered aloud, thinking.

"Huh?"

"That's what old Georgi said it was all about. Power. I wonder how they found out that these girls had that kind of gift?"

Murphy had an idea. "You got plenty of money in this devil cult, and you felt that presence, that whatever it is, slowly emerge when you studied the stones. So did I. It's so real, so scary, you could easily see demons and build a cult out of it. So their recruiters bring one or even a few with 'em, all paid for with the rich leadership's money, and they go to the strictest, most fundamentalist, socially repressive places in the colonies. Why, hell, they'd have no trouble finding converts among the young malcontents and with that effect from them stones, well, you see what happens and how it goes. And maybe one gets left with the leader of the cult or coven or whatever they call it so they'll always have their own demon."