Kaspar's Box

"Possibly from the devices, for that's almost certainly what they really are," Maslovic replied. "Or from the intelligence that made them. Possibly more machine than animal itself. Not from Hell, which I am not at all sure exists, but from someone, somewhere. Too faint to be more than a jolt to us. Our brains interpret the attempt at feeding into us, controlling us, as some kind of presence, some kind of powerful and, yes, evil presence, but no more. It shows up randomly and it looks back at you, or at least that's what it feels like it's doing. Something in the girls' brains, maybe only when they're all together, is more sensitive. It can amplify what's coming through. And thus the 'demon' connects in the same way the lieutenant here connects to her ship. Where do they get it from there? Who knows? Possibly from us. Possibly from our machines, constantly communicating through the very air and empty space we occupy. I don't know how those things work, but whoever or whatever is behind them has been waiting for the likes of those three for some time. Magic, mystical stones of power made in a way we can't duplicate even now. Magic is science we haven't figured out yet."

"So what now?" the lieutenant asked.

"I'll have to feed this through higher command," the sergeant replied, "but it seems that there can't be but one possible answer to this, and one response. The question is, do these people know what we need to know?"

"And that is?"

"These stones, these-things-first showed up on a derelict spaceship. More, according to records, have appeared in wrecks mostly connected to this Three Kings legend. We saw the displays and pictures in Macouri's place back in New Bainbridge. If they weren't the Three Kings I can't imagine what they might be. It all comes down to the legend of the Three Kings. People go there but none come back. Their ships occasionally do, but they're ghost ships running on automatic or wrecks. How convenient that we keep finding them, considering how impossible this place is alleged to be."

"You think they exist, then?" Chung asked him. "And that the answers, the ones behind this, are operating from there?"

"The evidence is pointing that way. And who do the records identify as going there over the past couple of hundred years? Visionaries and missionaries and greedy mercenaries. Not the kind of people best suited for facing a potentially hostile alien force using them to probe and possibly control us, bit by bit."

"I agree, Chief, the Three Kings is where the answers lie," Broz put in. "So let's go there and see."

"Slight problem with that, isn't there?" Chung responded. "I mean, if there were any maps to that route, it would have been overrun by now. We don't know where they are or how to find them."

Maslovic gave a wry smile. "But I have a sneaking suspicion that at least one of our new guests here does. This might get to be very interesting and profitable after all."

And, with that, he got up and headed back for a second round with Georgi Macouri.

* * *

"Tell me about the Three Kings, Georgi," said Maslovic.

Macouri laughed. "A superstition by an outdated religion that won't go away."

"You know what I'm talking about. You have portraits of them in your house, surrounding your happy devil."

The little man seemed surprised and irritated. "You were in the building? You saw all that?"

"How else did I know of the blood sacrifices?"

"True, true. Hadn't connected the two. There are other ways to find that out if you really want to look. Not prove it, mind, but find it out. How do you like the looks of my god, Sergeant? Does he look like the Lord of Terror?"

"I couldn't care less. It's what frames his statue that I want to know about. Those huge pictures."

"Well, you must know something of the history in order to recognize them at all. Those aren't artist renderings or educated guesses, you know. They're exquisite digital blowups of actual frames. Those are in fact the Three Kings. Not exactly the worlds of everybody's dreams, are they?" He chuckled some more.

"If that's so, how did you get hold of them? They're not supposedly available to the public, although I have no idea who has the originals at this point."

"Oh, my family got them back. I assume you know the legend?"

"I didn't, but I do now," Maslovic told him.