Kaspar's Box tk-3

by Jack L. Chalker

  Tara Hibernius was only two wormgate jumps from Vaticanus, too. Strict and very conservative Catholic society. So Murphy might not have been stretching the truth about the place. They might well have imposed technological limitations on the average citizens there just to keep them isolated and their lifestyle mandated just so; this allowed for a cultlike society where people lived in ignorance of what else there was in the universe, the founders’ ideal. Back to the land, back to the simple life—it was consistent.

  But paying an old reprobate like Murphy to get your pregnant daughter off to some distant planet where she’d be totally unprepared to live wasn’t consistent. Some of these cults killed their sinners, but this seemed neither an act of excommunication nor of loving desperation. It made no sense at all.

  The computer-aided psychology report on any of the three was no more help. Except for a strong sense of deception, the physiological results were totally contradictory and so were the stories.

  “Why were you on Captain Murphy’s ship instead of staying back on your native planet?” the exec asked her.

  Irish O’Brian shrugged. “It beat the alternative, Mum.”

  “Indeed? And what was that?”

  “Bein’ burnt up with the baby and all, Mum.”

  “The people of your world would have burned you alive?” The exec would have sounded more shocked if she actually believed that it would happen.

  “Oh, yes, Mum. Me and me sisters.”

  “Sisters? I don’t see any relationship here.”

  “Oh, it’s a different kind of relation, that,” O’Brian replied, sounding casual and innocent. “Sort of sisters in the soul more than in the blood. They’d already got the other ten of us, y’see, so there wasn’t no doubt but what they’d do to us.”

  “They burned ten other young women? You saw this?”

  “Yes, Mum. Didn’t hav’ta, though. When any one of us goes, well, the others just sort of know, y’see.”

  “No, I don’t see, I’m afraid. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, Mum, it’s like this. The Old Country, it was united by a prophet who married off a daughter of the line of Judah to King Brian. That was at the old Tara, which is why that’s a part of the New Country name, y’see. They think they have the direct authority of God, and the Church is their instrument.”

  Were all these people totally insane? “What does all that have to do with anything, my dear?”

  “Well, y’know, we don’t exactly get along with God, y’know. We ain’t been all that impressed with his side, y’see.”

  This was going nowhere. The exec did, however, notice one thing that she hadn’t before. “Um, that necklace you’re wearing. Is it some family thing, or a gift, or some sort of religious medal?”

  The girl ran a long finger down the slender golden chain around her neck which ended in a large stone of some sort, emerald in color but looking somehow different, and certainly rough.

  “Well, ’tis of our beliefs, Mum.”

  “May I look at it?”

  The idea seemed to frighten the girl, the first real rise the exec had gotten from her. “Please, Mum. It’s not good for you to touch it. It’s just a stone, but it’s very important to me. Please don’t make me give it to you!”

  Sittithong thought for a moment. What the hell, they weren’t getting anywhere. “Very well, calm down.” She sighed and considered where to go from here and didn’t get very far. Finally she said, “That will be all for now, citizen. Please exit and wait until we’ve spoken to your companions. We might well want to talk to you all again after this. Unlike Captain Murphy, you haven’t committed any criminal acts as far as we’re concerned.”

  “So long as you don’t send us back to our deaths, anyplace is fine, Mum. We’ll get by.”

  Yeah, sure. Seventeen, pregnant or with an infant, little possessions, no money or credit, no education, no skills. Oh, you’ll cope fine.

  When O’Brian was gone, the commander called, “What do you think, Captain? You want to take the next one, or me?”

  “I think these people are all lunatics,” Captain Kim replied. “I’ve been looking over the initial examinations and interrogations of all three and that’s about what we can expect from the other two, it appears. I’m not sure whether it’s worth losing any more time or sleep over this.” He got up and came around to the exec, who rose and yielded the chair to the captain. “Still, let’s see what comes of this, if anything. I don’t want to be hasty here, and we’ve got procedural problems.”

  “Indeed. Most people in their circumstance will tell us where to drop them off.”

  “Let’s take the other two together and see if we can make any sense of this.” He pressed a point on the desk signalling the marine outside. “Send in the other two together now.”

  “Aye, sir,” was the response, and the door opened and the other two girls entered. Like O’Brian, neither seemed particularly awed by the room nor the presences within it, nor noticably concerned about their situation, either. If anything, the best either officer could sense was mild indifference to their situation.

  The captain and exec looked them both over. They looked around in a bored sort of way but did not return the stares.

  To the right of the captain was a short and somewhat chubby young woman with light brown hair and bright, almost impossibly blue eyes. To her right, his left, stood a taller, more striking figure with long blonde hair that was unnaturally pure and golden yellow, a sexy stance and baby face with lips that seemed to form an impertinent but sexy pout even when at rest, and strangely unnerving hazel eyes. The fact that this one was as pregnant as the others did not in the least diminish her radiant sexuality; even the neutered officers knew what she radiated and could sense it.

  The exec went over and whispered to the captain, “Sir, doesn’t it strike you that these girls, all three, seem unnatural somehow? The colorations are natural according to the medical exam, yet have you ever seen eyes or hair of those colors in nature on any planetfall?”

  She had a point, the captain reflected. Still, the fact that these girls were the product of some sort of genetic manipulation wasn’t extraordinary, only the superficiality of the tinkering. No humans had truly natural genetic lines any more, hadn’t for a couple of centuries at least.

  “Ain’t you cold without no hair?” the brown-haired girl asked, looking at the exec.

  “Isn’t it a bother to have to maintain all that hair?” the exec responded, used to the way dirtballers thought of service people.

  “All you folks look kinda creepy to us,” the girl came back. This would be Mary Margaret McBride. The other, the blonde and sexy Brigit Moran, said nothing.

  “People and lifestyles are different all over,” the captain told the girl. “You haven’t been off your world before, it’s clear, or you’d know that.”

  “You mean folks elsewhere all look like you?”

  “No, just military people. But there are other differences, quite a lot of them. None of us have much choice about that part.”

  “Why not?” McBride asked, apparently quite sincere in the question.

  The exec tried to rescue the captain. “Look, all that’s beside the point. The only thing we are trying to decide here is what to do with you. You wouldn’t like it here, I don’t think, and you would just be in the way of what we do.”

  “That’s easy,” McBride said. “Just put us off on any world with folks who look and act more like us. We’ll get by.”

  “You might at that,” the exec admitted. “The trouble is, you are very young, you have no experience outside a very primitive culture, and your—condition, let us say, makes it hard for us to just do that. We must make sure that you will not suffer or die because of what we do.”

  “Why?”

  It was such a strange question in that context that it threw the exec for a moment. Finally it was the captain who answered, “Because our ways include a code of what’s right and wrong and that
would be wrong. Still, if you had friends or relatives on another world we might be able to arrange for you to be with them. Do you have any family like that?”

  “We got some family of sorts most everywhere,” McBride assured him. “But not like you mean, I don’t think. Honest. We’ll be okay anyplace you drop us so long as the folks there ain’t like, well, you, for example.”

  “Sounds like we should just arrange to get you back home to Tara Hibernius,” Commander Sittithong said flatly. “That might solve all our problems.”

  Both girls seemed suddenly quite agitated. It wasn’t fear in their eyes, not exactly, but it was clear that this was the one thing that bothered them. “No, you can’t make us go back!”

  “Never!” repeated the heretofore silent blonde in a high breathy voice.

  “Perhaps a convent, then, on one of the developed colonies,” the captain suggested thoughtfully. “We could live with putting you in the custody of your church.”

  “Convent? Our church?” McBride seemed to be suppressing a laugh. “No, sir. Not them folks. We don’t fit in with them a’tall.”

  The captain noticed the necklaces the two girls wore around their necks, quite similar to the one worn by the first girl. He was going to ask about it, but then decided not to, at least for now.

  “Well, those are the only two choices we’ve come up with. If you won’t tell us your stories of why you were on Murphy’s ship and why you are fleeing your native world, then we can hardly make any third decision.”

  McBride was having none of it. “You’re just like them!” she responded angrily. “No, you put us back on our ship and let us go on, or you put us off on a big world with lots of folks. You better!”

  The captain found this almost amusing. “We’d better? That’s usually followed by some sort of threat. We’d better or what?”

  “You just better, that’s all! Can we go now?”

  The captain looked over at the exec who gave a slight shrug.

  “Why not?” he replied. “There’s little to be gained from this. You and your companions will have adjoining cabins and you must stay in them, together if you want, or not if you like, or in the lounge that will be nearby. Marines will be posted to make sure you don’t go start exploring and get into trouble. I’m going to have to take a look and see how long it’ll be before we’re within range of Tara Hibernius, and that’s that.”

  “You won’t send us back!” McBride said flatly. “You won’t!”

  “I will do what’s in the best interest of all of us, and you’ll have to accept it. Now, go. The sergeant outside will show you all to your quarters.”

  Mary Margaret McBride looked at Brigit Moran and the two locked eyes and resolute expressions for a moment. It looked quite childlike. Still, they both turned in almost military fashion and stomped out of the room.

  The captain sighed. “In the old days, I was a guest for a time at a private resort where military and trade representatives gathered to discuss policy. Many brought along their families in the old style because it was such a nice holiday spot. Many of their young children would act like that on occasion. I recall one small boy who did not want to stop swimming and go inside with his mother. He threw a loud screaming fit, one so awful I thought they would have to call the medical personnel, and it was only after a while that I realized I was watching unbridled and unchecked emotion. Finally, he threatened to hold his breath until he turned blue. He tried to do so, too.”

  “Sir?”

  “I half expected at least the talkative one to threaten the same thing just now. I hope our medical computers have full data on pregnancies. It may be necessary at some point to sedate them, and I should not like to be responsible for harming the child within.”

  The exec had less experience with the masses of humanity in their standard forms and found the whole thing more unnerving.

  “I don’t know, sir. Sedation might be quite advisable. In their mental state they are as much a threat to themselves as to anyone. I shall be happy to see them leave.”

  “I agree. Have them continuously monitored. Put an experienced security person on them, too. I don’t want a computer deciding what is and isn’t aberrant behavior.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The captain looked down at his desktop screen. “It says here we’ll be close enough to shuttle them back home in sixteen days. Let us pray that we can hold out that long!”

  III: THE WITCHES OF ERIN

  The exec was decidedly not amused.

  “All right, Murphy. Straight answers now. Are you all lunatics or failed experiments or just what the fucking hell are they doing in there?”

  Murphy had been given a full bath, shave, and clean generic clothing and looked just as much an unmade bed as he had before in spite of that. Still, he’d been sound asleep in his “quarters” when he’d suddenly been rudely awakened by two big, burly marines and almost hauled up seventeen levels to the command and control deck.

  Now he wiped sleep blearily from his eyes, and, partly resting on the side of a desk, he strained to focus on the viewing screen in front of them. It was the girls, all right, but he didn’t remember there being nine of ’em…

  Now the figures began to come together as his eyes more or less focused, and he gaped at what the duty personnel had been watching for who knew how long.

  The three Tara Hibernius girls were sitting on the deck in the middle of one of the two cabins assigned to them, stark naked except for the necklaces each of them wore around their necks, designs stained onto their bodies. They were holding hands and chanting, eyes shut, faces partially raised up as if in some kind of trance. Around them they’d drawn a design using chalk or something which they’d completed after sitting in the middle so that the drawing extended all around them.

  “Kinda gettin’ more’n your money’s worth of what normal wimminfolks look like, ain’t you?” he commented dryly.

  Commander Sittithong was not amused. “If there is one single thing about those three that can be defined as ‘normal’ by anyone, on any world, anywhere, I have never heard of it,” she responded. “Just what in heaven’s name are they doing?”

  Murphy shrugged. “Chanting, seems like,” he responded.

  The exec reached out and forcefully pulled the old captain around. “I’ve about had it with you, Captain Murphy! And you can stow that old folksy ethnic act, too. That may get you a few more drinks in spaceport dives, but it means nothing here! Now, just what is this all about?”

  Murphy squinted at the screen. “Be damned,” he muttered, more to himself than to the naval officer. “First time I ever seen ’em painted up like that. They all got hold of them damned necklaces, though. First time I seen ’em clear. Emerald, ruby, and turquoise. Strange lookin’ things. I don’t like this. Can you turn up the volume a bit and isolate the chant? What’re they sayin’?”

  The exec turned and gave a nod to one of the technicians, who pressed a few controls. The chanting grew much clearer, if no more explicable.

  “Power of the universe, come to us!

  Father of darkness, heed our prayers.

  Send your messengers to heed the call of your brides!

  “Gather, darkness! Come from where nothing escapes,

  Hear our prayers and extend to us your power!

  “Give power from the darkness where no light springs!”

  It went on like that, some of it in some sort of tongue-twisting language that was unfamiliar to any of them but which fit the chanting, mostly the same words clearly said over and over again, with occasional added lines of supplication to bizarre names or creatures.

  “Come send the goat that eats its young.

  “Come from the power where no light springs…”

  “Those are prayers, Commander,” Murphy said at last, indicating with a gesture that he didn’t have to hear more. “I’m not really well schooled on it, but apparently they’re praying to their lord and master and his minions to spring from the black holes of the u
niverse and give them the ultimate power. To do what, I don’t even want to think, but I kind of hope that it won’t get beyond that silliness.”

  “Prayers! To what deity? Nothing of the faiths of ancient Earth nor the cults that sprang from the colonies, surely.”

  “Oh, yes. Old as any of ’em. Maybe older than all but one. That design’s a kind of protection, since their deities can’t even be trusted to not kill their own followers—that stuff about the goat eating her young. Some ancient symbol, and more on their bodies. But it was known on Old Earth, for sure. It’s devil worship, Commander! They’re summoning demons.”

  The exec stared at him. “You can’t be serious!”

  “Oh, but I am. More importantly, they’re serious. They’re witches, Commander. That’s why they was bein’ burned back on Tara Hibernus. Don’t look so shocked. It’s not that odd. The damned society there is so strict, so fundamentalist if you please, that if you don’t blindly accept it, you’re corrupted. It’s the ultimate rebellion for the young in such a place. They only had three alternatives, you see. Blindly follow the incredibly strict and boring theocracy there or be the opposition, as it were. Mostly it does little harm and lets ’em blow off steam, since the third way is to kill yourself, which many do I’m told. I’d sure do it if I was stuck there, I’ll tell you. I’m from the same ancestral stock and traditions as them people, but they’re way beyond what my folks lived. Sooner or later, of course, most of the young ones pair off and wind up bein’ reabsorbed into that society and that’s the end of that. But these girls, their group or coven or whatever, went a bit far in the pleasures of the dark side and they got knocked up on a world where the powers that be think it’s damned near impossible, almost unthinkable. Musta been a hell of an orgy, huh?”