The exec looked over at the chief tech, who was ahead of her. “Orgy, Commander. A frequent rite of ancient cults going back to the early civilizations of Old Earth involving frenzied singing, dancing, drink and drugs, and wanton and uninhibited sexual activity.”
“I always wanted to attend somebody’s orgy but I never could find one,” Murphy sighed.
“I do not understand all that, but I do understand that it is a demonstration of disobedience and rebellion,” Sittithong commented.
“Of course y’don’t, you manufactured martinet! They engineered the sex right out of your society. Probably the drinking, drugs, and all the rest that make life fun now and then, too.”
“We have songs,” the commander responded, almost defensively. “But, never mind. So they truly were under a death sentence? And you rescued them?”
“Only in a manner of speakin’,” Murphy replied. “You’re dismissin’ what they’re doin’ as just some kid’s act, like throwin’ a tantrum or holding their breath until they get their way. It’s not like that. That’s how it starts, but they’re already well along. There’s always somethin’ to them things, I found in me long life. Maybe not what you expect, or even what they think is right, but usually there’s reasons why things keep goin’, and wherever there’s a belief in somethin’ supernatural, there’s always the two sides. The yin and the yang. God and the devil. Angels and demons. Somehow those little darlin’s sprung themselves from what must have been pretty good security. And, in that condition, they somehow made their way over forty kilometers on a world with no paved roads or mechanized vehicles to the one point of outside contact, the tiny spaceport and freight center. Security’s even better there. Really good. They hire some real experts to make sure of that, since they don’t want nobody on their little world to get the idea you can just pick up and leave and all. Folks like me don’t even have a point of contact with the common folk there. Just a few officials, priests mostly, who do the intermediary work. Yet they got in there, easy as you please, and it was just my bad fortune to be the one in port at the time. They only can handle one ship at a time, y’see.”
“But given that, tugs are generally automated or have at best one pilot. There wouldn’t even be room for them, and they’d be detected by machines or pilots. How did they get aboard your ship?”
“They just—did, that’s all. I delivered some pure breeding stock, mostly cows. I figure they used the pressurized and insulated containers to get up. But how they got in, how they kept from triggerin’ all the alarms or bein’ seen on the monitors, and how for that matter they got through a coded double airlock into the ship itself is beyond me. You see what I mean?”
“You asked them, I assume?”
“Oh, yes, I asked ’em. Never got an answer, though. Fact is, once they was in there, it never once entered my head to report ’em, throw ’em off, or whatever. It was like they was payin’ passengers and was expected. I can’t explain it, but it’s kinda spooky. On the one hand, I knew somethin’ was real wrong, but on the other, I just went along like all was normal.”
The commander stared at the chanting women and considered the new information. “So these three are not the ignorant little things they’d like us to believe?”
“That’s just the point! I think they are pretty much what you see. They’re sure enough illiterate; they think the law of gravity is somethin’ passed by the government, they was absolutely shocked when they discovered that their home world wasn’t flat, and they didn’t have the slightest idea how to turn the lights on and off in the cabin, let alone figure out how to boil water for tea. No, they think it’s all bein’ done by invisible demons from the depths of Hell or somethin’. But they got power that’s scary as all hell. That’s what I meant by you bein’ sorry you ever picked us up. Looks to me like they’re gettin’ ready to use that power, and with all that and not a brain in their cute little heads, they’re about as dangerous as a nuclear reaction.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this at the start?”
The old captain shrugged. “What? That them girls is three witches with supernatural powers who can do all sorts of mysterious stuff? You don’t even believe my story now, Commander. But looks like you will soon. When they start them chants and trance stuff, they’re up to somethin’. Just what I can’t say, but you’re gonna have a hard time figurin’ it out or dealin’ with it. Then you’ll see.”
Commander Sittithong sighed. “I sincerely doubt this, Captain. You might be so suggestible or gullible, but this is a star cruiser capable of eliminating whole planets if such a drastic action were ever needed. There’s more military might, and military safeguards, on this vessel than in any of past history’s entire navies, all under the ultimate command and control of cybernetic minds who themselves share power and must agree on an action. No, Captain, they’re just going to sit there and chant themselves all the way home.”
Murphy’s head shot up, suddenly wide awake. “Home? You’re takin’ ’em home?”
“There is no other legal, moral, or ethical choice,” the exec told him. “It has been approved all the way to the Admiralty. We’ll be within their home sector in just a few weeks, and then we’ll shuttle them back in. You, too, unless we find somewhere before that you can be put off at. Then none of you are our problem any longer.”
“You’re takin’ ’em home?” Murphy repeated, barely hearing the rest. “My God, Commander! And you told them this?”
“We had to. Regulations require—”
“Damn your regulations! Any way I can be moved off to one of your destroyers? Or at least close to a disaster escape pod?”
“You’re being overly dramatic, aren’t you?”
“Just you wait,” Murphy responded, wagging a finger at the officer. “Just you wait and see. At least you oughta break that up. Break all three up and put ’em in different areas of the ship so far apart they can’t even find each other. I think they need to be together to exercise this power.”
“I’ve indulged you this far, Murphy, but no farther. There is no reason to split them up. The very thought that such as they could be any danger to this ship or anyone on it is ludicrous! Now, go back to your quarters and pray to your primitive god if that makes you feel any better, but let’s have no more of this nonsense!”
“You wouldn’t happen to have some whiskey on this tub, would you?” Murphy asked her.
“Of course not!”
“Well, could you send one of them big marines in to my old ship and have him fetch a bottle from me secret compartment in the galley? Surely you can’t deny an old man that.”
“We found that stash of cleaning fluid you call whiskey earlier today,” the exec told him. “It is marked for disposal, but I don’t see why, if you want to kill yourself slowly, you shouldn’t have at least one bottle of it if it keeps you calm.”
“Oh, I don’t want it to keep me calm,” the old captain replied. “I want it to keep me nicely blotto for a while…”
* * *
Lieutenant Commander Mohr, the head of ship security, was an even meaner and bigger figure of a man than most of the marines on board, yet right now he looked like a small child caught with his hand in the candy jar.
“What do you mean, ‘They’re missing’?” Commander Sittithong thundered. “How in hell could anyone be missing on this ship?”
Behind them on the viewing screen was a full view of the “guest” cabin where the young women or whatever they were had been sitting and chanting for hours. Now it still showed the strange pentagram in which they’d been sitting, but there was no sign of them or of any life whatsoever in the place.
“I—I have no explanation, Commander. None. One moment they were there, the next they weren’t. You can play back the recording yourself. The alarm went off as soon as the subjects vanished from the surveillance. We immediately did a visual of the entire cabin area and found no signs of life, and the guards were still in place outside the door. We immediately ordered the lead
guard in with the other blocking the door with weapon drawn. The marine went through every centimeter of the cabin. They weren’t there. We immediately initiated a shipwide comparator search. No unknowns or unauthorized persons came back. None of the three showed up in a general search, either. It’s as if they vanished into some other dimension or something.”
“Bullshit! Those girls couldn’t spell ‘dimension,’ let alone find a new one. Has the captain been notified?”
“Not yet. We were waiting for you.”
The exec nodded. “Yes, well, I’ll notify him in a bit. He’s sleeping at the moment and it won’t do any good to wake him until we have something to tell him beyond the fact that these girls pulled a magic trick on the most secure location in what’s left of the known galaxy. What about Murphy?”
“Murphy, sir?” Because the sexes were so irrelevant to this crew, all officers were “sir.”
“The old freighter captain.”
“Oh, him. He’s still in his cabin, sleeping off the effects of whatever that horrible crap he swallowed so eagerly was.”
“Hmmm… We may have underestimated his story, or at least his fears. What about the freighter? We don’t have sensors everywhere on it.”
“We thought of that, sir, but we do have visuals on every pressurized area on it as well as constantly monitored seals on the entrance. All show no activity.”
The exec thought frantically for a minute. Finally, she asked, “Who is your best security analyst aboard? Someone who can figure these kinds of problems out if need be?”
“I’m not sure anyone has ever had any experience with this sort of thing, but Sergeant Maslovic has been excellent at solving the most subtle security breaches. He’s the one who found the missing neutronium, or at least accounted for it.”
“An enlisted man? And a marine at that? Very well, I’ll go along with you on this, but he better be good. Get him up here now, with every bit of data and clearances he requires to start on this right away. And bring Captain Murphy up here as well. Sober him up as best you can—check with Medical, they should have something. On the double!”
Both Captain Murphy and Sergeant Maslovic had at least one thing in common. Neither of them wanted to be there and stuck with this knotty problem, and neither of them had the slightest idea where to start. Still, Murphy, who was the most sour not only from the news that his “witches” had flown the coop, as he called it, but also that he was suddenly as sober as he’d ever felt in his adult life, was probably in the worse frame of mind.
Still, he had that deep-down sense of “told you so” satisfaction that he was more than willing to shove up these robotic martinets’ noses. He looked at Maslovic with a familiar nod, recognizing him from the squadron that boarded the freighter. Clearly the man was more than just a mere guard if he was here.
“So the little girls took a powder and now the whole navy’s in a panic,” he said with a wry smile. “And old Murphy’s been called up to help pull you out of the mess you made when you didn’t listen to him in the first place!”
“And you did so much better with them, by your own account,” Sittithong shot back.
“Well, you got a point there,” the old man admitted. “But if it wasn’t for you buttin’ in like you did, they’d be where they wanted to be and I’d be rid of them by now. Even I had no idea that they could do this!”
Maslovic was less inclined to trust the old captain. “This is quite a level of sophistication for three airheaded young things who can hardly walk, isn’t it?”
“ ‘Sophistication’ he says! ’Tis the black arts, m’boy! Nobody can teleport themselves off a ship by chantin’ usin’ some kind of gizmo!”
Maslovic nodded. “And there I agree with you. Not in the black magic, but in the fact that nobody can will themselves elsewhere. If these girls really could do that, why did they need you?”
“Invisible, then! Maybe they made themselves invisible!”
“Not likely. We don’t just track by vision. Every living thing aboard gives off heat and makes noise and has all sorts of nonvisual emanations that we can use for detection. They show up on none of them, even though small pests in the deepest holds do. No, they didn’t teleport anyplace and they didn’t become invisible or any such thing. There’s only one explanation that makes any sense here, and it’s highly sophisticated. Let me see the replay again, if you please, Commander.”
All eyes went to the screen, which blacked out for just a moment and then came back up with a recording of the trio sitting there inside the pentagram chanting.
“If that’s not an act, then those faces show a near trancelike state,” Maslovic pointed out. “But they’re doing something, and more and more they’re doing it in perfect synch. Look at the slight twitching in the feet, the little muscular movements in the mouths, and you’ll see they get to where the slightest little thing, even breathing and heart rates, are absolutely identical, like they’re one organism. It’s the closest to telepathy I’ve ever seen. The chanting helps them in some way, combines them in some kind of shared consciousness. It’s a discipline, but it’s clearly deliberate.”
“So they merge,” Sittithong commented. “That would give them a combined IQ of our dumbest sailor.”
Maslovic kept staring at the three. “No, sir. It’s not intellect at work here. It’s feelings, emotions, I can’t tell what else.” He looked at the small timer clicking off the hundredths of seconds in the lower left hand corner. “Now, finally, they’ve got to where they wanted to be. How they learned this I have no idea, but it will be essential that we find out. Imagine what would happen if these girls fell into the hands of someone who could direct them for the wrong ends, or if they could teach more capable people to do this. Nothing would be safe. On the other hand, if we can learn how it’s done, nothing would be closed to us.”
Even Murphy was getting interested. “What are you talkin’ about, man?”
“Watch. There!”
One moment the trio is still sitting there, chanting, and the next moment they simply are not there. There was no transition, no fading out, nothing. They were there, and then they weren’t, just like that.
“What do you see, Sergeant?” the exec prompted. “What do you see that we can’t?”
“Well, sir, for one thing I can see that we need a faster clock. Still, if you go back to the precise instant that they ‘vanish,’ you may be able to see it. At the moment they vanish, freeze it. I mean truly at that moment, at the precise frame number.”
It was done, but they could still see nothing. The girls sat, frozen, in that eerie unison that the sergeant had noticed. “Now advance one frame at a time.”
Each frame was a hundredth of a second, so it was going to take a while to go through the next few moments, but there they vanished, and nothing was clearly different.
“Right there, the first very few frames, perhaps five one hundredths of a second in all. Can’t you see it?”
Both Murphy and Sittithong stared as the same frames went by slowly again and again, but it wasn’t clear.
Finally, Maslovic said, “Don’t pay any attention to the girls vanishing. Look at the background, and in particular that crude design drawn around them. If we had thousandths of a second frames I think it would be obvious, but this isn’t much. Just look at the design behind where the women were sitting from the point of view of the camera.”
“I believe I see it. A slight distortion, a sort of blurring,” the exec commented. “Is that what you mean?”
Maslovic nodded. “The information had to be interpolated for that very short period. After that, the full information could be compiled from earlier storage. You see, we don’t keep every frame of every surveillance video we have. On a ship of this size the storage alone would be enormous. They’d been chanting for several hours, so the view of that part of the design was no longer in the security computer’s memory. It had to interpolate. As soon as it got the full view, it back-filled the design, redrew it digitally
, but for those brief first few fractions of a second it had to hold the design while reprocessing the rest of the image. Because of that, we get that distortion. It’s so minor you’d only see it if you expected to see it, and then only in this frame-by-frame analysis.”
Both Murphy and the exec turned and stared at the marine. “And, Sergeant, how in hell did you know to expect to see it?”
“It had to be there. And because the alarms triggered at five one hundredths of a second, it was the one small section that could not be digitally redrawn before a secure offline copy was made. The two computers are substantially the same speed, but the general security and surveillance computer had a lot to do. It still almost managed.”
“And all this nonsense means what?” Murphy asked, genuinely confused.
“It means that your girls didn’t disappear anywhere. After they did what they needed to do, they simply stopped, got up, and walked out the door.”
“Impossible!” Lieutenant Commander Mohr asserted. “They’d be all over our sensors!”
“Not, sir, if the surveillance computer was told to remove them from any and all monitoring.”
“What?”
“They are here, somewhere. They are simply being completely ignored, both by the monitoring computers and any crewmembers they might come into contact with. The background for every single security point on the ship is in memory, so only the parts that move or change need to be dealt with. Wherever they are, the computer is simply not showing or reporting them, but painting each frame and adjusting all records using prior data to have them not show up. As I say, I don’t know how they do it, but the computers are self-aware and in many ways would be recognized as just other life-forms, so whatever they’re doing to make them not noticed by our people is the same thing they did with the computer. I don’t think they know how they do it. In fact, I’d rather doubt it. But they’re here, as you saw them, most likely walking around the ship, and absolutely no person or computer is taking any notice of them. Is, in fact, blotting out their very existence. That’s why I mentioned telepathy, although I don’t think they read minds, I just do not have another term for this. They could be right here, right now, and neither we nor our highly sophisticated surveillance equipment would show it. Our brains would simply paint them out, just like the computers are doing. Since they don’t seem very bright, sir, I think we’re in very big trouble if they stop sightseeing and begin pushing buttons and interfering with other processes. This ship’s run by computers that are of the same relative design as the one they’ve compromised.”
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