Jack Chalker - Kaspar's Box

The fact that they hadn’t apparently done so meant that either she had nothing to offer but the ride and that’s what they were getting anyway or, possibly, that she had been fully compromised and reprogrammed not to know it. She put that out of her mind for now, though, not so much from paranoia as from pragmatism. If that were true, then it really didn’t matter insofar as there was nothing she might be able to do to discover or counter it.

Chung had watched with fascination as O’Brian’s operator—there was just no other way to think of it right now—had flowed rather nicely into Maslovic’s hand and then through him, until he had sensed it and let go, cutting the contact. That had yielded some very interesting and possibly useful facts. First, that the more it extended into and over Maslovic, the thinner the energy field around both he and the girl had become, so there was a real limit to how much that gemstone device could put out after all. That was probably why all three were needed to do what they did aboard the Thermopylae ; the power had to be combined.

Still, all three together had also been sufficient to have somehow reprogrammed the living sentry’s memory of them leaving, and the memory of anyone who came close to them. The three of them together, in perfect symmetry, had been necessary to create a field that could fog the mind of anyone coming into its proximity. Nobody could create a condition where someone would be invisible to everyone and everything across the whole catalog of senses and monitors, but apparently together, the three could create a thin field that would make no one and no thing notice that they were there. Fascinating.

It also implied limits to that power, however vast. They could put in their clever little program to the ship’s computer, but they couldn’t stay there and keep the girls supplied and protected or, worse, controlled. They could use the girls’ bodies and sensors to explore, almost like robotic probes or ferrets, but the requirement that the field, however thin, be stretched as far as possible vastly limited what they could actually do during those explorations.

She had never experienced this sort of energy, did not know its full properties or potential, so there really wasn’t a lot she could do to tell more about it without attracting unwanted attention from it, but it did allow her to see the energy in its ebbs and flows and something of where it went and what it could do.

It always had at least a slender thread directly into each girl’s cerebral cortex, and it also had a similar hairlike thread into the same region of the nearly fully developed fetuses. It certainly wasn’t using those connections for control, at least not now, but it did occasionally send quantities of energy in short, coded bursts along those connections, sometimes to the mothers but more often to the almost children within.

What would a newborn be programmed to do? What could it do? It wouldn’t even have full vision or control of its muscles for some time. Latent programming, probably, or lots of data and routines to be activated once the child was old enough for it to matter.

Were these, then, a class of invading soldiers being created by an enemy almost from the moment they had a developing brain? Or the perfect agents, or spies? What were the operators on the other side of those stones doing, and why?

As much anxiety as she felt, Chung also felt a great deal of excitement. No more pushing around little toads like Murphy or doing shows of force to get taxes from poor worlds growing poorer; this was what a military was for.

Now there was an enemy, a bit out of the shadows where those like her could see them at work, if obliquely. And if the operators were friendly, why had they spent so much time and trouble keeping in those deepest shadows?

How she’d like to follow that energy back to its source! And not in this little shuttle, either, but with her fighter, perhaps the whole fighter squadron, and on their own, without potential corruption from the mother ship’s master computers!

As it stood right now, though, this ship had four weapons, all personal weapons of no real use in space, and none of them was assembled and charged.

And with the last of the gates looming ahead, they were only a few hours out from those who sent those images that so troubled Maslovic, someone who, like herself, was without the fear of death and whose entire self was devoted to the mission, and not to some intermediaries in this obvious vast interstellar plot.

She saw the wormgate ahead, quite suddenly, but it was no surprise. Directly on the flight path, just where and when it should be, here it was, out then, with only a slight adjustment, back in for one last, very short ride.

It had been decided from the start that she would not communicate with those inside if she could help it, only observe, but they were now at the point where there was no more purpose to the silent treatment, meant to simply not remind the girls and whoever was behind them that someone else was aboard and watching. Now it was moot; they were almost there.

“Please awaken our passengers, Sergeant,” her voice came from the lounge public address speaker, sounding crisp and professional. “There are clean, loose whites in the locker aft, and whatever else they might wish to wear on exit. They certainly can not exit looking like that, nor, I suspect, would they want to.”

Maslovic sat up straight, almost at attention, and nodded at the speaker. It was conditioning; in this circumstance and until they actually landed, the lieutenant was the captain.

Murphy simply looked startled. It had been long enough since he’d seen the pilot that he’d forgotten that the whole thing wasn’t automated.

“You can clean up and get some fresh clothing as well, Captain Murphy,” Maslovic told him. “We have time yet.” He glanced at his watch, which now read 2:44:06. Murphy did the same, and chuckled.

“Three pregnant lassies, one toilet, one shower, and under maybe four, five hours tops from right now and some of that time strapped in. You’re dreamin’, man!” He paused for a moment, then added, “I’ll skip the prettifyin’, if you don’t mind. Bad for me reputation anyway. In fact, I think I’ll spend this last comfy time enjoyin’ what I can of that pretty good stout, and maybe a couple of scones or sweet rolls to settle me stomach. Tonight it’s a celebration! I’m free of them and all of you starched machines, and it’s payday to boot!”

“Suit yourself,” Maslovic responded, getting up and making his way aft to the beds. Somehow he suspected that the old captain wasn’t nearly as free and clear of this business as he might have hoped.

Murphy was a bit worried about that, too, but he was equally certain that he felt neither kinship with nor obligation to the military folks, now or at any forseeable time in his future. If this was any sort of menace, they were probably the least equipped to handle it with their rigid codes and genetic specializations. Pirates, con artists, and maybe a physicist or two, they might at least make a go of it. He’d grown to like Maslovic, at least a little, and respect his mind and almost con artist-like manner, but, deep down, Murphy knew that the marine was essentially an act, a performance, trained and programmed and superimposed on a hard and cold body and mind. All that surface charm and friendly company could shut down in a moment and the same fellow would shoot him and never think a moment on it beyond that, and blow away his mother, too, if he had one. Of course, his mother had been a machine, so in that sense he and the rest of his kind were the spitting images of their parents.

Not that Murphy didn’t have the con man’s personable manner and coldness of heart as well, but at least, he told himself, he’d earned that in the school of hard knocks.