Jack Chalker - Kaspar's Box

Damn them! They pulled another one of them witch vanishing acts again!

He started to go out into the shopping district, which was just coming to life with its lights and glitzy signs and exotic smells, when he suddenly stopped and just stood there in the hotel entrance, staring.

What the hell could he do? He had no more chance of finding them than anyone else, and if they were in that invisible mode or whatever it was they could pull, then nobody else would have noticed them, either. At least that situation would help defend against the nasty people and things around the city, and they were unlikely candidates for much in the sex side of things right now, so he couldn’t do much except sweat a bit and wait them out and hope that they came back.

He turned, went back up to the room, cleared off the parlor table, and called room service for a good dinner. While waiting, he decided to see if anyone of interest might be in the city directory.

Computers were very good at figuring out what you wanted and finding it for you, but he hated having a dialog with a machine. He called up a holographic screen with a print listing and sought some information.

Phineas… Phineas… Nope. Wait! Not Phineas! Saint Phineas, wasn’t it? Yes, let’s see…

There was nothing in the commercial or institutional directories that seemed to fit what he was looking for, but the plain contact listings, without the three-dimensional super ads and special effects, did show an Order of Saint Phineas. Not much of a description, but it was in the southwestern suburbs, a residential area mostly, but easily reached by mass transit.

“Research,” he said to the screen floating in front of him. “Expand on any cross-references on directory entry highlighted.”

“St. Phineas, Order of, rel., frat., priv. Chapel, grounds, residences. Members only. No visitors unless invited. Strictly enforced. Security A five.”

That was interesting. A security level like that might be expected at banks and dealers in art and precious gems or the like, and higher-level government offices. Rather unusual for a religious order, which is what the thing also said. Of course, if the girls really meant it when they said they were Satanists, then any such order might well have that kind of security and more.

He sat up, frowning. “Information, can you find me anything on Saint Phineas?”

“No information on Saint Phineas is in my records,” responded a pleasant and human-sounding female voice. “However, there is an Order of Saint Phineas listed in the communications directory.”

“Never mind.” That was going in circles.

He probably was one of those obscure Catholic saints, of course. There was one for just about every name or combination of syllables in the known universe, or so it had seemed when the religious calendars came out when he was growing up. Not likely to bother having all of those on a secular world’s directory like this one. Not much of Vaticanus here, that was for sure. More likely here would be Buddhists, Hindus, Moslems, Baptists, that sort of thing.

And all of a sudden it hit him like a bolt of lightning from the heavens themselves. Where was he sitting, anyway? Those rascals! Those damned scoundrels! People after his own heart, most likely.

“Information,” he called again. “Phineas Barnum, please.”

“No listing for a Phineas Barnum.”

“Not a listing. Who was he?”

“Barnum, Phineas Taylor, lived eighteen ten to eighteen ninety-one, Old Earth calendar system. Established museum of curiosities, later created a traveling circus called the Greatest Show on Earth. Descendants of the circus, merged many times and split among many units, perform to this day on established appearance circuits, with some periods of interruption. Credited with the saying, ‘There is a sucker born every minute.’ Barnum was also a politician and mayor of a major city at one time in his career. He—”

“That’s enough!” As the signal bell sounded indicating that dinner had arrived, he sat back and laughed heartily to himself. Phineas Taylor Barnum. A sucker born every minute!

It made perfect sense. Nobody paid anything to see robots battle or holographic shows that did the same things time after time, and even if you could walk right into a virtual reality game and battle gladiators in ancient Rome, there was some prurient interest and even some artistic appreciation for those folks of the old school who could still perform the old acts, live, in the ways you couldn’t.

There’s one born every minute… He almost choked on the steak, good as it was, because of his inability to suppress chuckling spasms.

This was a scientific reserve, but it was more than that. Lots of genetics work was done to order here, and lots of preservation and even resuscitation of extinct plants and animals from preserved DNA and stored encoding sequences were done here as well. It was also one of the few places where, for some substantial fees, you could do some special-order genetics on humans as well. Not well publicized, and in the old days before the Great Silence it was never advertised, but it was done here. What better place for breeding controlled mutations if that’s what you wanted to do? Lots of museum and performer types here as well, because of the laid-back attitudes. And even universally condemned activities might be done here, no questions asked.

And that was what he’d been doing for them all this time. They had their performers who might even get around now and then to out-of-the-way worlds like Tara Hibernius. Who would look twice at them? Such a backward nontechnological society would be a natural for live performances.

So you dropped by and you already carried the seeds of the project, whatever it might be, and thanks to the strict claustrophobic society there would be a lot of teen rebellion, perhaps against both church and society, so you had a seemingly unthreatening underground organization that attracted some of the young. The best prospects might be impregnated with the project seed, and then good old Murphy comes along delivering atmospheric purifiers and super fertilizers and he picks up the impregnated ones who also have been chosen as ones who really wanted out or else and deposits them here. Who would notice? Even if something in the chain blew, it wouldn’t look like any kind of illegal genetics work, it would just look like what it seemed, with the Satanic stuff thrown in for an even smellier bundle of red herrings.

Still, somebody had gone to a lot of trouble and expense for what seemed easy to do right here in a compound out in the bush. Why go to all that trouble, and for so little result? Three engineered babies you could grow in test tubes?

No, he had some of it, but not all of it, not yet. He was certain of that.

It was well into the night before the girls returned, much to his relief. Not that he was so terrified for their welfare, of course, but he had to get paid, after all.

His relief was short-lived, though, when he saw that they were under no apparent spells but dressed quite differently, and followed by a robot cart carrying a ton of packages. They themselves had on loose but rather colorful one-piece dresses, wide, floppy brim hats, fancy designer sunglasses, and nice-looking sandals. They also appeared to have discovered the application of makeup, were wearing earrings and finger rings, wearing painted lips and painted nails.

“Good god! How’d you get all that? ” he asked nervously. “You didn’t spend every single bit of credit I got, did you?”

“Oh, of course not!” Irish laughed, sounding tired but happy. “We didn’t spend nothin’ at all for these!”

Murphy frowned. “Then how…? I mean, they got print and retinal checks and you need the money or else here! Or did you just walk out with it while makin’ nobody see you or somethin’ like that?”