Jack Chalker - Kaspar's Box

It wasn’t quite as quick as Murphy guessed, but, eventually, they saw it: a tiny round robotic cleaner with a fanlike action that came out of an eight-centimeter-high compartment on one side of the opening and seemed to glide along picking up the accumulation right along the force field, half in and half out. It was lightning fast and the field above it ceased only so long as it was traveling its small route along the floor, a width of no more than fifteen or sixteen centimeters, but for that very brief time and in effectively constant motion, there was a gap.

“Sloppy,” Broz commented. “Lots of small remotes could get through.”

“Yeah? Then how come you didn’t think of it?” Murphy asked.

Broz ignored the insult. “The only question is, is there a second line of defense inside that would make this meaningless? If so, then we’re still stuck and we might as well just blow the thing. If not, though, it’s a lapse in either logic or cost that can get us in. That is, if you want to risk one of the ferrets.”

“Why not?” Maslovic responded. “I have a feeling we’ll have to blow our way in there anyway, but at least we can see what we’re up against. If it’s destroyed, we’ve got a dangerous problem. If it gets through, then the security’s basic and for show.”

“Not like your security, of course, which thought of everything ’cept maybe three wee girls compromisin’ your whole security system,” Murphy said with a half smile.

Again, his comment was neither acknowledged nor returned.

They almost missed their next opportunity, even though it was something they should have expected. The next time, the cleaner came from the opposite side back towards where they’d first seen it. Fortunately, the ferret was smart enough to refigure the angle and keep to the basic instruction, which was to breach the force field. At the precise moment, it leaped and passed over the cleaner at an angle, giving it just enough time to clear the field.

“We’re in,” Broz said needlessly.

“Better than in,” the sergeant responded. “There are the basic controls at that wall panel. Doesn’t even look like a code pad or biometric pass. Don’t go for it yet—it still might set off an alarm. Let’s see what’s back there.”

The ferret had no choice but to be on the floor at this point, but got back on the side wall as soon as it could do so.

The two sides of the hallway around the sealed security master console joined again on the other side and, in the area beyond, descended into a large semisunken chamber that could be seen only using the ferret’s high-capability, low-light system.

The room itself was out of another age, but not like the house. Instead, it seemed from some ancient time, a burial vault in ancient Egypt, perhaps, or some long forgotten prehistoric civilization. If it hadn’t been so antiseptically clean, it might have been taken for something original rather than some kind of show business set.

“I’m half surprised he doesn’t have robotic rats and cockroaches and such scurryin’ about,” Murphy noted. “Kind of loses some of its atmosphere without ’em.”

“But it gets it back with that central altar,” the security man replied.

And, in fact, that was the dominant part of the room: a raised rectangular object made to look as if carved out of solid stone, and on top was space enough for a human of average build to lie in a concave area designed for that purpose. From the sacrificial area came careful channels running off and down to the sides, and then down to a depression that went completely around the altar stone.

“Spectroanalysis on the stains along the channels and sides, please,” Maslovic ordered.

Broz adjusted some controls, focused on a particularly promising spot, and almost immediately began getting data.

“We don’t have to go very far in the analysis to figure this one out,” Broz commented. “It’s blood.”

“What kind of blood?”

“Human. Beyond that we’d need a sample for DNA analysis.”

“Hardly worth it. We probably wouldn’t know them anyway,” Maslovic replied. “So, he’s loonier than even we thought. I bet the ceremonies here are right out of ancient thrillers. I’m not sure we need to see much more. We can feed this to the local cops here and they’ll have a field day, but I’m beginning to think now our best interest is in assembling the team and going into the bush.”

“If Macouri has this much guts in town, in this surveillance paradise, to do this, imagine what he does out there, where there’s nobody to catch him,” Broz said.

“I doubt if he’s any more, or less, dangerous out there, but I don’t think he uses the bush for that kind of cover. No, he gets off by doing this under the noses of everybody. The risk is part of it for those types. The idea that he’s doing this sort of thing right here, in a rich section of the city, under the noses of the best human and automated policing systems around. That said, I want to nail this bastard out of the city if possible.”

“With this sort of evidence? Why not make it the locals’ problem?” Broz asked him.

“Because he might beat it, or it’s possible he has a very efficient trap under there or in that sealed security module that might eliminate not only the evidence but several square blocks around including here. No, as much as I’d love a crack at that house and particularly the records inside, all this has convinced me that we have to move on him now, where he is, while he’s away.”

“And me?” the old captain asked him. “I was thinkin’ of the girls, y’see. I did bring ’em, after all. And others, too, before ’em.”

Maslovic turned and looked at him. “Were all your previous passengers women?”

“Well, no, come to think of it. And not all the women were preggers, neither. But these are, and it don’t mean that some folks I was responsible for didn’t wind up on that slab in there.”

Maslovic shook his head. “No, Captain. We train for this. We practically know how one another thinks, and we have all our own gadgets as well. You can follow with the techs, but you have to stay with them until we finish what we have to do out there and signal that you can come in.”

“I figured as much on that. But the girls… You’re not gonna git ’em in the middle of a firefight, are you?”

“We’ll do the best we can. Just remember that they aren’t captives, they’re a part of it.”

“But them devil’s gems—”

“Those things give them power and direction, but I didn’t have any sense that they hadn’t knowingly put them on, nor that they had any intention of fighting the power and influence. No, Captain, this isn’t the rescue of the innocents. What happens to them will be partly their own choice. We’re after not only the bastards like Georgi Macouri, we’re much more after the ones he’s serving and the ones behind those devices. If we’re all lucky, the girls will have a choice, but only a choice. They can help us, or the others.” He turned to the two techs. “Recall the ferrets as soon as possible. I’ll get Lieutenant Chung and we’ll start prepping the team. Let’s move!”

They were named Sanchez, Ndulu, Rosen, and Nasser and they all looked like they liked bending barbells with their bare hands as warm-up exercises.

Sanchez and Ndulu were female, but you could hardly tell that until you were pretty close, and in the case of the strike team seemed irrelevant anyway. These were not in any way the kind of folks Captain Murphy thought of as normal.

He met them only briefly, as Chung and her tech team set up in an aerovan they had rented and then definitely violated the lease renovating. He would remain with them, and watch and hear the action secondhand. Chung would coordinate wearing the same sort of virtual command helmet she’d used to fly the shuttle; it would augment her senses and abilities sufficiently to effectively monitor all of the automated backups for the team at once, and to effectively watch the combat personnel’s back. Darch would insure that all of those things, including Chung’s apparatus, were deployed and working properly and he would manually back her up; Broz would oversee the equipment they’d assembled in the van as well as the shuttle’s own protective systems just in case they were spotted, even though they would be several kilometers away and in the middle of nowhere when it all went down.