A small tech with a round face and hawk nose looked up from his data screens and nodded. “Any time you need ’em, Chief.”
“Well, then, as soon as we’re sure they’ve settled down, we’ll go. I don’t like the fact that there’s a landing pad out front of the grounds there. They could go any time.” He looked eager for action. “Now we’ll give them a little taste of their saint right back at ’em.”
Murphy grinned. “And it’s sure that you know who that patron of this world and that society really is?”
“Not particularly. Nobody in the small databank we have with us, anyway.”
Murphy’s grin widened. “Phineas T. Barnum. ‘There’s a sucker born every minute,’ he once is said to have proclaimed. The trick is to know which is the sucker and which is the Barnum.”
“But this whole world’s named Barnum!”
“Exactly. He also ran the biggest and greatest circus in the world. And when he quit being a showman and a con man, he became a politician. Got elected, too. Con men and circus men and politicians. All one and the same.”
“And you’re sure that’s the Barnum of this world? And the saint this society says?” Maslovic wasn’t convinced.
“Oh, yes. It’s even in the bloody information line in the phone directory. I think the old boy would have loved this place, and the idea that it was named for him. He’d like these ferrets, too. All the more because they’re such clever machines.”
“Chief, I think we got a problem,” the tech at the control screens said without taking any eyes off the displays.
Maslovic turned quickly. “What?”
“Company coming over there. I think maybe we waited too long.”
On the full scanner they could see the identification symbol and blip for a private transport headed down towards them, and a corresponding ID line from it to the Order’s front lawn that it was following like a glide path to the landing pod there.
“Might not be for the girls,” the tech said hopefully.
“You know it is!” the intelligence agent snapped. His hand went to his chin and his eyes fixed on a spot on the wall as he tried to decide what to do next.
“You gonna follow ’em out, Sarge?” Murphy asked.
The other man shook his head. “No, no, not necessary. They’re going to be traceable over the whole damned world for several more days yet. We don’t have everything here until the ship arrives, and I wouldn’t want to bring them down blind in that jungle. No, if they’re going, let them go. Broz, get a ferret over there on the double. At least we should see who the hell is on the thing.”
“Rolling now,” another tech said in back of them.
Murphy turned and saw a chunky woman remove a small cylindrical object from a specialized case, then go out to the back door area. In half a minute she was back and said, “It’s off. Pick it up on Control One.”
Although various ferrets were common throughout the colonies for a vast number of jobs, ones of this sophistication were rare. The military model was damned fast, and smart enough to think a bit for itself, at least insofar as carrying out its primary directives. Added control by cybernetic link or by simple voice or typed commands was possible from the control panel.
Several local flying things seemed interested in the speedy little unknown as it raced across the street, up the wall and over it, and down into the garden area inside the compound, but the ferret was too smart for them. When one predatory insect the size of a large bird swooped down on it, the little robotic probe simply stopped, then used the millions of control pixels that made it look covered in fur to match the purplish grass it was on. Without motion, scent, or distinguishing color, the ferret went instantly invisible to the predator, who seemed a bit confused but broke off and flew away into the distance.
On the control screen, they had a very nice three-dimensional “window” seeing just what the ferret was seeing. Smaller, two-dimensional windows across the top and bottom showed views of what was in back of it and what was above it.
“Observe from above, position and freeze,” Broz told it, and the ferret scampered most of the way up the front of the large house or lodge or whatever it was and then stuck there, looking back at the landing pod. It was nicely positioned before the aerobus landed and settled with just a deep whine.
A door slid back from the center of the small craft and two women got out, both wearing medical blue uniforms.
“Doctors? Nurses?” Maslovic wondered.
“Midwives, like as not,” Murphy responded. “I’d put ’em as nurses overall. Neither of ’em have that command swagger you’d get from a doctor in this kind of position.”
“No matter. It’s pretty certain now that they’re gonna take them out of there,” Maslovic commented.
“Door’s opening,” Broz noted.
Out of the doorway came two people, a man and a woman, both dressed in rather too clean and clichйd tropical clothing, from khaki shorts to pith helmets and wearing heavy-duty boots. The angle didn’t give too good a look at the faces, but they both seemed middle-aged and plump, perhaps a bit dowdy or dumpy, and they moved almost like they were playing a game. Some sort of adventure, perhaps.
“Georgi Macouri and his companion Magda Schwartz,” Maslovic said, filling Murphy in. “He’s the spoiled rich idiot playing at devil worship and she’s even more into the play than he is. Don’t underestimate them, though. The local police files suspect him of being behind some disappearances, mostly young women, and she’s formerly employed by Crossline Shipping as their security director and knows all the gimmicks and tricks.”
“Disappearances? You mean he…?” The captain’s voice trailed off as he thought of the unpleasant possibilities.
“He could indeed. Human sacrifice wouldn’t be beyond him if it was part of the ritual and gave him a thrill. He’s spent most of his life being incredibly bored and now he isn’t bored any more.”
“But—the girls! You don’t think he’d…?”
“He might, but I doubt it. They’re not innocent in this and they’re not for sacrificing, at least not right now. Too much was invested in getting them here to just do to them what he’s probably done to poor locals. It looks like we may be in a little luck here, though. The way they’re dressed and taking charge, it sure looks like they intend to go on the bus.”
“Right at sunset,” Broz noted. “Good timing.”
“Earlier than I’d expected, though. It complicates getting the girls, but it does allow us the opportunity to see just what the hell’s inside that place. Ah! Here come the girls!”
Their angle, again, was overhead and offset, but there was no mistaking the three of them. Each had been cleaned up, their hair was nicely fluffed and brushed, and each wore a robe whose color roughly matched the colors of the three Magi stones they had. None seemed to be very comfortable walking even the short distance, and it seemed to Murphy at least that they hesitated as they reached the aerobus’s open doorway, but each in turn ducked down a bit and entered. The medics or midwifes, whatever they were, then got back in and, finally, the two from the house started to enter the vehicle as well. Then Macouri stopped, turned, and asked Schwartz in a voice that sounded sinister and gravelly, “You have secured the place, my dear?
“Absolutely, darling,” she responded in a deep, businesslike tone. “If you’re that worried, call and leave someone.”
“No, we’ll be gone too long to make that practical. I just have that feeling we’re being watched, that’s all. I shouldn’t like unwanted visitors in there while we were away for so long.”
“Oh, relax. It would scare the living daylights out of any silly policeman who tried. Come! I’m anxious to be off!”
Macouri nodded and sighed. “Very well, my dear. I suppose you’re right.” He turned and entered, followed by his companion, and the door slid silently closed.
Within a minute or two, Murphy could hear the low whine of the engine and feel the vibration even a block and a half down, and the aer
obus lifted up and quickly moved off and away into the darkness.
“Darch?” Maslovic asked.
The man at the main panels shrugged. “No problem. They’re showing up just fine. Going to be a long trip for them, though. They’re heading out over the ocean. We’re going to need our own wings to catch them, Chief.”
“We’ll manage. Broz, you heard Schwartz on that house. Sounds like it’s pretty well rigged.”
“We’ll send the other ferret over now. Our best bet is to go in right away and remotely, even if the systems are all on. The odds are that anything serious that might require their attention or draw their alarms would be better triggered when they’re making their trip than after they get where they’re going, get settled in, and can call their security computer and maybe friends and associates.”
“Fine with me,” the sergeant replied. “Let’s get moving. I really am curious about that place, and this suits me fine. Captain, grab a chair from the other room and bring it in. This may take a while.”
“I got nowhere else to be right now,” Murphy replied. “And ’tis curious I am as well about all this business.”
“Second ferret’s away,” Broz called from the back.
Maslovic nodded. “Okay, then. Here we go.”
* * *
It usually wasn’t as easy to get a ferret into an allegedly unoccupied house as this was, but in spite of the junglelike animal life that was all over the city and much of the world for that matter, most of the houses that were tightly built still had weak points to be exploited, from slight warping and settling causing small gaps in the foundation to exhaust ports around the upper stories that were blocked mostly by heavy mesh screens and used by the automated systems to exchange air in otherwise climate controlled environments. It was one of these that proved the way in.
The military ferrets could have cut the screen, but in earlier scouting the operators had discovered two small duct ports where the mesh had come loose and could be easily pushed in to allow entry by something the size and plasticity of the ferrets. While there were some dangers following them down into the house, most notably lasers guided by sensors whose sole purpose was to zap any wildlife that might find similar openings inside, they tended to be of a standard sort for which electronic countermeasures were already in the ferrets along with routines to deploy them. The sensors were easily fooled by the simplest of mechanisms—making them see and focus on some suspicious small moving object away from the ferret and then targeting the lasers there while the ferrets darted by on the opposite side.
“Too easy,” Murphy muttered.
Broz, the self-styled Commander of the Ferrets, shrugged. “Not easy at all. Probably cost a bloody fortune. What good’s a ferret if it can’t get by the simple systems designed to swat cockroaches?”
“Maybe. Still and all, didn’t you say the lady was some kind of security expert?”
“Efficiency,” Maslovic put in. “You don’t set bombs and dogs to kill flies. You put your security where it will best secure what you need to secure. If we’d come in over the walls ourselves or through the doors, I think we’d have quite a mess right now, but the ferrets are not us. They’ll have something that can detect them, I suspect, but not yet. Ferrets, after all, can only report, they can’t carry out the family jewels.”
Ferret One was already pushing through the vents built into a top-floor room and now looked down upon it. A quick scan showed it to be on the right side of the house, third floor, and most likely a bedroom.
An old-fashioned-looking ceiling fan turned just below the ferret, keeping the air moving so that it would not get stuffy or build up smells even if the room were left unoccupied for weeks. The ferret could see the air and sense the movement and feed the information back to the computer a block and a half away for analysis. It betrayed no traps, no hidden passages, nothing like that. It was as it should have been.
Below and against the wall was an enormous four-poster bed, its linens still thrown randomly back, indicating that it had been recently used and not yet serviced by a robotic or human housekeeper. Overall, the place looked pleasant and lived in but contained nothing odd or suspicious even if it did seem to be out of another time and place. The ferret stuck to the wall but registered no serious concern. Whatever traps and sensors there were weren’t here.
“You’d think they’d at least have somethin’ on the windows,” Murphy noted.
“Pastine,” Broz explained. “The kind of material used in making transparent windows for spacecraft and camera and sensor covers for space work. Not unbreakable, but what it would take to punch a hole in them would not only alert the household but probably the neighbors a kilometer away. Vacuum welded. You aren’t going to go in and out of those.”
“And remember, this is the third floor,” Maslovic pointed out. “Second floor’s more of the same, and the first floor adds a vacuum layer through which pass some of the most accurate sensors made. And if you were really observant, you’d see that the roof overhang and gutter system covered the grounds around the house to a distance of three meters. Anything heavier than two kilos would trip it, so you’re not likely to walk up or use a ladder, and if you’re on some kind of floating platform, you’ll break the sensor webbing for more than five seconds and that will set off the alarm. Anything more sensitive and you’d have alarms going off every time a bug flew by or a heavy rain rolled down too much for the guttering. The ferrets are less than one kilo and were on the building’s siding in under five seconds in any event.”
“You make me feel like a rank amateur here,” the old captain said respectfully.
Maslovic smiled. “Now you know why you should always pay your defense taxes.”
With both ferrets now inside, they fanned out, mapping the entire third floor before going down one level. Some nice bedrooms, sumptuous baths, a full spa in the east wing, but nothing threatening nor of interest to them.
A center atrium framed a circular staircase which the ferrets declined to take. There was a small but detectable electrical current in the stair that indicated some connection to the master maintenance and alarm systems. As usual, the walls were much nicer.
“Interesting paintings hung on the atrium walls there,” Murphy noted.
“Yes, I agree,” Maslovic responded. “Broz, let’s see them in turn.”
They were huge and ornately framed, yet there was something about them that didn’t seem quite right.
“Separated, but a triptych,” the old captain said. “Odd. Go in on the one on the left, if you please.”
Broz framed it perfectly in the monitor. Although it didn’t come through properly on their screen, it was clearly some kind of holographic photo, a scene that in person would seem almost suspended in the framing. It was a violent scene, a landscape of stark barren landscape, volcanic activity along a rift in the back, and with storm-tossed clouds seeming to close in as if ready to engulf the whole scene.
“Is that a creation of someone’s imagination or a photograph of a real place?” the Irishman wondered, the question rhetorical.
“Impossible to say. Let’s see the middle.”
A dark, cold, threatening landscape it was, with little sense of life of any sort. In the background, rolling hills seemed to fold like dough or plastic in and out of the undulating landscape below a sky of bright, numerous stars.
“And the right,” Maslovic requested.
What was dangerous in the first and bleak and cold in the second was absent from the third, a veritable garden of trees, flowers, sparkling pools and even a small waterfall. It was as bright and cheery as the others were threatening and desolate.
“Pull back a bit.”
On the wall, between the first and second and again between the second and third picture were ornately carved symbols, three each, overlapping and with one above the other two creating a small pyramid of frozen, mechanical facelike designs.
“Those are like the girls’ stones,” Maslovic noted, trying to figure
out the grand scheme.
“More than that,” Murphy responded. “The one up top’s quite dark and shiny, the two below are lighter yet have duller finishes. Not the Magi stones but the Magi, Sergeant. Wise men, magicians, astrologers. Balshazzar, Melchior, and Kaspar, the Three Kings of Christian lore. One carried gold to the Christ child, one frankincense, an exotic scent, and the third a rare spice, myrrh.”
“I thought you weren’t religious.”
“I’m not, but by God them catechism classes finally come in handy. ’Twas a Catholic monk that found ’em, so there’s a common source, if you please. Me sainted mother always hoped I’d become a priest, but there wasn’t no money in it.”
“And what’s all that have to do with these pictures?” Broz interjected, impatient to go on.
“You don’t get it, do you? You never heard of the Three Kings on that shiny sterile factory ship of yours? The three lost worlds of treasure and ease, where all your wishes can come true. That’s them, you see. That’s what they look like. Shows how much ugliness gets lost in the legend, don’t it? That’s where the stones come from. That’s where whatever this is all about is centered. That’s where your mysterious enemy is.”
“So why don’t we just pack up here and go there and face them down?” the tech asked, both bored and confused.
“Aye, see, that’s the rub. Nobody knows where they are or how to get there, and them few what did never got back. Devil worship my ass! They found some rich suckers to do their dirty work for ’em, that’s all.”
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