"Any luck on figuring out the girls' role in this?" the sergeant asked them.
One by one they shook their heads. Nobody had given the slightest clue, although all but the cook who, if she knew, probably hadn't paid attention and didn't give a damn now, seemed to be amused by the constant questioning about that.
Finally, there was near silence as each of them thought over the reports of the others and reflected on how little it had profited them.
Finally, Captain Murphy took a last drain of stout, put down the makeshift mug, and said, "Wheelbarrows."
All the other heads suddenly turned in his direction. "Wheelbarrows?" Maslovic repeated.
"Sure. You know what a wheelbarrow is?"
"Not exactly."
"It's a device for manual labor haulin' and such. One wheel in the front, two stands and two handles in the back so one man can get behind it, lift it up on the wheel, and rush it and its contents to wherever it's needed. There's an ancient joke, origins unknown, about a fellow who was known to be a smuggler on some world and there was this security perimeter or somesuch which you had to pass and who was lookin' for blokes what might try to sneak things over. And every day this laborer who worked on one side would come up to the guards with a wheelbarrow full of dirt. Now, they knew the fellow was sneakin' somethin' by 'em, but they didn't know what.
"They did him a full scan, analyzed every bit of dirt, did a full inside-and-out analysis of the wheelbarrow, you name it. Never found nothin', so they had to let him through. Did this for months, he did. Finally he quit, and was ready to make his exit with some money that was a lot more than he'd made as a laborer. Guard sees him, knows he's leavin', and begs the fellow to tell him what he was smugglin'. Promises no penalty. So, finally, the smuggler, he smiles and says, 'I was smugglin' wheelbarrows, of course.' "
They all looked at him blankly. Finally, Darch asked, "But why would he need to pass wheelbarrows through security?"
Murphy raised his eyes towards heaven and sighed. "It ain't worth explainin' a joke. The point is, you can do it with container modules on a space freighter. Fellow keeps bringin' in empty ones, and it's only later that they figure out he was smugglin' in the containers themselves to folks that needed 'em but couldn't buy 'em cheap where they was. You see? The point is, what was bein' smuggled was in plain sight. The container was the booty!"
Maslovic thought it over. "But under that logic, the girls themselves would be the object of the exercise. But there are lots of young women down there on Barnum's World and, in fact, the one thing we don't have any shortages of are people. So why smuggle them in? What possible value could they have?"
"I been thinkin' about that, and I come up with a theory. Maybe them girls got a talent. They sure ain't got a lot of education, and I ain't sure how much brains they're hidin' or if they're hidin' any a-tall, but you don't need to be a mental wizard if you got a useful talent. Somethin' you're just better at, or somethin' you're born with. I been tryin' to figure out what the hell Tara Hibernius had that would be worth this kind of trouble to smuggle someplace in that little an amount and I can't come up with nothin'. But pregnant girls-hell, they're the most helpless, least threatenin' folks you'll ever find. Nobody's gonna be scared of 'em but they're gonna be a lot safer travelin' out in the real world. It may even be just some kind of tricky gizmo or substance that made even them believe it, which would give 'em real reasons like I told you that first time to make 'em want to run like hell and get on an old tub with an old reprobate like me."
Maslovic thought it over. "You know, Macouri said something like that. He said that the way you insure people's absolute faithfulness is to have them be scared of something so awful that even death and torture are preferable. So if those three were really put in danger of their lives, in fear of even staying among their own people, it would make it far easier for them to turn their backs on family, friends, the only land they ever knew. Makes sense. And you said that young girls weren't the usual travelers?"
"Nope. Mostly men. Some women, but not them type."
"Then that has to be it. Which begs the next question: what makes those three unique enough and valuable enough to go to all that trouble and expense?"
Chung looked over at the sergeant. "You did the research on those weird alien stones?"
"Enough, after I got the captain's lead," Maslovic told her. "Why?"
"Any reports of people with them coming up with strange powers? Any revolutions or crimes of the century? Any major suicides or murders, for that matter, out of statistical norms?"
"No. None that I can think of. Darch, you did a lot of that. Anything?"
"Nothing."
"We're all ears, then, Lieutenant."
She shifted in her seat, a loner unused to this kind of central role. "I am, as much as anything, more than just a human. I'm a human cyborg interface module. I am only truly whole and one when I'm united with a ship or other piece of piloted hardware like the van. But if we put those controls on any of you, even with extensive training, the best you'd do would be okay. You would never combine as one with the machines as I do almost as a matter of course. You would simply use the interface to give orders faster, to control the machinery. The captain, I think, knows what I mean if you all do not."
The old man nodded. "Aye. I've handled them things now and then but I don't like 'em."
"Well, aren't there a fair number of rich people like Macouri with those stones? Some sort of status symbol?"
"Yes, okay."
"And even more, I bet, in the hands of government and scientific researchers. Brilliant people, I'm talking about. And not a one of them, or any three of them, could take over and control a naval cruiser's main computer. A computer using proprietary languages and codes, impossibly complex, and a device for which they'd have no knowledge of nor understanding of how it worked. And these three illiterate farm girls from nowhere just do it like it's second nature. You see what I mean? Even I would have a lot of trouble handling that kind of complex interface, not to mention disabling all the protections, breaking through all those complex firewalls and security traps. Only the Admiralty together manage that, and they knew what it is and how it works and all the codes and bypasses."
"Power," Maslovic muttered aloud, thinking.
"Huh?"
"That's what old Georgi said it was all about. Power. I wonder how they found out that these girls had that kind of gift?"
Murphy had an idea. "You got plenty of money in this devil cult, and you felt that presence, that whatever it is, slowly emerge when you studied the stones. So did I. It's so real, so scary, you could easily see demons and build a cult out of it. So their recruiters bring one or even a few with 'em, all paid for with the rich leadership's money, and they go to the strictest, most fundamentalist, socially repressive places in the colonies. Why, hell, they'd have no trouble finding converts among the young malcontents and with that effect from them stones, well, you see what happens and how it goes. And maybe one gets left with the leader of the cult or coven or whatever they call it so they'll always have their own demon."
"Sounds reasonable," Maslovic said. "Go on. You're doing fine."
"And along come these three unhappy farm girls, probably gonna be forced into arranged marriages and break their backs with work and havin' babies and all, and for some reason the stones react to them and them to the stones in a way nobody's seen before. Maybe they have, but I bet it's really rare. Power they can't tap in these not terribly bright but terribly unhappy young lasses. But the recruiters, the leaders, they know what it's all about. You stumble on the ultimate weapon, but the thing's on automatic and just fires randomly in all directions. Dangerous to all. But if you pick it up and treat it good and point it careful like, then it's your weapon. Sarge, you give most of the prisoners a whole bag of them stones and I bet not much happens. But you give one each to the three, and you put 'em together in the same room so they can act as one, and I think you got, well, some kind of biological amplifier. Now your three young ladies, under your control, can take over whole damned planets."