Kaspar's Box

The figure that appeared in their minds as they spoke with the leader on Balshazzar was of a huge man in a pink robe and a tremendous gray-white beard and long flowing hair, the very picture of a prophet or perhaps Moses getting the Ten Commandments.

"I am still getting used to this," Karl Woodward said. "You are all right with all this, my old friend?"

"It is actually quite practical," Ann assured him. "And it beats the DNA makeover that never really did the full job which you have now inherited. It is you who have the really difficult job now, Karl. You have to continue to sit there and lead. I, on the other hand, get to finally go where common sense should have told us to go so long ago."

"It was Kaspar who always traveled, says the legend, with a finely hewn box of the most exquisite mahogany," Woodward reminded him. "And all who saw it marvelled at the box and wondered what great mystical treasures it contained. And when the baby Jesus reached out to the box, only then did they discover that inside was where the old astrologer kept his candy. You won't find candy in Kaspar's box this time, you know."

"I know. But perhaps we will find truth, old friend. If we can get back the word, we will do so."

"Take care. Go with God, and keep the temper in check until it's necessary."

"But give 'em Hell when required," Ann responded, completing some private joke of theirs. "Yes, I remember. Perhaps not yet farewell, but it is time."

"I agree. It is time."

Ann broke contact, and Chung prepared to secure the ship and break orbit. Randi Queson wandered back to the wardroom and sank down in a chair next to Jerry, Murphy, and Broz.

"You are worried," Nagel said. "I'm worried, too, but I expected to be dead and done to a turn back there by now, so at least we're going to go in full steam and of our own free will. Who knows what we're going to find?"

"I know, I know. But with all that, I keep going back to the nightmare."

Nagel nodded. "I know. I can't get it out of my mind, either." Randi, Jerry, and even the less sociable Cross, had all used the stones to share the nightmare with the others, a nightmare they had experienced only once, yet could not forget.

She had been flying, flying through some strange, alien greenish sky with pink and yellow clouds.

Although it had clearly been a point in some kind of atmosphere, she could see through it to the stars beyond, the whole starfield laid out before her, not in the usual visual spectrum but through some other means. It was almost as if she were viewing some kind of photographic negative of the sky, an alien sky she'd never seen before filled with all the stars and formations of a globular cluster, but where light was dark and black was a kind of bright, soft pink.

Looking below, she saw a vast world that was heavily developed but long past its prime. Great domed cities stretched in uncounted number to the horizon, encapsulating ancient and dying masses whose shape and other details could not be determined from this height.

It would have been awesome if she hadn't felt permeated with a sense of awful hopelessness, a feeling that all those billions plus billions down there were in total despair, creating so much unhappiness that it collected and beamed from every individual and every dome and perhaps every centimeter of the planet, and beyond, going to and right through Randi Queson. She felt tremendous sorrow for them, all the more because she knew that she could not help them in any way, only watch their decline into despair and death.