"There are folks who make themselves into the machines?" Irish O'Brian was appalled at the thought. "They do it by choice?"

He nodded. "Many do. Particularly the ones who are scouts searching beyond anywhere we know for new worlds and new life. Not just navy people, although the big ship you were on, the one we came from, has three minds permanently a part of their system."

"Oh, my god! And you wonder why we don't like the way things are goin' here?"

The sergeant shrugged. "Who's 'we'? Your sisterhood? The religion you're serving? Just curious."

Irish O'Brian gave a sly smile. "Ah, but you'll not be gettin' me to speak more of that. None of your tricks there, if you please! We got our secrets, y'know."

"Okay, then, let's talk about something else." Maslovic seemed to be thinking a moment, as if deciding what to talk about. His eyes came to her neck after a bit, and he brightened and asked, "What's that gem around your neck? Or is that some kind of religious secret, too?"

O'Brian's hand went to the large gem and seemed to cover it from his gaze for a moment, then she relented. "It's a relic, y'might say. A kind of way of sayin' who and what we are, like them Holy Joes back home what think they got the direct word of God straight from Heaven to their holy book. They wear their crosses and their medals. We got ours."

"It's an excellent imitation of a Magi stone," the sergeant remarked, as if he'd heard of them before an hour or so previous and knew all about them.

"Imitation! I'll have you know this is the real thing! 'Twouldn't do to have no fake around our necks!"

Maslovic chuckled. "Now, come on. I don't doubt that you believe it's real, but everybody knows that there are only a few hundred of those in the whole known galaxy, and most of them are in the hands of museums, governments, and the very rich. How could you have a real one, let alone three, coming from a primitive world like Tara Hibernius?"

Her left hand went to the gem and held it up defiantly to him, still on the neck chain. "You see? It's real."

"Even I know that those things give off some kind of rays that affect people deep inside," the sergeant pressed. Murphy kept silent but decided to watch his back from now on around the military man; he was pretty damned good!

"You want to see if it's real? C'mon over here. I know you ain't got no feelin' for me tits, so come close and look straight into it! You don't hav'ta hold it, just get close and look inside! You'll see!"

"Maybe he won't," Murphy put in. "Even if it is a real one, how can a machine feel what them things are said to give off? Or is that nothin' but the blarney?"

Maslovic slid over very close to her and let her angle the gem towards him. It was quite impressive, more elaborate than any gemstone, real or artificial, that he'd ever seen or studied about. It was as large as a hen's egg, colored as if a translucent emerald with a center of some darker material substance that, when viewed from different angles, seemed to form, well…

"Can I hold it?" he asked her. "You can keep it on the necklace around your neck. I just want to feel it."

"Gettin' to ya, huh? All right, but mind your manners!"

He reached out and turned the sparkling emerald-colored gem so that its slightly flattened face was towards him and stared into the darker area.

The deep green exterior sparkled with each capture of the light and seemed to flash and move with every breath the girl took, or every slight movement his hand caused.

The darker area inside was also green, but a green so dense and deep it seemed like some sort of liquid, swirling and going down much farther than the gem itself was deep.

And in that dark area, pictures began to form.

Maslovic couldn't decide if those pictures were in fact real and emanating from the stone or somehow in his mind, caused by some sort of radiation from the stone, but they nonetheless seemed very real if also very surreal, as if actual shapes and places were being viewed through some dense liquid lens.

The images were strange, bizarre. Human figures twisted into grotesque shapes, creatures very nonhuman twisting and writhing and swarming, all superimposed against alien landscapes, distorted scenes of people and unknown animals in lush but unknown tropical bush; a swirling hell of intense storms and volcanic fire; and, finally, a barren, dark landscape with structures, structures clearly not in current use but rather the remnants of ancient cataclysm.

The sets of impressions never came fully into solid focus for all their sense of three dimensions and movement, nor did the various parts ever blend with one another, but rather continued changing in a constant series of superimpositions. It was endlessly fascinating, yet totally mystifying. Was he seeing something real in there, or perhaps many realities, or was this being dragged from his subconscious or, just as possible, from the nightmares of Irish O'Brian and perhaps even Patrick Murphy? He couldn't tell, but if they were from anyone's subconscious, then they were disturbing indeed, and if they showed some twisted realities, then it was more disturbing still.

Slowly he became aware that one of the images was not changing radically, but rather in distance and perspective only. It was the dark world of wreckage and the sense of death and gloom, and slowly, ever so slowly, the image was coming to the foreground as the point of view resolved on some sort of eerie cavern.

He felt himself pulled down towards the cavern, and then, just inside in the darkness, there was… another.

He let out a sharp, short cry and dropped the gem, which settled back against Irish O'Brian's cleavage, and he backed away. It took him several seconds to compose himself again, breathe normally, and regain complete control of himself. Captain Murphy was looking at him, curious and puzzled at one and the same time, but Irish O'Brian had a smirk on her face that was almost unbearable.

"So you met dear Tad, didn't you?" she asked with a sense of total satisfaction.

V: OF MEN AND WOMEN AND MACHINES

"All right, lad, so just what did you see in there?" Murphy asked Maslovic when both were again alone in the lounge. "You looked like you saw your own death in that devil's thing."

Maslovic shook his head. "No, no. Not that. Something infinitely more disturbing, I think. The trouble is, I don't really know just what I saw. I can't explain it. You take a look in one next time and we can compare notes."

"No, I think not," the old captain responded. "Maybe I might have just for curiosity's sake, but after watchin' you, I ain't got no yen for that sort of thing. Makes me wonder why in hell them rich bastards pay so damn much for them things. Pay a fortune to be shocked and scared to death? I guess the rich are really different than you and me."

The sergeant nodded. "I can see the appeal, oddly enough. You just have to know where to look and sense when to look away. I don't know. Maybe even that's somebody's thrill. The pet demon in the gemstone. Nobody else would have one."

"Could be. But was it real?"

Maslovic thought a moment. "I've been trying to decide that. It's certainly real to the looker, as an experience, and I think it's possible that part of the experience, if you can call it that, is real. I'm going to have to get my datalink and see if it says anything about these Three Kings. Descriptions, maybe."

"Oh, I can tell you that. One's supposedly a kind of paradise, a Garden of Eden place, and one's a land of fire and water and mineral riches, and the third's a cold, dark place of mountains and caverns. That's all part of the legend and, I suspect, it's from the original scouting report."