"You can indeed. They look rather blank, if you must know, and all our sensor readings indicate that the feeling is genuine. They simply don't remember."

"What happened to the children?"

"No, being pregnant. I should think that would be difficult to forget, yet it's a hole. Our psych people say that they've never seen such a perfect selective mindworm."

"A what, sir?"

"Mindworm. Psychs use it all the time. It's quite similar to the ones used on computers and other positronic devices when they have problems. And, in our business, both for long-term psychological health and occasionally for security purposes, there are things that simply shouldn't be recalled, even subconsciously. High pressures, bitter memories, breaking points. But using them always leaves gaps, things that you can find and pin down if you really dwell on them. Not these three. They have a perfectly consistent memory of the entire period with Murphy and with us and down there, and it simply isn't the one we know and saw. It's quite frightening, really."

"Frightening?"

"Consider that whatever did that with them also was in our own main computers and memory banks and even had access to the Admiralty in a limited way. Suppose that power also rewrote or redid some things there? We would never know. Our original medical scans when they were first aboard do say that they were all three undergoing normal pregnancies, but now it's not absolute that those scans were or remain correct."

"Well, sir, I'm sure Maslovic and the others can tell you that they were as distended when they left the town house as they were here, so whatever happened happened in a relatively short time after that. And we were out there doing reconnaissance within hours of their arrival."

"And that is the mystery, Commander. The physical evidence we have says that they were pregnant when they were here and when they got out there, and the stretch marks confirm it to a fair degree. Yet not just their memories but their physical state and even their hormonal balances say that they were not. And that leaves us with the big question."

"Sir?"

"If they were not carrying children, then just what the hell were they carrying?"

"I still believe that you are acting in a most uncivilized and brutish manner not even to allow me to send for my clothing!" Georgi Macouri said almost petulantly.

Maslovic gave him a wicked smile, remembering the blood on that altar or whatever it was inside the town house.

"Well, you see, Mister Macouri, we're military. We're not personally or individually brutish, but we're professionally brutish. Nothing personal, you understand."

"Yes, but to force me into this loutish, crinkly uniform, and these ill-fitting skivvies. That, sir, is going too far!"

Maslovic leaned back and took another look at the man opposite him. Macouri wasn't a particularly impressive figure. He wasn't handsome or charming or debonair like the people in commercial dramas, and he had a particularly irritating way of saying everything through his nose in a relatively high-pitched tenor. He had nothing that would mark him as brilliant or dangerous, nothing charismatic that would draw any attention to him. That, of course, was the case with all the best agents and spies in history, but Georgi Macouri wasn't particularly interested in blending in or not being noticed. He had money and he flaunted it. It was, in a sense, his only real attraction, but it was more than enough, apparently.

"Civilized simply means living in cities," the intelligence man pointed out. "You are, right now, in a rather good-sized city in space and it functions. Hence, we are civilized. More civilized than most. We have no crime here, and nobody wants more than they have or can have. Everything is provided, including a skilled job that is perfectly suited to them. The competition they do have is friendly and meretricious. Improve your skills, do it better, advance in rank which means not only position but respect. That's the only currency here. Respect. We save our violence for training and for the occasionally necessary missions. You can search all you wish on this vast ship, and you won't find a single solitary altar nor sacrifices to any deity. We believe in what we see, what we know, what we can smell and touch and measure, and we don't mind that. We don't need any altars."

"Bull! Everybody needs something greater than themselves!" Macouri snapped, showing Maslovic that he'd finally hit a rare nerve. "Why, I bet you have more shrines aboard this tub than they have on Vaticanus. Not to Saint this or that, but statues of past great military types, memorial plaques, honors lists of military achievers, and so on. Your own uniforms have these little marker things and I suspect that each one means something. Service someplace dangerous, perhaps, or best shot, or something for bravery and valor. They're all shrines. And the larger and more lasting ones are almost temples. It's simply a matter of culture in how you label or approach these things. I've never seen a military of any size that didn't do it that way."

"Point taken. But you know it's not the same."

"It's precisely the same! As for blood, well, what's the thing that all combat types like you value most and are taught to value most? Self-sacrifice. Taking the bullet for your comrade. That's who gets the biggest shrines and is talked about in all the classes to the young to inspire them. Who shed the most blood. It must be ten, a hundred times more important in this sort of setting when most of you spend your whole lives as nothing more than glorified tax collectors."

"And what do you believe in, Mister Macouri?"

The rich man gave a self-satisfied smile. "The same thing as you do, Sergeant. Power. In my culture money can be the means to power, and I use it, but it's not everything. But all religious beliefs come down to a worship of power, sir! Your superiors have power over you. You have power over your specialists. Your organization has a certain kind of power over the remaining world governments, until at least they collapse. The Hindus among others worship many gods because each represents a certain aspect of power. The god of Abraham, whether it be Christian or Moslem or Jew or whatever, represents the ultimate power. That's what makes the old boy God, isn't it? All that guff about love thy neighbor and charity and all that is mere window dressing. You accept and live by the Seven Pillars or you go to Hell. You obey the Law and the Commandments or God will strike you down. Accept Jesus as the Son of God or roast forever in the Lake of Fire. Eat a hamburger and be reincarnated as a flea. Do it the military way or you'll wind up in the brig or worse. It's all the same."

"And you feed your own power god with innocent blood."

"Nobody is innocent! And one can always look on those others as having been destined for just such a role. None that we have ever selected has ever had a higher purpose, or much of any purpose, until we gave them meaning. Poor, ignorant, backward, at best mercilessly exploited, at worst forgotten and ignored. They're born, abandoned, manage to survive for a relatively short life doing nothing but scrounging to stay alive, and then they die in squalor and are cremated and dumped in a nameless grave kept out of sight and out of town just for that purpose. Your kind doesn't care about them, nor does anyone else. But we care. Oh, don't look so shocked! The military of humankind has a history as well as a present day incarnation. How many innocent civilians have died in bombings, strafings, shellings, and for just being in the way of military operations? You justify them as mistakes, or, my favorite, 'collateral damage.' If you get the chance, you say a little prayer for them or apologize to the survivors but you push them out of your mind. Unavoidable. Accidental. As if guns shoot themselves. We never treat people like that. No, Sergeant, it won't do. You'll hang me and hold your nose and categorically refuse to accept that there's really not a blade of grass difference between us in the end."