Kingdom of Cages (19 page)

“I believe you,” Chena assured her. “Keep going.”

“ ‘Mom ordered Teal to go outside. Teal stood sideways next to the door so she could listen, but she wasn’t able to make notes
on everything exactly, because she didn’t know how to spell it all and they talked fast.’ ”

“It’s okay,” said Chena, before Teal added a longer apology.

“ ‘Spy asked Mom if she’d thought about her future, now that she’d been living here for a month. Mom answered she liked it
here just fine. She had a job and her girls were happy. Spy asked Mom if she wasn’t interested in some comfort, some security.
Mom answered she’d never had that anyway, so why should she be willing to sell herself for it?’ ”

Sell herself? To who? For what? What is she talking about?
Chena bit her lip, which was already sore from the sun and from her chewing on it all day. Teal didn’t seem to know what
she was saying, she was just having fun reporting it all.

“ ‘Spy talked about the Diversity Crisis and how important it was that everybody help out,’ ” Teal went on. “ ‘He also talked
about assuming debts and making regular payments to somebody or the other, Teal didn’t catch the name.’ ” Teal squinted at
the display. “ ‘Mom said thank you but we were all just fine. Spy talked about Diversity Crisis again and Mom said what a
lovely day, thank you for stopping by, but we have a lot of work to do. Spy left.’ ”

Teal sat back, and in the faint green light from her comptroller Chena could see her face had gone suddenly serious. “They’re
still after her,” she whispered. “The hothousers. They’re not going to leave her alone.”

“They’re going to have to,” said Chena firmly, angrily. “Because she’s just going to keep on saying no. Mom is not going to
let them experiment on her, no matter what.” Inside, she was thinking,
Why didn’t Mom say there’d been a man here? How come she didn’t tell me?
Then, guiltily, she remembered all the things she hadn’t told Mom about today.

This keeps up, we’re going to fill this whole house with enough secrets to bust apart the walls.

“Did you find out anything new in Stem? About Dad?” Teal wanted to play, and she’d already managed to chase sleep away, so
Chena figured she’d better go along with it.

Chena considered what to tell her. “No, not about Dad. But I did find out something new about that woman, the old woman Nan
Elle.”

“Is she a spy too? I’ve seen her. She looks like she should be a spy.” Her face squinched up as if she just tasted something
sour.

“Spies don’t look like spies, vapor-brain,” growled Chena, smacking Teal gently on the shoulder to let her know she was being
silly. “If they looked like spies, everyone would know, and what would be the point?” Teal smacked her back, and they slapped
at each other’s hands, giggling for a few minutes, before Chena went on. “Yes, she’s a spy, but she’s working on Dad’s side.”
Is she really? Do I really know that? Farin could’ve lied to me. But why would he? Cops always have something going on, but
Farin, he’s just a person.

“She is?” Teal was saying thoughtfully, as if she were turning the idea over in her head and seeing how it fit into the scenario
they already had laid out. “Then what about the cop?”

“I don’t think he’s bad,” said Chena slowly. “But he doesn’t know what’s really going on, so he’s going to make mistakes.
We have to keep an eye out for him because he could get in the way.” Then she thought of something else. “The stuff you’ve
coded, Teal, you did encrypt it, didn’t you?”

“How dumb do you think I am?” she asked indignantly. “Encrypted and substituted. Nobody’s reading this stuff but me.”

“Okay, good. Now, I’m toasted. I’ve got to get some sleep.” She pulled the blankets back up again and laid down on the earthy-smelling
pallet.

“Chena?”

Chena squeezed her eyes shut. “What?”

“Why’d it have to be Dad that went away? Why couldn’t they get someone else?”

Chena suppressed a groan and rolled over so she faced her sister’s approximate location.

“It had to be him because they needed someone who was a really good pilot. We figured all that out, remember?”

“Yeah, but the Authority has thousands of really good pilots. I mean, that’s the point, isn’t it?”

Why are you doing this? I don’t want to talk about this.
Chena forced herself to think in terms of the story, of their Dad the brave spy and pilot, not anything else. “They do, but
they’re not always sure they can trust them.” The story blossomed inside her. “See, the poisoners are working on a whole bunch
of Called worlds. They have to work in small labs and keep what they’re doing a secret. But they also have to talk to each
other to tell each other what they’re doing. So they use messengers. They’re bribing the Authority pilots to carry messages
back and forth for them, between the labs where they’re making their poison.”

“But the Authority knew nobody bribed Dad,” added Teal. “Because we didn’t have any money.”

“Right.” Chena smiled to the darkness. “The Authority knew Dad was honest, so they came to him, and they said, ‘We need you
for this mission,’ and he said, ‘What about my wife and kids? I can’t leave them. It might be dangerous,’ and the Authority
said, ‘You don’t have to worry about them. We’ll watch out for them, but we might have to hide them until your work is finished.’
”

“And Dad said, ‘All right, I’ll do it, because we can’t let the poisoners go free,’ ” jumped in Teal, her voice low and shaking
with drama. “ ‘There are too many lives at stake, but I’ll need to know what happens to my family, so I can make sure they’re
all right.’ ”

The story took hold inside Chena. It felt warm and comfortable, like Farin’s smile. “So Dad flew out to one of the Called
worlds where they were pretty sure there was a lab, and he started asking questions, carefully, because he’s a spy too now,
but he’s spying for the Authority. He started asking about making extra money, and who’d have good jobs, and he didn’t care
what it was as long as the pay was good, that kind of thing.”

Chena heard cloth rustle as Teal nodded and pitched in. “Pretty soon, a bribed pilot told Dad that there were these people
who’d pay him to take coded messages to other planets. Secret stuff, and how he wasn’t supposed to get caught with it. So
Dad said sure, he’d do it, and the pilot gave him the message.”

She fell silent, and Chena picked up where she left off. “The message, which was encrypted. But Dad said, ‘Don’t I get to
meet these guys?’ And the bribed pilot said, ‘Not until you prove you can do the job.’ ”

Teal let out a long happy breath. “So Dad’s got to deliver that message first before he can find out who’s sending it. I like
it.”

“Me too,” admitted Chena softly.

“Do you want to go to sleep now?” asked Teal.

Finally!
“Yes, so shut up, would you?”

Teal blew a raspberry at her, which Chena ignored. After a minute, Chena heard her sister wriggling around and getting comfortable.
She closed her eyes gratefully and drifted to sleep.

That night, she dreamed of Farin, but in the morning she couldn’t remember what those dreams had been about.

M
adra showed up during breakfast, which was brown bread toasted on top of the stove and raspberries and early apples, eaten
raw.

There was a knock, Mom opened the door, and Madra stepped in, surveying the room. For once, she was not smiling.

Instead, she sighed and put her hands on her hips. “So, you did raid the stores.”

“Is there a problem?” asked Mom, pushing the door closed.

Madra’s mouth pursed, as if it were trying to smile on its own and she was trying to tell it not to. “There is if you didn’t
tell the shift supervisor that you’re not living in the dorms anymore.”

“I didn’t tell the shift supervisor anything. There was no supervisor there when I went in.” Mom sat back down at a little
table and nodded toward an empty pillow. “Won’t you have a seat?”

Madra pressed her lips together in a thin line. She did sit, however, folding her legs neatly under her. “In that case, we
do have a problem. More than one, actually,” she added under her breath. “But the one that relates to you is that the recycling
stores are only for the people who are living in the dorms and working exclusively for the village.”

“Well, I had no way of knowing.” Mom folded her hands on the tabletop and gazed calmly at Madra. “There should be a sign posted.”

Madra nodded. “You’re right, there should be. I’ll see about it. But the fact remains that you now owe the village for what
you took.”

“Owe?” Mom’s voice hardened. “For a broken table, some dirty pillows, and a few scraps of fabric?” Chena felt herself tensing
up. Here it came again. Money. How they didn’t have enough, and they weren’t doing the right things with it.…

“I’m afraid those are the rules,” said Madra softly. “The value isn’t in the materials themselves, the value is in what they
could be used for, and by whom. You are working, you are making money, and your labor isn’t being given to the village, so
some of your money has to be.”

“I still work for the village. We all put in shifts.”

“Reduced shifts, and”—Madra raised her index finger—“you’re not doing the heavy labor.” She lowered her finger, and her gaze,
so she was talking to the table. “I’m afraid these are the rules. It’s my fault that you didn’t know them and I’m sorry. But
you either have to give the things back or you have to pay for them.”

Mom’s face had gone rigid. Her hands, still on the table, began to curl into claws. “May I ask you who decided to alert you
to this shocking impropriety?”

“Well, I confess, that’s part of the problem.” Madra glanced at Teal and Chena, who were sitting there completely intent on
the conversation. Mom’s gaze followed Madra’s.

“Girls, why don’t you start on the breakfast dishes?”

They moved obediently. Chena prodded at Teal to keep her going. They needed to hear, yes, but they didn’t need to call attention
to the fact that they were listening.

“The person who told me was Experimenter Basante,” said Madra, as Teal and Chena carried the breakfast dishes to the basin
by the stove. Chena waved toward the door, indicating that Teal should go get fresh water.

“From the hothouse?”

Teal made a show of stomping her foot, and Chena frowned at her. Teal made the piss-off sign and left to get the water.

“Yes,” said Madra.

Chena ladled hot water from the pot on the stove into the dish basin. Basante was the spy. They were talking about Teal’s
spy.

“Helice, have the hothousers told you what kind of experiment they want you for?”

“Yes.” Mom’s next few words were lost under the sound of Teal banging open the door and grunting dramatically as she lugged
in the bucket of water. “… after me for it since I decided to emigrate.”

Chena frowned hard at her sister and grabbed the bucket away, splashing water all over the floor.

“Girls,” said Mom warningly, without turning around.

Chena frowned down again at Teal’s stubborn face, almost ready to yell. But she didn’t. She just tipped cold water in with
the hot.

Behind her, Madra said, “Helice, I don’t know if you fully understand the situation here.”

Chena swirled the dishes around in the water a little and then rubbed a thick cake of the omnipresent yellow soap on the rag.
Teal was staring at Mom. Chena elbowed her to get her to stop.

“But I’m sure you will be pleased to enlighten me,” Mom said.

Chena’s throat tightened as she picked one of the bowls up out of the water. Her hands scrubbed at it without her mind paying
attention to what she was doing.

“I’m not saying the rumors of the hothousers snatching people out of their beds are true, but I’m not saying they aren’t either.
The complexes have been threatened, and as usual, we are the ones who are going to suffer.”

Chena dumped the bowl into Teal’s hands so she could dry it.

“Madra, I appreciate all the help you’ve been, but what business is this of yours?”

Chena scowled and forced herself to keep her eyes on the bowls remaining in the cloudy water. She heard the thunk as Teal
put the dry bowl on the shelf.

“Because they may not just stop at making trouble for you. They may decide to make trouble for the entire village.”

“I hope you’re not saying that is my fault?” asked Mom indignantly. Chena gave Teal the next bowl.

“No,” answered Madra. “If you want to see me as an interfering busybody, that’s fine. You’re not alone. But I care what happens
to the people in my village, and I don’t want to see anybody sold off for body parts.”

Crash! Chena jumped. Teal stood shamefaced beside the shattered remains of the bowl. She’d probably tried to put it on the
shelf without looking.

“Vapor-brain…” groaned Chena.

Mom was on her feet, her face thunderous. “Both of you, outside, and
close
the door.”

Chena didn’t even dare to protest. She just grabbed Teal’s arm and dragged her out the door, kicking it shut behind her.