Kingdom of Cages (2 page)

“And you can compel Pandora?” said Father Mihran, so softly Tam had to strain to hear him.

“If you force me to,” replied Commander Poulos, just as softly. “Only if you force me to.”

Father Mihran climbed to his feet. He stood only a few centimeters taller than the commander, but at that moment it seemed
to Tam that he filled the entire room.

“You are ignorant and the daughter of ignorance,” Father Mihran said flatly. “And you will leave us. Now.”

Commander Poulos bowed her head and gestured with two fingers to the man on her left. He, in turn, typed a command into the
comptroller on his wrist while the commander touched the ring control for her video screen again. The disasters faded away
to become a desert— row upon row of red-gold dunes stretching out under an endless sky.

“This is a live feed,” said Commander Poulos quietly. “I believe you call this place the Vastness.”

“No—” began Father Mihran.

Light flashed, filling the screen, making Tam flinch. A boiling cloud of dust and ash filled the entire screen, rippling,
growing, cascading upward, lifted by the long, low roar of thunder. Father Mihran cried out in sheer pain and all the council
babbled at once, some to the father, some to each other, and some to their implants.

Tam could only stand there, jaw hanging, heart pounding. He couldn’t believe it. A bomb. On Pandora, in the wilderness, the
beautiful wilderness, which must be protected, must be studied and understood.

“It’s a clean bomb.” Commander Poulos’s voice was almost gentle. “This time.”

“You bloody-minded, ignorant…” shouted Father Mihran, but words failed him. He just stared at the boiling cloud of ash, hearing
the endless rolling thunder, and Tam saw tears streaming from his eyes.

“You’ve kept Pandora pristine, to study and preserve, just like your ancestors did,” went on Commander Poulos. “If you do
not agree to help find a cure for the Diversity Crisis, the Authority will start bombing this planet until there’s nothing
left living outside your domes.”

Father Mihran’s hand curled into a fist and he pressed it against his forehead. Around him, the council fell silent, except
for Administrator Has. “It’s real,” Has whispered, choking on the words. “I have confirmation from Athena Station. It’s real.”

On the screen, the dust and ash finally began to settle, and Tam glimpsed the burned black crater. It was so big. Bigger than
any of the dunes—what was left of the dunes. The whole shape of the world had been changed to accommodate that huge black
smoking hole.

“How could you?” gasped Father Mihran.

“Do you think we want to do this?” Commander Poulos stared at him incredulously. “Do you think I’m having fun here? I’m threatening
to destroy an entire world. I’m acting like a damned dictator or crazy general out of the legends.” Her knuckles turned white
as she gripped the table edge. “I’m going to say this one more time, Father Mihran. The Called are going to die unless we
do something.”

“And if the Called die”—Father Mihran’s hand shook as he lowered it—“the Authority and its cities die.”

“Yes, and our way of life with them.” Her smile was tight and grim. “I never said we were being selfless. The Diversity Crisis
is in the corridors of the Authority cities too, Father. We are just as desperate as the rest.”

“Why do you come here?” Father Mihran’s words came out as a sob. “Have we ever asked anything of the Authority or the rest
of the Called? What right have you to force your problems on us?”

Commander Poulos sighed and straightened up, polishing the sapphire thumbnail gem on her trousers seam. “No right,” she admitted.
“None at all. But you should be aware that it is not just the Authority that’s bringing their troubles to you.” Father Mihran
stared, fear and murder both shining in his eyes.

Commander Poulos just nodded. “We already have rumors of ships on their way here. The word is out that Pandora is clean and
that it’s extraordinarily compatible with human life. Now”—her voice grew firm again—“maybe some of those ships will just
dock with your Athena Station and process their crews for potential immigration, all polite. But some of them might not. They
might just land and start setting up their own settlements in the middle of your precious wilderness. They might even do worse
than that.” She stabbed her finger toward the settling ash and the smoking crater. Tam swallowed. His hands were shaking.
Nothing could be worse than that. What could be worse?

The trees falling one by one, the ground stripped bare, the animals, the birds, dead and dying. A wave of nausea washed though
Tam. Oh, it could get worse. It could get much worse. From the faces of the councilors, he knew they were thinking the same
thing. Jace was turning green. Sick amusement accompanied fast by shame rolled through Tam.

One muscle in Father Mihran’s cheek twitched. “And the Authority would of course stop anyone from invading Pandora.”

“If we knew Pandora was doing everything possible to help put an end to the Diversity Crisis, we just might,” replied Commander
Poulos.

“So…” Father Mihran groped for his chair and sat down heavily. “If we refuse, we have the choice of the Authority destroying
us or the Authority allowing us to be destroyed.”

“Your people aren’t the only ones who learned the lessons of the pillage of Old Earth.” Commander Poulos touched her ring
and blanked out the image of the burned ruination. “If we don’t move now, we will lose our chance.”

Father Mihran dropped his gaze to the council. There should have been argument. There should have been raging debate. The
whole family should have been called in. The city-mind itself should have raised its voice.

But none of this happened. There was only silence, until Father Mihran spoke again.

“It will take time.”

Commander Poulos inclined her head once. “We know.”

“Do you?” snapped Father Mihran. “I am not speaking of months. I am speaking of years. Possibly decades.”

“We know,” the commander repeated. “That is why we are here now, while we still have decades, perhaps even as much as a generation.”
Her face grew hard, and Tam knew she was seeing disasters that were to her at least as horrible as the crater she had opened
in the Vastness. “There will be too much suffering, but there will be survivors. We’ll be able to start over.”

Father Mihran opened his mouth and closed it again. “Which world’s generation are you picking for our clock, Commander?”

The small, grim smile returned. “Why, Pandora’s, of course.”

Tam felt it then, the dizzy sensation of watching something begin to slip away, like a leaf in a stream, and knowing with
terrified certainty that it was one of a kind, and when it was gone there would be no more. Everything changed today. His
world, his life, his vision for his future, everything, it all slid farther away with each heartbeat.

He also knew that this feeling, like the image of the Vastness crater, would never leave him. The Authority had won. They
had let the Authority win. With their single act, Commander Poulos and her people had altered the lives of every human being
living on Pandora.

And the Pandorans, in turn, would change the entire world, whether they wanted to or not.

The New World

I
t was late when Tam finally left the experiment wing and crossed Alpha Complex’s central lobby. Outside the dome, the sky’s
summer sapphire hue had deepened to indigo, and the first three stars shone over the forest, which stretched its long shadow
across the marsh toward the Alpha Complex. Silhouettes of wading birds—paddlers, skimmers, and shimmies—stood stark and still
in the peach and fuchsia light.

The beauty of the sight stopped Tam. He leaned on the railing in front of the triple-insulated windows, giving himself a minute
to watch the marsh’s many dances. Fish and insects rippled the water. Bats skimmed overhead. One of the wading birds stabbed
its beak into the water and came up with a patch of darkness, maybe a frog. Snap! The meal was done and the bird strutted
away.

It might have been Old Earth out there. It almost was. Pandora was one of the few worlds to score a perfect ten on the Almen
Compatibility Scale.

The scene tugged at Tam. He wished, as he had on a thousand other evenings, that he could walk out of the complex with its
pillow dome, insulation, sealed portals, and water-cooled walls. He would step into the pink and lavender glow of the sunset,
onto one of the marsh’s tiny islands, and watch the water birds in their thousands take flight all around him.

Oh, Tam spent a great deal of time outdoors, in the villages for which he was administrator, but those were fenced and protected
areas, not the pristine wilderness, not what he saw through the window. That beauty remained forever out of reach, past the
glass, past the fences.

Just once,
Tam thought.
What could it hurt?

Years of conditioning raised a surge of guilt in him at the thought, and that guilt activated his Conscience implant.

Are you looking out the window, Tam?
it asked him.
Are you thinking of walking in the marsh?

The Conscience implant couldn’t actually read thoughts, but it could measure the presence of chemicals indicating anxiety,
or guilt, and ask probing questions. Tam took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the world inside, on his home and
family. This time he was not successful. His Conscience tasted the continuing guilt in his mind and knew its guess was right.

We’d be no better than the ones who tear their worlds apart and try to turn them into farms. Pandora must be protected.

Tam shook his head. “Yes, yes, I know,” he murmured to his Conscience. “I’m not going to break out. Really.”

It was dark enough outside that Tam could see his own reflection in the window glass. It showed him a spare man, whose black
trousers, white shirt, and white-on-white patterned vest hung on him as if he’d lost a lot of weight recently. His medium
brown skin was still clear, but his thick black hair swept back from a high forehead that showed the lines of age and worry.
His dark eyes set above his Roman nose sagged tiredly at the corners.

It had been ten years since the meeting in which the Authority had bullied Pandora into seeking answers to the Diversity Crisis,
the death that stalked across the Called. But after ten years of experiments, analysis, and gathering more data than could
ever be used, their theory of how to produce a universal cure was still just theory.

The Authority was getting restless. The failure of the second delegation to Earth had only made that restlessness worse. The
Authority might say they were no government, that they were just merchants and go-betweens, but they knew their future was
bound completely up in the future of the Called, and they were not going to let that future go.

A new reflection moved in the glass. Tam focused on the translucent image and saw that a thin young man had come to stand
behind him. The man’s pale skin, white tunic, and white-striped trousers stood out sharply against the background of ferns
and drooping tropical greens in the big bubble terrarium that dominated the center of the lobby.

“Basante. You’re all I need right now,” Tam whispered aloud, almost without realizing he was doing it.
That is one of the problems with Consciences,
he thought to himself.
You end up talking to yourself a lot.

Basante is part of your family,
Tam’s Conscience reminded him.

Maybe he’ll go away.
Tam looked past their reflections to what he could still see of the marsh. The thumb-sized luminescent flies their ancestors
had nicknamed will-o’-the-wisps danced over the waters and dotted the reeds, as if the stars had come down to play.

A fanciful image. Tam smiled softly to himself.

Tam focused on the reflections again. Basante was still there. In fact, he looked ready to wait all night.

Nothing else for it, then.
Tam turned. “Good evening, Experimenter Basante. I thought you were retiring for some private time.” They both had spent
all afternoon and most of the evening hearing the report of the latest delegation to the Called. Their conclusions were as
expected. Trying to find a cure for the Diversity Crisis one planet at a time would involve making massive changes to each
planet’s biosphere for the sake of its human inhabitants, which was completely unacceptable. Father Mihran had told them all
so before they left.

“It is bad enough that we will be enabling the colonists to continue to destroy the natural and native life of their worlds.
We will not turn our own hands to that destruction, any more than we would begin to destroy Pandora.”

Which meant only one thing. If the worlds could not be changed, the humans would have to be.

“I had hoped to get to bed early.” Basante stepped forward. “But this is urgent.”

Without waiting to be invited, he pressed his palm over the back of Tam’s hand. Tam glared at him. He also, however, looked
at the back of his hand to see what data had been transferred to the display.