Kingdom of Cages (22 page)

“Watch—” Chena began.

Before she could get the warning out, his fingertips touched the fence. She heard the sizzle a split second before he jerked
his hand back.

“Sorry,” said Chena, climbing down off the bike into the narrow space between the rail and the fence. “It’s a—”

A bass bawl cut through the air. Everybody’s head jerked toward it, including Chena.

“It’s an antelope,” she told them. “It’s hurt or something.”

Another bawl split the air, followed by a human scream. Chena started forward, pulling her toe up just short of the fence.

Behind her came the clank of metal against metal. In front of her another antelope bellowed, and another human screamed. And
another.

The bike started moving.

“Hey!” she shouted uselessly. She glanced desperately back at the strangers, but they no longer looked at her. They were already
rushing back toward the landing site.

Left with no choice, Chena ran after the bike. The rail hummed hard under it as it accelerated. She cried out herself and
lunged for the seat with both hands. The bike almost jerked her off her feet, but she threw her weight backward and it slowed
just long enough for her to swing her leg over the seat and plant her feet on the pedals.

Once she was aboard, the bike took off faster than Chena could ever pedal. Wind yanked tears from her eyes and snatched her
breath. Gritting her teeth and clamping onto the handlebars, Chena twisted around as far as she could. She could just see
the strangers running through the clearing they had trampled, shouting and waving their arms. But she couldn’t see anything
around them but waving grass.

Then a trio of biscuit-brown antelope broke through the grass screen, running blindly. They smashed against the fence. It
sizzled in response and Chena smelled the stench of burning hair. The antelope wailed and reeled back, scattering left and
right to run along the rail, shedding dark flakes from their coats. Birds rocketed overhead, shrieking out their own terror.
Under it all, people screamed, but Chena could barely hear them anymore because of all the noise from the terrified animals.

What’s happening?
Chena turned her head every which way, trying to see what caused the panic. The sky was clear. The ground…

The ground moved.

Chena blinked and looked again. No, she was right, the ground was moving. A million individual threads snaked between the
stalks, glittering in the sun as they reached the cleared lane around the rail. Ignoring the fence, the sparkling threads
ran over the bike rails.

They were ants.

Chena choked and her free hand flew to her mouth. Billions of tiny red-brown ants swarmed over the rail, heading for the strangers—the
strangers who screamed, and whose screams receded as fast as the bike could pull her forward. Chena twisted as far as she
could, but she couldn’t see any people anymore. All she saw was the moving ground, the running antelope, and the waving grass.

Then she felt a tickle under her trousers. She looked down immediately. A few red-brown specks crawled up the frame of the
bicycle. Chena screamed and beat at her legs. Points of fire burned themselves into her skin. She shrieked louder and beat
harder until she wobbled in the bicycle seat and she realized she might fall off onto the ground, into the path of those billions
of ants. She grabbed both handlebars so tightly her knuckles hurt.

She felt them. They crawled up her legs. She whimpered but didn’t dare let go, not even when the wind blew her hat off. She
could feel them tasting her skin. She knew they crawled up her back and down her scalp and into places she couldn’t even stand
to think about. They were all over her. She knew it. She could feel them. Even when the bike hurled her into the shadows of
the forest and she couldn’t see the ground moving anymore, she knew they were still on her. Dozens of them, maybe a hundred,
under her clothes, in her hair, maybe all over her face. They were going to bite her to death. They were going to make her
crazy, like the animals, or make her scream herself to death, like the strangers.

The bike pulled into the depot. Before it even stopped moving, Chena vaulted off it, forgetting her packages, forgetting everything.
She barreled through the gate and up the stairs to the top catwalk, running as blindly as the antelope had.

A wall slammed into her, sending her staggering backward, but she couldn’t fall. They’d get her if she fell. She swatted frantically
all over her body and arms, clawing at her face and hair.

Hands grabbed her wrists. “What happened?” demanded someone.

“Ants,” she squealed. “Ants. They’re all over me. Get them off!”

But the hands just held her tighter. “Red ants?”

“Yes!” Chena shook her head frantically. Maybe she could shake them off. They were everywhere. She could feel them.

“All right, all right.” The hands dragged her forward. Chena realized the voice came from Nan Elle. She had made it. But the
ants were still there.

The light dimmed as Nan Elle propelled her inside her house, through the front room, and into a small closet.

“Strip!” ordered Nan Elle. “Get your clothes off, girl.”

Chena tried to obey. Tears blurred her vision as she tore at her clothes and kicked her shoes off. She was vaguely aware that
other hands helped her. She didn’t care. Her clothes were full of ants. She had to get them off.

She was barely naked before Nan Elle gave her a push. She toppled sideways into a tub full of freezing cold water. She jerked
her head up, taking a deep gasping breath, but hands pushed her under the water again. She struggled until she realized what
was going on. Yes. Yes. Drown them. The water would drown them and get them off her.

When her lungs felt like they were going to burst, the hands finally released her. Chena shot up out of the water and dragged
in great whooping gasps of air.

“Are they gone? Are they gone?” she cried, blinking water from her eyes and rubbing frantically at her shoulders, unable to
tell whether the tickling was water running down her skin or the ants.

“They’re gone,” said Nan Elle. “Now let me look at you.” Nan Elle pulled first one arm and then the other away from Chena’s
body and turned them over, examining them. She took Chena’s chin between two fingers and pulled it left and right. Then she
reached into the bath and pulled out Chena’s leg, running her wrinkled hand over Chena’s chilled skin.

“Hush, now. You only got a few bites. They’re painful but…” She looked at Chena’s face and saw how wide her eyes were, and
how she shivered from more than the cold water. “There were more than a few, weren’t there?”

Chena nodded, hugging herself. She could still hear them; the strangers, the animals, the birds. She did not want to close
her eyes because she knew she would see them and the ants.

“All right,” said Nan Elle, speaking more softly than Chena had ever heard before. She held up a thick towel. “Get out of
there and wrap yourself in this.” She laid the towel on the edge of the tub. “The ants are all gone. I promise you. When you’re
ready, you come out.” She shuffled out of the room and closed the door, leaving Chena sitting in cold and darkness, relieved
only by a single sunbeam from a long narrow slit up near the ceiling.

Chena sat in the water and shivered a few minutes longer, until her breathing evened out and her throat loosened. Then, checking
the floor first to make sure there was nothing crawling on it, she climbed out of the tub and folded the towel around her.
It felt deliciously warm after the frigid water. She rubbed her skin and her hair as hard as she could. The cloth was harsh,
but that was all. There was no more crawling. Her legs hurt in spots, but those spots didn’t move.

Chena bit her lip and stuck one leg out in front so she could see. Three red welts the size of her thumb blazed on her shin.
The welts hurt, but they didn’t seem to be actually
doing
anything.

After a moment’s looking around, Chena realized that Nan Elle had taken her clothes. She cracked open the door and peered
out into the main room. Nan Elle stood by the stove stirring something. Chena’s clothes were draped over the end of the table.
She could just see that the front door was closed. There didn’t seem to be anybody else in the room.

She straightened up, opened the door, and took two tentative steps into the main room.

Nan Elle lifted her head and sized Chena up.

“Your clothes are clean,” she said, nodding toward Chena’s things.

“Thank you.” Chena snatched her stuff off the table and retreated to the bathroom to change.

When she came out again, Nan Elle put a bowl and a cup in her hands and sat her at the cleanest end of the table. Suddenly
hungry, Chena ate. It was nothing but dorm cereal and mint tea, but it tasted great. She even managed to forget that Nan Elle,
sitting in the high-backed chair, watched her every move.

Finally Chena drained the cup and remembered her manners.

“Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”

Again Nan Elle nodded. “You’re welcome.” She leaned forward, both hands folded on a crooked walking stick. “Now tell me what
happened.”

Just thinking about it started Chena shaking again, but with Nan Elle’s eyes boring into her, she didn’t dare keep quiet.
Chena told her about the people parachuting down from the sky, about the animals beginning to panic, and about the billions
of ants and how the bike had almost rolled away and left her there in the middle of the chaos, and the screaming, and the
hungry ants. She clamped her hands between her knees to keep them from shaking, but by the time she was done with the story,
they stopped on their own and she was able to breathe easily again.

She glanced up at Nan Elle. The old woman’s eyes were closed, her head bowed over her hands. For a moment, Chena thought she
was asleep. But then she saw that Nan Elle’s head was shaking and her mouth was muttering.

“The fools, the fools.” Nan Elle lifted her head and shifted her grip on her walking stick. “When you go back out, I’m going
to ask you to look around for me.”

Chena shot to her feet. “Not on your mother’s life.”

Nan Elle smiled, just a little. “My mother has been dead for some years.”

Chena shook her head, hard, like she was still trying to shake ants out of her hair. “No. I’m not going back there.”

“Ever?” asked Nan Elle softly. “How are you going to run your business?”

Chena looked away and shrugged. “I will go back, just not right away.”

Nan Elle stood and walked forward until she was close enough to look up Chena’s nose. “Listen to me, Chena Trust. If you do
not go back there tomorrow, you will never go back. They will have you so scared that you will never be able to make another
move without their approval again.”

Involuntarily, Chena took a step back. “Who’s ‘they’?” she said, trying to sound like she thought the old woman was crazy.

Nan Elle’s whole face puckered. “The hothousers.”

Chena felt the shakes starting up again. “No. They couldn’t do something like this. Not even them.”

Nan Elle sighed. “I would like to believe that, Chena. You have to remember, though, the planet they have jealously guarded
for so long has been threatened with the invasion for the past ten years. They have had plenty of time to get ready for this.
I’m not surprised to find out they co-opted the biosphere itself for the job. It is what they know best.” She smiled, just
a little, and very grimly. “If it makes you feel any better, I believe that they put the automatic recall onto the rail-bikes
so that no innocent bystander, like you, would get hurt.”

But Chena barely heard her. All the strength evaporated from her knees. She had to grab the table edge to keep from falling
over. She managed, just barely, to collapse onto the stool. Somebody had done that to the people. Somebody, somehow, ordered
them to be bit to death like that?

“How?” whispered Chena. “How?”

Nan Elle shrugged. “I wish I knew. Mote tech, possibly. They’ve been using that to monitor the world for years. Perhaps they
have exploited the chemistry of the ant hive, or—”

“No.” Chena slashed her hand through the air between them. “I mean, how could they do that to people?”

Nan Elle shook her head. “There, I have no answer for you.”

“Who do you think they were?”

“There have been rumors that Athena Station has become drastically overcrowded.” Nan Elle sucked thoughtfully on her cheeks.
“Some of them might have thought to try—”

“You mean they could have been Athenians?” cried Chena. Her stomach knotted up. “I might have known them!”

Nan Elle shook her head. “Nah, nah, your friends would all be too bright to try such a fool stunt. Still…” Her gaze grew
distant. “It might be worth it to make inquiries. There may be more trouble coming from that direction.” Her attention came
instantly back to Chena. “Will you take a letter to Farin for me? Tomorrow?”

Chena swallowed, everything she had seen crowding back into her mind. “I… um… don’t think…”

Nan Elle laid a skinny finger on Chena’s collarbone. “Now, you listen carefully,” she said, softly but forcefully. Chena could
smell everything about her: mint, yellow soap, rotting breath, and old sweat. “You want to get out from under them, don’t
you? Oh, they can be defied, but not if you’re afraid, and not if you’re ignorant. I can teach, if you want to learn. But
only if you are ready to do what is necessary.” She took one step backward and Chena could breathe again. “If you are not,
there’s the door.” She gestured toward it with her stick.

What was going on here? Was she calling Chena a coward?

What if she is? You’re not going to do anything stupid just because she calls you names, are you?
Chena bit her lip.
But what if she does know something? What if that something can help us get out of here?

And if Mom found out, that would be the end of it, the whole errand business, and probably even going outdoors until she was
nineteen.

But if she didn’t take the risk, who would? And what if Mom couldn’t earn money fast enough on her own to get them out of
here before the hothouse really started cracking down?