Kingdom of Cages (3 page)

The miniature screen shone with the colored lines that made up a gene scan. Tam’s practiced eye read it as clearly as if it
had been the alphabet, and he felt his eyebrows rise.

Tam looked up from the scan. “Is this one of ours?”

“Not yet,” said Basante. He had a grin on his face, as if he had produced the gene alleles by himself from a dish in his lab.
“She’s being processed for immigration right now.”

Tam felt his mouth tighten into a frown. Basante’s enthusiasms were reason for caution. As of this afternoon, his project,
the Eden Project, had suddenly become the chosen means of curing the Diversity Crisis. However, Basante, like the other experimenters,
was too apt to see the subjects of his experiments as spare parts and forget that they were as human as the family. “Have
we asked her to volunteer for the project yet?”

“Do you want to take the chance she’ll say no?” Basante actually looked surprised.

Tam’s frown deepened and his gaze turned sour. Recognizing that a negative answer was on the way, Basante held up his hand.
“Normally I’d agree with you.” Basante had sat with Tam in history lessons. He knew that even villagers could be pushed too
far, and this woman was a stationer. “But this one is too important,” Basante barreled on, gesturing to the gene scan. “She’s
within three or four points of perfection. We’ve been having the Authority sweep the Called for this configuration, and here
she is, practically delivered to us.”

Tam ran a thumb over the back of his hand, wiping the scan from his display. “We will ask her to enter voluntarily. We can
make a good offer. But we will let her immigrate no matter what she says.”

“And if she does say no?” Basante folded his hands behind his back.

“Then at least she’s down here with us, and about to have all the usual problems station people have in the villages. We will
make our offer again.” Tam turned away, then he turned back again. “If I find out you or anyone else has forced her into the
project, I’ll have you standing up to explain yourself before the family, including Senior Committee.”

Tam walked away from the windows and through the connector hallway, with its aquarium walls. Sunfish and koi looked briefly
out at him between green clouds of algae and then went about their own business.

He hoped he had been clear enough. With Basante, one never knew.

Outside, I wouldn’t have to worry about any of this,
he thought, before he could stop himself. The guilt rose, and must have tasted familiar to his implant. He’d been giving
it a lot of practice lately.

Earth,
his Conscience said.
I want you to think about what happened to Earth.

Then it seemed to Tam he smelled ozone and sulfur, and everything he had ever learned about Earth came flooding back to him.
Earth, the birthplace of humanity, with its endless sprawl of buildings tied together with roads and tubes and rails, its
red tides, and rivers that ran slick and hot with waste from the power generators and factories. He remembered studying the
diagrams of the water processors and the earth processors and the people in their protected habitats, and all the vast machinery
that was needed to ensure the continuance of human life on a world where the only green left was the miles and miles of corn
and soybean fields that fed all those people.

He remembered the video composites of the people in their boxlike homes, taking their medicines and monitoring their blood
chemistry and receiving news reports about the latest longevity discoveries and treatments and the progress that was being
made in reseeding the oceans with fresh kelp to help create more oxygen for them to breathe during their long, propped-up
lives, which had destroyed the world they did not understand. Around them, that same world struggled not to die, while its
oblivious children lived on in shells of stone, bacteria, and artificial gardens.

“But is it true?” murmured Tam to the memories and his Conscience as he took a deep, steadying breath. It was hard to ask
the question, but he had to. Without it, he would just accept, which was the one thing he could not do. If he did, it would
mean everything his parents had tried to do for him and for Pandora was over. It would make him worse than his birth sister
Dionte, with her scheming and her excesses. “Or is it just what you and I are supposed to believe?”

It is true,
answered his Conscience.
You know it is true.

“Yes,” Tam breathed with a sigh. It was the approved answer. It would shut his Conscience up and give him time to think for
himself.

Satisfied, the implant lapsed into silence, and Tam started walking again, hands folded behind himself, trying to be content
with the sight of fish on the one side and drooping ferns on the other.

Once, the Conscience implants had just been communication devices connected to personal data displays. They accepted subvocalized
commands, monitored physical health, and assisted with data reduction and sorting. They followed the orders of the ones who
carried them. But that was long ago, and now they were also personal guardians, making sure all members of the family remembered
who they were and what they owed to their family, and to Pandora.

With room in his head to think his own thoughts again, Tam turned back to his conversation with Basante. It was very clear
that Basante wanted this immigrant woman in the experiment wing. He probably wanted her in the involuntary wing, where he
wouldn’t have to bother explaining things to her.

Tam wondered abruptly if Dionte knew about this woman. Probably. Basante was wedged very tightly into her plans and saw very
much through her eyes.

Tam hoped the woman was smart and strong. Otherwise, both Bas-ante and Dionte could quite easily get what they wanted.

Chena Trust lay awake in the darkness, blinking at a thick, blank, silent wall.

After a few million seconds of this, she rolled over on her back and listened. Beyond the breathing, rustling, snoring people,
she heard another world. It chirruped, peeped, and murmured with a whole set of rhythms that followed no pattern Chena could
make out. It was nothing like their home on Athena Station, which she, her little sister, and their mother had left a week
or so ago. On the station, she could tell what was happening in the world by the clicks, creaks, and whooshes that filtered
through the ancient walls. Here, it was just noises all piled up on top of each other.

Chena burrowed under her covers, but sleep didn’t come back.

What are you afraid of?
she asked herself.
You’re here now. It’s stupid to be scared of the place. You’re not going back.

She wanted a light, an info screen, and a jack for her wrist comptroller, so she could find out something about this place
she was in, but none of that stuff existed here. The walls stared back at Chena, blank, immutable, silent. Everything she
knew was up in the sky somewhere—the curving, insulated hallways with their cameras and input screens, the kilometer-long
spiral staircases, which were always too cold or too hot and forever too loud no matter how much sound damping they’d put
up, their tiny apartment with its peeling carpet—these were all the past. And the future…

Was the future really a mud hut in the jungle? That was what Eng and King said. Chena poked her head out from under the covers
again.

“They give you a spear and make you hunt things.” King had hopped around grunting, with a big grin on his face, like he thought
he was doing a public service. “You’re going to look real sweet swinging from a vine, Chena. This is how you’re going to look.”
He grabbed a corner bracket and let himself swing back and forth until the caution alarm buzzed at them, with Eng laughing
that stupid horsey laugh of his the whole time.

They can both just piss off. What do they know? They were born on Athena too. They just know what they see on the screen.
Chena scratched at the gauze bandage sealed to the back of her hand.
This place isn’t mud. It’s stone and wood. It isn’t anything like mud.

Mom wouldn’t really make them live in the jungle. She wouldn’t do that to them. This was just a temporary stop. They’d move
someplace real in maybe a week or so. Mom had a job. They weren’t going to stay here.

Chena rubbed the bandage harder. Her skin still stung where they had inserted the new ID chip and then imprinted a multibranched
tattoo on top of it. All that had been done by the same woman in white overalls who’d spent the morning quizzing Chena. Where
was she from, what did she weigh, what did she eat, how often had she been sick, was she sick now, how did she do in school,
did she go to school, or did she just learn off the computer? Where did they live on Athena, had they always lived on Athena?
Who was her mother, her father, her grandparents, her aunts and uncles and cousins…?

When she couldn’t answer all the questions, especially the ones about her family, the woman in white overalls looked disgusted,
pulled out a syringe, and gestured for Chena to hold out her arm.

But they’d finally had enough of that and had put her in a sterile-walled waiting room already filled to bursting with people—men,
women, kids, and babies, none of whom had been in the car on the space cable that had brought Chena and her family down to
Pandora, and none of whom smelled like they had shower stalls in their apartments. Their old apartments. All of them were
immigrants, like she was now.

It had been about an hour before whoever was giving Teal her going-over let her into the waiting room too. Teal had been scared,
of course, but at least she didn’t look like she was ready to cry, which she would have if this had happened even just last
year. Chena grabbed Teal’s hand and peered around through the crowd, looking for someplace where they could stand. A pair
of old men in orange overalls that looked ready to fall off their skinny bodies shuffled sideways and gestured to Chena that
she could stand by the wall. Chena nodded her thanks and steered Teal toward the empty spot.

Chena leaned against the wall, and so did Teal, but she collapsed her knees until she’d slid all the way to the floor.

Chena looked down at her younger sister for a long moment. Teal had just turned ten. She looked like Mom. Everybody said so.
She had Mom’s sandy brown skin and high round forehead, black hair that fell back in waves around her ears. She had Mom’s
shining brown eyes, and was stocky like Mom was too, with square hands but round legs.

Chena, on the other hand, was thirteen going on fourteen and looked like their father—tan skin, thick and wiry hair that was
more brown than black, a sharp face, a wide full mouth, and deep-set eyes of midnight blue. Everything about her seemed too
long right now—arms, legs, hands, feet. She was still getting used to the fact that she could look Mom in the eye without
tilting her head up, and that she needed to wear a bra.

Teal wrapped her arms around her legs and hugged them to her chest, turning her head so her cheek rested on her knees and
she could look back up at Chena.

“What do you think Dad’s doing?” she asked. Her voice was small and furtive and a little impatient. She wanted to start a
story.

Chena sighed. Ever since Dad had left them last year, they’d been making up stories about what had happened to him. All they
knew for sure was that he’d failed to rejoin his ship in the port of a world called Rupert’s Choice and they’d left without
him. There’d been no news since then, even though Mom had talked to every bureaucrat on the station.

He’d probably just left them. Parents did that sometimes. There were kids in the halls on Athena who’d had both parents just
dump them. But maybe not. Maybe he was really out there doing something important and soon he’d come back for them.

Oh, well, it’s better than her whining.
Chena sat cross-legged next to Teal. “Okay.” She pulled her leg in as a big dark woman shuffled past, looking for someone
or something. “Let me see.” She pressed her fingertips to her forehead, like she was receiving messages from the Great Beyond.
“I think he’s working undercover for the Authority,” she said, flipping her eyes open. “I think there’s a conspiracy to poison
one of the colony worlds and he’s going to find out who’s behind it.”

One of the old men next to them wheezed with laughter. “I think you’ve got too much imagination for a hallway baby.”

Anger, hot and sudden, flashed through Chena. “What would you know, you limp old—”

The door swished open and Teal seized her arm before Chena could finish the insult. Mom strode into the waiting room. Chena
scrambled to her feet, stuffing her thumb between her first two fingers and stabbing upward to give the old man the piss-off
sign. He waved her off and turned back to his friend.

“Well, Supernova, well, Starlet, that was something else, wasn’t it?” Mom’s voice was light, but her face was tired, even
grim. “Gods below, I’m tired.” She had wrapped her arms around Teal and Chena and leaned back against the wall.

There was no time to ask questions then, because a different woman walked in right behind Mom. She wore a brown tunic and
a long skirt. Her skin was sandy gold and her black hair was swept back and bundled into some kind of little mesh bag. She
said her name was Madra and that she was the coordinator for the village of Offshoot. Then she’d read off a list of names
of people who were supposed to come with her—including Chena, Teal, and Helice Trust.

So they lined up and walked down the corridor and out a door, where there’d been a brief glimpse of sky, and shifting sand
and pebbles underfoot, and a huge glass and silver wire thing that Chena knew was a dirigible only because of a rig game she’d
played once, and they were lead into the compartment under the areogel balloon. At least in this one there were enough chairs,
and they were soft and comfortable, even if the immigrants did have to be strapped in, and they flew.

At first the feeling was fun, like the acceleration of the car on the space cable, but then it got boring. There wasn’t anything
to see except the walls and the back of the chair in front of her. There were no jacks for her comptroller, or game rigs,
or anything, and she found herself missing the space elevator. They’d been cooped up in there for two days in one big room
with capsule bunks on the walls, but that had been fun. There’d been rigs and screens and five other kids, including Dea Jemma
Tosh, whom Chena had grown up with, and Mom had been relaxed and happy, telling them over and over that this was a new beginning.