Kingdom of Cages (39 page)

For a while, and for price, the Authority had carried the message of this grand experiment. Some of the Called even sent representatives
to see it, and when they had seen, they went away and did not come back.

The years turned, and the worlds turned. Gradually life on Pandora became entrenched and the goals changed. Elle doubted even
the city-minds knew exactly how it all happened. Snubbed by the Called, who, after all, had come out here because they did
not want to be told how to live, the hothousers cast their eyes backward, to ravaged Old Earth, and decided they would not
send delegates out into the colonies. A convenient decision, since it turned out the villagers did not want to go out and
spread the word to the Called. They wanted to stay where they were and look after themselves. No, instead, the hothousers
would work to understand the whole of this living world, its humans included. Then they would take that knowledge back to
the cradle of humanity and present it there. All who heard would marvel at this incredible understanding, and the Pandorans,
as saviors, would embark on the greatest work ever. They would resuscitate Earth. But if they were going to truly do that,
they would have to understand human beings—how they lived, how they worked physically and mentally, what they could do, what
they would do. So the villagers became not laboratories of learning, but subjects for experiment.

Oh, there had been rebellions, and there would be again. There had been abuses, and there would be again. The idea of eventually
returning to Old Earth was swallowed by the enormity of categorizing and analyzing Pandora, and keeping it safe from the rest
of the Called.

Perhaps, if things had just gone on, some angry visionary in the village, or on Athena, would have risen up and incited the
people to topple the power structure. But things did not go on. The Diversity Crisis began. Now there was one central fact
of life. The rest of the Called were dying. Pandora was not, and no one was rash enough to do anything that might change this
enviable condition.

As long as that was true, the hothousers and their capricious whims would stay in power, and all the anger that could fill
two young women was not going to change that.

Elle reached for pen and ink. Whatever the result of the ongoing argument in the bedroom, there were letters to write. To
Farin, to people Farin would meet, and for Farin to give to others who would pass them on. Tam needed to know about the new
tailor. He already knew Elle would be mounting a poaching expedition. There had been too many deaths, but she had not been
willing to let Chena go until she was absolutely certain Chena would come back. Sending Farin with her would help assure that.
Chena would never run out on Farin just to see how far she could get before the hothousers noticed, as she might do if let
loose on her own.

Once Chena’s on her way, I will talk with Teal,
Elle told herself, setting her paper squarely in front of her and uncorking the ink jar.
The girl’s no fool, she just needs a direction. I’ve left her too long without one. She will come to understand she’s needed
here, as her sister has.

They will both come to understand.

Beleraja hauled herself onto the bridge of Menasha’s ship, savoring the sensation of freedom and familiarity it gave her.
Both the Poulos and the Denshyar flagships were from roughly the same era. The floor and walls were onyx and marble, with
saffron gripping patches radiating outward from the ring of command stations. The pilot’s window was half filled by the white
and silver skin of Athena Station. The other half looked out onto blank, black vacuum.

The lodestone sparkled in its gilded alcove. Beleraja kicked gently off from the hatchway and glided over to the stone. She
caught the holding strap with one hand and laid the other on its glittering surface, closing her eyes to pray a moment for
guidance and safe journey. It seemed appropriate somehow.

Shontio had loaned Beleraja one of the station’s precious shuttles so she could fly out and meet Menasha. He agreed that they
would need to speak somewhere where there was no possibility of being overheard. They were planning to create a radical rebalancing
of power throughout the Called. As Shontio pointed out, there were people even on overcrowded Athena Station that might balk
at that.

Beleraja turned her mind from the memory of Shontio’s hard, hopeless eyes when he had first spoken of how they could end the
crisis on Athena and in the Called, how they could flood the world with people and put into practice what Beleraja herself
had believed for so long now: that only the consolidation of the tattered patches of humanity would save them.

And we’d better be right,
she sighed to herself.
Because once we start this, there will be no other Pandoran cure.

Still hanging on to the strap, Beleraja twisted to find that Menasha had swum across to the captain’s chair and was now holding
on to its arm.

“Everybody else off shift?” Beleraja asked with mild disbelief, pushing gingerly off the wall toward the first master’s chair.

“Here and there, off shift, visiting aboard the other ships.” Menasha planted her soft-soled boots onto the gripping patch.
“I thought the fewer ears, the better.”

“Always.” Beleraja grabbed the back of the first master’s chair and pressed her own shoes against the nearest patch. “But
they are your family.…”

Menasha squeezed the chair arm, lifting herself a little and making the gripping patch crinkle underfoot. “Some of them would
rather not know what’s going on.”

“But they agree?” said Beleraja, trying to keep her anxiety out of her voice. She had lost track of the number of nights she
had spent pacing her tiny room, trying not to wake Hoja and Liel, the techs she now bunked with, and trying to tell herself
she had not made a mistake. Consolidation was the only answer that made any sense at all.

“They agree.” Menasha’s smile grew wistful. “That doesn’t mean they like it.”

Beleraja laughed. “I can’t understand that.” It had been so easy to say it could be done. Consolidation could be calculated
like the movement of any other cargo. As long as you knew distances and capacities, you could set up a simple schedule and
bring the Called to Pandora in neatly timed intervals. All they needed was a great enough capacity, and that was what Menasha
had been sent out to procure.

“So”—Menasha pulled a sheet screen from her coat pocket and handed it across to Beleraja—“here’s who we have so far. The rest
of the fleet is still making contact, but these are on their way.”

Beleraja skimmed the names of a dozen colonies and their population figures. “That’s five thousand. That’s barely going to
be enough. We need ten thousand, a hundred thousand if we can get them.” Menasha hadn’t seen the flyby shots from the satellites
showing where the would-be colonists had dropped down. There had been the shuttle drop, the parachutes opening, the people
landing with their loads of cargo. They scattered out to claim their land, and then… and then they dropped dead. When Beleraja
closed her eyes, she could clearly see the image of all those bodies lying still on the ground like fallen leaves. Then there
was nothing left but the artificial things, the landing rafts, the metal, the cloth. It was after that when the hothousers
showed up in their dirigibles, carefully gathered up all that detritus, and left.

Of the flesh-and-blood human beings there was nothing left at all, and there had been three hundred of them. In the four hours
that it had taken Satellite 22 to move out of range and Satellite 23 to move back in, they had died, and there was no trace
of the hothousers having come in to do the deed themselves.

“And how are you going to move these hundred thousand people?” Menasha swept her hand out. “There aren’t that many ships in
the Called.”

Beleraja willed herself to focus. Menasha was right, of course. She had to concentrate on what was possible, or this grand
escapade of hers and Shontio’s was doomed before it really began. “What about the ships we do have?”

“We’ve recruited two families so far, but it’s slow going.”

“Anybody talking out of turn to the council, do you think?”

“You’d know better than I would. What have you been hearing from them?”

Beleraja shrugged. The thin, tattered comm net that stretched across the Called was proving both a blessing and a curse for
their plans. It kept the council from being able to keep track of them, but it also kept them from knowing the latest changes
of council heart. A fleet to replace Beleraja and her family as Athena’s watchdogs could be on its way right now, and they
would have no way of knowing it. “We had a squirt a couple of weeks ago through Ganishi’s Station.” She rubbed the sheet between
her thumb and first two fingers. “It basically said the council is pleased that we’re keeping up the pressure on Pandora,
but they are not thrilled with the lack of measurable progress on the cure.”

Menasha barked out one short laugh. “What else’s new?”

“Agreed.” Beleraja read the names of the worlds and all the neat numbers that indicated how many people had decided to trust
that she and Shontio knew what they were talking about. “I think if I told the council I was going to drop five thousand colonists
on Pandora, they’d give me a medal. It would screw the pressure plate down tighter and still allow them to completely deny
their involvement.”

“You do realize…” Menasha let the sentence trail away. She tapped her fingertips against the chair arm, as if trying to decide
whether she would finish or not. Beleraja stood silently, giving her a chance to make up her mind. “You do realize,” Menasha
started again, “that the longer we have to draw this out, the better the chances are that someone who does not agree with
what you are doing will find out? That we’ll spark a debate, and possibly even active fragmentation among the shippers?”

“Yes.” Beleraja read the sheet again. Yaruba had decided to trust her, four hundred and twenty of them. High Marrakesh—only
one hundred and eighty-five there made up their minds to trust her, or maybe that was all they had left.

She felt Menasha watching her closely. “And do you want to do something about it?” Menasha asked.

Beleraja folded the sheet screen into thirds. “Is there anything we can do?”

Menasha stared out the pilot’s window for a moment, watching the unchanging, monochromatic scene. “We’ve been getting some
strange questions.”

“Like what?” Beleraja frowned.

“Like”—Menasha took a deep breath—“how are we going to divide the land once all these people get there? Like, how are we going
to set up the new government? In short, there are people who would help us in return for land and power.”

Beleraja stared at her, unable to do anything but blink in surprise for a long moment. “You’re joking,” she said at last.
“What do they think is going on here?”

Now it was Menasha’s turn to look surprised. “They think you’re invading Pandora.” Her eyes narrowed. “What do you think is
going on here?”

Excellent question.
Beleraja stuffed the sheet into her pocket where she wouldn’t have to see it anymore. “Mena, I can’t make those kinds of
promises.”

“Then who can?”

“Nobody!” The force of Beleraja’s denial startled her. “That’s not what we’re doing.”

Menasha pulled both boots off the gripping patch with a sound like a snort. She swung her legs over the captain’s chair and
brought them down again so she was standing right in front of Beleraja. “Then what are you doing?” she asked, rooting herself
in place. “Are you just dropping a hundred thousand people down onto a planet without any plan?” Her eyes searched Beleraja’s
for a moment, and Beleraja could tell they did not like what they saw. “Do you have any idea what you’re setting up here?”
Menasha did not wait for an answer. “Certainly most people are just going to want to grab a plot of land where they can live.
But there are going to be some people who have got ideas, and those ideas are going to involve bullying their neighbors.”
Her voice went suddenly soft. “This is not a family picnic we are talking about here. You are starting a new world. There
is going to have to be somebody in charge, and I hate to say this, but it is probably going to be you.”

Beleraja shook her head, although she could not have said which part of Menasha’s speech she was really denying. “We’re not
a government.”

“The Authority is not a government. You are going to have to be.” Menasha reached into her pocket again. “Beleraja, I’ve got
something else to show you.” Menasha pulled out another sheet screen. “This is the list of shipper families who will help
if we will guarantee them prime land and slots in a government.”

The sheet fell open in Beleraja’s hands and her eyes read the print automatically. Fifteen family names. Beleraja knew most
of them. Good families, old families. Over eight hundred ships. Properly coordinated, they could bring nine thousand more
colonists. Invaders.

Good families. Old families. Patriarchs and matriarchs she had known, or at least known of, since infancy, and here they were,
ready to help, and all she had to do was divide up a world for them.

Beleraja stared out the pilot’s window, a feeling of desperation creeping over her. She wanted to tell Menasha to fire up
the engines, to take her out to where her own family’s fleet patrolled the jump points for Athena Station. She wanted to climb
onto her own ship, close the hatch, and fly away. She wanted never to have agreed to Shontio’s request in the committee meeting.
She wanted never to have spoken of her beliefs to him, never to have seen him so worn down, never to have realized that the
Pandorans, no matter how brilliant and experienced, could not save the Called.

“Beleraja.” Menasha’s hands touched hers, and Beleraja realized her fist had closed around the sheet screen. “I know you have
not just been sitting up here enjoying the scenery. What have you been doing?”

“Working out landing sites.” She gestured toward the pulled-out screen attached to the captain’s chair. “Trying to figure
out what happened to the last set of people who tried a landing on Pandora. I could show you, but I’ve been keeping it all
on an isolated database.” Menasha nodded.
Well, at least you approve of something I’ve done.
“Mostly, I’ve been lying.” Despite the ship’s lack of gravity, Beleraja felt like she weighed a thousand pounds. “Lying to
the council, lying to the Pandorans.” Thoughts of the amount of time she had spent, and would still have to spend, at a command
board to monitor the screen made her eyes burn. “I have been intercepting each and every message between the two of them and
reworking it.” She rubbed her eyes. “You would not believe how good I have become at data forgery.”
And planting rumors in the comm net, and smoothing together disconnected images, and interfering with those pesky little satellites
so the Pandorans can’t keep track of which ships are actually coming and going from here.