Kingdom of Cages (58 page)

Chena dove out into the darkness.

T
he environment lock slammed shut, trapping the hem of her trousers. Chena sprawled facedown in the mud. She rolled over, yanking
on her pants until they ripped. Abruptly free, she snatched up her pack and ran into the marsh, throwing herself flat on her
stomach as soon as she reached the reeds.

They’d be out in seconds. How could she have been so stupid? She had to make a scene, had to let them all know how clever
she was. Chena struggled with the pack straps.
I’m going to be dead and dissected, right alongside Basante. Worse, that’s what I’m going to wish I was.

She glanced backward. Were those shapes moving behind her? Were those lanterns? Scanners focusing in on her body’s heat? She
only had the camouflage suit half out of the pack. Did the cy-bugs see her? She glanced toward the marsh, made a wish, and
dove in.

Birds, thousands and millions of birds, roared into the air with a cacophony of cries and the flapping of wings, making enough
noise to fill the whole wide world. They churned the air with their wings and split it open with their calls. Hidden behind
this living curtain, Chena yanked the camouflage’s parka over her head and ducked down into the swamp until only her head
and the hand holding her pack were above water. She groped in the pack and found her bottle of scent concealer by touch. She
smeared the goop over her face, pulled the veil into place, and hunkered down until cold water touched her chin.

After what felt like both a hundred years and five seconds, the birds’ noise died away. The marsh and the air around it stilled.
The frogs began to chirrup, peep, and croak again. The insects buzzed and danced. They swarmed around Chena in their usual
cloud, but not too close.

She didn’t smell like anything interesting, after all. No, nothing interesting here.

She was hidden from the cameras, but what about from the careful figures picking through the reeds? Aleph had called out the
hothousers themselves. Basante must really be dead. She’d done it. She’d killed him, and now they were searching their precious,
pristine world for her. She could just make out their full-body clean suits, and their eyes covered with night-vision gear.

She started to shake and clenched her teeth. She was camouflaged. They could not see her. It was impossible. As long as she
was smart and stayed still and kept calm, they would not see her. They’d have to step on her. That was a million to one. All
she had to do was stay right here, wait until they passed, then she could follow them out.

Splash, splash.

Two of them waded into her pool of the marsh. Chena cringed and bit down on her lip so hard she tasted blood. They were spreading
out, coming closer. They had helmets on and she couldn’t hear their voices. Had they seen her? They walked in a straight line.
They had to have seen her. She was gone. Pretty soon, she would wish she was dead. What could they see? She was all covered
up. Concealed, completely, she…

But her pack wasn’t.

A scream erupted in Chena’s mind, followed fast by a desperate plan. She clutched her bottle of scent concealer in one hand
and slipped beneath the water, abandoning her pack. The water was thick with centuries of muck, but her hands found the reeds
and pulled her forward, toward the searchers, but not into them. Past them. If she had her bearings, she’d just swim right
past them, through the foul, brown water full of who knew what, with her burning lungs and clogged eyes, just a little farther
to make sure, and the reeds biting into her callused palms, and she was going to burst, and this had to be far enough, she
couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t go any farther, just a little farther, have to breathe, have to breathe, have to breathe
…

Emerging slowly from the water was the hardest thing Chena ever had to do, but she did it. She clamped a hand coated with
blood and muck over her mouth to stifle the gagging, gasping noise of her breath and tried to clear the filthy water out of
her eyes with the other.

The moonlight showed her a pair of blurry human silhouettes bent over something that had to be her pack. One of them straightened
up. Chena froze, trying to be a rock, a hunk of grass, anything but what she was—a human, a murderer, hunted. Her pursuer
swept its gaze over and past her without pausing. When it turned its back to her, Chena dared to breathe again. One of the
pursuers shouldered her pack and began walking away, away from the complex, and away from her.

Triumph flowed through her feet, and trembling, but real, and enough to warm her for a few seconds.

Take that, take that. Thought you could just sneak up on me, didn’t you?

But triumph and its warmth didn’t last, and Chena began to shiver. Her lungs ached, her mouth tasted of swamp, cold reached
down into her bones, and she had nothing to cure any of it.

Gritting her teeth to keep them from chattering, Chena slipped out into the open water. On her knees, her chin skimming the
pond, she followed the ones who thought they were her pursuers.

They never thought to look back. They walked a weaving path, mostly keeping to the water, shining their scanners into the
reeds and the shadows made by the tiny islands. They explored clusters of water hyacinths and purple flags, and still didn’t
look behind them to see the form swimming like a strange crocodile, trying to keep itself mostly submerged despite the fact
that its hands were going numb with cold.

They had reached the edge of the marsh, and the hothousers tramped out onto dry land. Chena considered. She wanted out of
this water that wormed its way into every pore of her skin, filling her up to the brim with cold. But beyond the reeds, she’d
have no cover. The moonlight could show her up easily.

Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes, but Chena stayed where she was, sheltered beside a decaying log and all the thick
stench of the swamp. The sound of footsteps on grass faded away.

It took forever. Chena’s nose began to run and her skin felt so heavy she was surprised it didn’t slide off her body. But
somewhere out there, her pursuers got new orders, and she heard them again, turning around, retracing their routes. A tidy
line of maybe ten, maybe twenty fanned out across the swamp, still searching, but less diligently now. They moved faster.
They wanted to get inside too.

Be glad to let you,
thought Chena a little hysterically as they splashed into the water.
Live and let live, right? Right?

Six inches from her, a hothouser walked past. It did not pause. It did not see. It faded away into the night, and the frogs
began to talk about its passage.

One slow inch at a time, Chena crept out of the water. Shivering so badly she could barely control her movements, she crawled
into the shelter of the trees.

Leaves and branches blotted out the moon and Chena lay curled in on herself for a moment in complete darkness. The loamy ground
felt soft underneath her and she just wanted to lie there until the shivering stopped.

No,
she told herself.
You’ve got to keep going. You’re not covered. They can spot you. They can catch you, take you back.

Or maybe they’ll decide you’re too much trouble to take back.

She remembered the people who landed in the grasslands, and the ants, and jerked herself upright.

“Where do I go?” she murmured to the night. She couldn’t go straight back to Nan Elle. The place would be watched. Where else?
Farin, in Stem? Did they know about him? He’d been with her on the boat to Peristeria. He was on record as her cousin. So
he’d probably be watched too, but he went out a lot more than Nan Elle did. It would be easier for her to get a message to
him, so he could get one to Nan Elle. There had to be someplace she could stay, get warm, get out of the dark. Farin would
help. Farin wouldn’t turn her away just because she’d killed somebody.

Stop it. Basante helped kill Mom. You know he did. He deserved it.

A violent wave of shivers took hold of her, shaking the breath out of her lungs. Chena wrapped her arms around herself and
waited for the fit to pass.

Come on. You know what to do. Do it!

Crouching down, Chena peeked through the tree line. The night had remained clear, giving her both moon and stars to work with.
She found the northern triangle without difficulty and set off, following the edge of the tree line.

The night around her was not that cold. She could barely see her breath in the moonlight, but she was soaked head to foot
and every breeze felt like a fresh blast of ice. Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth to keep them still. But movement helped
keep her circulation going. Eventually her clothes would have to dry. Eventually her blood would have to warm. It would have
to. There was no choice.

The night wore away. The gibbous moon crested and began sinking toward the horizon. The stars turned overhead. Once, checking
her bearings, Chena saw the bright spot of Athena Station and a wave of homesickness almost drowned her.

Mom, why didn’t we stay up there?
She bit her lip.
Teal? Are you there? Or have you gone away already? Are you ever coming back?

There was no answer, of course, except to keep on walking.

No! No! This could not be happening. Not again! She had not failed to see another death, and this was one of the family! Basante
was dying, he was dying, and Aleph watched the family helplessly as they tried to revive him. It had taken fifteen minutes
to find him. How had it taken so long for her to finally think to clear all the walls so the family could find the door she
could no longer see? Panic burned orange and black inside her and tasted of copper.

How could this have happened? She had done everything right. She had found discrepancies. She had alerted the family. She
had followed up. Aleph’s frantic thoughts paused for an instant.

She had followed up. She must have. Why couldn’t she remember? No, she must have. But she couldn’t remember.

Panic. Orange and black, as jagged as broken glass around the edge of every thought, the smell of burning, and the taste of
iron and copper. Open all the cameras. Find Hagin. See everything at once, know everything about herself. Find Hagin.

Hagin was in the Synapese, directing a flurry of activity. Every tender on duty. Yes. They knew. They knew what was wrong.
Why hadn’t they stopped it?

Open the voice nearest Hagin.

“Hagin! Hagin! Dionte has done this. She has altered me again.” They knew. Reports were running. Her neurochemical levels
were being analyzed, adjustments were being tracked and verified. Her memory would soon be restored, and she would know. She
would know what had been done to her. She would know how to stop it. Her family would stop it from happening again.

“Aleph, we are working on the problem.” Hagin laid a warm hand on her wall, touching her to comfort her as if she were a human
being. “You know that Dionte has done nothing to you.”

What?
Every nerve, every thought thrown into that one word. Confusion, red, black, green, orange, smelling of old metal, tasting
of ice and fire. She did not know any such thing. How could Hagin say that she did? Call up all the reports. Involve every
subsystem. Run down the data again. Remember. Remember. But what did she really remember?

“Hagin, you saw. I showed you….”

Hagin pressed both hands against her wall. Around him, tenders opened the carapace, exposed the matter that contained her
memory, herself. They probed. She saw all the probes. She saw what they were doing, and yet she could not understand. She
had told them. She had told them what had happened. They knew. Why were they trying to find out what had happened? She had
showed them.

Hagin was speaking. “I saw the data. Aleph, you’ve put it together wrong. Dionte has done nothing. Try to wait. We are working
to help you even now. Look. We will have you stabilized in a moment. You are distressed.”

Flash all warnings. Alert each of them to stop. But they would not stop. The probes continued. All the searching. Why all
the searching? Print out the answer on every monitor screen. “No, you are wrong. I saw it!”

Hagin’s hands flew across the board, sending out commands to shut the monitors down and override the alerts. He was chief
tender, he could do that.

Hagin was speaking again, calmly, coolly, even as his hands worked frantically at the command board in front of him. “Aleph,
I believe that you believe what you saw. But there has been a mistake. Your connections are misaligned. We will help you.”

“I am your city!” All colors, all taste, all smells, swirling into one great morass. “You must listen!”

“We are listening, Aleph, and we are helping. You should be feeling calmer now. Talk to me. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

Orange and black paled to tan, the color of sand. The scent of burning separated out and faded to the scent of autumn leaves;
the taste of metal became the taste of winter’s first frost. “Calmer. I am feeling calmer.”