Kingdom of Cages (7 page)

“Well, it’s been lovely talking to you.” Lela drained her mug and gathered up her bowl and spoon. “But I’m on today and I’ve
got to get going. You can’t miss Central Admin, Helice. There’ll be a line.”

“Thank you.” Mom saluted and Lela nodded, striding off between the crowds and tables.

Teal groaned. “Another line! Why can’t they just buzz us with whatever they need?” Chena wondered if she’d even heard anything
about the dead body and the court, or if she’d just been wrapped up in her own head.

She rolled her eyes. “In case you haven’t noticed, vapor-brain—”

“Chena…” said Mom automatically as she stood.

“—there aren’t any computers,” Chena finished, then picked up her dishes and dumped them into a wooden bin that sat on the
end of the table.

“Which is so stupid,” announced Teal as they left the hall and headed down the path. “How do they run this place without computers?
How do they tell anybody anything?”

“I’m sure we’re about to find out,” said Mom. She did not sound thrilled.

Finding out involved sitting on the path outside the Central Administration Building with a long, ragged line of people in
station-style clothes. Chena thought she recognized a couple of the airheads from the first waiting room, but no one she knew
enough to say hello to. So they just joined the line—Mom standing up straight, like she could wait there all day, and Chena
and Teal sitting cross-legged at her feet, sometimes messing with their comptrollers but mostly just staring at the people
and the low green buildings, or the trees that made up the entire world beyond the fence posts.

Occasionally Madra would stick her head out the door, say, “Next!” and smile at the rest of them as they all shuffled forward
a few inches and settled back down to wait again.

Then Chena started noticing something. Not everyone who went through the door came out again. Sadia’s words about being declared
useless and getting hauled off came back to her, settling cold and hard in her stomach.

Stop it,
she told herself, chewing her lip.
Mom would never let it happen. She wouldn’t have brought you here if it could happen.

But her mind refused to relax. It kept rolling over those thoughts until she had wrung every possibility down from her brain
into her guts, where they all knotted together. By the time they reached the head of the line, Chena could barely sit still.

Of course, Mom noticed. “Easy, Supernova,” she said. “It’ll all be over soon.”

“I’m okay.” She tried to sound convincing, but wasn’t sure if she managed it. “It’s just—”

And, of course, that was when Madra had to stick her head out the door and say, “Next! Oh, good morning, Helice, Teal, Chena,”
she added as she recognized them. “Come on in.”

The office was dim and cool, like the dorm and the dining hall had been. Chena was starting to wonder if there was some kind
of regulation against bright light. But, except for the strip windows and the wooden walls, it looked like every office Chena
had ever been in. There were chairs for guests, and desk and another chair for the person who actually worked there.

This office also had stacks of record sheets piled on every flat surface. There was an interior door that maybe went to the
larger building. Next to it sat a teak-skinned man with a hooked nose who wore a white shirt, black vest, and black trousers.

“Sit down, please.” Madra’s smile was efficient as she slid into place behind her desk. “This is Administrator Tam Bhavasar
from the Alpha Complex.” Her smile did not waver, but something sour crept into her voice as she spoke the name. Chena shifted.
This was the first hint they’d had that Madra-the-Eternally-Cheerful might not like somebody. “We are under his jurisdiction
and he will be providing such representation as we require to the family inside the complex.”

“We’ve spoken.” Mom’s voice had gone back to tight and polite. Chena shifted her weight. Who was this guy? Her gaze flickered
to Administrator Tam. He had a long, lean frame. His legs stretched out in front of him, all relaxed, but Chena knew that
was for show. She could feel the tension radiating off him like white heat.

“Before you’re assigned a work shift,” Madra went on, “I am required to tell you…” Required? That was new too. Up until now,
all her little speeches had sounded like they were her own idea. “… that you, Helice, have the option of transferring residence
to the Alpha Complex.” The smile grew strained, even dipped for a second. “Your residence contract there will include free
room, board, and education, for yourself and your daughters, along with a guarantee of employment that will allow you a monthly
positive accumulation.”

“No,” said Mom in the frosty voice she used on petty bureaucrats and pushy vendors. “We discussed this, Administrator. I am
not interested in participating in your experiments.”

Spare parts
—the words jolted through Chena again.
Oh, piss and God, they really do it.

Oddly enough, Administrator Tam seemed to relax a little. “You can change your mind at any time, Mother Trust,” said Administrator
Tam, running one long, clean hand up and down the chair arm. “I ask you to consider. The Diversity Crisis is affecting every
human world. Children are dying daily because we have not yet been able to come up with a cure. With your help, we will be
able to design a new—”

“Thank you.” Mom clipped off the words. She was using her special voice, the one that meant,
I don’t want to discuss this in front of my children.
“I have been informed as to what you are trying to design and how you want me to help, and I have told you I am not interested.”

But Administrator Tam was not ready to give up yet. “Life working the village will be very hard on your children. They are
not used to it.” Like Madra’s, the speech sounded rehearsed, like he wanted to be on record. Chena looked around for the camera,
but she couldn’t see anything. Who did this guy think was listening?

Then she remembered that the Pandorans, at least the hothousers, were all supposed to have chips in their heads. Maybe they
were there to record what you did all day, for the bosses, whoever the hothousers had as bosses. Mom’s boss back in Athena’s
repair bays would have loved something like that. He was always trying to dock her pay for taking too long a break or something.

The ghost of a smile played around Mom’s mouth. “My daughters have not lived easy,” she said. “As I have a job of my own,
I hope to change that situation.” She carefully enunciated every word in the last sentence so there could be no mistake. Chena
felt her insides thawing and relaxing. How could she have been afraid? Mom would never do such a thing, not to them, not to
herself.

“You have your answer, Administrator,” said Madra, twitching a record sheet off the top of the nearest pile. “If you’ll allow
me to move along? We still have a lot of processing to get through.”

Administrator Tam just nodded and sat back, satisfied. This was too weird. If the guy didn’t want Mom in the hothouse, what
was he doing here? Chena chewed on her lip. She did not like this. There were way too many things going on in this room that
she didn’t understand.

“Thank you for your understanding, Administrator.” Madra’s smile was sunny, but her tone was cool. She consulted the record
she had retrieved and compared it with the records already in front of her. “Now, I want to make sure both girls get on daytime
shifts, of course.”

“Can I put in a request?” asked Chena, a little hesitantly, looking from Mom to Madra to try to see how either of them would
take it. Mom looked mildly surprised. Madra quickly shifted her expression over into encouraging.

“Go ahead,” said Madra, gesturing to indicate that the floor, or possibly the whole world, was Chena’s.

“I’d like to be with K37,” she said, hoping she remembered it right. “I met this girl, Sadia,” she said in response to Mom’s
inquiring lift of her eyebrow. “When I was… out. She seemed nice. It’s her shift.”

“Mmm…” Madra shuffled through her records. “K37’s not a beginner’s shift. We normally don’t schedule newcomers there.”

“That’s okay,” Chena assured her. “I can handle it.”

Madra sighed and spoke to Mom. “It’s demanding physical labor on that one. Shoveling, working with the compost…”

“I’m not puny,” announced Chena. She caught the are-too look on Teal’s face and ignored it. She turned to Mom. Pleading with
Madra wasn’t going to do any good. “Please, Mom. She was nice, and she can show me what’s what.”

Mom faced Madra. “Can she try it? If she can’t handle the work, she could be transferred off the shift, couldn’t she?”

“Again, that’s not something we normally do.” The phrase sounded prerecorded. Chena snuck a look at Administrator Tam. He
watched Madra, but Chena couldn’t tell one thing about what he saw.

Madra herself seemed to be waiting for something, maybe for Administrator Tam to interrupt. When he didn’t, her smile reasserted
itself. “As long as you’re aware it will be demanding work,” she said to Chena, who nodded rapidly. “All right.”

“I’ll make it work,” said Chena confidently, more for Mom than for Madra. Mom just covered her hand and squeezed. She was
watching the administrator watch Madra. Did she know something about him?

“What about you?” asked Madra of Teal. “Anything special you’d like?”

Teal opened her mouth. Chena was sure she was going to say,
To get out of here.
Mom must have thought so too, because her face darkened with warning.

Teal, who could actually act like she had a brain sometimes, swallowed and said, “No, thank you.”

“All right, let’s see what we have, then.…”

While Madra shuffled and murmured to herself, Chena stole another glance at Administrator Tam. He seemed preoccupied now,
staring out the windows as if listening to some private voice that had nothing at all to do with what was going on in the
room.

At last, Madra made a couple of fresh imprints on her reports and announced that Mom was on the G3 shift and Teal was on K5.
She buzzed the information into their chips with a handheld scanner and wished them good evening.

Chena wasn’t even sure Administrator Tam saw them leave.

It turned out that was just the first line of the day. Mom also dragged them to the bank to see how much they had in positives
(not much), to the rental office to hear the prices on empty houses (too much), to the school administrator to hear the price
and conditions of classes (way too much), and to the passport office so she could get chipped for getting to and from her
job at the geothermal power plant.

By the end of it all, Chena was seriously regretting her morning’s excursion, and Teal was mad enough to spit at her. Mom
wouldn’t even consider letting them go somewhere, even on the roof garden of whatever building she was in, no matter how many
times they swore they’d stay together, they wouldn’t talk to strangers, and any other model behavior they could think of.
It was all a complete no-go. She just glowered if they tried to promise too hard.

They missed dinner sitting in line. By the time they got to the dining hall, there was nothing left but a kettle of the hot
cereal, which had been cooking long enough to get crusty. It still tasted good, though, and Chena ate without complaint. She
had expected Mom to be verbal, telling them the shifts were a strictly temporary thing, that it wasn’t going to be that bad,
but she wasn’t. A cloud of silence had descended around her, and it stretched out to include Teal and Chena. Teal ate fast
and spent the rest of the time fidgeting with her comptroller. Chena tried to get a quick look at what she was doing and failed.

She hiding it from me?
she wondered, and the thought left her feeling strangely angry.

By the time they got out and headed back toward the dorms, twilight had descended. They walked, silent, side by side, Chena
wondering what they’d have to wait for next.

All at once, the world around them shifted and rustled, as if the wind had picked up. Chena’s head jerked up, automatically
looking for a changed sign or warning light.

Then the forest bloomed. Bright white cups lifted up from nests of dark green on the forest floor. In the trees, the vines
spread velvet blossoms colored deep purple, bloodred, and cobalt blue, the petals stretching themselves out until the flowers
were the size of Chena’s head.

In answer, the twilight seemed to break into a million fragments that swarmed around the flowers. Big angled zigzags of darkness
darted around the trees, and smaller dots zoomed around the flowers so thickly, the petals were almost lost inside the clouds.

“What is it?” breathed Chena.

“Bats,” said Mom. “And beetles, I think, going after the nectar in the flowers.”

A gust of wind carried a thick, sweet perfume to Chena, along with the noise of the flapping and screeching overhead and a
high, tinny drone that could be heard even under the perpetual sound of rustling leaves and falling water.

“I don’t like this,” muttered Teal, rubbing her arms. “I’ve got creeps.”

Chena wanted to tell her not to be a baby, but Mom was already moving. “Let’s get inside, then.”

Chena wanted to rebel, but those were practically the only words Mom had said since they had left the bank, so she decided
now was probably not the time to argue.

She was not surprised, however, when inside turned out to be a lot less interesting than outside. People sat around the common
room, mainly on pillows on the floors, and they talked or played games with counters and cards. Chena wandered around the
room a little, looking over the shoulders of the other kids, but they mostly glowered at her or pointedly turned away. With
all the adults around, it was no place to start something and try to break her way in. She didn’t see Sadia anywhere.

In the end, she finished her prowling and ended up against the wall next to Teal. She slid down the wall until she sat next
to her sister, who was messing with her comptroller.

“What are you doing?” she asked softly. Mom wasn’t going to be any help here. She’d found a bunch of other women, all in villager
clothes, to talk to.