House of Midas

by Chloe Garner

  “How do you know that?” Troy asked.

  “How old were the Gana you saw today?” Cassie countered.

  “Young,” Olivia said.

  Cassie nodded.

  “They are. Pre-adolescent, if I had to guess. And Gana live for centuries. Why in the world would all of their children so close in age?”

  Troy waited, then shook his head.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I,” Cassie said, sticking her head around the doorway then pulling back against the wall.

  “So how do you know that the generations are being kept apart?” Troy asked, feeling a bit like he was falling down the rabbit’s hole.

  “I saw the nursery,” Cassie said.

  “Why didn’t you open with that?” Troy asked. She laughed.

  “Because sometimes you say insightful things, when I’m not just telling you everything. The kids only go up to a certain age, but they go all the way down to babies, in that nursery, being cared for by low-level Gana and outsiders.”

  “Why?” Olivia asked.

  “Good question,” Cassie answered. “Grand told us we were looking in the right direction, and I intend to figure it out. Something important is happening. It just started in the last few years. The Gana are breeding, and they’re breeding in big numbers.”

  “War?” Troy asked. She looked at him sharply, then her expression softened.

  “I don’t know. It’s possible. I would expect the other Gana to have huge families, too, if that were the case.”

  “How do you know they aren’t?” Olivia asked. “How do you even know whose kids those are, that you saw?”

  “Eli knows who his mother is,” Cassie said. “He was the only one who did. Unless there’s a reason for the order they were in, it suggests that he’s in a significant minority. That most of them are children without mothers. None of the kids in that nursery would know who either of their parents were.” She shook her head. “We need to move. We only have thirty seconds left here.”

  There were more turns, more hallways, and then a small door, solidly built and out of the way of the rest of the palace.

  Cassie took a piece of the electronics off of her arm and put it on the door, then pulled something out of her back pocket and slid it between the door and the frame.

  “What is that?” Olivia asked.

  “Key,” Cassie said.

  “Where did you get it?” Troy asked. She glanced at him deviously.

  “What did you think I’ve been doing all this time?”

  “Why do you need that when you’ve got the key?” Olivia asked as Cassie peeled the membrane back off the door and put it on her arm. Cassie glanced around then pulled the door open.

  “Bypassing the rest of the security,” she said.

  Troy looked at the dark stairwell, the sense of momentum that drove him to dash down into the darkness momentarily overcome by a random, rational thought.

  “Why do you even need us here?” he asked. Cassie looked down the hall once more, then grinned at him as she started tripping down the stairs on quick feet.

  “Who else am I going to impress with all this?” she asked. “Last one through close the door.”

  *********

  The world below Kable Telk was completely different than the one upstairs. The hallways were lit with artificial lighting, sterile and constant. The walls and floor were tan, cut, it seemed, directly from the native rock, and there were no doors, no fixtures, nothing to differentiate one hallway from the next other than the simple geography of the place. All around them there were voices, but it wasn’t like upstairs, here, either. They were distant, quiet, busy voices, the voices of people talking as they worked, or murmuring to themselves as Troy walked past this doorway or that. Very few people were out, and when they were, they walked quietly, quickly, taking a direct path where they were going. Once, Cassie, Olivia, and Troy pulled up short as a Gana woman came out of a room not twenty-five feet in front of them, turning away and walking, in plain sight of them, to where the hallway T-ed into another one. Troy didn’t know what Cassie would have done, if the woman had turned the other way. He didn’t know what he would have done.

  He was certain he couldn’t find his way back upstairs, even with the careful mental notes he had taken about each turn, each feature he’d been able to differentiate.

  They’d gone past dormitories, what appeared to be a cafeteria.

  “They force Gana to live like this?” he whispered once. “Their servants outside live better than this.”

  “The servants are specialists,” Cassie had answered. “They’re important.”

  “Kron is a monster,” Olivia said. Cassie shook her head.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Troy didn’t know what that meant.

  They went on.

  Eventually he identified a vague idea of a search pattern that Cassie was following. They were covering huge amounts of ground, breezing past areas that seemed to have high-density populations in them, or were frequently used. She was looking for abandoned space.

  Where you would hide something.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked as the sound of voices began to die off behind them. She turned a corner and stopped, looking self-satisfied.

  “This is a good start,” she said. He came to stand next to Olivia and Cassie to look down an even darker stairwell.

  “What do you think is down there?” Olivia asked.

  “Whatever it is, it’s important, and no one ever goes to look at it,” Cassie answered, tipping to look back down the hallway where they’d come. “Deep, dark secrets live down here, not just the ordinary ones.”

  Troy hesitated, already feeling like a rat in a maze, but he had no choice but to follow her as she started down, more carefully this time. Olivia held back longer than he did.

  “What if they catch us?” Olivia asked. “Up to now, maybe that Cassie is special would… but…”

  He nodded.

  “I know. But there’s something wrong here. You can feel it, can’t you?”

  She pressed her lips and nodded quickly, then gave him a quick, nervous laugh.

  “I just wish it were someone else looking for it.”

  “Too late now, O,” Cassie called up quietly. “It’s forward from here, until we find what we’re looking for.”

  Troy watched Olivia’s face, wanting to push her but not wanting to say the wrong thing and break whatever spell or resolve had brought her this far. She nodded.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’ll go.”

  He nodded and took her hand, going down the stairs slowly, one foot over the other, listening for anything that he might wish he’d heard, if he were less careful.

  Don’t imagine things. Keep it in reality. But every detail, every real detail, has the potential to save your life.

  It had never been true before, he thought. Not like it was for the jumpers, every day.

  Cassie was at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for them.

  “That looks clear-cut, what do you think?” she asked.

  They stood.

  The air down here was dry. It had lost its characteristic baked-caramel scent somewhere behind them, and just smelled like dust and abandonment. The hallway in front of them was straight, no turns, no doorways, no intersections, and the floor had worn a soft rut where obedient feet always trod in the middle of it. The lighting was subtle, lodged along the ceiling and a soft orange that felt like windows at dawn.

  There was only one way to go.

  Cassie was the first to start down the narrow path in the center of the hallway, and Troy and Olivia fell in step behind her. Even quiet feet stirred up echoes that were lonely in the space. There were no voices. Voices didn’t belong here.

  The lights dimmed as they got closer to the end of the hallway, where an anachronistic door, more technology than metal, blocked the way forward. Cassie leaned her forehead against it for a moment, as if communing with it, then she
stepped back and fidgeted with her arm for a second before peeling off another strip and affixing it to the door. There was a long wait, then a tired mechanism groaned and the door popped with a soft explosion of air that kicked up the layer of dust on the floor of the hallway. Cassie pushed it forward and Troy followed her through.

  The room on the other side was shocking by comparison. It was cut from the same stone, but it was full of light to the point that Troy had to take almost a minute to let his eyes adjust before the light stopped hurting his head. The space around him was round and he turned his face up to find no ceiling above him, but sky. The walls were lined with mirrors that all directed sunlight down toward the bottom of the great silo.

  And then he saw her.

  She was pure white, a Gana woman reclining on a chair watching him with unblinking eyes.

  And then, as his eyes continued to filter out the intensity of the light, he saw that she was restrained. Metal clamps burrowed into her arms, her legs, her sides, and a knotwork of electronics was attached to her chest, running across her body and down into the floor.

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  Cassie was the first to approach her.

  “I’m not sure that’s the right question,” she answered quietly. “I’ve been looking for something, but…” she looked up at the streaming sunlight coming in from above, “this isn’t what I expected.”

  “Who are you?” the woman asked again, her voice gaining a bit of strength as if stiff with disuse. She wasn’t demanding or angry, but now she had a musicality to her words that hadn’t been there before.

  “I’m Palta,” Cassie said. “These are my friends.”

  “And why are you here?” the woman asked.

  “Again, not sure that’s the right question,” Cassie said.

  “And yet, you will answer me,” the woman said, her head slowly turning from one to the next of them.

  “No,” Cassie said, shaking her head slowly. “I think it’s self-evident. Who are you?”

  “I am the Goddess of the Gana,” the woman said.

  “That’s what they call you?” Cassie asked, walking a lap around the chair.

  “It is,” the woman said. “There is always one, only one.”

  “You’re a power plant,” Cassie said.

  “Yes,” the Gana woman said after a moment. “I am.”

  “No,” Cassie answered. “That’s just not good enough.”

  The woman gave a soft sigh that might have been a laugh.

  “What else could you possibly ask of me?”

  “A spine, for one,” Cassie murmured.

  “My spine is demonstrably present,” the Gana woman said. Cassie sighed.

  “The Goddess won’t do,” she said. “What did your mother call you?”

  “I only met my mother once,” the woman said. “On the day that she died.”

  Cassie sat down on the ground in view of the woman, resting her elbows on the outside of her knees.

  “Tell me about that,” she said. The woman looked at her with an odd expression.

  “Why are you here?” she asked. “It isn’t time.”

  “Time for what?” Troy asked. Her slow gaze moved to him, measuring him up in a way different than she had, with Cassie, then nodded slowly.

  “I am the Goddess of the Gana,” she said. “Once a year, there is a ceremony in my honor, to keep the memory of me in front of my people. It is not time.”

  “And you’re alone the rest of the year?” Olivia asked. The expression from the Gana woman would have been kind if she were capable of such an expression. As it was, she merely got close, but it was significant enough that Troy was moved by it.

  “It is my role,” she said.

  “Tell me about your mother,” Cassie said. The Gana woman was more sharp with Cassie, now, eyes taking her in with a more predatory fierceness.

  “My mother was the previous Goddess,” she said. “I was here the day that she died, and that was the day I became the Goddess.”

  “That doesn’t sound fair,” Cassie said. “Why would you want that?”

  Her tongue darted across her teeth.

  “Why would anyone ask what I want?” the white woman answered. “It is my role to play.”

  “Everyone else gets to pick something,” Cassie said. “How can they just put you in that chair and leave you there?”

  “I watch over and protect my people,” the woman said.

  “You power them,” Cassie said, “while they forget about you.”

  “They remember me each year,” the woman said.

  “They call you a goddess,” Troy said, going to stand next to Olivia. “But they treat you worse than they treat their slaves.”

  “They don’t feed her,” Olivia murmured.

  “She photosynthesizes,” Cassie answered. “Though that’s just enough to allow her to survive. The amount of power she’s generating is massive compared to that.”

  “How?” Troy asked. Cassie shook her head.

  “Too elevated.”

  “Don’t speak of me like a child,” the woman said. “I am the Goddess of the Gana, one of a long line of Goddesses, and we care for our people.”

  Cassie tipped her head back and forth, rocking ever so slightly as she did.

  “You do a lot for them, to be sure,” she said. “But they take a lot more than you would give, I suspect.”

  “They leave you down here to rot,” Troy murmured.

  “How did your mother die?” Cassie asked.

  “She gave herself, as did her mother before her,” the Gana woman said. Cassie nodded.

  “So it’s true. That part, at least.”

  The Gana was becoming agitated.

  “Why are you here?”

  “We can’t leave her like this,” Olivia said.

  “They take your children,” Cassie said.

  There was a long silence, and Cassie nodded as if the Gana woman had confirmed it.

  “They take your children. Which of your brothers is fathering them, at this point?”

  “What?” Olivia asked.

  “Is it part of the ceremony?” Cassie asked. “Or is it after?”

  The woman turned her head away.

  “The line must continue,” she finally whispered.

  Cassie looked like she might have regretted it, but she spoke again, lower this time, intimate.

  “It wasn’t so bad, was it? Before? But you grew into a woman and they need their next power source. That’s how they decide the king, isn’t it? The one who fathers the next one is the next king. That’s how they never have a mother or a wife. She’s locked away down here, waiting for her daughter to come of age so she can give up and explode in a ball of energy.”

  The Gana woman looked like she was going to say something, but no words came, and then she looked away again.

  “They all want so badly to be king, too, don’t they?” Cassie asked. “There’s supposed to be decorum to it, ceremony. But they sneak down here when they think no one is going to notice, don’t they?”

  The Gana woman’s breath was odd, almost jagged, now, and her eyes closed.

  “You don’t belong here,” Cassie said. “You don’t belong to them. You belong to yourself.”

  “I am the Goddess of the Gana,” the woman said finally.

  “Yes,” Cassie said. “But would you wish this on your daughter? Would you choose it for her?”

  “It is an honor to serve my people,” she said.

  “What’s your name?” Cassie asked.

  There was a squeaking noise, high pitched and almost desperate.

  “What’s your name?” Cassie asked again, louder, her voice echoing up the rock walls.

  “I had a nurse who called me Violet,” the Gana woman finally said. “Long, long ago.”

  “She was your half-sister,” Cassie said. “Your father became king after your mother gave birth to you, and all of your half-siblings that your mother had with your uncles became househ
old staff, including your nurse.”

  “How does she know that?” Olivia murmured into Troy’s ear. He shook his head.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “But it rings true, doesn’t it? There aren’t any children anywhere.”

  “The genetics of it,” Olivia said slowly, “generation after generation.”

  “That isn’t the worst of it,” Troy said, watching the Gana woman. She was still as expressionless as she had ever been, as any of the Gana were, but she was crumbling, like baked sand under too much force.

  “My children,” she said softly.

  “Yes,” Cassie said, without mercy. “They will be servants to the one of your brothers who wins the genetic lottery and fathers the next power source.”

  “Violet,” Troy said. “We aren’t going to leave you like this.”

  “You must,” the woman said. “It is my role.”

  Cassie stood.

  “I’ve never been much for roles,” she said. “Especially when they set out to screw you from the start. You can walk away from this, but you have to want to. We’ll be back tomorrow.”

  She started for the door, and Troy caught her shoulder.

  “We aren’t just leaving her there.”

  “We are, today,” Cassie said, looking over her shoulder. “She needs time to think about what freedom means. She’s never even thought about it before. And I need time to get ready.”

  “Get ready for what, exactly?” Olivia asked.

  “We can’t climb out,” Cassie said, looking up the long walls. “It’s just not rational to expect it of her, and the trip back down is too exposed. So we go through Kable Telk.”

  “How?” Troy asked. She winked at him.

  “I’ll figure it out. Come on.”

  They followed her quickly back up to the servants’ level, through it, and up to the main level.

  “Can you find your way back to Grand from here?” Cassie asked. Troy nodded. He’d paid plenty of attention to the highly-featured main floor; he could have made it back to the classroom in the dark.

  “Good,” she said. “I’ll meet you at the servants’ village in thirty minutes. Keep moving. The timing is going to be tight.”