Kingdom of Cages

by Sarah Zettel

  “What have we been running for you?” gasped Chena. “What did you give Sadia to do?”

  Nan Elle’s spine straightened minutely. “I’ll send your instructions down. Take your grandson back to bed. This may take a moment.”

  “Thank you,” lisped the old man. He probably had even fewer teeth than Nan Elle.

  Nan Elle didn’t move again until he had left. Neither did Chena. She stayed where she was, trying to get her breath and trying to imagine what the old woman might say to her, or try not to say.

  The door shut. The lamps weren’t on, and the room plunged into a murky twilight.

  “What has brought on this fit?” inquired Nan Elle as she moved to sit in her high-backed chair.

  “Oh, no.” Chena turned to keep her eyes focused on the old woman. “Not this time. This time, you tell me.”

  “I’ll tell you anything you ask, Chena.” She spread her hands. “But I ask you to do the same. What brought this on?”

  “What did you give us to carry?” Chena shot back.

  “Letters,” answered Nan Elle promptly. “To friends and colleagues, about growing seasons and proper doses of properly registered and approved plants. Nothing incriminating, nothing even very interesting. Every leaf and stem I sent you to buy was so thoroughly licensed I was spending as much time filling out the forms as I was administering to my patients.”

  “Then why’s Constable Regan got Sadia and my mom in there with him?” She stabbed her finger down vaguely toward the constable’s house. “If it’s not you, who is it?”

  “Sadia and your mother are in with the constable?” Nan Elle frowned. “Is there someone from the hothouse in there with them?”

  Chena nodded miserably. “It had to be something you sent with us. There isn’t anybody else who could have got us in trouble.” Except almost with the hacker-tailor, but I turned him down and Sadia wouldn’t…

  Every part of Chena froze solid for a moment. No. He disappeared her father. Sadia wouldn’t…

  Unless she thought it would keep her close to him. Unless she thought she could get something out of him.

  Unless he offered to tell her what happened to her father.

  “Mmm…” Nan Elle nodded. “You seem to have hit on some reason yourself.”

  “I…” Chena swallowed and stumbled backward. “I have to go.…”

  “Chena Trust.” Nan Elle stood. Chena stared. The old woman seemed to have shriveled, as if something had been taken out of her. “If you’re in trouble, Chena…” She walked slowly forward and laid her wrinkled palm onto Chena’s hand. “If you ever need help getting… away, you use my name—Elle Stepka. You say I am your grandmother. I will help you, and your sister, if you ever need it.”

  Chena pulled away, rubbing her hand, as if she thought Nan Elle had left something behind.

  “Thanks,” she muttered, retreating toward the door.

  “I’m sorry, Chena Trust.” Nan Elle hunched even further in on herself. “This was not my doing. This is the way things sometimes are on this world.”

  “Yeah.” Chena’s fumbling hand found the doorknob and she escaped into the daylight. She bit her lip hard and started running again, back to the cop’s house. She had to tell him what happened wasn’t Sadia’s fault. She would tell him about the hacker-tailor. It was his fault, whatever had happened. Sadia had been bullied or bribed. It wasn’t her fault.

  But when she got there, the cop’s house was dark and no one answered when she pounded on the door.

  Chena stared at the blank wooden door and felt her mind go numb. Where had they gone? Where was Mom? Where was Sadia? What should she do?

  What do I do?

  But her mind was so full, so frightened, there was no room in it for new ideas or plans. All on its own, her body turned around and trudged her back home. Chena walked into the empty house and sat down on one of the pillows. She stared at the table waiting, but for what, she wasn’t really sure.

  Eventually, though, her knees got stiff and her mind got bored. She stood up, drank some water she poured from the pitcher by the stove, sliced up some bread for lunch, and poked at the beans soaking in the bowl of water by the stove to see if they were soft enough to start cooking yet.

  She had the beans gently boiling and had just tossed in a handful of salt when Mom came in, with Teal in tow.

  Mom took in the situation at a glance.

  “Thank you, Chena, for starting lunch. We’re going to need it.” She closed the door behind them. “We’re moving again.”

  Chena couldn’t say anything. She just bowed her head.

  “Back to the dorm?” asked Teal. “It’s the rent, right?”

  “No,” said Mom, sinking down to one of the pillows. “There have been some complications. We’re not going to be able to stay in Off-shoot.” She ran her hand over the table, pausing to trace the nails that she and Teal had put in. “We’re going to the hothouse. I’m going to take their offer.”

  Chena bit her lip. It’s not my fault, she thought desperately. I didn’t do anything. I had permission to be out there. It can’t be my fault.

  Teal spoke the words Chena could not. “You’re going to have a baby for them? You said you wouldn’t do that.”

  Mom nodded. “I know.” Her eyes were shining.

  No. Chena took a step forward. Don’t cry. You can’t cry. This isn’t my fault.

  “Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do.” Mom didn’t look at them. She looked at her fingertips as they traced circles around a crooked nail. “Sometimes we even have to do things we said we never would.”

  “But why?” Teal cried. She stood with her hands balled into fists. “I don’t want to go. I was just getting used to it here.”

  “None of us want to go,” said Mom. “But we can’t stay. They are asking for too much.”

  “Why?” Teal stomped her foot. “What happened? I’m sick of all this stuff going on and I don’t know why!”

  Teal, shut up. Just shut up, Chena, frozen in place by guilt and fear, thought fiercely at her sister. I’ll tell you all about it later, I promise. Just shut up now.

  There was a splash and a hiss. Chena jerked her head around. The beans were boiling furiously, the water slopping over onto the stove. Chena snatched up a rag to use as a hot pad and grabbed the pot off the burner, but she moved too fast and caught her toe on the hearth corner and stumbled, sending boiling water and squishy beans spilling in a huge wave across the floor.

  Mom was on her feet and across the room before Chena even saw her move. “Are you all right?” Did you burn yourself?” She took hold of the pot’s handles and lifted pot and rag away from Chena.

  “No.” Chena was shaking. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

  “I know,” said Mom, looking at the empty pot and then at the floor with its lake of thin, steaming soup. “ Let’s get this cleaned up, all right?”

  “Okay.” Chena reached for the rags, and she saw Teal, still standing in front of the door, now with her arms folded across her chest.

  You did that on purpose, Teal’s face said. You did that so I wouldn’t ask any more questions. I know you did.

  I didn’t, really, she tried to say back. It was just an accident. I promise.

  “Teal, come help,” said Mom.

  Teal turned and stormed out the door. It banged shut behind her, loud enough to make Chena wince.

  Mom just sighed. “Well, we’ll let her go for a little while. Help me here, Chena.” She got down on her knees, mopping at Chena’s mess.

  Chena knelt beside her and started working. There was nothing else to do.

  Teal wasn’t home by the time Chena and Mom got the beans cleaned up. Mom announced they should go look for her. She went to check the library and sent Chena to search the dorms and dining hall.

  Chena had a feeling she knew where Teal was, but she was grateful for the chance to get away. She real
ly wanted to find Sadia and ask her what had happened, why Shond was being taken away, why Regan had questioned her, with Mom there.

  But Sadia wasn’t anywhere. She wasn’t in the dorms or the dining hall, and when Chena started asking, people just stared at her, or, worse, turned their backs on her. Bewildered and frightened, she climbed back to their house and all the way up onto the roof. There, in the weeds, she found Teal lying sprawled on her back, staring up at the waving branches overhead.

  Chena stepped into her line of sight. Teal focused on her for a moment, and then her gaze flickered away.

  “Mom’s looking for you,” said Chena, squatting down next to her. “Let her look,” announced Teal bitterly. “Like she cares what happens to me.”

  “This isn’t Mom’s fault.” Chena snicked a blade of grass off its stem with her fingernail and started tearing it into little pieces. “She’s doing her best.”

  “She isn’t doing anything!” Teal pounded the ground with her fist. “She’s just sitting around wringing her hands and saying, ‘Oh, my goodness! Whatever shall we do?’ ”

  “Teal…” Chena scattered little bits of grass. “You’re not seeing everything—”

  “No, of course not.” She sat up abruptly. “And you’re going to tell me what’s going on, are you? Because you know everything! You’re not here ninety percent of the time, you don’t care piss and spit about anybody but yourself, and you’re still the one she actually talks to!”

  Chena opened her mouth and closed it again. No, no, don’t tell me I screwed this up too. “That’s not it, Teal—”

  “Go away.” Teal closed her eyes.

  “I can’t,” Chena said.

  “Chena!” Mom’s voice called up from below. “Is Teal up there with you?”

  “Yes!” Chena called back down.

  Teal’s eyes snapped open and her face tightened into an expression of pure anger at Chena’s betrayal.

  There was a moment of silence from Mom. At last she said, “Okay, as long as we know where she is.” Chena heard the door open and close.

  Teal went back to staring at the branches. Anger stabbed through Chena. What was she supposed to do? Teal wanted to be impossible. Nobody knew what was going on. Nobody could know. Not here, anyway, where they couldn’t even get their hands on a decent computer.

  Chena stood. “You want to stay up here all night and get bat shit on you, you do that.”

  She pounded down the steps without looking back and slammed the door hard behind her.

  Mom was in the bedroom. Chena could see her through the open door.

  “She’s staying up here?” Mom asked, lifting the lid on the clothes box.

  “Yeah.” Chena leaned against the inside threshold.

  “That’s okay. Come help me get some stuff together.” She frowned at the clothes. “We won’t need that much, just enough for a couple of days until we get settled.”

  “What about the rest of it?” Chena gestured vaguely around the room. “What do we do with this stuff?”

  “Nothing. It’ll go to whoever gets the house next.” She picked up her nightshirt. “I suppose, anyway.”

  Chena wrapped her arms around herself as if she were trying to hold something in. “Mom?”

  “Yes, Supernova?” Mom folded the nightshirt’s shoulders in toward each other and smoothed it over her arm.

  “Why are you doing this? Why are you really doing this?”

  Mom laid the folded shirt back on the pallet. “Because if I don’t, they are going to take you away from me.”

  Chena’s chest constricted, hard. “They said that?”

  Mom nodded. She picked up a pair of Teal’s trousers.

  “Why?” cried Chena. “They can’t. This place has laws. I didn’t do anything.”

  “No,” Mom agreed. “But apparently that girl you hired to help with your errand-running did, and they are saying that because you paid her, you are responsible for her.”

  Chena froze. She didn’t even close her mouth. Mom folded the trousers neatly and laid them on top of the nightshirt. “I didn’t know either,” she said. “They are not accepting that as an excuse.”

  “But—” began Chena

  “No, Supernova.” Mom shook her head. “They wanted me and they got me. All we can do now is ride the wave and look for a way out.” She plucked one of her work shirts out of the box. “Another way out.”

  Wordlessly, Chena walked over to stand next to her mother. She pulled a pair of slacks out of the box and folded them in half, and then in half again. She laid them next to the pile of shirts and reached for a pair of socks.

  A knock sounded on the front door. Mom dropped the shirt she was folding, went into the front room, and opened the door. Madra stood on the walk outside. Her face was a mask. Only her eyes held any expression, and Chena hoped that no one would ever look at her like that.

  “I understand you will be transferring to the hothouse,” said Madra.

  “Yes.” Mom inclined her head. “I was going to come find you. I imagine there’s some paperwork?”

  “Not much, but I do need to read your chips.” Madra pulled the scanner off her belt. “Is Teal here too?”

  “She’s on the roof,” volunteered Chena. “I’ll go get her.”

  “That’s okay.” Teal stepped into view, squeezing past Madra to get through the door. “I’m here. What are we doing now?”

  “Checking out,” said Mom. “Hold out your hands.”

  They all held up their right hands, and Madra ran her scanner over the tattoos. When she was done she checked the reader and hit a couple of keys before returning the machine to her belt. Then she looked at Mom one more time and opened her mouth.

  Mom didn’t give her a chance to say anything. “I know, Madra. Thank you for your help.”

  “Good-bye, Helice.” She walked back out the door, just as a skinny man in black slacks and a white shirt came into view.

  Chena recognized him at once: He was the man from the constable’s office. Teal’s spy. The cold glance and small nod she got from Teal confirmed it. This was Basante, and he had come to take them all away. Like Sadia had been taken away, and Shond, and their parents. Chena took hold of Mom’s hand, and didn’t even feel childish about it.

  “Yes, Chena,” said Mom as she squeezed her hand. “We’re going now.”

  It was a proper assignment, Tam’s Conscience tried to tell him. Now that the family Trust is in the complex, they are out of your jurisdiction as administrator. Those are the parameters. It does you no good to be angry with your sister.

  “But it may do someone else some good,” he muttered back as he strode into the laboratory.

  The laboratory was as much of a hive as the family dome. But where the family dome was a garden and forest of living plants, the laboratory was a forest of workstations and a garden of equipment—clusters of monitors, a labyrinth of pipes and aquariums, mazes of glass-walled cubicles that could be sealed off to create sterile environments.

  According to Aleph, Dionte was in one of the imaging rooms. Tam followed the curve of the wall until he came to the appropriate door. Tam’s touch on its surface caused it to flash his name to whoever occupied the chamber. After a moment, the door slid open and let him in.

  Walking into the imaging room was like walking into a cage of light. The room’s glass screens had been set to show thousands of fine lines that shimmered in the air, making a complex, multicolored net around Dionte. She sat in the center of that net, her fingers splayed out, touching nothing but light.

  “What are you doing?”

  She did not move. “Experimenting.”

  “I thought that was Basante’s job.”

  Dionte smiled. “When it comes to the Conscience implants, I am allowed to do a little experimenting as well, you know.”

  “You are experimenting with your Conscience?”

  Her smile grew fierce. “Did you know that it takes very little restructuring to connect the data input functions t
o the actual Conscience functions? If this works, I will be able to feed raw data directly into my subconscious and use the brain’s nondeclarative memory processes to organize the input and create the appropriate connections with what I’ve already learned, without having to take the time to understand it consciously.” Her eyes grew distant, seeing the future rather than what was in front of her. “Think of it: Each one of us will be able to have the understanding of an entire city-mind inside us. Think how our judgment, our possibilities will expand. We will be able to reliably harness intuition to cognition.”

  “Because we all know what a bother thought is,” said Tam dryly. “I can see many uses for this development. Although, on the face of it, it sounds a little like the ancient idea of sleep teaching, and we all know how badly that worked.”

  Dionte finally lowered her hands. “We’ll be able to see the future, Tam. See it and understand it, not just guess at it.” She rubbed her fingertips together, staring at them as if she’d never felt the touch of her own skin before. “If our ancestors had given us this gift instead of just nagging little voices in our ears, we wouldn’t be under siege now.”

  “If not this, then it would have been something else.” Tam shrugged. “That is the way it is, Sister.”

  “But not the way it has to stay, Brother.”

  The iron certainty in her voice took Tam aback. For a moment he could not even think of how to question her.

  So he kept his voice as bland as he could. “Just be sure that with all this wondrous internal rearrangement, you don’t forget how to look out and see the rest of us.”

  “Thank you, Brother,” she said, matching and even mocking his tone. “I will keep that under advisement.”

  Tam turned to the light that encased her. “This”—Tam gestured to the colored lines shimmering between them—“is not a map of your Conscience implant.”

  “No.” Dionte’s voice took on a tinge of awe, as if seeing an artist’s masterpiece. “This is Eden.”

  Tam turned in place, tracing the colored branches of the fate map. Each branch indicated the expression of a single gene at some point in an individual’s life. With practiced eyes, he read the implications and complications as the timer flickered and the branches grew, stretched, and shifted, playing their expressions out across the fabric of simulated years.