Kingdom of Cages

by Sarah Zettel

  He remembered the night when their parents explained to them in the lowest of whispers that they were not like other children. Their Consciences would not be able to hold them as firmly as other people’s did. So they must be more careful, more attentive, and more certain of what they did. They would have a special duty when they were grown to help those who could not move without their Consciences’ approval. There would come a time when someone was needed who could stand up to the rest of the family. When that time came, they, Tam and Dionte Bhavasar, would have to take the lead.

  He remembered Dionte so recently standing before the family and arguing vehemently that Pandora needed to protect itself against the Authority. She drew multiple examples from history to show that the Authority would not have the patience to wait for solutions. The complexes could not cooperate with the Called. Any such effort was doomed failure. They must be ready to strike when the inevitable attack came.

  Tam felt himself rise. He felt himself walk across the amphitheater, only vaguely aware that Cartes had stopped speaking. His body moved without instruction from him or his Conscience and came to stand in front of Dionte.

  “Where is it, Sister?” he asked, his voice sounding harsh and wrong in his ears.

  But he might as well have been asking her for one of her daily reports, for all the reaction she displayed. “I think that question is for you, Tam,” she said quietly. “Along with whether or not those children really belong to Elle Stepka.”

  “Aleph says they do,” countered Tam. “Has Aleph been tampered with?”

  Dionte blinked. “At least once, obviously.”

  “Are you submitting an accusation?”

  “Are you?”

  “Please!” Someone stepped between them. Navram. One of their father’s four birth brothers, and a member of the Senior Committee. “You are birth siblings as well as branch. This does not become either of you. Where are your Consciences?”

  An interesting question. Tam held Dionte’s gaze without blinking. His chest was heaving, he realized. He couldn’t seem to get enough air.

  “Tam.” Navram laid his hands on Tam’s shoulders and walked him backward two steps. “It does you credit that you are upset by the damage done to your charge, but if we do not proceed in an orderly fashion, we will never know what happened. We will accuse, fight, and lose, that’s all.”

  Tam bowed his head. “Yes, of course. You’re right.”

  Navram nodded, satisfied with the answer and the tone of its delivery. “Now, do you truly want to make an accusation against Dionte?”

  Tam did not look up. He did not want to see what expression Dionte wore.

  I have no proof. She has said nothing to me that she has not said in public, with the agreement and support of a dozen others. It does not matter what I know, only what I can prove.

  But if I can say it, perhaps others can find the proof.

  He steeled himself and lifted his gaze. Dionte remained where she was, with her hands folded in front of her. Her eyes gleamed with anger and determination.

  Say anything, her eyes told him, and I will have the children back here.

  Tam swallowed. It was an empty threat if proof of her actions was found, but if it was not…

  Then the Trust daughters would be back in the complex, and this time they would be in the involuntary wing, and Nan Elle would probably be in there with them.

  “No. I misspoke,” he said, stepping back on his own. “I am distressed, and I am sorry.”

  “It does you credit,” Navram told him firmly. “But this work belongs to all of us, and we must be able to share in its reclamation.”

  “Of course.” Tam bowed to Navram, and to his family. As he did, his gaze slid sideways to Dionte. The nod she returned was barely perceptible. He’d read her threat correctly.

  There is nothing you can do about that, he told himself, taking his seat amid a miasma of reassuring odors. Unless you are ready to sacrifice Teal and Chena.

  I do not want to be ready for that, he answered himself. They were his; they had been placed under his protection the day they came to Offshoot. He would protect them. He would not fail them again.

  Tam got ready to wait out the rest of the reports, declarations, and summaries.

  At the end, he rose, ignored the questions and strategy planning going on all around him, and descended the stairway that only some of the family could open, heading down into the cellar commonly called the Synapese, down to where Aleph could be accessed directly. He had work to finish.

  The meeting had gone on longer than he had expected, but he was still well within the transitional window. Aleph was an organic mind, very like a human mind on a gigantic scale. In the human mind it took time and chemistry before a short-term memory became long-term. Changes in the neocortex had to be translated into new connections between multiple separate structures in the medial temporal lobe, which in turn had to create new connections to the entorhinal cortex, which in turn had to communicate with the hippocampus. It was a complex process. Compared to the rate at which an inorganic computer could store information, it was glacially slow. It did, however, have a distinct advantage. Once the long-term conscious memory was set, it was very difficult to lie to Aleph. No search-and-replace program, however sophisticated, could be used to change Aleph’s memory. Like a human being, Aleph not only knew, but she was aware of what she knew and how she came to know it.

  But, like a human being, Aleph had a weakness. While the changes were taking place that shifted information from short-term to long-term memory, the information was vulnerable to disruption or distortion. New cues could cover the old. New impressions could blur and fog what had previously been crystal clear. Whole scenes could be discounted in favor of more familiar, stronger impressions. Everything depended on the relative strength of the synapses that were formed between the different cortical structures, and synapse strength could be manipulated. Emotion was the key. Strong emotions created strong connections, and emotions were easy to alter externally. Human beings had been doing it to themselves by using various chemicals almost since the race first climbed down from the trees of Old Earth.

  Knowledge of Aleph’s cortical geography and neurochemistry, that was all that was needed. Oh, and a Conscience that had been fore-shortened by birth parents who saw themselves as the latest in a long line of those who watched the watchmen.

  Did you know that I’d be watching Dionte too? he asked their ghosts. His Conscience made him smell smoke and ash. It didn’t know what he was up to, but it didn’t like it. It worked to make him uneasy with smells of disaster. Blood, smoke, rot, all scents that went straight to his hindbrain and conjured up nameless discomfort, which wandered around his mind unearthing old, unwanted, distracting thoughts.

  Strong emotions created strong memories. Blood and rot. His birth mother dying the day he turned thirty-seven. Despite what the villagers thought, they were not immortal in here. They did not prolong life. Such attempts led humanity to attempt to dominate their world so it would be forced to keep them alive. It was wrong to alter the course of life, they were told. Humans were part of the world’s life, and it was wrong to alter, to change what was natural, important, and needed. Change they were told, over and over, should only serve Pandora.

  “No,” he told himself. “I will do this thing.” It was a split second before he realized he had spoken aloud.

  What are you doing? asked his Conscience. Why are you going into the Synapese?

  He came to the bottom of the steps. Glowing pillars lit the world, the ceiling being reserved to hold the organic material that made up Aleph and all its subsystems. It was an open space, the size of the whole dome, broken only by the support struts that kept the entire complex from sinking into the marsh.

  The tenders, those charged with taking care of Aleph, were in an uproar, of course. Sections of ceiling had been removed, like plates of a giant skull, to expose the naked matter underneath. With fine needles they took their samples, injected
their hormones and epinepherines, trying to find where the process had gone wrong, trying to help Aleph remember anything of what had happened to Helice Trust or to the project she was carrying. Especially to the project she was carrying. It had been almost to term. It might be alive somewhere, even though its birth mother no longer was.

  Because I was slow and stupid. Because I believed a little bureaucratic check could keep things in line and because I stayed away from the children so that they would not associate me with anything bad if trouble came. I thought if that happened I would have time to get to them, time to explain, time to stop it. Tam’s jaw tightened. But then I thought I’d be able to give them a free choice to come in or stay out, didn’t I? And I failed in that too. Failed in every last one of my responsibilities to this family.

  All his adult life had been spent in balancing the needs of his family against the needs of the villages and the villagers. Hundreds of people, hundreds of lives, had passed in and out of his hands, and yet he had never cared for a family under such pressure. He’d never had a family he had watched so closely, or who had struggled so hard to maintain what freedom they had, not just Helice, but both her children.

  Never had a family he’d failed so badly, never one of his own that he had allowed to die.

  “Tam?” Hagin, chief tender and another of Tam’s uncles, noticed him standing there, probably alerted by Aleph’s voice in his ear. “What do you need?”

  “I was hoping to help.” Before he became an administrator, he’d been a tender. It was felt that the ones who had to work directly with Aleph should understand her intimately. He spread his hands. “The Eden incubation was under my supervision. I feel…” He shook his head. “I can’t stand back and do nothing.”

  Trust your family, his Conscience told him. What if you make things worse? So much damage has already been done.

  He smelled blood again, and in his mind’s eye he clearly saw Helice Trust on the floor. His smile was grim. The problem with emotional recall. Sometimes it could raise exactly the wrong image.

  Hagin was consulting the readout on the back of his hand. “We could use another measurement in the amygdala.” He looked Tam up and down. “You still remember how, Nephew?”

  “You can watch me if you want.”

  Hagin shook his head. “No need.” He spoke over his shoulder, more of his attention on the work than on his nephew.

  No time. Tam filled in for him.

  Tam clasped Hagin’s hand, and Hagin returned his grip. The action woke up Tam’s display and synched it to Hagin’s.

  There were tool lockers in some of the unlit support pillars. Tam retrieved a needle probe as long as his forearm and checked the calibration on the butt end. It was a familiar action, calming both him and his Conscience.

  Aleph’s amygdala was in the northwest quarter, about a fifteen-minute hike across the broad open space of the Synapese. Tam had been away from this work long enough that he had to glance at the ceiling map now and again to remember his way. Like a human brain, Aleph’s had multiple redundancies, but it also had centers of activity. The amygdala did much of the work of emotional memory. Theoretically, a family member murdering Helice Trust should have upset Aleph badly. Even if the memory of events had been somehow repressed, she should remember being upset. If the chemical traces of that emotion could be located and enhanced, Aleph might be able to articulate what had upset her, leading the tenders back further to the factual memory.

  That was, of course, the goal of all the frenzied activity going on around him. Tam’s goal was somewhat different, however. He needed to create a strong, positive emotional connection to a quite different piece of information.

  Tam climbed a work platform and positioned himself so he sat cross-legged under the amygdala’s central locale. With clumsy fingers, he unsealed the carapace and exposed Aleph to his view.

  “Tam?” inquired Aleph, sounding a lot like his Conscience. “I am glad you have come to help. I do not understand what has happened.”

  “We’ll find out, Aleph. Try to be easy.” He lifted the needle and inserted it gently and smoothly into the soft flesh. Aleph could not feel physical pain, only emotional.

  “There should not have been a way for this to happen. What could have been done? Was the room tampered with? Was I?” The question was soft and scared, almost childlike.

  “We don’t know yet, Aleph,” said Tam as he adjusted the needle from the probe setting to the transmit setting so Hagin could get his data.

  When he had first ensured that Chena and Teal would be acknowledged as Nan Elle’s grandchildren, he had only needed to alter computer records. This was different. This time he needed to alter experiences that Aleph had undergone herself. From his pocket he pulled an injection cartridge and tucked it into the socket at the end of the needle. A touch of the release key and the entire contents shot straight through into Aleph’s mind.

  “Aleph, listen to me,” said Tam, low and urgent. “Chena and Teal are with their grandmother, Elle Stepka. They are safe with her. They need to stay there, otherwise what happened to their mother might happen to them. This is true. It’s absolute. It’s got to be this way. This is important.”

  “This is important,” repeated Aleph. “It is good. I feel that.”

  Tam adjusted the needle back to its probe function and slaved it to his display. The readings he’d preprogrammed into the display transmitted across to Hagin, just as if they had really come through the needle. In ten or so minutes, his hormonal injection would dissipate into the generally heightened anxiety chemistry all around it, but it would take the positive impression with it, down into all the separate structures that made up long-term storage, and, if he’d judged the dose and the words right, it would remove Aleph’s need to worry about the remaining Trusts.

  Remember, Aleph, he willed the mind all around him. Remember that this is the way it is and the way it always has been. You feel it. You know it’s the truth.

  Nothing happened. No alarmed voices called out to tell him he’d failed, but no quiet confidence stirred inside him to tell him he’d succeeded. All he could do was climb back down to the floor and head toward the home wing, and hope that someday Chena and Teal Trust would find a way to forgive him.

  Tam sighed. No. To earn that kind of forgiveness, he would have to find a way to bring his birth sister to judgment for killing their mother. To do that, he would have to find where Dionte had hidden the Eden Project, before she found a way to convince the family that she had done the right thing.

  Part Two

  Wild Birds

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Decisions and Beliefs

  Chena!”

  Nan Elle’s shout sounded through the window. Chena snatched up her half-full basket of rose hips and trotted down the rickety stairs that led from the chaotic roof garden to the rear of the house.

  Nan Elle stood in the main workroom, bent almost double over her mortar and pestle. She did not look up as Chena rushed inside.

  “Shan Tso was just here.” Nan Elle tipped the brown powder from the mortar onto a clean white cloth. “They will need willow bark, seaweed, and concentrated penicillin.”

  “Oh, no.” Chena felt blood drain from her face as she set her basket down on the table. “Mila…” Mila was the Tsos’ six-month-old baby. Chena had helped at the birth.

  “Is already sick.” Nan Elle bundled the white cloth into a small bag and tied it closed with string. “They will need foxglove infusions by this evening. I’m getting those ready now.”

  Chena bit her lip and gripped the table’s edge for a moment to steady herself. Nan Elle called the fever burning through Offshoot the “red-and-whites,” for the blotches it brought out on its victims’ skin. It was a bacterial infection, but remained extremely resistant to their home-brewed penicillin. It worked fast, raising a person’s temperature so high so rapidly that their heart couldn’t handle the strain. They had seen their first case two months ago. Now ten people were dead. Three
of them were children. Twenty-five more people were down sick.

  Twenty-eight, if you count all the Tsos. Chena resisted the urge to slam her hand against the table in frustration. She never expected to care about any of these people. She had expected to remain as indifferent to every living human being as she had felt after Mom had died. But she had begun to care despite that. After years of nursing them, setting their bones, dressing their wounds, and helping deliver their babies, she had come to care very much. Now, when they needed her the most, there was nothing she could do for them.

  “Chena,” said Nan Elle sharply as she turned to reach for the pot of boiling water on the stove. “They are not getting any better. Move.”

  The order jolted Chena into what was becoming an all-too-familiar routine. She grabbed two clay pots and a precious glass jar off the shelf over the tubs they used for washing and sterilizing. She filled each with as much as she could of the required medicines, being very careful not to take the last of anything. They were going to be up all night again brewing fresh serums as it was. She sealed the vessels tightly with beeswax and wrapped them in cloth so that she could drop them into her rucksack, sling it over her back, throw the door open, and run.

  During the past five years, she had learned the names of everyone in Offshoot and knew the catwalks and paths better than she had ever known the corridors on Athena Station. The Tsos lived on the first level overlooking the dormitories.

  It was shift change and the catwalks were crowded. “Out of my way!” Chena bellowed. By now people knew her voice, and they knew her business. They pressed themselves against the railings to let her get by, murmuring or cursing as she raced past them.