Kingdom of Cages

by Sarah Zettel

  I’ll have to find out.

  Tam reached the bottom of the stairs and looked up to see Basante striding eagerly toward him, as if summoned by his thoughts.

  “Tam, we have her!” he shouted eagerly, grasping Tam’s data display.

  “Have who?” Tam pulled his hand away, looking down at the display automatically.

  “Look at it!” Basante stabbed his finger at Tam’s display. “It’s Chena Trust.”

  Tam looked. There was too much data for the display alone to handle, so his Conscience began whispering in his ear, summarizing statistics and providing descriptions of video clips. Basante had given him a mote camera report, so the data were mostly chemical analyses and percentages. But there were also visual data showing a blurred yet unmistakably human figure crashing through the rain forest with such force and clumsiness it made Tam wince. Basante had spliced all this together with readouts and video clips of Chena Trust, and overlaid that with a running commentary outlining every similarity between the two data sets that he could draw.

  He’s been taking lessons in thoroughness from Dionte. Nan Elle had warned him she might be poaching aid against the fever in Offshoot. She had, however, neglected to tell him she would be sending Chena to do the work. Probably because she knew what his reaction would be.

  Chena is only free as long as she keeps herself in the clear. There are those inside Alpha Complex who are looking for excuses to bring her back here. If they put her on the project, Elle, I don’t know how long she’ll live.

  “We have her,” announced Basante, shaking with excitement. “She’s lost her body right. We can pick her up anytime.”

  Tam shook his head. “I don’t agree. These results are inconclusive.” As Chena’s administrator, Tam had the final say regarding any change in the status of her body right.

  “I don’t believe this,” murmured Basante. In the next instant, his face bunched up and he shouted, “How can you stand there and ignore these results?”

  Around them, family members halted on the paths, and heads turned. An argument between two family members was, of course, everybody’s business, because harmony was everybody’s responsibility.

  “Is everything all right, Tam? Basante?”

  Tam did not take his eyes off Basante. He just held up his hand. “We’re fine,” he said. “Just a disagreement about some data.” Bas-ante’s face flushed angrily, and Tam felt a twinge of sympathy. Bas-ante had been involved in his own search. None of the other infants produced by the project had measured up. Their fate maps all predicted death from various autoimmune diseases before they reached adolescence if radical intervention was unavailable to them. Tam was ready to believe a great deal about Basante, but he could not fault his dedication and sincerity. The stress and worry wearing him thin were genuine.

  That knowledge, however, changed nothing. He was not going to give Basante Chena Trust. He had utterly failed her mother; he would not fail her.

  “We can settle this easily, Basante,” said Tam calmly. “I’m willing to call a meeting of the Administrator’s Committee so you can present your data to all of us.” Breath and body of my ancestors, let that give me enough time to ask the questions I must and warn Elle.

  “That’s perfectly reasonable.” Tam’s uncle Hagin, bluff, smiling, and always ready to help, stepped forward from the dozen or so people who had stopped to listen to the quarrel. “What do you say to that, Basante?”

  Basante was still shaking, but all the excitement had drained out of him. His skin had gone paper white. “I say… I say…” his hand went to his temple over his Conscience implant as he struggled to get the words out over the severe chastisement it was surely giving him. After a few seconds, he gave it up. “Yes, of course. Perfectly reasonable.” But his hand still rubbed his temple, and his angry eyes still said he knew what Tam was really doing.

  “I’ve always loved your enthusiasm, Basante—” began Hagin.

  “You’ll excuse me.” Basante turned and shouldered his way between the watching family, his hand still rubbing his temple. A couple of their kin hurried after him, anxious to help.

  “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?” Hagin asked Tam with lifted eyebrows.

  Tam gave Hagin a watery smile, and, because he did not feel like listening to his Conscience berate him, he also gave a partial truth. “The Eden Project. What is it usually about with Basante?”

  “True.” Hagin’s laugh was short. “But it’s his dedication that has kept the project going since—”

  Tam held up his hand, indicating that his uncle did not have to finish the sentence. “I know. I’ll find him and apologize later, Uncle. I promise.”

  “I know you will.” Hagin clapped him on the shoulder. “Now, judging from that furtive look in your eyes, I’m going to guess you have work you want to get to?”

  “Always.” Uncle Hagin’s life was so simple, thought Tam with sharp-edged envy. That which helped and supported the family was right. That which divided the family was wrong. For him, there was nothing else, and here Tam stood, not only hiding the truth from him, but trying to get away from him.

  He also realized he was smelling old yeast and shook himself mentally.

  You should talk freely with your family, his Conscience reminded him.

  Tam flashed Uncle Hagin another smile and made his way through his gathered kindred. Despite his Conscience’s insistence, they were not the ones he needed to speak with now.

  Dionte watched Basante pace back and forth across her work area, clearly sick with fury. She needed to calm him down quickly. She had all the aural privacy screens up, which meant they could not be overheard, but they could still be easily seen by everyone else working in the experiment wing. They were already drawing stares from the experimenters in the next station, and if one of them did something to alert Aleph, Aleph might notice she could not currently locate Dionte and Basante on her own, which would cause the city-mind to look for flaws in herself that Dionte could not let her find. Aleph could not know that there was a way to make her deaf and blind.

  “Five years!” Basante thumped his fist on Dionte’s keyboard, making all her monitors squeal in confusion. “Five years, and we still have not been able to produce another viable infant. What is he thinking? We need one of the Trusts back. We need detailed readings for every stage of her pregnancy, including immediate preimplantation and postnatal. We need—”

  Dionte crossed swiftly to him, taking his right hand and pressing it between her own. Her Conscience activated the modified sensors under the skin of her palm and immediately set to work opening the connection between his data display and his Conscience implant.

  Calm him, she ordered her Conscience, and her implant passed the order to his. As Dionte watched, his shoulders relaxed and the furrows smoothed from his brow. She could practically smell the scents of fresh air and jasmine being conjured for him as his Conscience whispered into his mind that he was with family, that he must relax. He must trust his family. He must trust Dionte.

  Despite all this, his hand tightened painfully around hers. “We should not have taken Eden,” he whispered frantically. “I cannot do this alone.”

  “Hush, Basante, hush.” She pressed her fingertips against his lips and glanced around. The experimenters at the other stations were returning to the work, seeing that Dionte was attending their kinsman. “You are not alone. You learn daily from the rest of our family.”

  Basante pushed her hand away. “But they are just speculating. They do not have access to enough information and I cannot appear to know too much.”

  Dionte swallowed her impatience. “This is not about Eden,” she told him firmly. “This is about what Tam is doing.”

  “No,” said Basante with uncharacteristic firmness. “Everything is about Eden. Everything that you and I do, and everything that Tam does. He knows, Dionte. He knows.”

  Calm, calm. Dionte repeated the order. Basante’s shoulders drooped again under the strength of
the neurochemical surges flowing through his system.

  “Of course he knows,” said Dionte softly, leading Basante to one of the workstation chairs. “He has always known. Up until now we have been able to hold each other’s secrets as insurance that we would all remain free and active.”

  “And now?” said Basante a little dully.

  “Now…” Dionte let his hand go and sank onto one of the other chairs. “Now I think Tam has gotten far away from us.” She kept her voice carefully neutral. She did not want to reawaken Basante’s natural tension. He had become more volatile of late. Possibly he was becoming habituated to the increased endorphin levels. She would need to examine him soon. Over the long term, she realized that inner understanding could not be purchased at the price of outer understanding. Tam, surprisingly, had been right about that much. But the balance was proving elusive.

  And until you find it, Basante is wholly your responsibility, she reminded herself. And he needs direction. “I think you should transfer your report about Chena Trust’s activities to a secure file in case we need it later. I will see about bringing my brother back closer to home.”

  “Yes, Dionte,” said Basante complacently. He rose and left the workstation, crossing the line on the floor that marked the boundaries of the privacy screens and then heading for the stairs.

  Dionte stayed where she was, her hands resting on her thighs, her eyes staring at her monitors as if lost in thought. She did not want to give anyone anything new to wonder about. Basante had already provided a gracious plenty.

  He was so concerned about the Eden Project, he quite failed to see what Tam’s actions really meant. They meant Tam had almost found Eden. They meant that he would soon be able to go to Father Mihran and the rest of the family to tell them who had stolen the Eden Project and what they had done with it, and this time he would be able to prove his accusation.

  Her first feeling was anger. How could he do this? How could he help the Authority kill them all? Without the family, without the potential of the implants and the city-minds and the intuition and creativity of the human mind all tied together, there was no future. There was only a repetition of the long, sad, brutal, stupid past.

  But anger quickly gave way to a wash of sorrow. Tam had never understood. Five years, and he had not relented. Five long years of persistent blindness. In his heart he knew she’d spoken the truth to him, but he denied it because he was afraid. Tears prickled at the backs of her eyes.

  Brother, I don’t want to force this change on you. She bowed her head. But I can’t let you leave us vulnerable to the Authority and the Called. I can’t.

  There was no time for regret. Tam was lost. His fear of the enormity of their responsibilities as the custodians of the only future in which any part of humanity could survive had swallowed him up. All she could do was ensure that he did not make things worse.

  She would have to be quick, which meant she would have to be crude. With luck, however, Tam’s recent history would provide her with most of what she needed.

  “Aleph.” Dionte leaned down and laid a hand on the screen’s command board. “See me. Hear me.”

  “Dionte?” answered the city-mind. “How can I help you?”

  “I need to review Tam’s files,” she said. “His Conscience seems to be troubling him of late and I wish to make sure we have not overlooked any anomalies in his implant.”

  “Of course,” Aleph responded instantly, as expected. Dionte was Tam’s assigned Guardian. It was perfectly proper for her to review his Conscience records at any time.

  The screen nearest to Dionte flickered to life. Even as it did, Dionte spread her hands across her keyboard. The board contained sensors, just as her palms did. The sensors were designed to transmit information to Aleph’s subsystems. Aleph could tell whose hands touched which keyboard, and whether they were nervous or excited. It was chemical analysis technology similar to that used in the mote cameras.

  What seemed to have gone unrealized when the sensors were embedded was that with sufficient knowledge, one could use them as a direct connection to Aleph’s nondeclarative memory, just as the Conscience implants were a direct connection to the minds of the family members.

  Dionte subvocalized her commands to her Conscience. Her Conscience translated and expanded those commands so they ran down her fingertips straight into Aleph’s subsystems. The subsystems understood and returned file after file on her brother’s movements for the time she required. But more than that, they raised images in front of her mind of the ebb and the flow of the chemistry of Aleph’s central mind. The tides of memory and personality shifted before her eyes, under her hand, and inside her own mind. Her exterior eyes may have read the reports that Aleph consciously displayed for her, but she was unaware of them. All her concentration focused on the information welling up from the deep resources of her mind.

  Human memory was not evolved to facilitate complete and accurate recall. It was evolved to infer, approximate, connect, and classify. Information was scattered here and there throughout the structures of the brain, and each thought, each memory, was created through a process of constructing all that stored information into a new shape. An organic mind could only absorb so much, so fast, and would only allow for the recall of what was used frequently or what was significant emotionally.

  This was not a limitation of the Conscience implant, however. Although much of its workings, its neuronal filaments, and its insulation were organic, it relied heavily on the ancient technology of the knowledge chip. It could absorb and store information instantly. It learned with complete accuracy. It had to, because it had to be able to learn precisely which areas of the brain had to be stimulated and at what strength to produce the required response in the brain of the person who carried it.

  Since Dionte had first combined the functions of her implant, she had spent hours refining its integration with her mind. All the family could absorb and transmit information through their hands, but only between data displays. She could use the sensors in her hand to draw data directly into her implant. Her implant would then stimulate her unconscious recall, bringing to her inner eyes images and memories, hints and ideas that would allow her naturally fragmented human memory to reach levels of accuracy, insight, and understanding completely out of reach to the rest of the family. When she had the proper balances achieved, when she could completely understand the optimal structure of these new bonds, she could pass them on to the rest of the family. Then, tied together to their kin and their creations, they would see the future clearly. They would know what to do and they would never be threatened by any outsiders again.

  But she had to make sure they stayed alive long enough to reach that new understanding.

  The subsystems of her own self observed, translated, and transmitted the information into her Conscience, which turned the electronic impulses back into chemicals and fed them into the matter that was her natural mind. It was as if the floodgates of understanding opened inside her and she knew what Tam had done.

  Tam had tampered with Aleph’s memory to help Chena and Teal Trust escape the complex. He’d used techniques she had told him about in younger, less discreet days. Perhaps he had even watched her as she worked. She would have to go deeper to fully understand that, and she did not have the time.

  “Aleph,” she whispered. “Aleph, I found something and I need you to see.”

  Ideally, she would have shown Aleph the flaws in the growth of Tam’s Conscience implant. But too many records had been falsified across too many years for their lies to be quickly tracked and reversed. Instead, she would have to show Aleph an action that no healthy Conscience would permit.

  She showed Aleph the record of Tam diverting the city-mind from her oversight of Chena and Teal Trust, and then convincing her that this inattention was right and proper.

  Silence came from the city-mind.

  “Aleph?” said Dionte gently. “I must order Tam to be quarantined and diagnosed immediately. If there is a r
adical flaw in his conscience, it must be corrected at once, before he does any further damage.”

  “Yes. That is the proper procedure.” Aleph hesitated, and Dionte felt for the city-mind. To any conscious mind, knowledge that it had been tampered with must necessarily be disturbing. “How…” Aleph’s mind was filled with unfamiliar hesitation. “How could he…”

  “There’s a flaw in his Conscience,” Dionte told Aleph. She subvocalized commands to her Conscience so that reassurance would follow her words to Aleph’s central mind. “That is what we need to correct. We need to help him, quickly.”

  “Yes. Quickly.” Aleph spoke the words, but without conviction. Dionte suppressed her exasperation. Basante was not the only one who was becoming more difficult to predict. She needed to do an extensive reevaluation of her assurance-stimulation techniques. But, blast her brother, and blast her family, their stubbornness and indecision left her with little time and even less freedom.

  What is wrong, Dionte? murmured a voice in her ear. With a shock, Dionte realized it was her Conscience. She had not heard its voice in years. What are you doing?

  This was not permissible. She was allowing Tam’s self-doubt to infect her and compromise her control. She took a deep breath. It would be all right. Aleph stood with her, as Basante stood with her. They understood. They trusted her and would do what was needed.

  “I am helping my family and my world,” she told her Conscience. “I am going to save them all.”

  And when Aleph and I are finished, she added to herself, the brother of my birth will understand.

  Aleph watched Dionte shut down her keyboard and walk away from her workstation. Dionte had things to do, tasks that needed completing. Aleph also had work to do, but Aleph couldn’t move.

  How had this thing been done to her? How could this thing possibly have been done to her? Tam, during the search to understand how Helice Trust had slipped from Aleph’s attention, had made unnecessary chemical alterations to Aleph’s amygdala structures. The resulting adjustment had distracted her attention from the need to delve further into the files on or referring to Chena Trust.