Kingdom of Cages

by Sarah Zettel

  “Oh, you don’t…” She held up her hands. “I mean, I’ve got to go back anyway.…”

  “I’m glad to know you’re willing to do me a favor.” He took her free hand and folded it around the chit. “But if you want to make yourself some money, Chena Trust, don’t ever do something for free when the customer’s willing to pay.”

  Slowly she drew her hand back. “Do you want an answer back?” she asked, ideas flitting through her mind and forming into hopeful possibilities.

  “Very good.” He nodded with satisfaction. “An answer and a pint of raspberries, and I’ll pay for both.”

  More ideas. Chena felt her spine tingle with the strength of them. “And if somebody had a message for someone here and I needed to know who they were… ?”

  “Now you’re thinking. I could probably tell you the names and homes of most people in Stem.” He picked up the basket. “I’ll see you soon, Chena Trust.” He saluted her briefly, flashed one more smile, and turned away to stroll up the boardwalk.

  Chena watched his back until he disappeared around the curve of a dune. Her hand began to tighten around the note from sheer delight, but she stopped herself before she crumpled it. This paper stuff was not as flexible as a sheet screen. She looked at the chit and read the positive code. He had given her enough to pay for half the bike rental, for just a message.

  There were possibilities here. She might be able to make this work. If other people were willing to pay for errands and messages … if she could make one trip every day, and bring back as much stuff as she could carry…

  Except she couldn’t make one trip every day. She had to work, and they might not be going to school yet, but Mom hadn’t stopped insisting they try to learn something, as she put it. Unless Chena could figure out some way to free up her days, this was going to stay nothing but a set of really good ideas.

  Chena chewed on her lip as she walked back toward the railbike depot. There had to be a way. She’d find it. But even if she didn’t, she would at least make one more trip to bring Farin his answer and his raspberries.

  She would see him again.

  By the time Chena got back to Offshoot, twilight and flowers filled the forest, and she was as tired as if she’d spent the entire day shoveling compost. But she didn’t mind. She held the chit and the note in her pocket like precious secrets. She knew how she could make her errand-running business work. She could help Mom make enough money to get them back to Athena Station and then pay an Authority shipper to take them to some other world where no one would snatch them up for body parts. All she had to do was convince Teal and Mom about a couple of things. When she’d done that, she’d go back to Stem, and she’d see Farin again. They’d talk, and she would tell him about her ideas for running a whole business of carrying packages and letters, and he’d tell her how smart she was, and then… and then…

  Chena stubbed her toe against an uneven board on the catwalk and stumbled forward a few steps. She swore and hurried up the stairs, keeping her eyes firmly on where she was going.

  It was shift change. Chena tried to get above the worst of the crowd by climbing the stairs to the catwalks, but even the catwalks were crowded. She found herself being jostled on all sides by people anxious to get to their meals and their baths, or just to get indoors before the mosquitoes rose for the evening.

  Below her, she saw Sadia shouldering her way through the crowds as they spread out. She waved, wondering what Sadia had been doing, since it was her day off too. Sadia must not have seen her, though, because she did not wave or even break stride.

  Chena shrugged. Oh, well. I can tell her everything tomorrow. Well, okay, maybe not everything. Maybe she wouldn’t tell Sadia how her heart thumped when Farin smiled. She didn’t want Sadia to think she was a stupid little girl with a crush.

  The house Mom had rented was on the second level of Offshoot. It was a small place, lashed in the shadows near a cluster of other buildings around a central cistern that caught the water falling from the upper levels and spilled it down to the canals that ran toward the hydro-processing buildings.

  The house had been built so that strip windows alternated with thick wooden panels, letting in what little sunlight crept under the thick branches and between their neighbors’ houses. Even for an Offshoot house, it was perpetually dim, which was one of the reasons Mom had gotten it so cheap. But now Chena could see light in the windows and her heart rose. She couldn’t wait to tell Mom.…

  She stopped in her tracks. Careful, Chena. Tell Mom too much and you’ll get so grounded…

  She shook her head. It was okay. She’d be able to tell her enough. Who would she say she got the letter from, though? Talking to strangers was not a sport Mom considered appropriate for her and Teal. If he was a friend of someone, okay, but she sure couldn’t say he was a friend of Nan Elle’s.

  Maybe she didn’t have to tell about the letter at all. Maybe she could just tell about the idea of the letter.

  Yeah, that’ll do it. Secure with that extra thought, Chena pushed open the door.

  “Well, there she is,” announced Mom. “You were wrong Teal, we won’t have to call out the cops after all.”

  The front room had been completely transformed while she’d been gone. Patchworks of cloth made a colorful rug for the center of the warped floor. A low table, canted either from the tilt in the floor or because its legs were uneven, stood on the rug. Four fat red pillows lay scattered around it. The blank, worn wood of the walls had been polished. Curtains as patchworked as the rug hung in the windows. Vines and flowers stood in baskets and pots in the corners.

  “How?” began Chena.

  “Ah, you forget, Supernova.” Mom smiled. She sat in the middle of the floor with a weird, blocky contraption in front of her and a length of purple material hanging out one edge of it. “I used to be a colony woman, and not a rich one either. I know a thing or three about making do, when I can get the stuff.” She gazed in satisfaction at the room. “It’s not high design, but it will do, and we can fix it up as we go.”

  “Look at this, Chena!” exclaimed Teal, jumping to her feet and pulling her sister toward the low table. “We get to eat on the floor!”

  “Well, not quite, but close.” Mom also stood and enfolded Chena in an embrace that went on long enough that Chena knew she had really been a little worried. “How was the great adventure?”

  “Great,” answered Chena. “Where’d you get all the…” She gestured at the rug and curtains.

  “Amerand Dho, the mother of one of Teal’s friends, told me there was a rag room in the recycler complex. Free for the taking. Same place we got your hat.” Mom pulled the object in question off and hung it on a wooden hook on the back of the door that also had not been there when Chena left. “I borrowed the sewing machine from her as well.”

  “I helped,” announced Teal. “I cut stuff out and held it together so Mom could pin it all up. I screwed the table back together—”

  “Nailed,” corrected Mom.

  So that’s why its crooked, thought Chena, but she didn’t say anything.

  Mom walked over to the stove, where something smelled really great. “Are you hungry?”

  Chena’s mouth was watering worse than it had when she met Farin. She didn’t even need to answer. Mom just started scooping soup into a bowl.

  They gathered around the new table, eating and talking. The soup wasn’t as good as the stuff in the dorm, but it felt great inside her. Mom and Teal told her about the scavenger hunt through the recycling complex, looking for stuff that wasn’t too old or worn out or dirty. They had pallets in the bedroom now. Apparently Teal had spent the better part of the afternoon up on the roof whacking the dust out of them. This was not, according to her report, anywhere near as stellar as getting to build a table.

  Chena told them about the grasslands with the birds, and about the lake that sparkled and filled the horizon, and the cave-riddled cliffs. She described the market, and the jetties with the people coming and g
oing. She left out breaking the bowls, and replaced the story of how she finally got lunch with a few vague remarks about a tent and sandwiches. She also left out her money idea. She needed to convince Teal to go along with the scheme first. If she was going to make this work, Teal would have to take her shifts.

  The night thickened, the room dimmed, and Chena found herself yawning until she thought her face would split wide open. Mom lit an extra lamp, but the brightness didn’t wake Chena up any. Her head started to droop toward her empty bowl. Mom laughed.

  “Okay, big day’s over and work starts again tomorrow. Help me wash up, and you two are going to bed.”

  Chena brought in buckets of water from the cistern and Mom added hot water from the kettle on the stove. The kettle was new too. They washed the red-brown bowls and tarnished spoons and put them on the new shelf to dry. Mom had obviously put that one together. It didn’t tilt at all.

  Another bucket of water was hauled in and faces were washed and teeth were brushed and Chena was finally able to collapse onto her new pallet. It was thin and lumpy and smelled earthy, but, like the soup, it felt great. She placed the note and the chit underneath the pillow for safekeeping and snuggled down under the woolen blankets.

  I’ll talk to Teal in the morning, she thought, pulling the blanket up to her ears. Sleep now.

  “Chena,” whispered Teal excitedly. A hand shook her by the shoulder. “Chena!”

  “Get off.” Chena shoved her hand away. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “But I caught a spy.”

  Chena pulled the blanket the rest of the way over her head. “Tell me tomorrow.”

  “No.” Teal yanked the blanket down. “Now. He was talking to Mom.”

  “Huh?” Chena opened both eyes and looked at her sister. Teal was just a blur in the darkness, but her whisper was urgent.

  And I’m definitely not getting any sleep till I hear this.

  “What’d he want?”

  “Shh,” breathed Teal. Chena just rolled her eyes.

  Teal shoved the sleeve of her nightshirt up, exposing her comptroller. “I got him coded in,” she whispered proudly. She touched the display stud and a soft silver glow lit up her face, turning it into a mass of blobs and shadows. “ ‘Spy showed up at twelve-thirty hours—’ ”

  “Showed up?” The words trickled into Chena’s mind. “He came here?”

  Teal nodded rapidly, making wisps of hair flutter around her face. “We were just carrying the table parts up from the recycler.”

  “Keep going.” Exhaustion pulled back from Chena, leaving room for wariness.

  “ ‘Spy was a man,’ ” Teal read. “ ‘Taller than Mom, with short black hair and skin about my color and gray eyes, wearing a black shirt and white canvas pants and boots.’ ”

  “What did he…” Chena stopped and rephrased it, to keep within the feel of the game. “What did he say he wanted?”

  Teal checked her notes. “ ‘Spy gave his name as Experimenter Basante from the Alpha Complex.’ ”

  Alpha Complex. The hothouse. Chena bit back her questions.

  “ ‘Spy said he’d be pleased to talk to Helice Trust in private.’ ” Teal paused. “I’m not making this up, he really talked like that.”

  “I believe you,” Chena assured her. “Keep going.”

  “ ‘Mom ordered Teal to go outside. Teal stood sideways next to the door so she could listen, but she wasn’t able to make notes on everything exactly, because she didn’t know how to spell it all and they talked fast.’ ”

  “It’s okay,” said Chena, before Teal added a longer apology.

  “ ‘Spy asked Mom if she’d thought about her future, now that she’d been living here for a month. Mom answered she liked it here just fine. She had a job and her girls were happy. Spy asked Mom if she wasn’t interested in some comfort, some security. Mom answered she’d never had that anyway, so why should she be willing to sell herself for it?’ ”

  Sell herself? To who? For what? What is she talking about? Chena bit her lip, which was already sore from the sun and from her chewing on it all day. Teal didn’t seem to know what she was saying, she was just having fun reporting it all.

  “ ‘Spy talked about the Diversity Crisis and how important it was that everybody help out,’ ” Teal went on. “ ‘He also talked about assuming debts and making regular payments to somebody or the other, Teal didn’t catch the name.’ ” Teal squinted at the display. “ ‘Mom said thank you but we were all just fine. Spy talked about Diversity Crisis again and Mom said what a lovely day, thank you for stopping by, but we have a lot of work to do. Spy left.’ ”

  Teal sat back, and in the faint green light from her comptroller Chena could see her face had gone suddenly serious. “They’re still after her,” she whispered. “The hothousers. They’re not going to leave her alone.”

  “They’re going to have to,” said Chena firmly, angrily. “Because she’s just going to keep on saying no. Mom is not going to let them experiment on her, no matter what.” Inside, she was thinking, Why didn’t Mom say there’d been a man here? How come she didn’t tell me? Then, guiltily, she remembered all the things she hadn’t told Mom about today.

  This keeps up, we’re going to fill this whole house with enough secrets to bust apart the walls.

  “Did you find out anything new in Stem? About Dad?” Teal wanted to play, and she’d already managed to chase sleep away, so Chena figured she’d better go along with it.

  Chena considered what to tell her. “No, not about Dad. But I did find out something new about that woman, the old woman Nan Elle.”

  “Is she a spy too? I’ve seen her. She looks like she should be a spy.” Her face squinched up as if she just tasted something sour.

  “Spies don’t look like spies, vapor-brain,” growled Chena, smacking Teal gently on the shoulder to let her know she was being silly. “If they looked like spies, everyone would know, and what would be the point?” Teal smacked her back, and they slapped at each other’s hands, giggling for a few minutes, before Chena went on. “Yes, she’s a spy, but she’s working on Dad’s side.” Is she really? Do I really know that? Farin could’ve lied to me. But why would he? Cops always have something going on, but Farin, he’s just a person.

  “She is?” Teal was saying thoughtfully, as if she were turning the idea over in her head and seeing how it fit into the scenario they already had laid out. “Then what about the cop?”

  “I don’t think he’s bad,” said Chena slowly. “But he doesn’t know what’s really going on, so he’s going to make mistakes. We have to keep an eye out for him because he could get in the way.” Then she thought of something else. “The stuff you’ve coded, Teal, you did encrypt it, didn’t you?”

  “How dumb do you think I am?” she asked indignantly. “Encrypted and substituted. Nobody’s reading this stuff but me.”

  “Okay, good. Now, I’m toasted. I’ve got to get some sleep.” She pulled the blankets back up again and laid down on the earthy-smelling pallet.

  “Chena?”

  Chena squeezed her eyes shut. “What?”

  “Why’d it have to be Dad that went away? Why couldn’t they get someone else?”

  Chena suppressed a groan and rolled over so she faced her sister’s approximate location.

  “It had to be him because they needed someone who was a really good pilot. We figured all that out, remember?”

  “Yeah, but the Authority has thousands of really good pilots. I mean, that’s the point, isn’t it?”

  Why are you doing this? I don’t want to talk about this. Chena forced herself to think in terms of the story, of their Dad the brave spy and pilot, not anything else. “They do, but they’re not always sure they can trust them.” The story blossomed inside her. “See, the poisoners are working on a whole bunch of Called worlds. They have to work in small labs and keep what they’re doing a secret. But they also have to talk to each other to tell each other what they’re doing. So they use messengers. They’
re bribing the Authority pilots to carry messages back and forth for them, between the labs where they’re making their poison.”

  “But the Authority knew nobody bribed Dad,” added Teal. “Because we didn’t have any money.”

  “Right.” Chena smiled to the darkness. “The Authority knew Dad was honest, so they came to him, and they said, ‘We need you for this mission,’ and he said, ‘What about my wife and kids? I can’t leave them. It might be dangerous,’ and the Authority said, ‘You don’t have to worry about them. We’ll watch out for them, but we might have to hide them until your work is finished.’ ”

  “And Dad said, ‘All right, I’ll do it, because we can’t let the poisoners go free,’ ” jumped in Teal, her voice low and shaking with drama. “ ‘There are too many lives at stake, but I’ll need to know what happens to my family, so I can make sure they’re all right.’ ”

  The story took hold inside Chena. It felt warm and comfortable, like Farin’s smile. “So Dad flew out to one of the Called worlds where they were pretty sure there was a lab, and he started asking questions, carefully, because he’s a spy too now, but he’s spying for the Authority. He started asking about making extra money, and who’d have good jobs, and he didn’t care what it was as long as the pay was good, that kind of thing.”

  Chena heard cloth rustle as Teal nodded and pitched in. “Pretty soon, a bribed pilot told Dad that there were these people who’d pay him to take coded messages to other planets. Secret stuff, and how he wasn’t supposed to get caught with it. So Dad said sure, he’d do it, and the pilot gave him the message.”

  She fell silent, and Chena picked up where she left off. “The message, which was encrypted. But Dad said, ‘Don’t I get to meet these guys?’ And the bribed pilot said, ‘Not until you prove you can do the job.’ ”

  Teal let out a long happy breath. “So Dad’s got to deliver that message first before he can find out who’s sending it. I like it.”

  “Me too,” admitted Chena softly.

  “Do you want to go to sleep now?” asked Teal.