Kingdom of Cages

by Sarah Zettel

  Laban, the poker-thin, dark man who was director of computers, gave Shontio a sideways glance and picked up the story. “We are fortunate they backed down quickly,” he said.

  “Quickly?” Ajitha snorted again. “It took eighteen months.”

  “We are fortunate they backed down quickly,” Laban repeated. “Or we would have run out of food. We were poor, even then, and the shippers that could be reached”—his eyes slid sideways to Beleraja—“did not seem interested in our revolutionary cause.”

  Beleraja could make no answer other than dropping her gaze. She also could not help noticing that each one of the directors spoke as if they had fought the battle personally.

  “A treaty was negotiated eventually,” went on Ajitha, twisting her ring around her finger, “but the threat has always remained. Whenever Pandora is sufficiently upset with Athena, they suggest that the management board needs to have chips stuck in their brains. Obviously, this has never happened.”

  “We never let strangers land on Pandora before,” pointed out Ordaz.

  “We?” Kyle, the citizens’ welfare director, who had sat silent up to this point, lifted her chin. An unpleasant light shone deep in her black eyes. “We did not let anything happen. It is the Authority who was supposed to keep Pandora safe from invasion.” She met Beleraja’s eyes without any hesitation at all. “It is in fact the Authority who brought this trouble to us in the first place.”

  “Director Kyle,” said Beleraja, laying her hands flat on the table, “you’ll never know how sorry I am that Athena Station had to get caught up in this mess. I assure you—”

  “Beleraja,” said Shontio suddenly. “Do you remember what you said to me about the cure for the Diversity Crisis?”

  The statement so startled Beleraja, she had to run it through her head several times, and even then she did not understand. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “You said that you believed the only way to cure the Diversity Crisis was to bring the human race back together on a single world.” Slowly, Shontio’s shoulders straightened, as if some great burden were being lifted off them. “Could such a thing be done? Are there enough people who are desperate enough to come here? Are there enough shippers who could be convinced to take the job?”

  “Shontio…” Beleraja could not believe what she was hearing. He couldn’t be thinking this. This could not be what he was saying. He was talking about making good on the threat she had laid out to the Pandorans at that long-ago meeting. He was talking about letting the Called overrun the hothousers’ home and turn it into a new Earth, and, it seemed, he was talking about doing it without permission or sanction from the Authority.

  “Shontio, it would take years. The Authority would do everything they could to stop it.”

  “The Authority doesn’t care who comes to Pandora or how they get here. In fact, they want them here. The more people here, the more pressure on the Pandorans.” He flung out one hand. “By the time they know exactly how many people have come, it will be too late.”

  “Shontio, you don’t mean it.”

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “I’m tired of this.” He spoke the words plainly, without heat or anger. “I am tired of living under the threat of having my mind taken away from me. I am tired of knowing that my children have to live with the same threat. The Pandorans have finally gone too far. The only way to stop them is to break them, and the only way to break them is to flood Pandora with refugees, overwhelm hothousers with humanity. We end the Diversity Crisis and we end Pandora, all at once.”

  “Some people just tried a landing.” Beleraja stabbed her finger at the blank screen wall. “They are all dead! I told you that was what would happen!”

  Her words did not even make Shontio pause. “The landing failed because there were not enough people. Enough people, in a coordinated landing, in wave after wave, and I don’t care if the hothousers have the Burning God on their side, they will not be able to get them all.”

  “You will be sending them to their deaths. Thousands of them.”

  “They are already dying.”

  Beleraja sat there, her gaze locked on Shontio. She was vaguely aware that the other directors were shouting back and forth, arguing, their voices melding into one great incomprehensible noise. All she could understand were Shontio’s hard, hopeless eyes. He had given up. There was no compromise left in him. In his mind, he had already declared war, and he was not going to back down. It was up to her whether she supported him or not. If she did not, he would still go to war, but he would lose.

  “It would take years,” she breathed.

  “We have years.”

  Beleraja’s mind spun. “I would have to send out some of the family ships. There is no way I would trust this to go through the comm stations.” The few ships and satellites that passed for a communication network in the Called had more leaks than a thousand sieves. Anyone who wanted to pay enough in money or luxury goods could find out anything they pleased.

  “Could it be done?” asked Shontio.

  Then Beleraja knew that it didn’t matter what the directors were shouting or how hard they were trying to interrupt. Shontio would reason with them, or threaten them, until they came to his side. All that mattered was what she said next. She thought of her family; she thought of her mother, who had been matriarch before her. It was their lives and her memory that Beleraja would risk now, whatever she said. It was the Authority, her past, and her future, her way of life, and the way of life of hundreds of thousands of people who had no idea this conversation was taking place.

  “Yes,” she said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Draft

  Aleph, city-mind to the Alpha Complex, opened her dedicated connection to the convocation. Instantly the vivid exchanges of the other cities fountained over her.

  The city-minds were living intelligences. As such, they required interchange with their own kind, a place where they could debate, advise each other, and discuss the paths the world was taking. They were advisers to their families, and sometimes it was vital that they be in agreement about what advice to give. Times such as when a set of long-held rules were being placed in suspension. A time such as now.

  “The families’ debates are over, and the voting is done,” said a voice underscored with notes of strength and the scent of fresh water and greenery. That was Gem, mind to the Gamma Complex, steady and sure, Aleph’s best friend among the other minds. She was pleased to hear him first thing. “Our people have decided that Helice Trust is necessary to the Eden Project. We must abide by that decision.” Signals of assent poured in from most of the other twenty-four minds.

  But not all of them.

  “I do not like the decision,” grumbled Cheth, mind to Chi Complex. An abstract and ragged burst of red and orange accompanied the words, emphasizing her displeasure. Cheth didn’t like anything she hadn’t thought of, and never had. Aleph sometimes wondered if something had gone wrong during Cheth’s growth in the early years. Some chemical imbalance that stunted her empathy.

  “Neither do I,” said Gem, sounding unusually stiff. His unadorned words said he dismissed Cheth’s argument. “But that is not the point.”

  “We can speak when we disagree, isn’t that our purpose?” pointed out Cheth with a sound like a sniff, taking Gem’s scent and changing it to the prickly odor of ice and early frost, a warning scent.

  “We can grumble, you mean,” cut in Peda, mind to the Psi Complex. He dispersed the warning and replaced it with an image of calm waters and retreating cloud banks. He was practical but hard-nosed. If Aleph hadn’t known how diligently he cared for his people, she would have found him difficult to like. “Which is what we are doing, and it is not helpful.”

  “How did the proper means of drafting a villager even come to be a question? Is Aleph losing touch with her people?” Aleph bridled at Cheth’s tone and her clashing mosaic of unnatural yellows and scarlets. Had the crabbed old mind not noticed she was connected? Or did Cheth ju
st not care?

  “She is not, but she is here, thank you,” said Aleph, taking the colors and turning them over until they became a rising sun over Peda’s waters. “And she is not aware that she has lost touch.”

  “Then how did this matter come to be debated? There are rules in place.” Cheth, ever efficient, made sure a copy of the rules of procedure for recruiting experimental subjects was copied into her receiving subsystem.

  “I am in possession of those rules, Cheth.” Aleph kept her voice even but let everyone be aware that she placed the file into a holding buffer. “I was there at the original debates for them, as were you.”

  “Then why are they so suddenly not enough?”

  “Because Pandora’s circumstances have changed,” answered Gem before Aleph could speak. He had been given a rumbling bass voice. Aleph found it a nice counterpoint to Cheth’s querulous old woman. He flavored his words with strong pepper. “There has never been such a direct threat to Pandora and our people before.”

  “Then you agree with this decision, Gem?” demanded Peda, his words tasting cool and bitter. “Aleph, of course, supports her people—”

  “As do we all,” replied Gem promptly, wiping away the bitterness with a scent of oranges and warmth.

  “We forget.” Aleph erased scent and taste so everyone would concentrate on what she said. “For all our memories, they know more than we do about the situations beyond Pandora. We only hear and store so much. How many of the conversations stored in your subsystems have you reviewed lately, Cheth?”

  Cheth grunted in a blur of gray and shocking green. “It is not a question of who knows more, it is a question of what is best for our people. The villagers can be pushed too far. We know that.”

  Silence and emptiness spread out through the convocation as the city-minds remembered. It had been almost a thousand years ago, before the Consciences had been developed. The members of a village called Pestle had been told they would be separated in order to increase the genetic diversity of twenty other villages. Lists were drawn up, but without reference to the villagers’ partnering customs.

  Pestle rioted. They managed to shut down the fences and sustain their mob all the way to the Delta Complex. They had been let into the dome by some sympathetic family members, but once there they had exposed and attacked the city-mind. Aleph shuddered inside herself. Daleth had been perpetually cheerful, a delight to talk to. He liked making riddle poems that engaged all the senses. Once the riot had been quelled and the village dispersed, his people worked frantically to save him, but the damage was too extensive.

  The new Daleth was much more placid, preferring internal contemplation to sociabilty. She was aware of his sigil. He was in the convocation now, but sitting silently by.

  It was after the riot that the mote cameras, the searcher packs, and the other active organic countermeasures were put in place. But at the same time the Consciences were developed, in part so that no one in the complexes would again forget the loyalty owed to their families, their cities, and Pandora itself.

  Aleph had always privately believed that the necessity of Consciences proved that the city-minds had failed in their mission. They existed to take care of the families, to help them remember their history and to make good decisions. That was why they were living minds, not computers. They were supposed to be companions to the families, to help them keep the world in balance. All their care, though, had not been enough, and the families had needed to turn inside themselves.

  Aleph had meant to speak to the convocation on Dionte’s behalf, to explain Dionte’s reasons for suspending the normal draft rules to allow for a more vigorous recruitment of Helice Trust, and how this suspension was of benefit to the families, the villagers, and the cities. But the memory of the Consciences’ history made her pause. It was not something that had surfaced in her thoughts for a long time. She ordered a search for the relevant debate from the Consciences’ development. When the file came back, she copied it out to the other cities for their attention.

  “It would not be a bad idea to remind specific citizens of how driving the villagers too hard can bring disaster,” Aleph suggested, soothing the words with honey and fresh thyme. “I do not favor speaking in disagreement, but action must be tempered by memory. After all, we are here to preserve a level of learning and memory that stretches across the life of Pandora, not just the life of one person.”

  Murmurs, scents, and tastes of warm assent filled the convocation. Even so, Aleph paused again. Perhaps not everyone should hear this memory. Perhaps there should be a channel of communication through the people. It would look less like direct interference from the cities that way. The city-minds were here to preserve learning and memory and present their benefits, yes, but not to take action. Taking action was the job of their people.

  “Dionte is the leader of this initiative. I will speak to her. She can determine which of our people most need to be reminded of the Pestle riots.”

  “You do trust your Dionte a great deal,” said Cheth crisply in a burst of winter blue. “I can scarcely remember a convocation where we have not heard her name.”

  That stung. It was almost an accusation of favoritism. “And you do not have one person you trust?” she asked, sending a cascade of images of the Chi Complex citizens, and freezing the rush on one pale, lined face. “You cannot tell me the details of this convocation will not be laid out for Olivere Jess as soon as we are finished.”

  “We all have our confidants among our people,” soothed Gem, folding the image away. “Feelings among the people are running high right now. It might not be bad to let this filter through them gently.”

  “They are not china vases, nor are they children,” answered Cheth, making the words crackle like glass.

  “Is that a generalization?” inquired Aleph innocently, filling the words with warmth and the colors of spring. “I thought the first principle was to treat each person as an absolute individual.”

  “Yes, yes, all right.” Peda waved a wind to brush their images aside and return to the calm waters and sea smells. “Let’s not start sniping at each other. Obviously the people are not the only ones with an emotional stake here. I call a vote.” His words set automatic commands in motion and all images and sensations cleared from the convocation. Copies of the conversation appeared in front of her, text only, and Peda’s words filled in underneath them. “All in favor of letting Aleph’s Dionte direct the tempering reminders regarding the draft of Helice Trust for the Eden Project?”

  The vote was swift among the twenty-four complexes, and the convocation listed the numbers for Aleph to store in permanent record. Nineteen voted yes, three voted no, and two abstained.

  There was nothing more to do. Agreement had been reached on how this important advice should be given and who should be advised. Farewells were said and one by one the city-minds cut their connection to the convocation and returned their attention to their daily routines. Gem’s ID, however, stayed shining on the line.

  “Aleph?” said Gem softly.

  “Yes?”

  “We are friends, yes? I may give you advice?”

  Aleph tried to laugh, but couldn’t quite manage it. So she sent across a rainbow spray of bubbles. “Of course you may. Such a question!”

  Gem added the image of a river trout swimming furtively through her bubbles. “Perhaps you should share your thoughts with more than just Dionte.”

  “Gem, not you too.” She sighed, sending back the sour taste of disappointment.

  “Of course not me too.” Gem stilled her sending and refused to accept it. “Don’t be ridiculous. However, we always have to be sensitive to appearances.…”

  Irritated, Aleph puffed up a vision of an ancient gossipy woman chattering at an audience of pigeons. “Cheth’s grumblings are not comments on appearance.”

  Gem crossed the image out. “Actually they are.”

  A wave of stubbornness surged through Aleph, leaving her confused. Where did this come from?
This was Gem she was talking to. He only had Pandora and the people in his concerns.

  “I will remember everything you’ve said,” she told him.

  Light scents reached her, bringing feelings of wistfulness and delicate hope. “And act on it?”

  “And act on it,” she agreed, sending him her young girl image with its right hand raised. “If you will let me go?”

  He joined the image with his teenage boy, dark, bright-eyed, and earnest, clasping her girl’s hand. “Let me know how things progress, Aleph. Take care.”

  “Take care, Gem.” Her girl saluted his boy and he returned the salute, adding a whiff of sandalwood and a touch of warmth for friendship.

  Gem closed their connection and Aleph returned her attention to herself. As a matter of routine, she ordered reports from her major inorganic subsystems. Everything was as it should be—the dome was in good repair, the people in good health, security in order. She had appointments to supervise Conscience downloads in an hour. The downloads always required her complete focus so she could fully analyze each Conscience’s findings and discuss with her people any adjustments to life and health that needed to be made so that they would feel less worry and less guilt in the future.

  Still, an hour was plenty of time to speak to Dionte.

  Aleph called for Dionte’s personal file and refreshed her memory of Dionte’s normal schedule. She turned on her eyes in the four most likely places.

  She saw Dionte in the substructure, down among the plates and props that protected the organic matter of Aleph’s mind. As a Guardian, Dionte had to constantly refresh and expand her knowledge of artificial neural structures, and consequently she spent a great deal of time studying Aleph’s physiology, and Aleph was pleased to assist Dionte in her understanding. Dionte had even taken up a second apprenticeship as a tender under the instruction of her uncle Hagin.

  “Hello, Dionte.” Aleph spoke from the wall closest to Dionte’s ear.