Kingdom of Cages

by Sarah Zettel

  “Who is it?” hollered someone as she pounded down the stairs. A second later she identified the voice as Madra’s.

  “Tsos!” she shouted back, gripping the rail post to swing herself around onto the lowest catwalk. The boards rang and shuddered under her thundering footsteps. Tension alone robbed her of her breath. Chena could run from the bottom of the village to the top and back down again without any problem, and sometimes she had. Time was slowly worsening Nan Elle’s arthritis. Chena’s most constant work as her apprentice was to run her errands.

  The Tso house was tiny and it listed toward the trunk of its tree, but the roof garden was trimmed and tidy and its walls free of moss and lichen. She skidded to a halt in front of the door and heard the thin, high wailing of an infant in pain. Gritting her teeth, Chena knocked, but did not bother to wait for a reply before opening the door and walking inside.

  The last time she had been in this neat, dim, sparsely furnished room, it had been to help Mother Tso deliver Mila. The memory of sweat, blood, and screaming assaulted her with almost physical force as she stepped into the room. Then, it had been Mother Tso screaming, and Nan Elle, and Chena herself. Now, it was just one voice. Just little Mila howling in her mother’s arms because she hurt and did not understand what was happening to her.

  Father Tso, a silent bear of a man with pale brown skin and hands like leather from a lifetime of fieldwork, looked down at her as she stepped to the door. Then he stepped aside so she could get to the family’s one big bed, where Mother Tso sat holding little Mila.

  Chena shut her mouth and shoved her emotions into the back of her mind. She picked Mila up out of her mother’s arms and laid a hand against the baby’s head. Burning hot. But that was not as bad in babies as it was in adults. The fever’s blotches were still faint on her golden skin. She was breathing without wheezing, and when Chena felt Mila’s hot little chest, she found that the child’s heart beat fast but steadily.

  She gave Mother Tso back her infant, but her eyes slid away as the woman tried to catch her gaze. She didn’t want to see that frightened look again. She’d already seen it on a dozen sets of parents. She was tired of looking into anxious eyes and lying.

  Instead, she bent down and pulled out the pots and the bottle. One at a time, she handed them to Father Tso, explaining in a brisk, professional tone how the contents of each were to be given, telling them she’d be back after dark with the foxglove infusions.

  He stood there, containers clutched in his hands, saying nothing, not even nodding. He knew. He knew about the dead, and the sick shut up in the men’s wing of the dormitory. He knew it was so bad that Constable Regan wasn’t even pretending to harass Nan Elle anymore and had given orders to his people not to question Chena about anything she carried. Madra had actually gone into the Alpha Complex to argue to their Family Committee directly for real medical help. Of course she’d been turned down, but word was she was getting ready to head back.

  And the Tsos were still watching her.

  Answer them, said Nan Elle’s voice inside her mind. You know the question, you give them the answer.

  Chena straightened up and made herself look directly at both the Tsos. “She’s going to get worse before she gets better,” she said, as gently as she could. “But she’s a big girl, and she’s been very healthy up until now. Keep her as cool as possible and give her the medicines as I’ve explained. There’s every chance in the world.”

  “Thank you,” said Mother Tso, hoisting Mila onto her shoulder so she could rub the child’s back. “We will look for you.”

  “You’ll see me.” Chena gave them the best smile she could manage, slung her pack back over one shoulder, and retreated onto the catwalk.

  Every chance in the world, thought Chena, feeling her face twist into a scowl as she headed back toward the stairs. Every chance the hothousers allow. Every chance to sweat and bleed out your ears and die.

  The familiar anger settled comfortably inside her, much better company for her climb up to the third level than grief and guilt. She turned over her latest plans for getting into the hothouse. One day soon, Nan Elle said, Chena would be taught the comm path that would allow her to speak with Administrator Tam directly. Tam, it turned out, had been Nan Elle’s hothouse contact for years. Which explained a lot.

  Nan Elle had refused to let Chena even ask Tam to get her into the hothouse, but as soon as Chena could get a message to him without Nan Elle overhearing, she’d have her chance. And then… and then…

  “Chena!” The sound of running feet accompanied the shout.

  Chena swung around, her heart in her mouth, and saw it was just Teal pounding up the catwalk behind her.

  “God’s garden!” Chena aimed a blow so it breezed past her sister’s shoulder as Teal caught up with her. “Don’t yell like that.”

  “Sorry.” Teal grinned at her. Her face was flushed from sun and exercise. Wisps of wiry brown hair had escaped from under her hat and she carried her overstuffed backpack carelessly in one hand. Teal had started up the errand running business again about a month after they… left the hothouse. Chena had tried to argue her into going to school, like Mom wanted, but Teal had shouted, cried, and sulked until Nan Elle had let her have her way. Teal was not interested in reading or vocational training. Teal was interested in earning money, and, as Nan Elle pointed out, Chena’s new tasks would keep her so busy she would not have whole days to take to run to Stem with messages and raw materials. It had its advantages. What Teal brought in helped pay a rotating series of dorm babies to take up Chena’s village chores as well as her own.

  “You’re looking pleased with yourself,” remarked Chena as she reached for the door.

  “I am.” Teal caught her hand before she could turn the handle. “I got something to tell you.” She jerked her chin upward, indicating she wanted to talk on the roof.

  Chena’s sigh rattled in her throat. She was tense. It was going to be a very long night. She did not have time for Teal’s baby games.

  “You do have time,” said Teal as if she had read Chena’s mind. “This is important, I’m telling you.”

  Chena growled wordlessly, but let Teal lead her up the stairs and into the riotous tangle of brambles, ryegrass, and saplings that camouflaged Nan Elle’s precious licensed, as well as illegal, plants. Chena had spent whole nights up here learning to tell the herbs and weeds apart by touch and smell as well as by sight. “People are not always so polite as to get sick during daylight hours,” Nan Elle had said.

  “So?” Chena tossed her empty rucksack down and sat cross-legged with her back leaning against the chimney pipe. “What’s the squirt?”

  Teal folded her arms and grinned even more broadly. “I’ve found the new tailor,” she announced triumphantly.

  Confusion drew Chena’s brows together. “You were looking for a tailor?”

  Teal dropped to her knees, letting her backpack fall onto a patch of clover beside her. “Yes. Chena, I’ve found a way to get us out of here. Back to the station.”

  Chena wasn’t sure whether to be saddened or annoyed. When would Teal give it up? She wasn’t stupid. She knew what was what, the same as Chena did. “Teal, we can’t go back. The station is overcrowded. Even if we could get past the constables and the hothousers, Athena wouldn’t take us.” One of the advantages of living with Nan Elle was that you got to overhear all kinds of news and gossip.

  “They would if we weren’t there to stay.” Teal’s eyes shone. “The Authority is there. We find the commander and we claim our citizenship. As Authority citizens we are guaranteed a place in one of their cities. And”—she held up her hand as Chena opened her mouth to interrupt—“because we’re both still minors, they would have to turn us over to our family. They would have to contact Dad to come get us. Simple.”

  Chena slashed her hand through the air between them. “Not simple. Not even part of reality. Teal, we gave up playing games about our noble daddy years ago. He’s gone. He left us. He is not going to
come get us.” He left us here to get experimented on. He left Mom here to die! He never gave a damn about us. When are you going to get that through your head?

  Teal’s grin hardened a little, as if she were determined to hold on to it no matter what. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that once the Authority knows we are citizens, they’ll have to give us a place.” She spread her hands. “Even if we just make the claim, they’ll have to let us stay while they investigate it.”

  Chena scrubbed the back of her neck and shook her head. “It can’t work. If it was that simple, Mom would’ve done that in the first place.”

  “She couldn’t have. Do you remember what she told Madra that one day? Mom was never an Authority citizen, remember? But now that she’s not here…”

  Chena’s head snapped up. “You don’t have to sound so happy about it.”

  Teal drew back a little. “You know what I mean. We can do this, Chena. It’ll work.”

  Chena just shook her head again. “No, it won’t. There is no way the hothousers are going to let us back up the pipe.”

  “That’s where the tailor comes in,” said Teal doggedly. “We get ourselves altered, get a set of fake IDs. I got money.” For the first time, Teal hesitated. “If I don’t have enough, they take other things.…”

  Chena felt her eyes narrow. The day had gone incredibly still. Even the continual rustle of the leaves overhead had dropped to a whisper. “What kind of things?”

  Teal licked her lips. “Genetic material.”

  Chena stared at her sister for a moment, stunned. “Oh, that’s really it,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “You know the tailors filter genetic material and information straight to the hothousers. You want to help them? Why don’t you just sign up for the draft? I’m sure they’d be delighted to have another Trust in the hothouse.”

  Teal’s grin faded, and the light in her eyes changed from enthusiasm to annoyance. “No,” she said. “I don’t know that they do that. I know that Nan Elle says they do that.” She looked quickly away, then back again. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter what they do with it. We won’t be here.”

  She was serious. She really wanted to just run away. She really, deep down, thought that their father still cared enough to come get them.

  “No,” Chena said again, climbing to her feet.

  Now Teal was staring at her. “What are you saying?” Her arms fell to her sides. “This is our chance. Finally!” She stopped, frozen in place by a new idea. “It’s taken me five years to get together the money and find the guy we need. Don’t you want to get out of here?”

  Chena snicked off a piece of ryegrass with her fingernail and twirled it around. Lolium pandora, family Gramineae. The seeds were edible, although they tasted foul. It was good for clearing up constipation.

  “We can’t just run away,” she said, tossing the piece of grass into the tangle of the garden and watching as it fell.

  “Why the hell not?” demanded Teal.

  Chena couldn’t make herself look at her sister. “Because we can’t.”

  “Chena, please, listen to me,” Teal begged. “If we stay here, they are going to get us. They will do things to us that will make us wish they’d just kill us. You know. You saw.”

  Chena felt her jaw stiffen. “And if we do go, then what? Nothing changes down here. More people just die or disappear.”

  She heard Teal snort. “And you think I’m crazy. You still think we can get back at the hothousers for what they did.”

  Chena spun around, her fists clenched. “We have to! We can’t let them get away with it!”

  Teal ran her hand through her hair and kicked at the dirt. “Give it up, Chena. There’s nothing we can do except get out of here.”

  “That’s not true. There’s plenty we can do.”

  “Like what?” Teal flung out her hands. “Feed the villagers grass when they need antivirals? Hold their hands while they die? Run their stupid little errands?”

  “Teal, will you shut up?” Chena made frantic shushing motions with her hands while she craned her neck around to see if anyone had paused on the catwalk to listen to their argument. “You know that’s not what it’s about.”

  But Teal refused to calm down. “No, I don’t. How would I know anything? You never tell me what’s going on, you just give me orders, like you think you’re Mom or something.” Slowly anger turned her face red. “You’re not! You’re not anything! You’re just—”

  “Teal! Chena! That’s enough!”

  Nan Elle stood at the foot of her stairs. “I need both of you in here.” Her cane thumped once on the catwalk.

  Chena and Teal looked at each other defiantly, each daring her sister to say one word to continue the argument Nan Elle had so obviously overheard. In stubborn silence, they turned and climbed down the stairs, following Nan Elle back into the workroom.

  When they got there, Nan Elle stood for a moment with her back to them, swaying unsteadily on her feet. “I know you two girls are nursing old hurts. I even, believe it or not, know what that feels like.” She turned then, and her eyes were cold. “But now is a time of emergency. People are dying. Whatever you may think, whatever you may eventually want to do, you are needed, here and now.”

  Teal crossed her arms and looked away. Chena just hung her head, ashamed for both of them.

  “Chena, I am going to send you and Farin down to Peristeria. You are going to have to poach what we need to stop the fever.”

  Chena’s heart leapt into her throat. Poach? That meant going outside the fences. Fear and exhilaration rushed into her stomach. Nan Elle was finally going to let her go outside the fences. And she was going with Farin. The image of his bright eyes and wonderful smile filled her mind. Peristeria was days away by railbike and boats. Days alone on a boat with Farin.…

  “Chena!” hissed Teal. “You can’t! I told you—”

  “I’ve got to,” Chena told her firmly. “You heard Nan Elle.”

  Teal stormed off into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

  “I’ll go talk to her,” said Chena hastily.

  Nan Elle nodded. “You do that. And you get your pack ready. You must leave at once.”

  “Yes, Nan.” Chena practically ran for the bedroom. She had no idea what she would say once she faced Teal in there, but she would think of something. She always had before.

  Nan Elle watched the door swing shut behind Chena. After a moment, the murmur of the girls’ voices vibrated through the wood. Elle turned away. She had heard everything she needed to, and much more than she wished.

  So, she thought as she sat down heavily at her writing desk. There is a new tailor in Stem and Teal Trust has sussed him, or her, out.

  Ambitious girl. Angry girl. She wanted to run, to fly. She had nothing to hold her here, the way Chena had. In many ways the fever had brought Chena into her own. Her skills had blossomed and she’d truly begun to feel for the people in her charge. Given time, her desire for revenge against the hothousers might fade away, and then she’d be ready to truly understand the way life was here.

  Pandora, centuries ago, had been set up as a scientific experiment. At first the hothousers had sequestered themselves in their domes so that they could study and understand the most Earth-like biosphere ever found without disturbing it. Then they saw what was happening in the Called. How humans were landing on pristine worlds and cutting into them until they bled. Not content to let the rest of humanity go its own way, the hothousers had invited in half a dozen ships’ worth of colonists to participate in an extended experiment in sustainable living. Initially it was thought that those colonists and their children would learn how to live in a wilderness environment comfortably, without damaging the world around them and without depending on machinery that there was no infrastructure to maintain. Then they would all fly out into the galaxy and teach the human race what they knew.

  For a while, and for price, the Authority had carried the message of this grand experiment. Some o
f the Called even sent representatives to see it, and when they had seen, they went away and did not come back.

  The years turned, and the worlds turned. Gradually life on Pandora became entrenched and the goals changed. Elle doubted even the city-minds knew exactly how it all happened. Snubbed by the Called, who, after all, had come out here because they did not want to be told how to live, the hothousers cast their eyes backward, to ravaged Old Earth, and decided they would not send delegates out into the colonies. A convenient decision, since it turned out the villagers did not want to go out and spread the word to the Called. They wanted to stay where they were and look after themselves. No, instead, the hothousers would work to understand the whole of this living world, its humans included. Then they would take that knowledge back to the cradle of humanity and present it there. All who heard would marvel at this incredible understanding, and the Pandorans, as saviors, would embark on the greatest work ever. They would resuscitate Earth. But if they were going to truly do that, they would have to understand human beings—how they lived, how they worked physically and mentally, what they could do, what they would do. So the villagers became not laboratories of learning, but subjects for experiment.

  Oh, there had been rebellions, and there would be again. There had been abuses, and there would be again. The idea of eventually returning to Old Earth was swallowed by the enormity of categorizing and analyzing Pandora, and keeping it safe from the rest of the Called.

  Perhaps, if things had just gone on, some angry visionary in the village, or on Athena, would have risen up and incited the people to topple the power structure. But things did not go on. The Diversity Crisis began. Now there was one central fact of life. The rest of the Called were dying. Pandora was not, and no one was rash enough to do anything that might change this enviable condition.

  As long as that was true, the hothousers and their capricious whims would stay in power, and all the anger that could fill two young women was not going to change that.

  Elle reached for pen and ink. Whatever the result of the ongoing argument in the bedroom, there were letters to write. To Farin, to people Farin would meet, and for Farin to give to others who would pass them on. Tam needed to know about the new tailor. He already knew Elle would be mounting a poaching expedition. There had been too many deaths, but she had not been willing to let Chena go until she was absolutely certain Chena would come back. Sending Farin with her would help assure that. Chena would never run out on Farin just to see how far she could get before the hothousers noticed, as she might do if let loose on her own.