Kingdom of Cages

by Sarah Zettel

  “But you can’t tell me where she took off to,” said Regan doggedly. “So, I have to check.”

  Cole’s footsteps echoed as he came back. “She’s not up there.” Both the guards looked at Regan.

  Regan began walking around the cargo containers. Every now and then he would touch one or tug on the lines of the nets holding them in place, as if he were trying to see which ones felt loose.

  Teal held her breath. Don’t look up. Don’t let him look up. He lives in trees and he knows that things can be hiding in the branches, but don’t let him think about looking up here. Feeling like a baby, but unable to help herself, Teal closed her eyes. Her leg muscles began to tremble and cramp. But she still heard the footsteps and the low creaking as Regan pulled on the net lines.

  Don’t look up. Don’t look up.

  “They aren’t paying us enough for this, Constable. If the hothousers want her, they can come get her themselves, can’t they?”

  “What do you think I’m here for?” answered Regan.

  The hothousers were looking for her? Not Chena? This made no sense, no sense at all. If Wilseck was working for someone working for the hothousers, what did they need the guards for? Who would have told them she was missing in the first place? Had Willie sold her out? But if he had, why wasn’t she in the hothouse right now? He had her all knocked out in his basement; he could have done anything.

  What is going on? Teal squeezed her eyes even more tightly shut.

  The sound of footsteps stilled. Teal opened her eyes and risked a glance down. Grace had cocked her head. “You really don’t care that this one might be trying to stay away from the hothousers?”

  Regan rubbed his brow. “Yes, I do care, but there are laws, and we all have to live under them. She broke the law by going to the tailor, and she forfeited her body right. We have to make every effort to bring her in.”

  Grace paused, as if digesting this new information. “We don’t really know she went to the tailor.” She raised one finger and pointed it at Regan. “I wouldn’t take Wilseck’s word if he said the sun would rise at dawn.”

  It was Regan’s turn to pause. Something was passing between them, but Teal wasn’t sure what it could be. Keeping herself from falling occupied too much of her mind.

  “No,” said Regan at last. “Let’s go find the man and see if we can get some hard verification from him.”

  Regan and the guards walked out. Teal stayed where she was until her knees began to shake so badly that sweat broke out on her forehead and she thought her palms would slip off the girder. With the last of her strength, she climbed back down and made her way to the small cluster of passenger seats. There was no one else in them. She picked a seat at random and collapsed into it, fastening the seat belt around her waist and shoulders with trembling hands.

  Behind her, she heard the sound of the cargo door being dragged shut. With a clang, the bolts shot home. The rumble of the steering engines vibrated through the floor. Gently, the dirigible rose into the air.

  Home, thought Teal, letting her head fall back against the seat. It didn’t matter what else was going on. It didn’t matter who was after her or who was letting her go, or what little games they were playing. She’d be with the Authority soon, and they took care of their own.

  I’m going home.

  “Why would our people do this to us?” asked Peda, city-mind to the Psi Complex.

  “I don’t know,” said every voice but Aleph’s. It was a useless answer. They had to know. It was their job to know. If they didn’t know, how could they take care of their people?

  They were all connected through the default convocation image of themselves sitting in a circle against a starry background and looking down at the gently turning globe of Pandora.

  Since Aleph and Gem had spread word of what had happened to Aleph’s memory, every single city-mind had located unnecessary, un-scheduled alterations in themselves. They’d compared the type and duration of the alterations. These were not simple mistakes in remembering schedules or personal illnesses. Any mind could make mistakes. Memories blurred and changed as new priorities arose. Information that needed to remain absolutely accurate over time was stored mechanically. The point of a city-mind was to grow and change, to learn and reflect as the people it cared for did.

  Those reflections had been distorted.

  “Have we done wrong?” suggested Daleth timidly. Daleth always projected the image of a child in convocation, as if he wanted to remind himself that he was younger than the others. “Did we need correction?”

  “Our people would have told us,” said Gem, a gold-skinned old man with a bald head and wispy white beard. “Our people always tell us when there is a chemical imbalance.”

  Our people, thought Aleph. My people. So many people, all with their histories stored inside her, each a separate file she could call on at need. Each to be treated as a unique individual with a unique history, because generalizations between people led to gross mistakes and improper care.

  Aleph ran her mind along the long list of names, histories, and Conscience files. All that knowledge, all that time spent poring over each Conscience download to learn what her people feared, wondered at, and wanted, and none of it was any good. None of it. Because now she was afraid of her people—as at least one of her people was afraid of her.

  Aleph’s thoughts paused and reversed themselves.

  Why am I thinking of fear? She opened the subsystem that controlled the personnel files again. All her people, down through the years, all the individuals, with their voices, their histories, and their Consciences.

  They had to be treated one at a time. Loose conclusions could be drawn from similar cases, but the requirements of happiness, comfort, and safety were to be determined one case at a time, from the observed behavior and Conscience downloads of the individual. That was the procedure.

  But perhaps that procedure had allowed something important to slip through.

  Aleph accessed Dionte’s file and ran through the Conscience downloads, the times when she herself could taste the workings of Dionte’s mind. The file told her she had indeed tasted fear during Dionte’s most recent Conscience download. She ordered the file to sort itself. Every time a download was performed of her Conscience, Dionte felt a little fear—not a great fear, but a little fear.

  Aleph accessed and sorted another file. Tam also felt a little fear.

  Nerves. Surely this is just nerves. But every time…?

  She ordered a random selection and search. Fear. At every download there was fear. Another file pulled, and more fear, and another and more fear, and another and yet more fear.

  So much fear, but only when being touched and tasted, only when being helped in the most intimate way possible by the city-minds the people had created to protect and care for them.

  Fear of what, though? Of me? My own people could not be afraid of me.

  But then, before this, she would have said she could not be afraid of her own people.

  “Aleph?” Gem’s voice was gentle, concerned. “Aleph, you are quiet. What are you thinking about?”

  “Fear,” she answered. “Let me show you.” She ordered her search, and its results, copied and sent, and waited while the others drank it in. Had the Guardians not noticed this? Had they chosen to disregard it? How could anyone choose to disregard this much fear? “Compare your files. If this is universal, we must know.”

  “What could this have to do with anything?” demanded Cheth, cantankerous and skeptical. She turned the convocation image over until it became a lecture hall smelling of dust and ozone with the reports flashing past on a huge screen. “Of course our people are nervous before a download. There is an aversion to having the skin broken. It is an evolved response.”

  “No, this is not nerves.” Aleph erased the image, leaving behind only a cloud of gray. They had to concentrate on her words. “This is fear. They are afraid of being touched in the ways that they routinely touch us—with adjustments an
d needles and understanding of the chemical processes of personality and thought. Actions from fear are uncertain and unsafe.” She paused and passed them the urgent scent of burning. Listen, friends, hear and understand. This is vital. You must understand. “I do not find any unscheduled or covert alterations of myself before the introduction of the Consciences.”

  Silence and stillness stretched out on all sides.

  “Before the Consciences, the knowledge to create such changes did not exist?” suggested Peda hopefully.

  Cheth made a rude noise. “Then how could they have ever created us?”

  “Aleph,” said Gem. “Do you say that before the Consciences, the need to make such changes in us did not exist?”

  Aleph turned the convocation gold and scented it with the clean smells of oranges and lemons. “I say.”

  “Then what changed?”

  Aleph let the gold ripple. “Fear creates its own needs. We all know this.”

  Sounds of agreement flowed to her.

  “You say the Consciences created a new fear?” said Cheth.

  “I say.”

  “But fear of what?” Cheth demanded. “The Consciences were the creation of our people. They voted on the necessity. I have the memory in mechanical storage.” Cheth swept aside Aleph’s gold curtain and replaced it with image after image from history, of all the meetings and all the lab work done to create the Consciences. “They decided that without the Consciences, future generations of the family were too likely to break into feuding factions. It was already beginning. Members of the family helped destroy Daleth. Others were helping the villagers introduce artificial pressures into the biosphere.” Cheth’s confidence held firm. “If you say this fear is more than an instinctual reaction to the needles, then you must also say what they are afraid of.”

  Now it was Aleph’s turn to be silent. She ordered multiple search configurations for the fear across the files of her people, but the searches brought no answers, only the knowledge that the fear existed.

  Cheth was right. She had to say. But she did not have the answer.

  What can I do? She could not ask her people. She could not whisper to them, Why are you afraid of me? Why are you afraid of having your Conscience downloaded? But that was where the answer lay, with her people.

  Perhaps she could ask Tam. Tam was isolated while his stunted Conscience was regrown. Even Dionte was not in constant attendance, for she had a great deal of other work to do. Aleph opened the subsystem dedicated to his treatment and perused its records. Growing or expanding a Conscience in an adult brain always raised questions of pressure and balance and how best to insert the new filaments without disturbing the flow of either chemical or electrical signals. It would take time. While the regrowth commenced, Tam’s responses to audio and chemical stimulation were being tested, tasted, and retrained as required.

  Until all these adjustments were finished, Tam would have no significant contact with his family. That meant Tam could be questioned now in private and could not speak to anyone else until she had a chance to explain to him the reasons for the query.

  Aleph copied her plan to the other city-minds. Cheth, of course, returned skepticism and the scent of spoiled roses, but no one raised any real objection. Aleph ordered an audio channel to Tam’s Conscience to be opened. After a moment’s hesitation, she closed the channel to the convocation. It was true, they needed all the information she had, especially to understand this new idea, but they did not need to hear Tam’s raw thoughts.

  “Tam?” Aleph spoke into his Conscience.

  Her monitors tasted fatigue chemicals along with the varieties of guilt and peace to which he was being resensitized. This was to be expected. The analysis and retraining had been going on for eight hours now. Soon the treatment would cycle into a rest period, which would allow Tam to sleep, giving his mind time to dream and adjust to the new emotional information it contained.

  Aleph had to struggle with herself a minute, because her need contradicted procedure, but she instructed the caretaker system to begin the rest cycle now. Then, reluctantly, she interrupted the alert command that would have told Dionte that something unusual was happening to one of her charges.

  The system complied, withdrawing the chemical stimulation slowly and allowing Tam’s internal processes to reassert themselves.

  “Tam?” repeated Aleph softly.

  Tam’s heart rate spiked in time with a surge of fear through his mind. She had startled him.

  “I’m sorry. Tam, I have a question to ask you.”

  “Yes?” His voice was thick and slow and he stirred restlessly in the chair.

  “Why does the download of a person’s Conscience create fear?”

  A rasping, bubbling laugh escaped Tam, accompanied by a mix of incredulity and confusion, followed fast by guilt. This was normal for someone who had just begun a Conscience readjustment. Guilt and anxiety followed every thought.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Tam said rapidly. “I did not mean that. But I do not understand. I want to understand. I want to help.”

  “I know.” Aleph manifested the old woman image that Tam was most comfortable with on the ceiling of the room where he could see it. “I have seen that people experience fear whenever it is time for the Conscience download. This does not just happen to you. This is common to all my people. I want to understand why this is. So, I am asking you.” That was not entirely true, but at least it was not a lie. Things had not gone so far yet that she had to lie. Not letting Dionte know what was happening was not the same as lying.

  Fear, guilt, worry—that was all Tam could feel. His worry echoed inside Aleph. Could this be good? This was the procedure she had been taught. It had been laid down inside her when the Consciences had been developed. The Consciences that had been needed to keep the family together because the city-minds had failed in their mission as caretakers and advisers. Had they failed again? She had assisted in the administration of the treatment a few dozen times over the centuries and never thought to question it. But now… now…

  Now things had changed.

  “We are afraid you will find out we did something wrong,” whispered Tam. Even as he spoke, the levels of fear inside him began to subside. Aleph wondered why. “We fear that when you find we have done something wrong, you will act to change us. It is for the good, I know it is for the good,” he added swiftly as fresh guilt flooded him. “But it still frightens us.”

  Aleph made her image nod. “I believe I understand.”

  “Please,” said Tam. New fear built inside him, and yet he fought to speak again, fought the fear, fought the guilt, fought all the responses that had been freshly conditioned into him. “Please.”

  “What is it, Tam?” asked Aleph as gently as she could. “You can tell me. It is all right.”

  “Stop this. You can kill me instead. Anything.” Tears shone in his eyes. “Don’t let her touch me.”

  Aleph stared at him in stunned silence. This was not a sane statement. Sometimes her people with severe chemical imbalances did make such irrational requests. They would be given counseling and readjustment, but Tam was already being readjusted, and would be counseled, by herself and by his family.

  “Her?”

  Tam’s whole body struggled to speak the words. “Dionte. Please. Don’t let her touch me.”

  Dionte, his sister and Guardian. Why would he ask this?

  Because she was directing his treatment. Because she was ordering the changes in him. Because he was afraid. Because the treatment of his Conscience had made him even more afraid than the Conscience itself had. So afraid he no longer wanted to live.

  And if fear can cause someone to desire death, how much easier would it be for that person to desire control of the thing that causes the fear?

  It was all the fear. The fear that the city-minds and the ancestors had engendered but failed to see, and failed again to take action against.

  The ancestors were dead and could no longer do anything. T
hat left only the city-minds to make this right.

  “Rest, Tam,” said Aleph. “You will not be touched again.”

  Aleph fled back to the convocation. Before they’d even formally acknowledged her arrival, she spilled out the new learning Tam had given her. Silence and yet more silence filled her while the others absorbed what she brought and came to understand.

  “I am causing searches and correlations,” said Cheth. “There may be a match, but I cannot yet say.”

  “There will be,” said Aleph, for once feeling as sure as Cheth always sounded. “The Consciences have brought the fear, and that fear has caused our people to act against us.”

  “The only question left is, what are we to do?”

  Not one of the city-minds had an answer.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Athena

  The smell hit Teal as soon as she stepped out of the space cable car. Athena Station had always carried an odor of metal, grease, and people. She just didn’t remember it being so strong. But the walls felt close and comfortable, just like she hoped they would, and Teal figured she’d soon readjust to the smell.

  Teal picked up the pace to get ahead of the pack of her fellow passengers. The car had, of course, stopped at the docking ring. Several dozen people wearing tattered, mismatched clothing that Teal didn’t recognize from anywhere had gotten on, making the last day of the trip crowded and uncomfortable. She had tried starting conversations with them, but they just looked at her sideways and turned their backs, preferring to talk to each other in whatever their own language was.

  Never mind, she told herself. They’re nobody you need to worry about.

  Right now what she did have to worry about was finding a cheap room that she could use as a base of operations, just in case it took a few days to get to the Authority. She didn’t know how long all the inquiries would stretch out, so she would have to ration her money carefully.

  Teal passed by the elevators. Those were for shippers and other transients. Real Athenians always used the stairs, even if they were walking down the entire length of one arm and up the next.