Kingdom of Cages
Authors: Sarah Zettel
Also by Sarah Zettel
Reclamation
Fool’s War
Playing God
The Quiet Invasion
Available from Warner Aspect
Copyright © 2001 by Sarah Zettel
All rights reserved.
Aspect® name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.
“Wild Birds” © 1986 by Jan Harmon reprinted with permission.
WARNER BOOKS
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
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First eBook Edition: August 2001
ISBN: 978-0-446-55977-5
This book is dedicated to my friend, Dr. Karen Fleming. Dude!
Contents
Chapter One: A Mud Hut in the Jungle
Chapter Nine: Hothouse Flowers
Chapter Eleven: Decisions and Beliefs
Chapter Twelve: Queen of the World
As ever, the author gratefully acknowledges the United Writers Group for their help and patience. She would also like to thank
Dr. Laura Woody and Dee Keanealy, whose knowledge of biology, herbology, and medicine was invaluable for writing this book,
and Jan Harmon, whose music gave her the title.
…Thank heaven for wild birds
They’re all dressed up in feathers, with colors outrageous.
They soar from this earthly bound kingdom of cages
On delicate wings, so small and courageous…
—Jan Harmon, “Wild Birds,” 1986
Threats
“We are aware there is a crisis,” said Father Mihran calmly. “But it is not ours.”
Tam’s gaze flickered to Commander Beleraja Poulos, the representative from the Authority. Her face faded to white, then flushed
darkly.
Tam did not have a seat at the conference table. His place was in the back of the room with the rest of the administrative
apprentices. They stood shoulder to shoulder in their best black shirts and white trousers, all of them there to watch this
historic meeting and learn how to deal with outsiders. Jace, standing just to Tam’s left, looked bored, but then Jace always
looked bored. Haye, on the other hand, was staring so hard it looked like her eyes were about to pop out of her skull.
The late morning sun streamed through the pillow dome, warming and lighting the room, bringing the feel of springtime with
it. A ring of windows let in a view of the marshes outside with their swaying reeds and stooping, moss-draped trees. This
was Pandora, the most beautiful and perfect world ever discovered since human beings left Old Earth, and it was about to turn
humanity away.
It is what we must do,
his Conscience implant whispered to him.
Pandora must be protected.
Tam eyed Commander Poulos uneasily. She had no Conscience to tell her this. She sat before Father Mihran, straight and strong
in a tailored blue coat with gold braid on its sleeves and collar. She and her three colleagues were a blaze of color crowded
at the end of the table facing the family council, which was arrayed down either side. The council all wore straight black
jackets with white cuffs and collars. If Tam worked hard and did well, he’d eventually take his place at that table and wear
that coat for formal meetings.
Today, however, he was very glad to be standing well away from it. Commander Poulos’s dark eyes were full of poison as she
stared Father Mihran down. Was she really going to just accept their refusal and go away?
Father Mihran seemed to think so, if his outward calm was any indication. His place was at the head of the long, low conference
table and his wrinkled, oak-colored hands rested lightly on its polished surface. The father’s entire manner spoke of cool
resolution, and Tam wished he could copy it. He’d embarrass everyone if they caught him shifting his weight like he wanted
to.
“If the rest of the colonized worlds cannot take care of their planets or their people, then…” Father Mihran dropped his
gaze and waved one graceful hand.
“Then they deserve whatever happens to them?” asked Commander Poulos, her voice as suddenly full of poison as her gaze. “Is
that what you were going to say?”
“No.” Father Mihran sighed. “I was going to say I’m sorry for them.”
“But not sorry enough to help?” The commander’s light tone was completely at odds with her thunderous expression.
“We cannot help them.”
Commander Poulos pressed her mouth into a straight line and raised her hand. She had a blue gem embedded in her thumbnail,
and Tam wondered what its significance was. He should check. They would be quizzed on such details later.
She touched one of the rings on her right hand. The Authority representatives had brought their own video rig and now its
screen lit up. Tam wanted to groan and look away. Jace actually did. Tam stepped on his foot and when the younger boy gave
him a dirty look, Tam jerked his chin at the screen. They had to watch. They had to know. How would they ever be able to make
decisions that could affect the entire family and all the villages if they couldn’t stand to know what was going on?
Tam repeated that idea to himself as the images Commander Poulos had brought with her played across the holograph screen yet
again. There was the wrinkled woman whose right arm ended in nothing but a stump, weeping as she stared across a field where
the grain on the stalks swelled with pulpy gray tumors. There was the filthy clinic full of children with too-small bodies
and too-large heads, with the one doctor explaining they had no way to perform genetic analysis to find out what was causing
the defects. All that equipment had been washed away twenty years ago in a spring flood. There were the funeral pyres with
the thick black smoke hanging over them, making Tam’s nose twitch as he imagined the heavy stench. The remaining population
leaned against each other, watching what was left of their friends and relatives burn.
So many worlds, so many disasters, and one name for all of them. The Diversity Crisis. All the Called, short for “colonized,”
worlds were struggling to survive in the face of depleted biological resources, decimated populations, and vestigial infrastructures.
The disaster had even reached back to Old Earth. Commander Poulos had opened her presentation explaining how, eight years
ago, Authority ships had carried a delegation from the Called to Earth. Droneships could have been sent, of course, but it
was decided that the magnitude of the tragedy truly needed a human voice to describe it, so it was human beings who brought
news of the catastrophe reaching out across the colonies. Gene stocks thought to be adequate for the establishment and growth
of civilizations were failing. The fertility rates were dropping, mortal defects increasing, and nature and disease were still
taking their tolls. All of the Called, even the space dwellers of the Authority, needed fresh genetic input for every aspect
of life—livestock, crops, humans, everything.
Earth, although grown so far apart from her daughter worlds, had been willing to help. But it was soon realized that the delegation
from the Called had brought more with them than their pleas. The plague they carried killed two million inside one Terran
month. No one knew where it came from. Some said the delegates had carried it with them and it had somehow survived sterilization
and quarantine. Some said it had bred on Earth itself, a hybrid of Terran and proto-Terran viruses created by something innately
harmless the delegation had exhaled the first day they walked free.
Some said the delegates had released it deliberately, to wipe out the native Terrans and reclaim Earth for themselves.
From this turmoil, only one agreement was reached. The horrified Terrans sent the delegates back with a single message for
the Authority and all the Called:
Never return. Never even try.
But the crisis among the Called would not relent and the Authority found itself pushed into making a fresh decision: to come
to the one colonized world where it was known the Diversity Crisis had not reached and beg for help.
Although, Tam noticed, Commander Poulos had stopped using words like “begging” and “at your mercy” and even “please” twenty
minutes ago.
The images of disaster continued. A mass grave, a ruined field, a quartet of children bearing the ancient signs of Down’s
syndrome. Still, Father Mihran’s gaze did not flicker. Tam wasn’t even sure he blinked.
“So much tragedy,” he finally murmured, and Commander Poulos’s guard dropped far enough for Tam to see hope light her face.
“But also so much ignorance.” The commander’s hopeful expression faded as Father Mihran gestured toward the screen. “None
of this would have happened if any of them had taken the time to truly understand the conditions they were living in. To understand
that, however beautiful, their new worlds were not Earth.” His gaze narrowed as he watched a family opening a silo door to
see what had once been grain blow away in a cloud of red dust. “If they do not understand the problems inflicted on them by
their own worlds, how can we hope to?” Father Mihran spread his hands toward the window and the world outside. “We have been
on Pandora for two thousand years and we do not truly understand even this one biosphere yet.”
“You can help them.” Commander Poulos spoke the words more as if they were a command than a plea. “No one else has the analysis
facilities, or the experience, that you have here. You can draw out a diagram for a single genetic base pair or an entire
planet. You have all the techniques and understanding of the long generations that have studied Pandora.” Commander Poulos
leaned forward, eager, believing she was at the point of reaching her goal. Tam saw a man cradling a dead child on the screen
and secretly hoped she was.
“You can teach them how their worlds work,” said Commander Poulos urgently. “You can help each world find its cure.”
“These poor suffering worlds.” For the first time, Father Mihran’s voice took on an edge. “Let’s talk about them.” Commander
Poulos drew back just a little, but Father Mihran remained as he was, back and shoulders ramrod straight and his hands on
the table, as if determined not to let any gesture or expression distract anyone from his words. “Let’s talk about groups
of as few as a hundred would-be colonists being dropped on a planet by your ancestors in the Colonial Shipping Authority,
because those colonists were hoping for riches or a place where their own fanatic ideals could be enforced without question.
Let’s talk about the ones who hacked away at forests for the trade in exotic timber, which your people shipped between worlds.
Let’s talk about mines gouged out for the trade in heavy and precious minerals, which your people also carried.” His index
finger tapped the tabletop, once. “Let’s talk about colonies that failed and were enslaved by their oh-so-noble-and-generous
neighbors, according to treaties your people mediated, part of which included shipping the slaves out to their new masters.”
“Do you say you’re better than we are?” shot back Commander Poulos, rising to her feet and leaning across the table. “Then
prove it. Help the Called to stay alive when they will not help each other and cannot help themselves.”
“No,” said Father Mihran, and the other council members murmured their agreement.
Commander Poulos glanced at her silent subordinates. The man on her left hung his head. The young woman on her right just
looked grim. Tam felt the silent communication pass between them, and his stomach tightened.
“Father Mihran,” said Commander Poulos. “Don’t do this. The Called, the Authority, are desperate, and we’re here as ambassadors
of that desperation.”
“And how much are you being paid for the job?” asked Father Mihran coolly.
Commander Poulos winced briefly. “A lot,” she admitted. “Because there’s a chance you will not let us go again, especially
when you realize I can’t let you refuse.”
Silence, thick and worried. Not even Father Mihran made a sound.
“We need Pandora’s help or we are all going to die,” said Commander Poulos, separating out each word and meeting the gaze
of each and every council member in turn. “Not today. Not even for ten years, or maybe even twenty. But eventually. Whole
worlds are already gone. Earth has abandoned us, and we cannot compel them to change their minds.” Her gaze came to rest on
Father Mihran again.
