Kingdom of Cages (13 page)

There were even rumors that some of the shipper families were taking large payments to outfit refugee ships and point them
in the right direction. Beleraja and Director Shontio sent a fresh petition to the Council of Cities out with every ship,
asking them to help quash the practice. When the replies came back, they always swore no such thing was happening, and that
if it was, of course they’d stop it.

Even before today, Beleraja had stopped believing them.

The crowds remained thick all the way to the hub and the directorate offices. In Shontio’s favor, he had not tried to shove
the problem away from himself personally. The directorate corridors were as filled as the stairways had been with staff, citizens,
and the hallway people the long-term station residents called “airheads.”

Beleraja walked through the rings of administrative and security checks without challenge. The director’s door registered
her presence and opened for her automatically. Shontio kept a standard office—fully wired desk, guest seat, refreshment case.
A pot of variegated ivy stood on the corner of the desk, just about the only greenery on the station outside the farming levels.

Shontio sat behind his desk. The wall screens around him showed crowd control at a corridor juncture, a cafeteria full to
overflowing, the line outside one of the medical bays. He swiveled his chair around as she entered and traced a command pattern
on his desktop. The walls blanked, and Beleraja was grateful. She still felt emotionally overburdened from the refugee ship
Menasha had walked her through, and from all the realizations that had come to her afterward.

“So…” Shontio ran one hand across his copper-colored scalp. The station fashion was to wear your hair short, even shaven.
If Shontio allowed his hair to grow out, it would probably be a shaggy gray mane. His bright red, high-necked jacket was perpetually
rumpled these days. Its gold trim was fraying and the buttons were dim. “Did the refugees pay Commander Menasha to bring them
here?”

“Worse,” Beleraja said, throwing herself into one of Shontio’s guest chairs. “The Authority paid her to bring them here.”

Shontio stared at her for a moment while her words sank in. “Why?”

“To put pressure on Pandora,” she said simply. She was tired. Tired of the refugees and all their desperation, tired of the
Council of Cities and its stupid maneuvering, tired of seeing her family, her husband, one month out of every twelve, and
tired of watching the never-ending crises wear Shontio slowly down.

Shippers did not make friends easily outside their families. When you came to a place just once ever five local years, relationships
became a constant reconciling of blurred memories with new realities. But her family had docked at Athena Station at least
once every two local years the entire time she was growing up, so her friendship with Shontio had a rare continuity, and she
prized it. It was one of the reasons she had taken the Pandoran contract in the first place.

“They mean to turn your station into the sword of Damocles,” she said, rubbing her blue thumbnail gem against the seam of
her trousers. “They think if the Pandorans know that there’s a whole load of displaced, desperate people up here, and that
some of them have access to ships that could theoretically make it down to the surface, it will speed up work on the cure.”

“Oh, is that what they think?” Shontio glared at the walls as if he could see through them and the vacuum beyond, all the
way to El Dorado. His angry, tired gaze turned back to Beleraja. “You know what the station management board is going to do?
They are going to seal those people into their ships and make them sit there. If they haven’t got money to pay for air and
water, they are going to be set adrift.” His voice shook as he spoke. “I’m losing my credit with the committees, Bele. There’s
too many people out there refusing to leave with the Authority convoys.”

“I know,” she said softly. “But I think that’s what the council is counting on.” She looked at her thumbnail gem, blue for
the rank of commander. It no longer sparkled as it once had. It just glinted dully in the station’s full-spectrum light. “In
fact, I really think they’re hoping someone will make a break for it and try to establish a settlement down in the Pandorans’
beloved wilderness.”

“Which would allow them to make their point while still denying they had anything to do with such a flagrant violation of
their agreement.” His shoulders slumped and Beleraja felt for him. Everybody had too much to deal with these days. More than
one of them was crumbling under the load. She didn’t want to see Shontio go down like that, especially when she could feel
herself going down with him. “They can blame you and I for allowing the refugees to stay here,” he went on, “as can the management
board.”

“We could call down to Administrator Tam,” suggested Beleraja. “Tell him the situation.”

Shontio snorted. “Tam doesn’t understand. He never has. He hates the Crisis because it’s disrupted his life, not because of
what it’s done to the people. I’m not sure how eager he’ll be to help work out a bigger disruption.”

“Then we ask him to get his committee and Father Mihran—”

“And Father Mihran will say what he’s said every other time!” Shontio slammed his fist against the desk. Beleraja jumped,
even though she knew his anger was not for her. “He’ll say they can’t absorb any more refugees. He’ll say they’ll have to
wait until there’s a new draft, or a population shift in the villages. He’ll say that our decision to let them stay makes
them our problem.” Shontio stared at his own fist, clenched so tightly the knuckles had turned white, but Beleraja knew that
was not what he was seeing. “Maybe we should give the Authority what they want. Maybe we should just look the other way and—”

“No, Shontio.” Beleraja reached across the desk and grasped his knotted hand. “You know what will happen to them. The hothousers
have had ten years to get ready to deal with that kind of invasion. If we look away while anybody tries to make a run to the
surface, we are going to watch them die.”

“You don’t know that,” said Shontio without lifting his gaze.

“Yes, I do.” Beleraja let his hand go and straightened up. “And so do you.”

“So”—Shontio uncurled his fist and laid his hand flat on the desk— “we do nothing.”

“No.” Beleraja shook her head. “We call Father Mihran and Administrator Tam, and we try again. We call the council, and we
try again with them too. You talk to the committees and the management board. I talk to Mena and the headman for the new refugees
and try to inject a little reality into their veins. Maybe they’ll like the idea of living in their ships or dying on Pandora
less than the possibility of helping a struggling colony survive.”

“Yes.” A little determination crept back into Shontio’s voice, and he was able to look at her again. “Of course. Maybe this
time we can make it work.” He paused, his expression suddenly wistful. “Do you think this cure, this business of redesigning
the human immune system, is going to save us?”

Now it was Beleraja’s turn to look away. “No.”

“Why not?”

Beleraja watched her hands. She remembered the pride she had felt when her command gem had been set. She had plans to lead
her family to glory, not trap them into patrolling one tiny area of space searching for the desperate.

“Because I believe that the only thing that can really work is for there to be a whole lot of human beings on a single planet
where there can be all the give and take that we had back when we were growing up on Old Earth.” She ran her fingertips over
her gem. “We are too isolated out here. The nearest band of humans might be two years apart. Those are not conditions we were
evolved to stand. We need exchange—genetic exchange, intellectual exchange, even violent exchange, maybe—with our neighbors,
or we die. We are proving that right now.”

Shontio watched her silently for a moment. “I thought the Authority ruled out consolidation as a solution.”

“They did.”

“And you never told me that you spoke out against the idea.”

“I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

Shontio, leave me alone.
“Because I was afraid. Because I’m like everybody else. I don’t want to lose my way of life.” She made herself sit up and
look right at him again. “I’m a shipper. For eight generations my family has lived in space. We are gypsies, birds. I did
not want to advocate cutting our wings and binding ourselves to a single place.” Then she added more softly, “I was afraid
to. I wanted—I still want—to believe this massive feat of genetic engineering will preserve our way of life.” She gave a small,
mirthless laugh. “I’m as bad as Tam, as bad as any of the Called. I don’t really want to change my life, even when I know
I’m going to have to.”

“And I thought the Authority was trying to save us all.” Shontio’s words were full of grim mockery.

“The Authority?” Beleraja shook her head. “I’ll give you the Authority. Why isn’t there a working communication network for
the Called?”

Shontio stared at her, not following the leap in logic. “There is,” he said.

Beleraja waved her hand, dismissing the idea. “There’s a few hundred satellites and a couple of dozen station ships full of
extremely bribable inbred crews. I mean a real network, with jump capability and message encryption. It’s technically feasible.
Why doesn’t it exist?”

“Tell me.” Shontio steepled his fingers and got ready to wait.

“Because way back when, when the Called was expanding instead of collapsing, the Council of Cities worked out that it would
be better for the Authority if the Called had to depend on them for communications. If the worlds only knew what we told them
…” Beleraja threw up her hands. “Well! We’d just keep on being indispensable. Profits and power forever.” She let her hands
fall back onto the chair arms with a thud. “The shippers might have done something, but if there was a working comm network,
then the cities would be able to keep an eye on us with extreme efficiency, and my illustrious ancestors didn’t want that.”

Shontio regarded her over his fingertips for a minute. “And the Called never worked this out?”

“Oh, I’m sure they did, but they expected to one day have an infrastructure that would allow them to put up their own satellites.”
She shook her head slowly. “That, however, did not happen.” Her mouth stretched into a thin, tight line. “That is the kind
of forward, altruistic thinking that the current Council of Cities sprang from. If there had been a comm network, word of
the Diversity Crisis would have spread so much faster. We might even have had a solution by now, because the very best minds
on all the worlds, including Old Earth, could have exchanged ideas, but no.” She spread her fingers and looked down at her
gem. “Save us all? We might have helped us die.”

Shontio ran his palm along the edge of his desk. “Well, Bele,” he said, “if your ancestors killed us, and the Pandorans’ cure
can’t work…” He stilled his hand. “What are we doing here?”

“Whatever we can, Tio,” she answered grimly. “Whatever we can.”

In front of Tam, the screen cleared to its normal, glassy transparency. It didn’t even show him his own reflection. Now that
he was no longer wrapped up in his conversation with Shontio and Beleraja, he became aware of the noise of the family’s home
spreading out around him— voices, children’s running feet, the ceaseless sound of falling water. He rested his hands on his
knees and waited to hear a voice speaking directly to him.

“That was a difficult conversation,” said Aleph, her voice sounding as if it came from the air right next to him. Aleph was
the “city mind,” the artificial intelligence that took care of the Alpha Complex and its family. Among her other duties, she
monitored all contact with Athena Station. “You will be calling a meeting of the Administrators’ Committee?”

Before Tam could answer, a new image coalesced on the screen in front of him, and another on the screen to his right. Father
Mihran stood surrounded by the frantic activity of the laboratory. To his right, Liate, Athena’s officially assigned administrator,
sat alone at a little conference table, her arms folded across her chest.

“Tam,” said Father Mihran gently. “I understand you have had another message from Athena Station.”

Tam nodded. He should have known this was coming. Aleph would have alerted Father Mihran and Liate. Technically, Athena Station
was under Liate’s jurisdiction. Tam, however, was head of the Administrators’ Committee, and anyone who had business with
an administrator was allowed to appeal to him.

“Yes,” he said, positioning himself so he could face both screens. “And I should have alerted you immediately, Liate. My apologies.”

Liate looked down for a moment, the tip of her tongue protruding between her full lips. “I’m asking only to be kept fully
apprised of the matters in my territory.”

“Of course. I will inform Director Shontio and Commader Poulos that you are the one they should contact in the future.”

“They did not seem to listen to such matters of protocol.”

“Which is not anything Tam can help,” interrupted Father Mihran smoothly. “But I would suggest that you both meet and be sure
that your strategies regarding communication with Athena Station are well matched.” Father Mihran looked directly at him,
and Tam knew what he meant to say.
We need to be sure that you are not giving them any concessions. That you are not promising to authorize expanded immigration.

“Aleph is checking the administrators’ schedules right now to find out how soon we can meet.”

The image of Father Mihran looked toward the image of Liate with his eyebrows raised in silent inquiry.

“I am receiving responses that say this afternoon will be convenient,” said Aleph. “There is much concern over the new arrivals
at Athena.”

Yes,
thought Tam.
Everyone knows the station is already under pressure, and to their credit, they all understand that things kept under pressure
too long have a tendency to explode.