Kingdom of Cages (23 page)

“Okay.”

Nan Elle nodded once. “Very good. Here’s another thing you might want to consider. Taking on a partner. Two of you are stronger
than one alone. Besides, that way, no matter what you see, there’s a second witness.”

What’s that all about?
But Chena kept the question to herself. “I’ll think about it.”

“Hmph,” Nan Elle snorted, moving to get out her pen and paper. “You do that, station girl.”

It took Nan Elle about fifteen minutes to finish the letter. With the message tucked into her sealed pocket, Chena walked
outside again. It was almost dark. Since it was fall—it had taken Chena a while to understand the business of changing seasons,
but she had it now—there were no more flowers to bloom, but bats still skittered through brown-gold leaves that came loose
and drifted down onto the catwalk.

Below her, people walked between the dining hall and dorm. A couple headed for the faint lights of the library. A greeting
drifted up through the twilight. A door creaked open and thumped shut.

Nothing had changed. Nothing at all. Nobody knew what had happened to all those people, and they never would. Chena’s hands
knotted into fists. She wanted to tell them. She wanted to scream it out to all of them.
Hey! This is what the hothousers are doing! How can you just
stand
there?

And if she did, then what? Chena’s shoulders hunched up as she walked. She’d scare Mom and Teal to death. Mom would keep her
home. There wouldn’t be any more money, and the hothousers would still do whatever they wanted.

Better to just keep on going and keep your mouth shut. Much better.

Chena headed down the stairs to reclaim her packages.

“With respect, Father Mihran,” said Shontio through gritted teeth. “Your… invaders did not even dock at Athena Station. I
would be happy to show you all our computer logs and the camera records.”

Father Mihran, a blurry image on the conference room’s wall screen, waved his hand. “That is not the issue. You saw them coming
and you did not warn us.”

From her place at the end of the conference table, Beleraja watched the Athena Station management committee. She wondered
if they knew how shabby the four of them looked in their old coats with the missing braid and the crumpled collars. Shabby
people in charge of a shabby station, she thought, ashamed, depressed, and tired all at once. Athena had gained its independence
once upon a time, but it had lost everything else. Now it might even lose that independence. And she had helped bring that
about, because she did not have enough ships, or enough people, to do the job she had been sent to do.

“How could I warn you when I didn’t know what was happening?” demanded Shontio.

“When did the Authority start paying you to help threaten us?” snapped Father Mihran.

“What?” Shontio’s shout pulled him to his feet.

Father Mihran remained seated and enunciated each word clearly. “How much did the Authority offer you in order to let this
little demonstration of their displeasure happen?”

“Father Mihran”—Shontio dragged out the title as if it were the last thing in the world he wanted to say—“you have no right
to insult me.”

“I’m afraid I have no choice. According to the treaty between Athena Station and Pandora, you are responsible for—”

“And you do not get to tell me my responsibilities!” Shontio slammed his palm against the table, making everyone in the room
wince. “I am responsible for a bursting, starving station because you will not open—”

Father Mihran slashed his hand through the air, cutting Shontio off.

“And if you wish to continue to have your responsibilities, you will make sure that nothing like this happens again.”

“You’re not threatening me, are you?” said Shontio, his voice as low and dangerous as Beleraja had ever heard it. “You’re
not threatening the station?”

Father Mihran bowed his head. “We are beyond threats, you and I. There are only promises left. And I promise you, I will not
permit another landing on Pandora. If the Athena management board cannot keep order, then order will be kept for them.”

Shontio reached out and swatted a command key on the table’s edge, cutting the connection to Pandora and blanking out the
wall.

“They mean it,” said Ordaz, the water and waste director, shaking his head until his jowls and chin quivered.

Ajitha, air director, waved her long hand dismissively so that her single diamond ring glittered in the light. “They are just
outgassing, as always.” She twisted her ring. “Pandora has only one threat to use against us, so they have to use it often.”

“No,” said Shontio quietly, lowering himself back into his seat. “I don’t think so. The sacred ground of Pandora has been
breached. This time, I think they’re serious.”

Beleraja watched fear settle over each one of the four directors.

“Forgive me,” she said. “What is the threat?”

Shontio’s smile was without humor. “I can’t believe you haven’t heard this one yet, Beleraja. Athena gained what independence
it has during the Conscience Rebellion—you know that, right?” He watched her nod. “Did anyone ever tell you what the Conscience
part of the rebellion’s name stands for?”

“I always thought that referred to the conscience of your ancestors.”

“Oh, no.” Shontio shook his head. “It was when the hothousers had all decided that in order to maintain family unity, they
were each of them going to get a little artificial intelligence chip planted in their heads to help remind them what was right
and what was wrong. They wanted to do the same to Athena Station, or at least the directorate. We refused and went on strike.
Shut down the space cable completely, shut down the manufacturing facilities, and threatened to start destroying the satellite
network.” Shontio shook his head again and stared at the wall, saying nothing more, as if he had forgotten he was in the middle
of the meeting.

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.

A
leph, 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.