Kingdom of Cages (40 page)

“I wondered why the situation had stayed so calm.” A smile flickered across Menasha’s face, but it faded almost as soon as
it formed. “Now I’ve got something else for you to think about.” Slowly, deliberately, Menasha stretched out her arm and pointed
at the pilot’s window. “Your first wave is coming. If you want there to be a second wave in anything less than two years,
you are going to have to consider these requests.”

Beleraja’s shoulders sagged, and she felt as though they would never straighten up again. She opened her hand and the crumpled
sheet screen full of family names spun gently into the air. “What am I doing, Mena?”

“I don’t know,” Menasha answered. “What are you doing?”

Beleraja watched the sheet perform a graceful pirouette on one corner. She should let go. She should just leave, right now,
with Menasha. There was no way to make this work. She was being a fool. This was not her job. Her job was to look after her
people, and she had been neglecting that for years now. She had been exchanging plans with them for how, after the consolidation,
they might turn themselves into a salvage fleet, looting abandoned stations and satellites for usable hardware and software
to bring to the newly settled Pandora. They could still fly, still be free.

But if she believed what Menasha was saying now, those plans were merely fantasies. She was no longer matriarch of her small
family, she was matriarch of all the refugees that Pandora could hold.

No. I don’t want that. I want to fulfill my promise and go away. This is not my life. This will never be my life.

But her mind’s eye showed her the crowded stairways of Athena Station, full of people Shontio had let stay because she had
said this thing could be done.

Beleraja closed her hand around the drifting sheet screen. “I guess I’m going to talk to Shontio about setting up a provisional
government for when we invade Pandora.”

C
aptain Aban?” Farin saluted the slouching, dour man at the end of the dock, giving him the bright smile that Chena had seen
work as well on men as on women.

Chena watched Aban look Farin up and down, trying to reach some judgment about him.

“You coming down the river?” He had a long, lazy drawl to his voice, as if he didn’t care what happened next.

Farin nodded. “Myself and my cousin.” He gestured toward Chena, who beamed up at the captain, trying to look younger than
she was. It was a trick that had gotten a lot harder since she had grown two inches and filled out so much in her bosom.

Aban spared her a glance, but did not seem to be impressed. He made a come-here gesture with his first two fingers. “Chits
and hands.” He unhooked the scanner from his belt.

“We have this for you as well.” Farin handed over a much-folded piece of paper.

Aban frowned. This was not part of the routine, and he obviously did not like it. But he took the paper anyway and opened
it, running his gaze swiftly over the words. His frown grew deeper and darker. Chena held her breath. This was the real test.
If this man did not agree to the instructions in Nan Elle’s letter, they were going no farther.

Not that they had really gotten anywhere yet. Chena still had to reach the rain forest village of Peristeria, get outside
the fence, search the rain forest for a particular kind of fungus, the belladonna mushroom (
Fungus belladonna,
Nan Elle’s herb sheets called it). Dried and concentrated, it produced a substance that could regulate an uneven heartbeat
where digitalis couldn’t help. Administered in small doses along with some of Nan Elle’s precious salicylic acid and penicillin,
it would save the dying in Offshoot.

Captain Aban was supposed to take them down the last stage of the journey. Once, he had lived in Offshoot, and Nan Elle had
saved the life of his oldest son. The letter was reminding him of that and suggesting that if he left the crew door of his
riverboat open when the boat reached the Peristeria dock, it would be greatly appreciated.

Aban lifted grim eyes to Farin, who stood there patiently, although the smile had faded so he didn’t look quite as cocky.
Up until now, Farin had carried all their documents. Chena was traveling as a minor with him as her supervisory relative,
as was required for a trip of more than three hundred kilometers. At least it was another month until she turned nineteen.
It also meant that if anyone got suspicious they would be more likely to look at Farin, who was as clean as this morning’s
dew.

So far, it had all gone well. This man, though, could stop them in their tracks, and he looked about ready to. Some people
did not like being reminded what they owed.

At last, Captain Aban jerked his chin toward the boat. “We leave Peristeria at sunset, if you want a ride back.”

His words opened Chena’s throat and she was able to breathe again. Farin nodded their thanks and gestured for Chena to precede
him. She risked one look back and saw Aban’s fingers tearing the note into minute flakes without his eyes once glancing down
to see what his hands were doing.

The riverboat was the standard design—wide, double-keeled, with an enclosed cabin filled with benches for rowers and passengers.
People occupied more than half of them. Loose, gauzy clothing seemed to be the local uniform, to keep cool yet provide some
protection from the insects buzzing everywhere.

As soon as Chena and Farin boarded, Captain Aban climbed onto the deck and locked the cabin’s bow door. Chena gravitated toward
the stern windows behind the last rowing bench and laid both hands on the wooden rail that ran just below the glass panes.
The boat rocked and jostled as the rowers pushed off, and the huge metronome beside Chena started ticking to keep the time.

“Don’t you want to sit down?” asked Farin. “It’s going to be a long trip.”

Chena shook her head. “I’ve been sitting for days.”

Which was true. She’d sat on the boat from Offshoot to Stem, on the dirigible from Stem to Taproot, on the next boat from
Taproot to Deciduous.

It was also true, Chena admitted to herself, that she was simply too edgy to sit quietly with the rest of the passengers,
their baggage, and their babies. So she stayed where she was and watched the lush tropical world slip past. Water slapped
the hull, making an irregular counterpoint to the rhythm of the oars slapping the water. Neither sound was anywhere near loud
enough to cover the chirping and hooting pouring from the jungle that surrounded the swift brown river, even in combination
with the ticking of the metronome and the grunts of the rowers as they stretched and pulled.

Five years ago, Chena would have wondered what idiot didn’t know machines could do this work. Now she knew better. Machines
had to be built from artificial materials. They broke down and had to be repaired with more artificial materials. They could
litter or disturb the ecology. Humans could be maintained with naturally occurring substances and they fixed and reproduced
themselves without requiring spare parts to be shipped in from Athena. They also moved more slowly, and so were less likely
to damage Pandora than robots or powered vehicles.

Chena’s thoughts made her frown. In answer, Farin moved a little closer to her, a gesture which managed to be both reassuring
and disconcerting. But for once Farin’s presence did not occupy her whole mind. She was too taken up with what she was about
to try.

She was going outside the fence today. She was going to walk in the wilderness and poach the sacred forests of Pandora. Today,
Chena was on her own. On her own if she succeeded, and on her own if she got caught.

Chena hoped her fellow passengers would assume the sheen of perspiration on her forehead was from the tropical heat.

Teal had never understood why they had to live like this, or why Chena insisted that she stick to running errands while Chena
was the apprentice lawbreaker. But Teal was Chena’s responsibility, and she would do what was best. Mom would have expected
no less.

Teal was getting her revenge, though. Chena couldn’t look at Farin without remembering their last fight.

After their argument on the roof, Chena had walked into the bedroom to find that Teal had thrown herself flat on the broad
pallet they shared. Chena had sat down cross-legged beside her and picked up her big traveling pack. She needed to finish
unpicking some of the inner seams so she could sew in a hidden pocket. She got to work with her thick needle, waiting for
Teal to say something.

At last Teal did.

“Why are you doing this?”

Chena kept her eyes on her work. “Because I have to.”

“The fuck you do!” Teal heaved herself to her feet.

“Teal.” Chena sighed and lowered the canvas pack into her lap. “You don’t understand—”

“What’s to understand?” Teal ripped the pack out of her hands. “You’re being a space-head. Again!”

“A space-head for not wanting to run away when there are lives in danger?” Feeling childish but unable to stop herself, Chena
snatched back the pack.

“As if you really cared!” shouted Teal, just centimeters from Chena’s face. “You just want to go out there with your whore!”

Chena’s fist clenched around the needle. Teal stood her ground defiantly, daring Chena to lash out at her. Chena took a long,
slow breath and loosened her hand with great effort.

People said Farin was a prostitute. People said women, and sometimes men, paid him to have sex with them. Chena had been stunned
and upset when she first found out. She knew about prostitutes, she’d seen them on Athena, where they were illegal. They were
mostly women up there, and not exactly the kind of people Mom let her and Teal make friends with. Of course, she’d also been
a kid then and hadn’t understood a lot of things. She had asked Farin about what she had heard, and he had reassured her that
he was just a performer. He sold his talents to the village, not his body. Teal just wanted to believe the rumors because
she hated Farin, although Chena couldn’t understand why. Teal could still be so thick sometimes. Her friendship with Farin
was real. He cared about her. He helped because he was Nan Elle’s blood family, but also because he truly liked Chena. He’d
said so, plenty of times. One day, he would tell her he more than liked her. She was sure of it. In the meantime, she was
not—she was
not
—going to let Teal’s stupid insults ruin anything.

“You’re talking like a baby and you don’t understand anything,” she said, enunciating each word slowly and clearly. “So, just
go away for a while, would you? We’ll talk when I get back.”

“No. We won’t.”

Teal had turned away then and walked out of the house. Chena had just sighed and gone back to rigging her pack.

She sighed again now. She’d be back home in four days. Teal would have gotten over her snit by then and they would talk. This
time, she’d find the words to make Teal truly understand why they were living this way. She’d make her understand about Farin
too, once and for all. If this tailor, whoever it was, insisted on catering to Teal’s obsession with returning to Athena…
well, Nan Elle had taught Chena a few ways to deal with that kind of problem too.

Nan Elle said that once, a long time ago, the Pharmakeus had been a real network instead of just a loosely connected bunch
of men and women with hand-me-down information about Pandora’s plants and a grand, paranoid name. They’d operated out of the
hothouses, and they’d had people inside who would help diagnose and treat the illnesses. But then the Consciences came along,
and suddenly none of them could do anything the rest of the family disapproved of. The hothouser Pharmakeus had babbled happily
about what they were up to, and apologized, and the village networks were broken up, not just the doctors, but the computers.
It was done, they said, so no one could introduce anything that would upset the delicate natural balance of Pandora’s microsphere.

In the hothouse classes, they’d been told this all happened because the villages had not been originally supposed to operate
for more than a couple of generations. When it was decided that the real work of Pandora lay in understanding the world around
them rather than lecturing “those who did not want to hear,” changes had to be made.

My ass,
thought Chena, sneering at the river.
If that’s what it was, why didn’t they just move everybody into the hothouses? It’s really just another way to control us.
They’re afraid if there ever gets to be more of us than there are of them, we might decide not to put up with their shit anymore.

Time, and miles of riverbank, slipped away, but Chena didn’t sit down. She leaned her elbows on the rail and ran her mind
over everything Nan Elle had told her about the tropics—about the snakes, the big cats, the little parasites, and the huge
bugs. Don’t drink the water, don’t step into blank patches of mud or areas of dead vegetation, and for the sake of God’s own,
don’t eat anything you haven’t seen anyone else eat first. Chena’s comptroller, sewed securely into the seam of her pack along
with her compass, was stuffed full of every note she could key in. Normally, Nan Elle frowned on her using the comptroller
and insisted that she memorize every fact and name. This time she made an exception, because there was no time.