Kingdom of Cages (55 page)

Finally, almost blind in the thickening darkness, Chena found herself nose to nose with a moss-coated support pillar of the
Alpha Complex. She rested her cheek on a grassy hummock for a moment, just catching her breath. It was the same outside as
it was inside. She was only safe as long as Aleph wasn’t paying attention to her. If she had actually bumped into the thing,
the sensory subsystem might have alerted Aleph’s central consciousness, and it might have decided to look closely at what
was nosing around out here, and that would have been the end of everything.

Chena scrambled backward a few feet and then checked her comptroller. She swore. Inside, her client had already been waiting
for her for twenty minutes. In another ten, they would leave, and she would have to crawl all the way back across the swamp
and return to Off-shoot empty-handed.

Taking one long breath, Chena rolled onto her feet and hurried around the hothouse perimeter, using the last of the daylight
to dodge the fountains that sprayed water onto the outside of the dome, keeping it cool and comfortable for the people inside.

The shadowy shape of the entrance lock loomed in front of her. She peeked again at her comptroller. Four minutes left. There
would be a camera inside the lock. Any anomalies had to be gotten rid of out here. Quickly, Chena pulled the strings and straps
of the camouflage suit and shucked out of it. She had practiced this for weeks. The swarms of bugs scattered, momentarily
confused by the abrupt motion.

That won’t last.

She stuffed the suit into her pack, pulled out a small packet of things she might need, stowing them in her waistband’s inner
pocket. The pack would have to stay out on the grass, there was no help for it. But if everything went well, she would be
gone before daylight. No casual observer would notice an extra shadowy bump in the ground, and there was nothing in there
to attract the bugs. It would be all right.

Heart beating at the base of her throat, Chena walked to the entrance of the environmental lock. One long second later, the
door slid silently open for her and Chena stepped into the Alpha Complex. The camera that looked at her saw a woman in straight
black trousers and a long-sleeved shirt that had a white-on-white diamond pattern. Her long hair was pulled back into a ponytail.
She did not like to think about how much the outfit cost, or how long it had taken her to finagle a pair of the soft-soled,
machine-made black shoes that were the approved footwear inside the hothouse. The cost would be worth it. It would all be
worth it.

A short flight of ceramic stairs led up to the inner lock. Chena had not been able to obtain a complete map of all the sensors
in here. If she was going to be stopped, it would be in here. For all she knew, they might even be checking the air for the
chemical composition of her sweat. Well, if her plan did go that far wrong, there was always the fresh poison under her fingernail.

But the inner lock opened as easily as the outer had and Chena stepped, blinking, into the foyer. A woman stood beside the
inner door dressed in a black-and-white-striped robe. Her fingers scrabbled at each other, as if they were looking for something
to hang on to.

She swept up to Chena, the hems of her robe swirling around her ankles. “Follow me, quickly,” she murmured. “You’re a mess.”

I’ve just crawled across a damn swamp.
But Chena just smiled. “It’s good to see you too,” she said for the benefit of any of Aleph’s subsystems that might be moved
to track this conversation. “I’ll need to freshen up a little before the meeting.”

The woman gave her a sharp look that might have been approval, and turned away. She walked fast, with her hands locked together
in front of her. Chena wondered if she was trying to hold them still. It was odd to see a hothouser with a nervous habit.

Then again, this hothouser is breaking several thousand regulations.

Chena’s client led her through the foyer door marked with parallel white lines on a black background. A warm smell of antiseptic
and perfume touched her, followed by a morass of voices. Trying not to stare, she followed her client into a huge open space
filled with hothousers of every age, wearing every shape and style of clothing, although all of it remained some variation
on black and white. Some of them stood by workstations that looked a lot like Nan Elle’s plant-covered work-table. Some sat
behind multi-comptrollers with dozens of screens and input pads surrounded by flickers and shivers of light that must have
been video displays projected onto angled glass.

The woman, her client, walked Chena rapidly through this maze of equipment and activity. Chena kept her eyes focused on the
woman’s back, sneaking only occasional glances at the bustle around her. She glimpsed hothousers laboring over green plants
in troughs of soil. She saw them observing hives of live insects, and sorting seemingly dead ones from piles of leaves and
loam. She passed hugely magnified images of bacteria, DNA, or protozoa projected onto glass walls. Still other glasses showed
images of crystals, or dirt, or hothousers.

Her client led her up a slender open staircase toward the second tier of offices. On the way up, they passed a work area where
three hothousers fussed with the wires connected to a set of flesh-colored pears about half the size of Chena’s torso. She
flicked a glance at the glass screens as she climbed past, and her step faltered. The glasses displayed images of human embryos.
She gripped the railing hard to remind herself where she was and who watched her, and kept on going.

Her client led her into one of the tiny glass-walled laboratories. A double thickness of door sealed behind them, but did
nothing to cut off the constant babble of voices. Her client slid two fingers down one of the walls, making a brief command
of some kind, and the voices dimmed. Only then did she turn around to look at Chena.

“What do you have for me?”

Chena opened her waistband pocket and turned out a small envelope, which she handed to her client. Her client broke the wax
seal and slid in one finger. She drew it out a moment later and inspected the brown powder clinging to the tip.

She sniffed the powder and then stuck out the tip of her tongue as if she meant to taste it.

“I wouldn’t do that,” cautioned Chena. “Not unless you’re ready for a truly epic light show.”

Her client nodded once, as if Chena had said something only mildly interesting. She closed the envelope again, laid it on
a counter, and washed her hands thoroughly in the miniature sink. “How is it used?”

“Do you know what sourdough is?” Chena leaned back against a high stool.

Without turning around, her client nodded again. She reached for a thick towel and wiped her hands dry.

“You mix two pinches of the powder with a quarter cup of sourdough starter. Then you add six or eight pieces of fresh fruit.
Should be an Old Earth import, nothing native. I like bananas.” She waited for a moment to see if her client would make some
comment. But no reaction was forthcoming, so she shrugged and went on. “Then you mix in an additional cup of warm water. You
leave that to soak for two days, and you drink it. Preferably while lying down. It works very quickly.”

Her client brushed her fingertips over the envelope, as if she were scanning it with her hand. “And the effect is?”

Chena’s mouth twitched. “If you haven’t used too much of the fungus, the effect is euphoria and hallucinations, followed by
at least four hours of complete numbness.” Mushrooms, Nan Elle always said, were the most precious plant in God’s garden.
Nothing else produced such a range of useful effects, from wholesome to deadly.

Client cocked one eye toward Chena. “And if you have used too much?”

“It’s a good thing you washed your hands,” Chena told her. She pulled out a thick piece of homemade paper covered on both
sides with the closest, most careful handwriting she could manage. “Here’s everything we know about its species, its preferred
environments, the fermentation effects, and what chemical data we could work out.”

Client took the page and opened it. As she read, she ran her finger down the page, as Chena had seen Nan Elle do to keep track
of where she was. But Chena could not shake the idea that Client was reading with her finger as well as her eyes.

Buying into the hothouse mystique,
she told herself.
I’m starting to think they can do anything.

Client folded the page up again and laid it next to the envelope. “It is what we agreed on, and it is all satisfactory.” A
small smile formed on her face as she gazed possessively at what Chena had brought. “Do you know, many of my colleagues believe
it is a waste of time to study the ways in which the villagers have adapted to their environment over time?”

Chena ignored the question. “I’m glad you’re satisfied. Shall we take care of the rest of the meeting now?”

Client’s hand lifted away from the papers and curled in on itself. “Yes. Now is a good time.”

“I can handle this on my own.” Chena flicked a gaze at the transparent walls. “You don’t need to concern yourself with it.”

Client followed her gaze, her lips pursuing slightly and her fingers rubbing against her palm. “Yes, you’re right, of course.”
Her eyes swept the laboratory dome. “A colleague of mine did say we could use his station. It’s data-trained for what you
need. Let me come with you in case it’s locked.”

Triumph singing through her, Chena followed Client up to the very top level of the laboratory dome, where the far walls curved
in, letting the people who worked there look out onto the blue sky during the daytime. As it was night, of course, the whole
dome was opaqued to a pearly gray.

Client stopped in front of an open laboratory that seemed to be all comptroller. Banks of processors rose from the floor to
the height of Chena’s shoulders. The first sweep of her eyes counted twenty main screens, each with a separate input pad and
listening grill.

“You will be able to find what you need? You can call me if you can’t,” said the client.

Chena shook her head. “No need. I can manage,” she said with a confidence she did not feel. She pasted on a smile and sat
in the lab’s one chair.

She felt Client’s gaze on the back of her neck like an itch. She didn’t start right away. She rubbed her fingertips together
and steepled them, pressing them against her lips, as if lost in thought. Gradually the itch went away.

Okay, Aleph. Now it’s just you and me.
She laid her hands on the keys and began.

As she suspected, the data trees were similar to the ones set up for the library comptrollers, only these were much more extensive,
with innumerable sub-branches and cross-references.

Chena found the branch for daily reports and report archives and followed it down. She did not go straight for Mom’s name.
That would certainly be protected. She would not get that this trip, she was sure. She would have to be patient.

Without delay or inquiry for identification, the comptroller presented her with reports sorted by wing: voluntary, involuntary,
and home. Chena’s fingers tingled at the idea of going through reports on the involuntary wing and maybe finding out what
happened to Sadia. That was too much of a risk right now. She only had a little time before Client came back for her. She
turned down the branch for the voluntary wing.

Pandorans were nothing if not thorough. They recorded how much food was consumed and what kind, water use and reservoir levels,
CO
₂
levels, how much equipment and electricity was used to maintain the environment. Then there were the psychological records:
education, behavior, sociability, sleep patterns, cooperativeness.

My record on that score must be something to see,
thought Chena with a tight smile. Her hands kept moving.

Next came medical records, listed by date and whether they referenced physical maintenance or an experiment.

Chena froze. All the experiment names spelled themselves out in front of her, cross-referenced with the patient names.

It can’t be that easy, can it?

The lists were extensive, but surely these were just the low-security experiments. They would have a separate security database
for the high-level things, like what Mom had been involved in.

Except the only people who have access to this terminal are hothousers, and hothousers have no secrets from each other because
that work is so interconnected.

That was what Administrator Tam told Nan Elle anyway, and nobody could lie to Nan Elle. Chena had seen people try. There were
things he would not say, maybe, but he would not lie to her.

Chena stared at the path and the list of reports on the screen. Did she dare? It looked like she could. It looked like she
could have it all now. She could know, right here and now, who was ultimately responsible for Mom, who had allowed her to
die.

Chena’s fingers started moving before she was even sure of her decision. She entered the search for her mother’s medical records,
the experiment she was involved in, and all other data pertaining to and about Helice Trust, in order of decreasing relevance
to the experiments. When she finished, her hands fell into her lap, as if all the strength had flowed out of them and into
the machine.

Chena waited. In the space of a heartbeat, the data all came spilling out onto the screen, all of it under the heading EDEN.

Chena read, drinking in the information until she felt she would burst. Eden was a genetic construct. It was supposed to be
the answer to the Diversity Crisis because it had a “rapidly adapting and aggressively proactive” immune system—a set of antibodies
and T cells that could take anything the worlds could throw at it and spit it back out.

There had been a debate then, and Chena brought up the sub-branch for it. Most of the family wanted to give over the cure
to the Authority and the Called, and believed firmly that Pandora would then be left alone. But some of them… Chena’s eyes
took in the words and she felt herself go cold. Some of them said the cure could be used as a weapon. Immune from all kinds
of infection, Eden, or a host of Edens, could go out into the Called and spread diseases engineered in the hot-house labs
without having to worry about accidentally getting sick themselves or bringing anything unwanted back with them to Pandora.
They could take out what remained of the Called, and all of the Authority cities. With the rest of the human race gone, and
Old Earth content in its own system so many light-years away, Pandora would be safe forever.