Kingdom of Cages(15)

But Administrator Tam was not ready to give up yet. “Life working the village will be very hard on your children. They are not used to it.” Like Madra’s, the speech sounded rehearsed, like he wanted to be on record. Chena looked around for the camera, but she couldn’t see anything. Who did this guy think was listening?

Then she remembered that the Pandorans, at least the hothousers, were all supposed to have chips in their heads. Maybe they were there to record what you did all day, for the bosses, whoever the hothousers had as bosses. Mom’s boss back in Athena’s repair bays would have loved something like that. He was always trying to dock her pay for taking too long a break or something.

The ghost of a smile played around Mom’s mouth. “My daughters have not lived easy,” she said. “As I have a job of my own, I hope to change that situation.” She carefully enunciated every word in the last sentence so there could be no mistake. Chena felt her insides thawing and relaxing. How could she have been afraid? Mom would never do such a thing, not to them, not to herself.

“You have your answer, Administrator,” said Madra, twitching a record sheet off the top of the nearest pile. “If you’ll allow me to move along? We still have a lot of processing to get through.”

Administrator Tam just nodded and sat back, satisfied. This was too weird. If the guy didn’t want Mom in the hothouse, what was he doing here? Chena chewed on her lip. She did not like this. There were way too many things going on in this room that she didn’t understand.

“Thank you for your understanding, Administrator.” Madra’s smile was sunny, but her tone was cool. She consulted the record she had retrieved and compared it with the records already in front of her. “Now, I want to make sure both girls get on daytime shifts, of course.”

“Can I put in a request?” asked Chena, a little hesitantly, looking from Mom to Madra to try to see how either of them would take it. Mom looked mildly surprised. Madra quickly shifted her expression over into encouraging.

“Go ahead,” said Madra, gesturing to indicate that the floor, or possibly the whole world, was Chena’s.

“I’d like to be with K37,” she said, hoping she remembered it right. “I met this girl, Sadia,” she said in response to Mom’s inquiring lift of her eyebrow. “When I was… out. She seemed nice. It’s her shift.”

“Mmm…” Madra shuffled through her records. “K37’s not a beginner’s shift. We normally don’t schedule newcomers there.”

“That’s okay,” Chena assured her. “I can handle it.”

Madra sighed and spoke to Mom. “It’s demanding physical labor on that one. Shoveling, working with the compost…”

“I’m not puny,” announced Chena. She caught the are-too look on Teal’s face and ignored it. She turned to Mom. Pleading with Madra wasn’t going to do any good. “Please, Mom. She was nice, and she can show me what’s what.”

Mom faced Madra. “Can she try it? If she can’t handle the work, she could be transferred off the shift, couldn’t she?”

“Again, that’s not something we normally do.” The phrase sounded prerecorded. Chena snuck a look at Administrator Tam. He watched Madra, but Chena couldn’t tell one thing about what he saw.

Madra herself seemed to be waiting for something, maybe for Administrator Tam to interrupt. When he didn’t, her smile reasserted itself. “As long as you’re aware it will be demanding work,” she said to Chena, who nodded rapidly. “All right.”

“I’ll make it work,” said Chena confidently, more for Mom than for Madra. Mom just covered her hand and squeezed. She was watching the administrator watch Madra. Did she know something about him?

“What about you?” asked Madra of Teal. “Anything special you’d like?”

Teal opened her mouth. Chena was sure she was going to say, To get out of here. Mom must have thought so too, because her face darkened with warning.

Teal, who could actually act like she had a brain sometimes, swallowed and said, “No, thank you.”

“All right, let’s see what we have, then.…”

While Madra shuffled and murmured to herself, Chena stole another glance at Administrator Tam. He seemed preoccupied now, staring out the windows as if listening to some private voice that had nothing at all to do with what was going on in the room.

At last, Madra made a couple of fresh imprints on her reports and announced that Mom was on the G3 shift and Teal was on K5. She buzzed the information into their chips with a handheld scanner and wished them good evening.