Kingdom of Cages(18)

I will not leave Mom in trouble. I won’t give them the chance to screw us to the deck again. I swear I won’t.

Her resolve calmed her, and, eventually, Chena was able to sleep.





CHAPTER THREE





Meetings





Night had fallen solidly across the forest. Tam climbed the long, winding way to Nan Elle’s house more by touch than by sight. He glimpsed the occasional star through the shifting latticework of branches overhead, but they did nothing to illuminate his path. His only light was a small pocket flash he used to find the beginning and end of staircases.

At first the night’s chill had seeped through his clothes, but now a fine layer of perspiration covered his face and he had undone the collar button on his formal black and white coat.

Not enough time in the gym, murmured his Conscience as he paused to catch his breath.

“But I don’t feel guilty about it, so why are you sounding off?” he muttered back.

Your medical health is a default concern, his Conscience reminded him.

Tam just grunted and vaguely wished he could turn that off too, but he didn’t dare. Over the years his Conscience had been tampered with multiple times. Too many alterations to the remaining facade would draw attention he didn’t want.

Up ahead, a light gleamed and vanished, followed by the long, slow creak of a door with neglected hinges. He had tried repeatedly to get Nan Elle to oil those, but she just asserted it made it harder for anyone to sneak up on her.

It also makes it harder to visit in secret. That noise carries.

Warmer air, a more solid sound to his footsteps, and the sharp odors of pepper and chilis wrapped around him, and Tam knew he was inside. He fumbled for the edge of the door, found it, and pushed it shut, its hinges screaming in protest.

Where are we? asked his Conscience. Tam did not answer. He concentrated on keeping his breathing steady and his mind calm. It didn’t work. He had too much going on inside him.

You know you shouldn’t be here, his Conscience said, correctly. Suddenly Tam thought he smelled the odor of old yeast. It was a scent from his childhood, of a failed experiment in a biochemistry lesson, and it never failed to make him uneasy, a response his Conscience had nurtured for years.

For all those years, Tam had learned to walk through it.

“Good evening, Administrator Tam.” An oil lamp flickered to life, and after blinking a few times, Tam made out Nan Elle, stooped and withered, standing in the far corner of the room beside the brick stove. Her title, Nan, meant grandmother, and she certainly looked the part.

“Good evening, Nan Elle,” he replied, coming forward to touch her cheek in greeting. The smell of yeast grew stronger. Tam forced his feelings down. “I’m afraid our constable is upset with you.”

“Our constable is too clever by half.” Elle touched Tam’s cheek. Her hands were dry and callused from a lifetime’s work. “Can’t you appoint a stupid one?” She picked up a mug from the stove and handed it to him. The steaming liquid smelled strongly of mint.

“I’ve tried, but the man gives me depressingly few excuses to fire him.” Tam looked around for a stool and finally hooked one out from under the central worktable.

Nan Elle’s home was primarily one big room. An immaculate slanted writing table stood by the windows under shelves crammed with record books and diaries. Aquarium pipes lined the walls between the bookshelves. Carp and smelt peered at him. White cloth covered the examination chair that stood under three precious power-cell lamps. The central table was the compounding table. Stacks of pots and jars, mortar and pestle, a little oil stove, and straining cloths waited beside bales and packets of things Tam couldn’t identify in the dim light but that gave off a miasma of conflicting odors, some of them none too aesthetic.

At least, he thought, these odors are coming from outside. It was hard to tell sometimes. When a Conscience couldn’t keep control by verbal reminders, it would induce hallucinations and memories. Olfactory hallucinations were the most common, and the strongest triggers of organic memory inside the human mind.

Tam sometimes imagined his Conscience getting frustrated by its inablility to move him. He understood that the ones that were properly integrated and left to grow with their hosts could produce overwhelming floods of emotion or memory.

He never wanted to know what that felt like.

“Since when has an order from a hothouse needed a reason to be given?” Nan Elle was saying. Her eyes glittered bright with humor as she sat in her high-backed wooden chair by the writing table like a queen sitting on her throne.

“Since firing competence and hiring incompetence makes my family look at things twice,” Tam replied solemnly, pushing aside a stack of clay bowls to make room to set down his mug. “They also are not stupid. I’m afraid the constable might try to delay the court to review the evidence. If he does, I’m afraid you are going to have to deal with it.”