Kingdom of Cages(19)

“Too bad,” Elle sighed, cupping her own mug in her twiglike fingers. The chair creaked under her as she shifted her weight. “So, what can I do for you, Tam?”

Tam took a long swallow of tea. It had been heavily sweetened with honey and sat well in his stomach. “I was hoping you could tell me something about one of the new arrivals, Helice Trust.”

Elle considered, but then shook her head. “I haven’t made contact with her yet. I’ve met her oldest daughter, Chena, though, briefly.”

“And what did you think of her?”

Again, Elle took her time in anwering. Most people thought of Elle as quick, sharp, and tricky. Tam knew her to be a long and careful thinker. Her quickness was the result of having spent hours turning over various scenarios far in advance.

“The girl’s brave,” she said finally. “Not anywhere near as frightened of the great outdoors as most station children. Determined, also. Not going to let anything get her down. Plenty of attitude. Could become a hustler, if left to her own devices.” Elle cocked her head. “I’ve looked over the fate map you left me last time. They are fascinating stock, if all the expressions are as predicted. Are we keeping an eye on them?”

Tam nodded. “I’m getting pressure from Basante, and others, to force the mother onto the project, but I’m resisting.”

“Why?”

Now it was Tam who took his time answering. “Because they belong to Offshoot now, and that makes them my responsibility. I’ve seen how some of the other administrators run their villages. They are perfectly willing to bully their people into the complex, but I won’t have it here.”

“You don’t want them forced into becoming something they might not want to be?” Tam heard the smile behind Elle’s question.

“Perhaps.”

“Or perhaps you’re saying you don’t trust your family?”

She was goading him now, and Tam had to work to keep from snapping at her. It did not help that his Conscience already had a feel for his answer and was bringing him the scent of green decay.

“I trust my family,” Tam told her. “I just don’t like them very much.”

“Stubborn,” chided Elle. “It’s going to get you into trouble.”

Tam waved her away. “We are starting to forget that these people are human beings, not lab rats. The last time that happened, there was a war and a whole dome got destroyed. I don’t want that to happen again.” He looked down at the mug in his hands. Whips of steam curled across the liquid’s clear green surface. “The Trusts are under my protection. I don’t want anyone to have a chance to go behind my back to get to them.”

How can you make such accusations against your family? asked his Conscience, filling the air with the scent of burning. “If she decides to volunteer on her own,” said Tam to both Nan Elle and his Conscience, “that’s fine. But I will not have my people coerced.” Elle is right. I will not have them made into things they don’t want to be, and have the control over their futures stripped away from them.

I will not have done to them what has been done to me.

Silence stretched out for several minutes. “How bad is the news?” asked Elle at last.

Tam sighed and set the mug down again. He lifted his gaze to the curtained windows, as if he thought he’d see something profound written in the ripples in the cloth. He smelled yeast, and the odor of rotten vegetation. Scents of failure, of disobedience and ignored instructions. They intensified his real unease and he squirmed on the stool. “If we are to believe our good commander Beleraja Poulos, it’s never been worse. Some of the colonies are talking about breaking all contact with the Authority, on the grounds that the Authority is doing them no good at all.”

“Watching your people die will make you impatient,” murmured Elle, more to her mug than to Tam. “So, your people have decided to go forward with the immune system project?”

“Yes. We’re calling it the Eden Project. A number of detailed descriptions have already gone to the Authority’s Council of Cities.”

“Will they accept it, do you think?” Nan Elle asked softly.

“They will have to. It is what we are prepared to do.” In theory, a human immune system could be made active enough to expel any and every microorganism that produced a toxic reaction in its host. Such experiments had been tried on a number of worlds when the Diversity Crisis was first recognized. In reality, the approach presented huge problems. An overactive immune system could provoke any of a thousand different autoimmune diseases in its host because it could not tell the difference between invading microorganisms, the normal symbiotic organisms, and the changes that occurred in a human naturally over time. To add to the difficulties, a fetus with a hyperactive immunity could actually end up attacking its mother while in the womb, or the mother’s immune system might go on the offensive against the child.