Kingdom of Cages(21)

“Her mother brought her and her sister here to live in the dorms. It’s not the action of someone who’s had very many choices in their life.” Her mouth curved up into a smile. “And if I can’t reach her myself, perhaps I’ll bring in young Farin from Stem and have him run into her accidentally.”

“Nan Elle, that’s completely unfair.” Farin was Nan Elle’s grandson and an extraordinarily handsome young man. It was fairly well known that he made a living off those looks, and Tam had wondered why Elle would permit such a thing. But he thought he knew. Farin had dozens of connections across five different villages, connections Nan Elle was more than ready to make use of.

“It’s unfair, but it will work,” said Elle solemnly, but Tam had the distinct feeling she was laughing silently at him. “Or I don’t know my boy.”

“I’ll leave it to you.” Tam tapped the table once with his palm and stood. “Thank you for your help, Elle. I’ll let you know what’s happening.”

“I should think so.” Elle shuffled across to him and touched his cheek again. “Step sure, step safe.”

“And you.” He touched her in answer. “Is there anything you need?”

“A body that’s roughly forty years younger.” Her mouth puckered into a smile as she said it. “Failing that, a new camouflage suit and some more sample bottles would do.”

“You’ll get them.” Tam walked to the door and laid his hand on the knob. “Oh,” he said, turning around. “The dead man, what did he do?”

Elle’s hands clenched the edge of the table. “He broke faith with me.”

Tam nodded and walked out into the darkness. It would never do for an answer to the constable, but there were so many parts of this world where Constable Regan would never walk, and a number of them were in his own village.


Sadia hadn’t been kidding when she said that most of the day was working the shit. Before her first shift, Chena had no idea how much waste material human beings could produce.

Since there were no computers, the assignments for each shift were posted in the dining hall. Chena had found that K37 was working in the Recycling and Composting Building. After taking Teal to her shift, which was in the dining hall kitchen, and promising faithfully that she would be back to get her at the appointed hour, just as she had with Mom, Chena had asked a man in the villagers’ thick clothing where the Composting Building was. He told her to follow her nose. The strongest stink would lead her to it.

When he turned away, Chena made the piss-off sign at him. But then she stepped outdoors and the breeze touched her cheeks and she discerned a faint, unpleasant smell, like from a bathroom that had been used too many times without being cleaned.

Chena followed the smell up the gravel paths and across the footbridges until she came to a long, low building on the river side of the village. One of the many canals that dissected the village grounds ran straight through the building. Coming from inside it, she heard all kinds of scraping and rumbling.

Biting her lip, Chena did her best to walk up to the doors without hesitating. The shedlike building was built on a long slope so that the canal that flowed slowly into one end flowed swiftly out the other through a series of brown reed-filled ponds that increased in size until the chain opened out into the river.

Inside, the noise was deafening, and the smell was worse. The noise came from a pair of huge cylinders at least as big around as tree trunks. They lay on their sides in some kind of cradle along one wall. Each drum had four bicycles attached to it by long bands. People sat on the bikes and pedaled, and the motion turned the drums over and over. Other people shoveled what looked like mounds of black earth into wheelbarrows, and still other people pushed the barrows away down toward the river. Another corner of the room was taken up by people standing around steaming kettles, stirring them with long poles. As Chena watched, a woman lifted a pole out and she saw it ended on a paddle that the woman used to lift out a heap of soggy rags, which she promptly dumped into her neighbor’s kettle. In another corner, they were chopping and scrubbing pieces of wood.

The canal was not left alone. Chena could see square frames had been inserted into it at regular intervals. People lined its banks, dipping what looked like long-handled baskets into the water and lifting out heaps of green sludge that got dumped into wooden trenchers next to them.

As her eyes swept across this bewildering array of activity, Chena spotted Sadia shoveling dirt into the wheelbarrows. The sight gave her confidence to walk up to the deeply tanned man standing by the door with record sheets in his hand and a scanner on his belt. He looked down his long, straight nose at Chena.