Kingdom of Cages(35)

Tam climbed to his feet. He was head of the Administrators’ Committee, but there were limits on what he could do. “Always, so many limits,” he breathed to himself.

Your family will help you, said his Conscience.

“Yes, thank you,” said Tam. As soon as he spoke, he seemed to smell the reassuring scent of aloe. When he had still lived with his birth family, their niche had been surrounded by the plants. His Conscience was trying to make him feel that everything would be all right.

Maybe it would. Tam stood, automatically smoothing down his black vest as he did. If he could convince his family that action needed to be taken, that what was happening up on Athena was not just the Athenians’ problem. Perhaps he could even gain some leverage by pointing out that the station was being used by the Authority, just like Pandora was.

Somewhat reassured in spite of himself, Tam stepped out of the grove that sheltered the comm screen and started walking toward the dome’s western edge.

The family dome of the Alpha Complex was a huge open space, as much garden as it was living quarters. Tam sidestepped a pack of children as they barreled past him toward the play garden, followed by a smaller pack of parents and volunteers, talking and laughing with the easy familiarity of people who had lived all their lives together. A pair of seniors worked on their knees, aerating the roots of a newly grafted tree whose bright pink blossoms drooped lazily over their heads as if listening in on their conversation.

The center of the dome held the common living and working areas—kitchens, bathing pools, class areas, and most of the comm screens, all of it open to the dome and to all the other family members. Everyone over eighteen did have a personal alcove where they slept, entertained visitors, and kept their personal possessions. These were staggered along the curving walls of the dome, modeled after ancient cliff dwellings. Most of their rooms opened onto the common dome. The family saw privacy as a villager’s notion, a stationer’s notion, and an unhealthy one at that. Privacy bred secrets, and secrets could only swell to divide family members from each other, the city, and Pandora.

Tam sometimes wondered if it was his stunted Conscience that kept him wishing for a place where none of his family could see him. Surely, if his Conscience worked properly, he would want nothing better than the company of his kith and kin, especially when he was feeling troubled.

But this was all part of the gift and the burden his parents placed on him and his birth sister, Dionte. They were assured that they were not the only ones, that there were always a few, in secret, and that they were needed to watch over the family. There always had to be someone who could think clearly without the threat of being overwhelmed by guilt or fear. They were to make sure that their branch brothers and sisters did not become completely suffocated by the insulation that the voices in their heads wrapped around them.

Tam winced as he noticed his birth cousin Jolarie’s latest decorating idea for his alcove involved lurid yellow and red abstract blobs hung from the ceiling on twine nooses. Baidra, an experimenter visiting from the Gamma Complex, waved at Tam from her alcove where she stretched out on her bed with a reader sheet. She winked and gestured at him to come sit beside her, and Tam waved his refusal. Not today. There was too much in his head today to play the lover.

Tam put one foot on the stair that led to his own alcove. Movement caught his eye. Dionte waited on the ledge in front of Tam’s alcove with two covered cups in her hands.

Well, Sister, why am I not surprised? Tam waved with feigned welcome and climbed up to her, hoping by the time he got there his smile would be a little less forced. So, do you want to discuss the agenda for the administrators’ meeting, or the progress of the Eden Project?

“Good Afternoon, Dionte,” said Tam when he drew level with his younger sister. Dionte had been a moon-faced child, and she had grown into a soft-faced woman. She wore her black hair in a pair of braids, which she coiled around her head and pinned in the back. She dressed in a simple garment composed of four alternating black and white panels, with one black sleeve and one white.

Tam waved Dionte to a richly upholstered divan. He pulled a pair of fat pillows off the bed for himself and dropped them onto the floor.

“Basante is upset with you,” said Dionte, handing one of the covered cups to Tam as he sat by way of both greeting and greeting gift.

Ah. We’re going to talk about Eden. Tam accepted the cup handed down to him. “That’s nothing new.” He remembered the evening Bas-ante had come to him burbling about Helice Trust and the possibilities locked in her genes. By now Basante had seen Tam’s report of her second refusal to volunteer for the project.