Kingdom of Cages(39)

“I would never say such a thing,” Dionte told him, a little shocked. “But the fact is, Basante, it may be up to you and I to protect Pandora.”

The smile faded away. “Dionte, that isn’t possible. We can’t work without the family’s support.”

It will only be for a little while, I promise. Dionte took Basante’s hand. The smooth touch of his data display activated the sensors under the skin of her palm. Basante plus, she subvocalized to her own implant, and the preset commands she had encoded under that name flowed down the filaments in her arm, through her palm, into the biosilicate of his display, and to his implant.

“The family has decided not to protect Pandora from the Authority,” she said. “You see it as well as I do. You know this is true.”

The human body was a hot, acidic, constantly shifting environment. Anything inorganic planted inside it had a tendency to simply wear away over time. Although the Conscience implants were primarily organic, they each contained inorganic materials to assure the necessary precision of memory and consistency of output. Those inorganics needed monitoring and adjustment if they were to continue to function across the lifetime of their host.

The monitoring and adjustment were taken care of by Guardians like Dionte. Once a month Aleph downloaded any incidents each Conscience’s tiny AI had thought were matters of concern, so that the family member could be counseled or advised. At that same time, Dionte performed maintenance checks, injected alpha viruses loaded with fresh stem cells for the organic filaments, and worked with a needle laser and a hair-thin probe to lay in fresh connections or etch new patterns into the chip itself.

The solution of how to bring the family closer together turned out to be simple. It was a matter of a few new connections and a few new filaments, creating a new junction between the implant’s simple data-handling functions that connected the implant to the display on the back of the hand and the Conscience functions that connected the implant to the mind.

“They are trying to compromise with the Authority the way they’d compromise with other members of the family and it isn’t going to work,” she went on, keeping his gaze captured with her own.

If her own Conscience had been fully functional, she never would have been able to make the adjustments required, in herself or in anyone else. She would have been overwhelmed by a guilty need to tell her kin what she had planned and why she thought it would be a good idea. But that had not happened, and during Basante’s last appointment with her, she had made it possible for her implant to speak directly to his.

If she had made no mistakes, Basante’s implant would respond to the signals it was receiving from hers with endorphins and positive scents. Her own implant whispered in her mind, raw percentages and unfiltered numbers that made up the chemical analysis of Basante’s mind. Dionte could not catch them all. She would have to work on that. Obviously, she needed a subprogram to perform the analysis automatically and give her data she could use on the spot. Despite that, Dionte had to hold back a smile, because the numbers told her that her adjustments were working. Basante would hear her words and feel safety and security, not guilt. He would be able to answer her without contradiction from his Conscience. Even better, his implant spoke to hers, telling her what it was doing, allowing her to order adjustments or reversals as they were needed. The method was crude now, but she could improve on it. She would improve on it.

“You understand what I’m saying, don’t you, Basante? You see that I’m right?”

Basante stared at her, confused, but only for a moment. “Yes,” he said, sounding a little surprised. “I do.”

“I am not saying we should give up speaking in the meetings and gathering our support,” she said, grasping his hand even more tightly. “Indeed, I am saying that changing the family’s mind must be our primary goal. But”—she held up her free hand to stop any interruption he might be thinking to make—“we also must get ourselves ready in case that support doesn’t come, or in case it comes late.”

A light came into Basante’s eyes and spread into his face as fresh confidence took hold of him. “We need Helice Trust.”

“We need the child she can provide us.”

“Yes.” He squeezed her hand, confidence blossoming into eagerness.

“So, you will help me? I can count on you?” Say yes, say yes, Bas-ante. This has to work, or we’re all going to die. All of us, and Pandora with us.

Basante’s smile was warm and genuine and Dionte felt the warmth of it thawing her fears. “Always.”