Kingdom of Cages(5)

But the new beginning was turning out to be as boring as used grease. That was Pandora out there. Pandora. The world where people walked around counting flowers, with chips in their heads to tell them what to do. Where they were so busy with plants and animals, they didn’t even know know how to fix their own machinery and they had to get Athenians to take care of everything for them, from replacement parts to satellite maintenance. Where they had beaten the Diversity Crisis and all the babies were born healthy and alive. A thousand conflicting stories ran through Chena’s head. Nobody—well, nobody Chena knew—knew that much about Pandora. There was no public access network between the station and the planet, and the planet was forty-eight hours away at the bottom of the space cable. Forty-eight hours, after you got all the permits you needed, if you could get them. All Chena herself knew came from a combination of half-forgotten history lessons, legends she and her friends told each other, and snippets of rig games designed around the Conscience Rebellion that won Athena Station its semi-independence four hundred years ago. The Pandorans were helpless and they were automatons. They were distrusted geniuses and miracle workers. The whole world was a wilderness, and a garden.

And she couldn’t see any of it.

Eventually somebody came around and handed out some of the cakes that Chena and Teal had always called nutra-bricks. But even they were more interesting than the talk Madra got up to give—about how welcome they all were to Offshoot, and how they would be expected to give their share to village life, and on and on and on. Chena wasn’t sure if she actually fell asleep, but she was counting the white hairs on the balding head of the man in front of her for a while.

My first time on a planet, and I can barely tell it from the station, she remembered thinking.

Then, finally, finally, the dirigible settled down to the ground, they were herded out the door, and the world around them was dark, except for a little path of lanterns leading up to a wooden dock, with an enclosed boat waiting on it. Inside, they all had to take seats again, and a bunch of people had lined up on benches on either side of them and grabbed hold of these wooden levers sticking out of the walls. They began pushing and pulling on the levers in time with the ticking of a big metronome at the back of the boat.

Rowing. The were rowing. This boat had no engines!

But eventually even that novelty wore away into boredom. As hard as she tried, Chena couldn’t see a damn thing out the windows. Teal and Mom fell asleep on each other’s shoulders, and Chena wished she could do the same. The boat’s rocking motion made her queasy and she felt like she was alone in the whole dark world and nobody cared.

Then they were unloaded onto yet another lit path, in another dark world, and led into this big round room, assigned lockers, and given bundles of pallets and blankets and told to go to sleep, that there’d be a general breakfast bell, and welcome to Offshoot.

Welcome to Offshoot. When do we get to go home? Chena thought now to the darkness that was the ceiling.

She’d thought they’d be in one of the domed cities. That was what Mom had said at first. She’d applied for a liaison and consulting mechanic’s position. But that hadn’t been a go plan. Mom didn’t say why. She just told them they’d be heading for one of the outside villages instead.

As she thought that over, Chena noticed the darkness was less dark. The world seemed to be turning gray at the edges.

Sun must be coming up, she thought, sitting up and blinking. Weird. She’d been in rig games that showed dawn, and she thought she’d be ready for it, but somehow she’d never guessed it would be so… gradual. She didn’t think it could start up without you noticing it. It seemed like there should be a noise, a click, or a hum or a bell—something.

Which is completely stupid, she told herself. You’re a jungle girl now. No more caution buzzers, ever.

Then she realized something else. For the first time since they’d stepped aboard the space cable car, she wasn’t being watched or led around or put someplace. She could actually get up and go somewhere if she wanted to.

She looked at her comptroller. It had defaulted to the time function: 4:20 glowed at her.

Chena made her decision. Carefully, she folded back her blankets. Teal didn’t stir. Neither did Mom. One of the anonymous lumps that was a fellow immigrant snorted and shrugged, but that was it.

Now that her eyes had adjusted to the dimness, Chena found she could make her way easily between the clusters of pallets to the room’s one doorway. The floor was cool under her feet but not cold, so she decided not to bother with finding her shoes. A corridor led off to the right and a set of shallow stairs climbed to the left. Ahead of her opened another round room, also full of sleeping bodies.