Kingdom of Cages(81)

She did not move. “Experimenting.”

“I thought that was Basante’s job.”

Dionte smiled. “When it comes to the Conscience implants, I am allowed to do a little experimenting as well, you know.”

“You are experimenting with your Conscience?”

Her smile grew fierce. “Did you know that it takes very little restructuring to connect the data input functions to the actual Conscience functions? If this works, I will be able to feed raw data directly into my subconscious and use the brain’s nondeclarative memory processes to organize the input and create the appropriate connections with what I’ve already learned, without having to take the time to understand it consciously.” Her eyes grew distant, seeing the future rather than what was in front of her. “Think of it: Each one of us will be able to have the understanding of an entire city-mind inside us. Think how our judgment, our possibilities will expand. We will be able to reliably harness intuition to cognition.”

“Because we all know what a bother thought is,” said Tam dryly. “I can see many uses for this development. Although, on the face of it, it sounds a little like the ancient idea of sleep teaching, and we all know how badly that worked.”

Dionte finally lowered her hands. “We’ll be able to see the future, Tam. See it and understand it, not just guess at it.” She rubbed her fingertips together, staring at them as if she’d never felt the touch of her own skin before. “If our ancestors had given us this gift instead of just nagging little voices in our ears, we wouldn’t be under siege now.”

“If not this, then it would have been something else.” Tam shrugged. “That is the way it is, Sister.”

“But not the way it has to stay, Brother.”

The iron certainty in her voice took Tam aback. For a moment he could not even think of how to question her.

So he kept his voice as bland as he could. “Just be sure that with all this wondrous internal rearrangement, you don’t forget how to look out and see the rest of us.”

“Thank you, Brother,” she said, matching and even mocking his tone. “I will keep that under advisement.”

Tam turned to the light that encased her. “This”—Tam gestured to the colored lines shimmering between them—“is not a map of your Conscience implant.”

“No.” Dionte’s voice took on a tinge of awe, as if seeing an artist’s masterpiece. “This is Eden.”

Tam turned in place, tracing the colored branches of the fate map. Each branch indicated the expression of a single gene at some point in an individual’s life. With practiced eyes, he read the implications and complications as the timer flickered and the branches grew, stretched, and shifted, playing their expressions out across the fabric of simulated years.

“We’ve never made a whole person before,” he said. “Are we sure this is all there is to it?” He waved at the lines.

“If consciousness and personality entered into it, you might have a legitimate concern.” Dionte’s lips moved briefly, subvocalizing some command. “Fortunately,” she said aloud as the fate map vanished from around them, “in this case, they don’t. That is part of the perfection of this solution.”

“Does that perfection include helping Basante kidnap Helice Trust and her daughters?”

It turned out Dionte maintained enough of a sense of shame to look away. “The normal rules were suspended.”

“The suspension applied only to Helice Trust herself. There was no vote taken about her daughters.”

Dionte waved her hand, dismissing his words as a distraction. “So, Basante exercised initiative. He should be commended.”

“You cannot tell me this was Basante’s idea alone.”

Dionte didn’t answer. Her lips moved again, giving orders he couldn’t hear. The walls shimmered with projected images, more lines and graphs—process tracking. Dionte was seeing which of Aleph’s expert subsystems were working on whatever theories she had added into the fate map, and how they were coming along.

“You are not allowed to interfere with my prerogatives.” Tam stepped directly into her line of vision. “There are rules of precedence in place—”

Dionte swept her hand straight down, freezing her shining reports in the air around her. Their reflection left colored stripes across her dust-gold skin. “There is a sword hanging over Pandora, Brother. You would not act, even after the family voted that action was necessary.”

“We cannot break our old laws even in times of crisis. If we do, we put the world in as much danger as the threat of Authority bombs does. You’ve said it yourself, it’s only by the laws that the balance of Pandora survives!”