Kingdom of Cages Read online

  Also by Sarah Zettel

  Reclamation

  Fool’s War

  Playing God

  The Quiet Invasion

  Available from Warner Aspect

  Copyright © 2001 by Sarah Zettel

  All rights reserved.

  Aspect® name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.

  “Wild Birds” © 1986 by Jan Harmon reprinted with permission.

  WARNER BOOKS

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  First eBook Edition: August 2001

  ISBN: 978-0-446-55977-5

  This book is dedicated to my friend, Dr. Karen Fleming. Dude!

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Part One: The New World

  Chapter One: A Mud Hut in the Jungle

  Chapter Two: Offshoot

  Chapter Three: Meetings

  Chapter Four: Forces

  Chapter Five: Stem

  Chapter Six: Witness

  Chapter Seven: The Draft

  Chapter Eight: Caught

  Chapter Nine: Hothouse Flowers

  Chapter Ten: Theft

  Part Two: Wild Birds

  Chapter Eleven: Decisions and Beliefs

  Chapter Twelve: Queen of the World

  Chapter Thirteen: Discovered

  Chapter Fourteen: The Run

  Chapter Fifteen: Athena

  Chapter Sixteen: Under Cover

  Chapter Seventeen: Escape

  Chapter Eighteen: Reclaimed

  Chapter Nineteen: Pursuit

  Chapter Twenty: Eden

  Epilogue

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As ever, the author gratefully acknowledges the United Writers Group for their help and patience. She would also like to thank Dr. Laura Woody and Dee Keanealy, whose knowledge of biology, herbology, and medicine was invaluable for writing this book, and Jan Harmon, whose music gave her the title.

  …Thank heaven for wild birds

  They’re all dressed up in feathers, with colors outrageous.

  They soar from this earthly bound kingdom of cages

  On delicate wings, so small and courageous…

  —Jan Harmon, “Wild Birds,” 1986

  PROLOGUE

  Threats

  “We are aware there is a crisis,” said Father Mihran calmly. “But it is not ours.”

  Tam’s gaze flickered to Commander Beleraja Poulos, the representative from the Authority. Her face faded to white, then flushed darkly.

  Tam did not have a seat at the conference table. His place was in the back of the room with the rest of the administrative apprentices. They stood shoulder to shoulder in their best black shirts and white trousers, all of them there to watch this historic meeting and learn how to deal with outsiders. Jace, standing just to Tam’s left, looked bored, but then Jace always looked bored. Haye, on the other hand, was staring so hard it looked like her eyes were about to pop out of her skull.

  The late morning sun streamed through the pillow dome, warming and lighting the room, bringing the feel of springtime with it. A ring of windows let in a view of the marshes outside with their swaying reeds and stooping, moss-draped trees. This was Pandora, the most beautiful and perfect world ever discovered since human beings left Old Earth, and it was about to turn humanity away.

  It is what we must do, his Conscience implant whispered to him. Pandora must be protected.

  Tam eyed Commander Poulos uneasily. She had no Conscience to tell her this. She sat before Father Mihran, straight and strong in a tailored blue coat with gold braid on its sleeves and collar. She and her three colleagues were a blaze of color crowded at the end of the table facing the family council, which was arrayed down either side. The council all wore straight black jackets with white cuffs and collars. If Tam worked hard and did well, he’d eventually take his place at that table and wear that coat for formal meetings.

  Today, however, he was very glad to be standing well away from it. Commander Poulos’s dark eyes were full of poison as she stared Father Mihran down. Was she really going to just accept their refusal and go away?

  Father Mihran seemed to think so, if his outward calm was any indication. His place was at the head of the long, low conference table and his wrinkled, oak-colored hands rested lightly on its polished surface. The father’s entire manner spoke of cool resolution, and Tam wished he could copy it. He’d embarrass everyone if they caught him shifting his weight like he wanted to.

  “If the rest of the colonized worlds cannot take care of their planets or their people, then…” Father Mihran dropped his gaze and waved one graceful hand.

  “Then they deserve whatever happens to them?” asked Commander Poulos, her voice as suddenly full of poison as her gaze. “Is that what you were going to say?”

  “No.” Father Mihran sighed. “I was going to say I’m sorry for them.”

  “But not sorry enough to help?” The commander’s light tone was completely at odds with her thunderous expression.

  “We cannot help them.”

  Commander Poulos pressed her mouth into a straight line and raised her hand. She had a blue gem embedded in her thumbnail, and Tam wondered what its significance was. He should check. They would be quizzed on such details later.

  She touched one of the rings on her right hand. The Authority representatives had brought their own video rig and now its screen lit up. Tam wanted to groan and look away. Jace actually did. Tam stepped on his foot and when the younger boy gave him a dirty look, Tam jerked his chin at the screen. They had to watch. They had to know. How would they ever be able to make decisions that could affect the entire family and all the villages if they couldn’t stand to know what was going on?

  Tam repeated that idea to himself as the images Commander Poulos had brought with her played across the holograph screen yet again. There was the wrinkled woman whose right arm ended in nothing but a stump, weeping as she stared across a field where the grain on the stalks swelled with pulpy gray tumors. There was the filthy clinic full of children with too-small bodies and too-large heads, with the one doctor explaining they had no way to perform genetic analysis to find out what was causing the defects. All that equipment had been washed away twenty years ago in a spring flood. There were the funeral pyres with the thick black smoke hanging over them, making Tam’s nose twitch as he imagined the heavy stench. The remaining population leaned against each other, watching what was left of their friends and relatives burn.

  So many worlds, so many disasters, and one name for all of them. The Diversity Crisis. All the Called, short for “colonized,” worlds were struggling to survive in the face of depleted biological resources, decimated populations, and vestigial infrastructures.

  The disaster had even reached back to Old Earth. Commander Poulos had opened her presentation explaining how, eight years ago, Authority ships had carried a delegation from the Called to Earth. Droneships could have been sent, of course, but it was decided that the magnitude of the tragedy truly needed a human voice to describe it, so it was human beings who brought news of the catastrophe reaching out across the colonies. Gene stocks thought to be adequate for the establishment and growth of civilizations were failing. The fertility rates were dropping, mortal defects increasing, and nature and disease were still taking their tolls. All of the Called, even the space dwellers of the Authority, needed fresh genetic input for every aspect of life—livestock, crops, humans, everything.

  Earth, although grown so far apart from her daughter worlds, had been willing to help. But it was soon realized that the delegation from the Called ha
d brought more with them than their pleas. The plague they carried killed two million inside one Terran month. No one knew where it came from. Some said the delegates had carried it with them and it had somehow survived sterilization and quarantine. Some said it had bred on Earth itself, a hybrid of Terran and proto-Terran viruses created by something innately harmless the delegation had exhaled the first day they walked free.

  Some said the delegates had released it deliberately, to wipe out the native Terrans and reclaim Earth for themselves.

  From this turmoil, only one agreement was reached. The horrified Terrans sent the delegates back with a single message for the Authority and all the Called: Never return. Never even try.

  But the crisis among the Called would not relent and the Authority found itself pushed into making a fresh decision: to come to the one colonized world where it was known the Diversity Crisis had not reached and beg for help.

  Although, Tam noticed, Commander Poulos had stopped using words like “begging” and “at your mercy” and even “please” twenty minutes ago.

  The images of disaster continued. A mass grave, a ruined field, a quartet of children bearing the ancient signs of Down’s syndrome. Still, Father Mihran’s gaze did not flicker. Tam wasn’t even sure he blinked.

  “So much tragedy,” he finally murmured, and Commander Poulos’s guard dropped far enough for Tam to see hope light her face. “But also so much ignorance.” The commander’s hopeful expression faded as Father Mihran gestured toward the screen. “None of this would have happened if any of them had taken the time to truly understand the conditions they were living in. To understand that, however beautiful, their new worlds were not Earth.” His gaze narrowed as he watched a family opening a silo door to see what had once been grain blow away in a cloud of red dust. “If they do not understand the problems inflicted on them by their own worlds, how can we hope to?” Father Mihran spread his hands toward the window and the world outside. “We have been on Pandora for two thousand years and we do not truly understand even this one biosphere yet.”

  “You can help them.” Commander Poulos spoke the words more as if they were a command than a plea. “No one else has the analysis facilities, or the experience, that you have here. You can draw out a diagram for a single genetic base pair or an entire planet. You have all the techniques and understanding of the long generations that have studied Pandora.” Commander Poulos leaned forward, eager, believing she was at the point of reaching her goal. Tam saw a man cradling a dead child on the screen and secretly hoped she was.

  “You can teach them how their worlds work,” said Commander Poulos urgently. “You can help each world find its cure.”

  “These poor suffering worlds.” For the first time, Father Mihran’s voice took on an edge. “Let’s talk about them.” Commander Poulos drew back just a little, but Father Mihran remained as he was, back and shoulders ramrod straight and his hands on the table, as if determined not to let any gesture or expression distract anyone from his words. “Let’s talk about groups of as few as a hundred would-be colonists being dropped on a planet by your ancestors in the Colonial Shipping Authority, because those colonists were hoping for riches or a place where their own fanatic ideals could be enforced without question. Let’s talk about the ones who hacked away at forests for the trade in exotic timber, which your people shipped between worlds. Let’s talk about mines gouged out for the trade in heavy and precious minerals, which your people also carried.” His index finger tapped the tabletop, once. “Let’s talk about colonies that failed and were enslaved by their oh-so-noble-and-generous neighbors, according to treaties your people mediated, part of which included shipping the slaves out to their new masters.”

  “Do you say you’re better than we are?” shot back Commander Poulos, rising to her feet and leaning across the table. “Then prove it. Help the Called to stay alive when they will not help each other and cannot help themselves.”

  “No,” said Father Mihran, and the other council members murmured their agreement.

  Commander Poulos glanced at her silent subordinates. The man on her left hung his head. The young woman on her right just looked grim. Tam felt the silent communication pass between them, and his stomach tightened.

  “Father Mihran,” said Commander Poulos. “Don’t do this. The Called, the Authority, are desperate, and we’re here as ambassadors of that desperation.”

  “And how much are you being paid for the job?” asked Father Mihran coolly.

  Commander Poulos winced briefly. “A lot,” she admitted. “Because there’s a chance you will not let us go again, especially when you realize I can’t let you refuse.”

  Silence, thick and worried. Not even Father Mihran made a sound.

  “We need Pandora’s help or we are all going to die,” said Commander Poulos, separating out each word and meeting the gaze of each and every council member in turn. “Not today. Not even for ten years, or maybe even twenty. But eventually. Whole worlds are already gone. Earth has abandoned us, and we cannot compel them to change their minds.” Her gaze came to rest on Father Mihran again.

  “And you can compel Pandora?” said Father Mihran, so softly Tam had to strain to hear him.

  “If you force me to,” replied Commander Poulos, just as softly. “Only if you force me to.”

  Father Mihran climbed to his feet. He stood only a few centimeters taller than the commander, but at that moment it seemed to Tam that he filled the entire room.

  “You are ignorant and the daughter of ignorance,” Father Mihran said flatly. “And you will leave us. Now.”

  Commander Poulos bowed her head and gestured with two fingers to the man on her left. He, in turn, typed a command into the comptroller on his wrist while the commander touched the ring control for her video screen again. The disasters faded away to become a desert— row upon row of red-gold dunes stretching out under an endless sky.

  “This is a live feed,” said Commander Poulos quietly. “I believe you call this place the Vastness.”

  “No—” began Father Mihran.

  Light flashed, filling the screen, making Tam flinch. A boiling cloud of dust and ash filled the entire screen, rippling, growing, cascading upward, lifted by the long, low roar of thunder. Father Mihran cried out in sheer pain and all the council babbled at once, some to the father, some to each other, and some to their implants.

  Tam could only stand there, jaw hanging, heart pounding. He couldn’t believe it. A bomb. On Pandora, in the wilderness, the beautiful wilderness, which must be protected, must be studied and understood.

  “It’s a clean bomb.” Commander Poulos’s voice was almost gentle. “This time.”

  “You bloody-minded, ignorant…” shouted Father Mihran, but words failed him. He just stared at the boiling cloud of ash, hearing the endless rolling thunder, and Tam saw tears streaming from his eyes.

  “You’ve kept Pandora pristine, to study and preserve, just like your ancestors did,” went on Commander Poulos. “If you do not agree to help find a cure for the Diversity Crisis, the Authority will start bombing this planet until there’s nothing left living outside your domes.”

  Father Mihran’s hand curled into a fist and he pressed it against his forehead. Around him, the council fell silent, except for Administrator Has. “It’s real,” Has whispered, choking on the words. “I have confirmation from Athena Station. It’s real.”

  On the screen, the dust and ash finally began to settle, and Tam glimpsed the burned black crater. It was so big. Bigger than any of the dunes—what was left of the dunes. The whole shape of the world had been changed to accommodate that huge black smoking hole.

  “How could you?” gasped Father Mihran.

  “Do you think we want to do this?” Commander Poulos stared at him incredulously. “Do you think I’m having fun here? I’m threatening to destroy an entire world. I’m acting like a damned dictator or crazy general out of the legends.” Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the table edge. “I
’m going to say this one more time, Father Mihran. The Called are going to die unless we do something.”

  “And if the Called die”—Father Mihran’s hand shook as he lowered it—“the Authority and its cities die.”

  “Yes, and our way of life with them.” Her smile was tight and grim. “I never said we were being selfless. The Diversity Crisis is in the corridors of the Authority cities too, Father. We are just as desperate as the rest.”

  “Why do you come here?” Father Mihran’s words came out as a sob. “Have we ever asked anything of the Authority or the rest of the Called? What right have you to force your problems on us?”

  Commander Poulos sighed and straightened up, polishing the sapphire thumbnail gem on her trousers seam. “No right,” she admitted. “None at all. But you should be aware that it is not just the Authority that’s bringing their troubles to you.” Father Mihran stared, fear and murder both shining in his eyes.

  Commander Poulos just nodded. “We already have rumors of ships on their way here. The word is out that Pandora is clean and that it’s extraordinarily compatible with human life. Now”—her voice grew firm again—“maybe some of those ships will just dock with your Athena Station and process their crews for potential immigration, all polite. But some of them might not. They might just land and start setting up their own settlements in the middle of your precious wilderness. They might even do worse than that.” She stabbed her finger toward the settling ash and the smoking crater. Tam swallowed. His hands were shaking. Nothing could be worse than that. What could be worse?

  The trees falling one by one, the ground stripped bare, the animals, the birds, dead and dying. A wave of nausea washed though Tam. Oh, it could get worse. It could get much worse. From the faces of the councilors, he knew they were thinking the same thing. Jace was turning green. Sick amusement accompanied fast by shame rolled through Tam.

  One muscle in Father Mihran’s cheek twitched. “And the Authority would of course stop anyone from invading Pandora.”