Astra

by Naomi Foyle

  Astra obeyed and slipped Tabby back into his pocket. ‘Klor can fix him,’ she offered, scuffing the ground with her sandal. ‘Like he did last time.’

  ‘Astra. Look at me.’

  Constable Ordott straightened up and obeyed her Chief Inspector’s order. This could be big-trouble time.

  But fire wasn’t flashing from Hokma’s hazel-gold eye. Her brows weren’t scrunched together, forcing that fierce eagle line between them to rise, splitting her forehead like it did when Or-kids neglected their chores or fought over biscuits that were all exactly the same size, as Hokma had once famously proved with an electronic scale. Instead, her square face with its prominent bones was set in a familiar, patient expression. She looked like she did when explaining why a certain Or-child rule was different for under-tens and over-nines. And when Hokma was in explaining mode, you could usually try to reason with her. She always won, of course, but she liked to give you the chance to defend yourself, if only to thoroughly demonstrate exactly why you were wrong and she was right.

  ‘Klor’s got better things to do than mending your Tablette every two weeks, hasn’t he?’

  Hokma’s tone was calm, so Astra risked a minor contradiction. ‘Klor said it was a good teaching task,’ she attempted. ‘He showed me Tabby’s nanochip. I learned a lot, Hokma!’

  ‘You take Tech Repair next term. Tablettes are expensive. You should never play with them while you’re climbing trees.’

  ‘But I was looking for the girl. I needed Tabby to take photos.’

  The ghost of a frown floated over Hokma’s features. ‘What girl?’

  Astra whipped Tabby out again. Maybe he couldn’t talk properly, but he could still see. She clicked his camera icon and speed-browsed her photos. Hokma was getting dangerously close to impatience now, but in a minute she would be praising Astra and Tabby for their valour and initiative; she would be calling Or to raise the alarm and gather a team to bring the enemy down.

  ‘The girl in the tree. Look.’

  But the photo was just a muddy blur of greens and browns.

  ‘I don’t have time for these games, Astra.’

  Astra stuffed Tabby back in his pocket. No one would believe her now. ‘It was the girl I saw last week,’ she muttered. ‘The one who lives in the forest. She’s a Non-Lander. An infiltrator. She threw pine cones at me. See.’ She held out her bruised hand. ‘So I dropped Tabby, and the photo didn’t turn out.’

  Now it deepened: the warning line between Hokma’s eyebrows. Silently, she examined Astra’s knuckles. When she spoke again, it was as if she were talking to somebody young or naughty or slow: to Meem or Yoki.

  ‘There’s no girl living in the forest, Astra. You’ve just scraped yourself again.’

  ‘But I saw—’

  Hokma bent down and grasped Astra’s shoulders. Astra was supposed to look her in the eye, she knew, but she didn’t want to. She stared down at her feet again and dug her sandal toes into the garlic patch. Torrent was going to tell her she smelled like an alt-beef casserole when she got back to Or.

  ‘There are no Non-Landers in Is-Land any more,’ Hokma said, using her instructor voice as if Astra was stupid, as if Astra hadn’t just completed Year Two Inglish Vocabulary a whole three months ahead of her class.

  She folded her arms and glowered up at Hokma. ‘Klor and Nimma said there are still lots of infiltrators in Is-Land,’ she retorted. ‘They’re disguised as Gaians with fake papers or they’re still hiding in the off-limits woodlands.’

  Sometimes when her face was this close to Hokma’s, she felt an urge to stroke her eyepatch, especially the velvet ones. Nimma made them using material from a hoard of ancient curtains she used only for very special things, like the crazy quilt, or toy mice for toddlers, or fancy purses for the older girls when they started going to dances in New Bangor. Right now, however, Hokma was gripping her shoulders tighter until they hurt. Just as Astra was about to squeal ow, her Shared Shelter mother let go.

  ‘Klor and Nimma shouldn’t be scaring you with their rainwarped notions, Astra,’ she said firmly. ‘The off-limits woodlands are heavily patrolled, and if IMBOD didn’t catch any infiltrators, the reintroduced bears would.’

  Usually Astra loved to hear Hokma swear, but right now it was infuriating to be argued with. To be punished for caring about national security. How could Hokma refuse to acknowledge the ever-present dangers they all lived with? She was supposed to be smart.

  ‘No,’ she insisted, rubbing her shoulder, ‘the Non-Landers have changed tactics. They deliberately aren’t attacking us now. They live up high in tree nests, where the bears can’t climb. They’ve got stolen Tablettes that can hack IMBOD emails and they’re stockpiling bows and arrows through the tunnels and helping Asfar and the Southern Belt prepare to attack us when the global ceasefire finishes.’

  ‘What on Gaia’s good earth have they been telling you?’ Hokma snorted. ‘Klor and Nimma just aren’t used to living in peace, Astra. The tunnels are all blocked up, and Asfar is our ally.’

  ‘There are new tunnels. And Klor said the Asfarian billionaires could—’

  ‘Enough, Astra. There’s no such thing as a Non-Lander girl running wild in the woods. Everyone in Is-Land is registered and has a home. If you saw someone, she’s from New Bangor and her parents are close by.’

  ‘No.’ Astra stamped her foot. ‘She was dirty and her hydropac was really old. She lives here. She—’

  ‘I said FOG FRIGGING ENOUGH,’ Hokma bellowed.

  Astra stepped back, her heart thumping in her chest. Nimma and Klor never yelled like that, out of nowhere, let alone swore at her. When Nimma was angry she talked at you rapidly in a high, sharp voice, whittling you away with her rules and explanations, and behind her Klor stood solemn and sad, shaking his head and saying, ‘Nimma’s right, Astra,’ so you felt you had terribly disappointed him and eventually, half-ashamedly, accepted your punishment. This furnace blast of fury was very different. She stood quivering, not knowing what to do.

  Hokma waved her hand through the air as if to brush away a bothersome insect. ‘Astra, I’m sorry I shouted. I didn’t come here to bicker with you. I asked you to meet me so we could discuss something important. Let’s leave this discussion behind us. Now.’

  Astra kicked at a stone. Okay, Hokma had said she was sorry – but she didn’t sound sorry. She was being unfair and bossy and ignoring invaluable ground evidence. That was senior officers all over. Most of them, it was well known, had long forgotten what it was like to be out there, vulnerable and under fire from hostile criminals.

  Hokma turned and started down the trail back to Or, swinging her staff by her side. ‘Don’t you want to see Wise House?’ she called over her shoulder. ‘If there’s time before supper chores you can help me feed the Owleon chicks.’

  Astra stared down the path, her heart bobbing like a balloon in a sudden gust of wind. Wise House? Where Hokma lived alone breeding and training the Owleons, and no one was ever allowed to visit? Hokma was inviting her there to feed the chicks? Yes way.

  She sprang forward to catch up. A pine cone zinged over her head and hit the dirt path in front of her feet. She wheeled round and craned up at the jack pine. The top branches were waving gently but the Non-Lander girl was invisible, camouflaged by a screen of needles and adult indifference.

  ‘We’ll prove it one day, Constable Tabby,’ she swore. ‘After I get my Security shot.’

  ‘Astra.’ Hokma was nearly at the brook now. Astra glared at the top of the tree and stuck out her tongue. Then she spun on her heel and raced after Hokma.

  ‘Wait up,’ she shouted. ‘Wait for me!’

  1.2

  Astra jumped into Hokma’s footprints then skipped through the pines after her Shelter mother. She was going to Wise House, to Wise House, where no one except Hokma, Ahn and IMBOD officers were allowed to go. The officers came twice a year, to inspect the Owleons and take the fully grown and trained birds away. Since Astra had started school she hadn’t seen
them arrive or leave, but every few weeks she spied Ahn in his canvas-topped boots and old straw hat, his Tablette tucked in a scroll beneath his arm, striding out towards West Gate of an evening. He and Hokma were Gaia-bonded, Nimma said, a bond of more than twenty years, though it was hard to believe because they never even sat together in Core House at mealtimes, let alone held hands or kissed like Klor and Nimma did. Still, Nimma said that some people liked to kiss each other when no one else was watching.

  Ahn’s lips were so thin they were nearly invisible, but still it was just conceivable that Hokma might want to kiss them and give him permission to visit Wise House; what was nearly impossible to accept, however, was that Or-kids – even her, Hokma’s own Shelter daughter – were strictly forbidden. Or-kids were noisy and galumphing, Hokma said, and ran around and frightened the birds. ‘I’m not galumphing,’ Astra had complained to her last year. It wasn’t fair. Hokma was her Shared Shelter mother so why couldn’t Astra visit her? Peat and Meem went to stay with their Birth-Code-Shelter parents sometimes, and Yoki often stayed with his Birth-Code uncle. In fact, all the other Or-kids except her got to stay with all their Shared Shelter parents. Especially considering that she didn’t have a Birth-Code mother or a Code father, it wasn’t right that she should be stuck with Klor and Nimma all the time.

  ‘You’re the biggest galumpher of the lot, Astra,’ Hokma had laughed. ‘You’re always knocking into people. Better save all that energy for the Kinbat track for now.’

  It wasn’t true. She could run fast, and sometimes her elbows jabbed into adults who didn’t get out of the way. But she was light, and she knew she could be a silent tracker in the woods if she tried, even with her sandals on. But when she’d tried to explain, Hokma had got cross, and told her to stop arguing or she’d be running extra laps for the next two weeks.

  I wish you weren’t my Shelter mother, Astra had nearly shouted. But what if Hokma had said, Fine, I’ll stop now? So instead Astra had stormed off to the orchard, where she’d sat under a fig tree nestling the hurt like a dead bee in a puff of cotton. Later, she’d carefully placed the bee-hurt in a little drawer inside her heart. She didn’t like to open the drawer very often, though, because even though the bee-hurt was dead, it could still sting her.

  But now, at last, she was going to visit Wise House. As Astra followed Hokma down to the brook, the drawer in her heart flew open and like a small miracle, the bee took flight.

  * * *

  Ahead of her, Hokma crossed the small wooden bridge Klor and Ahn had built twenty years ago, when Or was new and the brook little more than a dried-up ditch. The water was deep again now, a smooth umber current nearly as deep as Astra was tall. She bent down, ripped open her Velcro sandal straps and, arm back behind her head like she’d been taught in cricket practice, hurled her shoes across to the opposite bank. The second one landed short of the first and rolled dangerously down towards the water.

  ‘Astra!’ Hokma’s hands were on her hipbelt again. But the sandal didn’t fall in. Hurriedly, before Hokma could object, Astra slipped off her hydropac and slung it across the brook too. As the pac sailed past Hokma’s head and into the woods, she splashed into the water. Clothed in its silky flow, she swam to the other side, dipping her head beneath the tarnished green reflections of the trees to refresh her hot face. Clean and glistening, she scrambled up the bank.

  ‘Better?’ Hokma watched Astra put her sandals back on. Leaves and bits of bark had stuck to her wet feet, but they would soon dry. Hokma tugged her flap-hat back down on her head and Astra lunged up to the path. On this side of the bridge it rambled through a bower of ancient oaks, rare trees that had somehow survived the Dark Time and become a place of solemn pilgrimage for every international visitor to Or. Today Astra and Hokma had the bower to themselves. As Astra pranced through the shady glade, the drops of water sparkling on her skin were consumed by the familiar sheen of sweat. She slowed down and let Hokma catch up with her; now they walked side by side, Hokma marking their strides with her staff, her free hand swinging lightly beside Astra. Quietly, carefully, almost as if she herself didn’t know what it was doing, Astra’s hand reached up and curled around two of Hokma’s fingers. Hokma squeezed. Astra gripped a little tighter.

  ‘Hokma?’

  ‘Yes, Astra?’

  ‘What does bicker mean?’

  ‘To have a nonsense argument. An argument no one can win.’

  ‘Oh. I thought it did, but I wanted to make sure.’ Somewhere, a wood pigeon mournfully echoed its own coo. Astra giggled. ‘It sounds like what the birds do outside my window. Bicker.’

  Hokma gave a gruff laugh. ‘Birds bicker. Squirrels squabble.’

  Astra thought for a moment. ‘And crows crorrel, I mean choral. I mean quarrel. Hey, I invented a tongue-twister! Yay.’ She risked a skip. Just a little one, so as not to pull too hard on Hokma’s arm and make her let go.

  ‘You certainly did.’

  Astra took a long step forward. She really wanted to ask Hokma about her missing eye. Even though Hokma was her Shared Shelter mother and they went for walks together and Astra could sit in her lap in the Quiet Room, as long as she asked nicely first, Hokma had never talked about it properly with her. The only time Astra had asked what had happened, Hokma had said she lost her eye because she wasn’t looking. Then she’d said, ‘Look!’ and pointed at the ceiling. There’d been nothing there and Hokma had laughed and said, ‘You missed it!’

  But then last autumn, after Klor and Nimma had told Astra, Meem, Yoki and Peat the terrible story of Sheba, and Klor’s leg, Astra had begun to ask them more about Non-Land and finally they’d also told her that during the Southern Offensive a Non-Lander had shot Hokma in the face. Hokma had been on patrol in the Southern Belt and the armed criminal had tried to shoot her CO. She’d stepped out in front of her officer and taken the bullet for him. Afterwards, IMBOD had given her a medal. Klor and Nimma had said that Hokma didn’t like to talk about it because she was very modest, but she still had the medal, at Wise House, which was private, and no, Astra couldn’t ask Hokma if she could go there and see it. As a rule, she shouldn’t ask people personal questions, not even Shelter parents. They would tell her themselves when they were ready, or when they thought she was ready, like she and her Shelter siblings were now ready to hear about Sheba.

  Hokma had stopped walking. She dropped Astra’s hand and began poking at a rock in the path with her staff. She was frowning a little. Astra scratched her belly. Maybe now wasn’t the right time to ask about Hokma’s eye. Not if it was worse than the story about Sheba, which had made them all cry, even Peat and Klor. Especially Klor. Maybe soon, when Astra had an IMBOD medal of her own and everyone was celebrating in Core House, she would ask Hokma to bring hers down from Wise House to show people and Hokma would go and get her medal and put it next to Astra’s and tell the story then.

  Luckily there was another question pressing forward in the queue, one she had been wanting to ask all week and now was inescapable.

  ‘Hokma?’

  Hokma was inspecting the underbelly of the stone. ‘Yes, Astra?’

  ‘Torrent said you feed the Owleon chicks real worms. But that’s not true, is it?’

  Astra waited confidently for a reply she could snap back to Torrent, who fancied himself the leader of the eleven-year-olds – and everyone younger than him. He was just being mean, she knew, trying to make Yoki cry as the three of them spread that evening’s food scraps into the vermi-compost bins outside Core House. The bins were filled with trays of red wigglers that worked day and night turning Or’s vegetable peelings into rich, nutritious soil for the gardens. The wigglers didn’t get paid, not like horses, sheep, cows and llamas did, because the bins were like luxury worm hotels they could stay in their whole lives so they didn’t need retirement funds; but worms were Gaia’s creatures, just the same as megafauna, insects and worker animals: they had rights and there was no way Hokma would Code a bird to eat them.

  ‘Don’t tell lies, Torre
nt,’ she’d said scornfully. ‘Don’t worry, Yoki. The Owleons are grain-eaters. Everyone knows that.’

  But Hokma didn’t scoff at Torrent’s claim. With a twist of her staff she dug the rock out of the path and flicked it into the undergrowth. Then she peered into the hole, tsked, and straightened up.

  ‘That’s a good question. Let’s sit down and talk about it, shall we?’

  They had left the oak bower now and were skirting a bushy glade. Hokma pointed with her staff to an almond tree at the far edge of the clearing. Astra looked at it doubtfully. Why couldn’t they just talk here? As Hokma headed for the tree, she examined the hole in the path. Where the rock had been, a fat nightcrawler was squirming its way back into the dry ground. Astra placed a leaf over the hole to protect the worm from the sun, then scuffed her way through the sun and shrubs after Hokma.

  At the tree, Hokma hooked a branch down with her staff. It was thick with green almonds. ‘Here.’ Hokma pressed one of the nuts into her hand. It felt like a hard, fuzzy little mouse. As Astra fingered it, Hokma tugged at her hydropac and dropped handfuls more into the back pocket. ‘Give those to Nimma tonight for a stew,’ she said, buttoning the pocket back up. ‘They won’t be around for long.’

  Why was Hokma talking about stew? Astra threw the almond into the glade and swivelled round. ‘Is Torrent right?’ she challenged. ‘Do you really feed the Owleon chicks worms?’

  ‘Sit down, Astra.’ Three large, flat stones were arranged in a semicircle beneath the tree and Hokma lowered herself onto one. If she were Klor or Nimma, she would be patting the place beside her, but Hokma said she liked to look at a person properly when she spoke to them. She pointed with her staff at the stone opposite. Astra hesitated, then sat down with her arms crossed in front of her chest. The stone was warm but hard, and it felt gritty against her bottom. Sunlight was dappling Hokma’s face and breasts through the almond tree branches; suddenly everything seemed uncertain, shifting, not one thing or another.