by Naomi Foyle
Or’s alt-lamb, -beef, -chicken and – fish came from a plant in New Bangor. Next year Astra’s class would go and visit it, but up until now she’d only ever seen pictures of alt-meat incubators: giant industrial vats stored in large buildings in all Is-Land towns and cities. Hokma’s was tiny in comparison; about a square metre in area and around thirty centimetres deep. It rested on its table like a shallow aquarium filled with green algae. Through the murky, bubbling liquid, Astra could see the artificial mouse muscles growing from coils of polymer tubing, absorbing proteins from the algae and fatty tissues from the biodegradable scaffolding.
She placed her fingertips on the incubator lid. The strips of pink muscle immersed in their plant-based bath were peacefully flexing in time to pulses emitted by the biodegradable tubing. ‘I like alt-fish sticks,’ she said. ‘They’re nice and flaky. And I like roast alt-chicken. I think alt-beef is too tough, though. And Yoki says he wants to eat only hydroponic vegetables now.’
‘Yoki might have to go and live with the Jain Gaians when he gets older. And you’d better not tell him what we’re going to do now.’
Hokma stepped around the incubator and over to the wooden crate on the desk. It was a vermicompost, Astra realised: there were holes in the lid and a tray of liquid underneath it. Worms couldn’t get too hot or they died, so the big vermicompost boxes at Core House were housed in a thick-walled lean-to. This one was small enough to keep indoors, where the temperature wasn’t cold but, she had to agree, cooler than at home in the Earthship. Together Astra and Hokma lifted the lid. Hokma took the worms from her hipbelt pouch and added them to the compost. Astra stood on tiptoe and gazed down at the familiar sight of red wigglers, clumped together like tiny pink socks in a drawer full of worm castings, vegetable scraps and earth. Or-soil was dry and dusty, but this humus was as rich as Nimma’s fruitcake.
It was very strange, looking down at the worms knowing you were going to kill them.
‘The bins at Core House are like worm hotels,’ she said. ‘But this one’s sort of like a worm Death Ship, isn’t it?’
Hokma put her hand on Astra’s forearm. ‘Astra,’ she said quietly.
Astra turned, alarmed. What had she done?
‘You must never talk about the Death Ships like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘You mustn’t ever compare the people in the Death Ships to worms. Remember, Elpis’ father died in the Ships, and her mother had terrible dreams about them all her life.’
She hadn’t meant to insult Elpis or her parents. She hadn’t. ‘But we’re all Gaia’s creatures,’ she defended herself. ‘Worms and people too.’
‘I know. But this vermicompost is like our beehives: a nice place for worker creatures to live, not a prison. You’ll learn more about the Death Ships in Year Seven. Then you’ll see what I mean.’
‘Oh.’ Astra picked at a splinter on the edge of the wormery. Maybe she shouldn’t tell Hokma she’d called the Non-Landers slugs. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘That’s okay. Now let’s find some juicy ones, shall we?’
Hokma took a bucket from under the desk and pulled on a pair of biolatex gloves. One by one, she picked up a dozen worms, small ones the chicks could swallow easily, she said, and dropped them gently in the bucket. As they landed, Astra felt the little thumps echo in the pit of her stomach: Doom doom. Doom doom.
‘Are you all right?’
Astra looked down into the bucket. The worms were tangled in a writhing knot around the edge, all seeking to escape in that slinky way worms had: squeezing their coils of muscles together into a blood-red bunch, then stretching out again into a thin pink ribbon to move forward. Klor had told her about a Gaian scientist in New Zonia who had used this principle of locomotion to design a better, less painful colon cancer detection camera, one that pulsed gently up inside the patient’s body to take pictures of what was wrong. Like all Gaia’s creatures, worms were so inspiring if you just stopped and observed them for a while.
One of the worms, the skinniest one, twitched its blind head as if beseeching her for help. Her mouth dried. ‘I guess.’
‘I know it’s hard. But they aren’t going to be hurt, not for a moment.’
Hokma crossed the room, put the bucket on the stainless-steel counter and took down a cutting board from a shelf beside the fridge.
‘Do you want to help? There’s another pair of gloves here. You could pass me the worms.’
It was a test – but she hadn’t studied; she wasn’t ready to take it. Suppose she squished a worm too hard and killed it by mistake? Astra shook her head dumbly.
‘Okay.’ Her Shelter mother opened a drawer and took out a medical syringe and needle and a bottle of yellowish liquid. Holding the bottle up to the light, she filled the syringe from it. ‘This is a special solution I make up here,’ she said. ‘It paralyses the worm and stops its hearts beating. It also contains a special Code sequence that will customise the chicks for particular IMBOD applications.’
Astra only had one heart, not five, and right now it was shrinking in her chest into a tight, squirming little knot. ‘Are the worms Code-vectors, then?’ she asked, trying to sound professional. ‘Like the Security Serum?’
‘Exactly.’ Hokma reached into the bucket and plucked out a worm. She placed it on the cutting board. Pinned between her fingers, it contracted and expanded in a long, slithery S shape. Just at the point Astra thought of as the neck – though Torrent always said worms were like Mr Banzan and didn’t have necks – Hokma inserted the needle between two of the worm’s muscles.
‘It’s just a tiny prick,’ she said as she depressed the plunger. ‘Far better than being stabbed to death by a blackbird.’
The liquid drained into the worm and its crimson body rippled for a moment more, then it stopped moving and lay there on the board, limp and still.
‘Can’t you grow alt-worms in the alt-mouse incubator?’ Astra asked. Her eyes felt wet and prickly and there was a lump in her throat. Squeezing past it, her voice had turned all thin and squeaky. She felt her face turn red, but she couldn’t cry. She couldn’t let Hokma know she was upset. If she acted like Yoki, Hokma would decide not to tell her important things either.
‘No, it’s not big enough, and it’s too expensive to run two.’ Hokma set the needle down and rested her wrist on Astra’s shoulder. Her gloved hand, the hand that had just murdered the worm, hung in the air in front of Astra’s face. ‘There’s no need to cry, Astra,’ she said. ‘These worms have lived a very full life, much longer than they might have done in the wild. And the Owleons protect us in all sorts of ways. They need to be fed.’
Astra rubbed her eyes dry. ‘I know,’ she said, defiantly. ‘I just felt sad for a minute, that’s all.’
‘That’s okay,’ Hokma straightened up. ‘In life we often feel different emotions at the same time. Being able to do that is a sign of great strength.’
Meem would be crying if she were here, and Yoki screaming. Torrent, though, would want to have a go with the needle. And Peat would ask questions. Astra swallowed. ‘My teacher said that complexity is difficult. Is that what she meant?’
‘Partly, yes. Complexity is difficult in all sorts of ways. Now, are you sure you want to watch me kill the rest?’
Kill. The word ricocheted around the room like an acorn hitting glass, steel, skull. The sound of it hurt. But killing was what Hokma was doing, and Astra wanted Hokma to know she understood: killing was sometimes necessary.
She nodded and one by one, Hokma injected the rest of the worms. When she’d done, she carefully lowered their dead bodies back into the bucket.
‘They have returned to Gaia now.’ She stripped off her gloves and handed the bucket to Astra. The worms were arranged in motionless heaps, small pink spirals dotted across the bottom. Was she going to have to pick them up now? Was that the next test to fail?
Carrying the bucket with both hands, trying not to look at the worms, she trailed after Hokma through the sliding glass do
ors and onto the verandah. The wooden deck was supported by three massive stripped tree trunks and opened onto a wide, wild lawn behind Wise House; the long grass was studded with stumps and what looked like roughly made stools.
‘Those are the perches,’ Hokma said. ‘I put the Owleons on them in the mornings.’
Beyond the lawn a pinewood beckoned with raspy fingers. Between the trees was a row of brown hutches. The Owleons. The birds were invisible in the dark interiors, but Astra’s heart lurched in her chest and she made towards the verandah steps.
‘Not yet. The chicks are in here.’ Hokma strode past the frosted bathroom window to the door at the right end of the verandah where another wall jutted out at the back of the cabin.
* * *
Astra entered a swirl of shadows. Hokma flipped a switch and the living-room window blinds silently retracted, letting light spill into another large room, this one lined with plants and shelves and smelling of sage and liquorice tea. Oddly, the ceiling was higher in the middle of the room; that, Astra realised after a moment or two, was because there was a loft at either end, accessed by two sets of narrow steps running up the wall in an interesting V shape she instantly wanted to climb and jump between. The front loft, she quickly determined, held a futon and a lamp; she was standing beneath the other, beside a low-angled screendesk that faced out through the back window into the clearing. Some curious objects were lined up on the edge of the screendesk: several metal sticks displayed in a mug, and a row of bottles filled with blue, red and green water. These were even more interesting than the staircases and Astra was just going to ask Hokma about them when from the other side of the room came a faint scrabbling and scratching, then a strange wheezy psh psh psh.
Beneath the front loft, a sofa and a comfy chair sat at angles to a handcrafted coffee table. The noises were coming from a large wooden box sitting on top of the table.
‘Yes, wake up, my pretties.’ Hokma crossed the big greeny-blue rag rug on the floor. ‘I’ve got a friend I want you to meet.’
Astra followed and knelt beside Hokma. She put the bucket down carefully between them and peered over the edge of the box.
‘Ohh!’ she whispered, recoiling.
There, blinking up at her, were three small balls of snowy-white fluff. Their wings were tiny, just little fingers of feathers, but what should have been the most adorable things she’d ever seen were disfigured by enormous hook-like beaks. It was a wonder the chicks could stand up, the beaks were so ridiculously big. They made the baby birds look like crabbed old men or ancient demons in fairytales: more than just old, a million years old.
‘Why are they so ugly?’ she blurted.
‘Ugly?’ Hokma smiled and offered her finger for the littlest bird to nip at. ‘You’ll hurt their feelings.’
As if seeking protection from Astra’s disgust, the middle chick shuffled over and huddled against its bigger sibling. The tiny one was left stranded in the corner of the box. Like Mr Banzan, it didn’t seem to have a neck; its head simply emerged from its puffy body as if it were a tiny snowman. But then it stretched out a claw and turned towards her. Face-on, its beak curved like a crescent moon, its eyes were two onyx pools and its bewildered expression was framed by a heart-shaped ruff.
In an instant, Astra’s heart was a puddle of love. ‘Oooohh,’ she cooed, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Astra, meet Copper, Amber and Silver.’ Hokma pointed to the birds from biggest to smallest. ‘Amber’s a girl and Copper and Silver are boys. Normally it’s hard to tell with birds, but I Coded them, so I know.’
Astra couldn’t take her eyes off Silver. ‘Why is he so small?’
‘Silver is the youngest. The eggs are laid several days apart, so if the parents can’t feed them, the oldest can eat the smaller ones and survive.’
Astra’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Copper’s not going to eat Silver, is he?’
‘Not if we feed them plenty of worms.’
Hokma reached into the bucket, pinched a dead worm between her thumb and forefinger and dangled it over the box. When Copper seized the creature’s body in his beak, Hokma let it drop. As the three chicks jabbed and clawed at the worm, she nudged Astra. ‘They’re Coded to be assertive. But if you give them another one, they won’t have to fight.’
This was the moment. Astra peeked into the bucket. Waiting in their spirals, the worms looked like tiny pink ziggurats, the ancient desert temples the school hallway wallscreen sometimes showed. Hokma would say the worm-temples were there to help her worship Gaia. And if Astra didn’t pick one up to feed the Owleons, Hokma might say she could never come back to Wise House. But she didn’t want to touch their lifeless bodies with her bare hands.
‘Can I wear a pair of gloves?’ she whispered.
Hokma laughed. ‘Okay – but you’ll have to wash them afterwards. I’m not wasting expensive lab gloves on a squeamish girl.’
Hokma went back into the lab. Astra sat waiting, her stomach squeezing. Hokma thought she was being silly, but she was going to feed the Owleons. She was. Then Hokma would see she was a good Wise House worker. She just needed some practise, that was all.
The biolatex gloves Hokma returned with were way too big for Astra and the tips of the fingers flopped into the bucket. She chose a worm, hoping it wasn’t the one that had looked up at her. As she pressed her fingers around it she flinched, half expecting a current of pain to jolt up her arm. But there was nothing: the worm felt squidgy through the eco-latex, no different from a living one.
She picked it up and quickly dropped it in the box in front of Silver. The little Owleon pounced and sucked up its meal with three gulpy hops.
Astra laughed. ‘He likes it!’
‘He certainly does. Worms are their natural food, Astra, so we’re working in harmony with Gaia when we feed them.’
Hokma fed Copper, dangling the worm so it could slide down the chick’s throat, and Astra tried that next with Amber. It was like the Tablette films she’d seen at school: steppe farmers feeding baby lambs with a bottle. Soon she was eagerly picking up worms and cheering as the Owleons gobbled them down. Then the bucket was empty and the chicks were waddling around, bumping into each other and the sides of the box.
She sat back on her heels, her heart shining in her chest.
Hokma scooped up Silver. ‘Do you want to hold him?’
Oh! ‘Yes, please!’ Astra pulled off her gloves and cupped her hands and Silver, light as a dandelion seed head, explored her palms. The chick’s long claws gently clutched at her fingers as if trying to prise them up into the air.
Her heart began to evaporate. ‘I feel like I can fly now,’ she whispered.
‘I know. I called my own Owleon Helium because of that feeling.’
‘Can I see him too?’
‘Not today. He’s on his way back from Atourne.’
‘Is he on a secret IMBOD mission?’
Hokma laughed. ‘If he was and I told you, he wouldn’t be any more.’
Astra flushed. It wasn’t a stupid question. Owleons were sneakernets, everyone knew that. They carried memory sticks and encryption keys on their leg clips, classified material that was too sensitive to trust to the internet. That’s why they were half-pigeon Coded – so they could be trained to fly between home bases – and half-owl Coded, so they would live a long time and fly silently at night, when it would be harder for criminals to see them. In the cities, some rich people used them for love letters and junk like that, but the Or Owleons were all professional IMBOD Code couriers.
‘I didn’t mean secret,’ she corrected herself as Silver nearly toppled over in her hands. ‘I meant important.’
‘I know what you meant, but no, he’s just on a regular update flight.’ Hokma stood up. ‘You can see Helium when he gets back, but right now I have to talk to you about something very important.’
‘About my IMBOD Service?’ Astra sprang to attention. This mission wasn’t over yet.
‘Yes, partly. Let’s go outside. You might n
eed to ask Gaia for Her wisdom.’
That was unexpected. Astra opened her mouth, then closed it again. She wasn’t sure if she was allowed to ask Gaia for Her wisdom: Klor and Nimma always said that was only for emergencies. They said the Pioneers had asked all the main questions about how to live in Is-Land and they were happy to follow the guidance She had given them. Because if everyone was out in the woods all the time pestering Gaia with personal dilemmas, what would happen to the kitchen dishes and all of Or’s IMBOD contracts, not to mention the Boundary? The best way to commune with Gaia, Klor and Nimma said, was to work hard to revere and defend Her: if Gaia really wanted to speak to you individually, She would visit you in a dream.
But Sheba had been an emergency, and Klor had asked Gaia for help then. Was this an emergency too? If so, no one had properly prepared Astra for it.
‘I don’t know how to do that,’ she said doubtfully.
‘That’s okay. I’ll teach you.’ Hokma stood. ‘Come on. We’ll go up on the roof.’
Astra put Silver down gently back inside the box and scrambled to her feet. ‘Can Tabby come?’ she asked. ‘Gaia might help make him better.’
