Astra

by Naomi Foyle

  ‘Okay. But he has to stay in your pac until we get to the top.’

  Housecoats off, sandals and boots on, Tabby secured in his transport, the mission was back on the move.

  1.4

  ‘I like to sit there when I’m speaking to Gaia.’ Hokma pointed at a clump of poppies near the middle of the roof meadow. ‘Beside Her vision plant.’

  They had climbed the ladder at the side of Wise House to get up to the roof. The sky was paler now, the sun a diffuse orb, and even though it was only ten past five, Hokma had let Astra come outside without her flap-hat. All around them the early evening light was gilding the long grasses and wildflowers that first Ahn, then the forest winds, had seeded for Hokma. At the Earthship Nimma kept the outer botanical cells full of white flowers, daisies and lilies and yarrow, transplanting anything else that seeded; here though, within the gilded border of wallflowers and wild cosmos, was a whole Tabby paintbox splattered all over the L-shaped roof. Disturbing damselflies and red admirals, Astra bounded through blue flax and cornflowers, pink-tinged daisies, yellow dandelions, magenta sweet williams, purple and crimson and gold baby snapdragons and a host of other blossoms she couldn’t identify yet. At the tall poppy crown she grasped a hairy stem and pulled its flimsy scarlet flower to her face. ‘I love you!’ she declared and settled herself down on the grass. Hokma joined her, arranging herself in half-lotus.

  ‘Look – Or’s flower!’ Astra pointed at a stand of spider orchids, the plant Or was named for.

  Hokma smiled. ‘Ahn brought them up from Core House lawn. What’s an Or building without orchids?’ She paused. ‘And Or-kids. It’s wonderful to be able to invite you here at last, Astra.’

  Astra didn’t know how to say how much she loved being here. Instead she bent over an orchid and gently fingered its lime-green sepals and big brown velvety lip. When Klor had given the Or-kids their first orchid lesson at Code House, he’d said that the mouths of the flower were called ‘labella’. They enticed insects deep inside to the anther lobes, which were pollen sticks that got stuck on the bugs’ heads – standing up like antlers at first, but then falling down like Yoki’s floppy fringe – so that when the insects flew away they carried the orchid’s pollen to the stigma of another flower. Torrent and the older boys had teased Yoki all day after that.

  ‘Klor says the orchid is one of the most efficient flowers in the meadow,’ she told Hokma. ‘Not like us Or-kids, he said.’

  ‘They’re certainly one of the most beautiful. I love the purple H on the lip: H for Hokma, Ahn says.’

  The labellum’s three shiny purple stripes did make an H shape: Astra had never thought of it as Hokma’s flower before but of course it absolutely was. ‘I think they’re efficient and beautiful. Like you,’ she blurted.

  ‘Like me?’ Hokma raised her dark eyebrows.

  Astra’s face burned, but she couldn’t stop now. ‘Yes – you breed the Owleons and you’re the School Spoke of the Parents’ Committee, and Ahn said that you used to be one of the most beautiful women in Is-Land.’

  ‘Did he now?’ There was an edge to Hokma’s voice that made Astra’s face flare as hot as one of Nimma’s pancake pans. Actually, when you thought about it, it sounded like Ahn was saying that now Hokma was old and ugly. But he hadn’t meant that at all, she was sure. There goes a formidable woman, Ahn had said to the head of an Old World delegation as Hokma passed by the vegetable garden on her way to Code House. Astra had been weeding, not exactly hiding, but the grown-ups hadn’t paid her any attention. Astra hadn’t known what ‘formidable’ meant – she’d asked Tabby later – but the visitor had nodded and added, She’s certainly very handsome. Then Ahn had sounded almost puzzled. I suppose she is now, he’d replied, but when she was younger she was one of the most beautiful women in Is-Land.

  Defiantly, Astra continued, ‘I think you’re still beautiful. I hate dangly earrings and silly grass skirts.’ Oh dear. That wasn’t right either. ‘Except when Nimma wears them, I mean,’ she concluded, stupidly.

  Now Hokma really laughed: a throaty peal that echoed out across the roof and into the woods. ‘Thank you, Astra.’ Then, though she was still smiling, she sounded serious again. ‘But Ahn knows that all women are beautiful. We’re all different faces of Gaia. You’re beautiful too.’

  Astra grimaced. ‘I don’t want to be beautiful. I want to get my Security shot and be smart and strong and do my IMBOD Service and be a great scientist and win an IMBOD medal.’ She jutted out her chin. ‘I want to be a Boundary constable and patrol the Southern Belt when it’s my turn, like you did. I want to help save Is-Land from the Non-Landers when they attack us again.’

  For a moment Hokma’s face tensed as though she’d sipped something nasty by mistake. But when she spoke, her voice was as deep and calm as a morning lake. ‘Astra, did you like feeding the Owleons?’

  Astra wiggled on her bum. The grass was tickly, but it felt nice. ‘Uh huh. Especially Silver.’

  ‘And would you like to feed the chicks every day, and when they are old enough, help me to train them to fly?’

  Astra gawped at Hokma. Her Shelter mother’s olive skin was burnished by the lowering sun. She was more than beautiful: she was like a Buddhist Tara, shining with mysterious knowledge. She had set a test, an enormously difficult spiritual test, and Astra had passed. ‘Yes,’ she yelped.

  ‘I thought you would. But first I have to know: can you keep a secret?’

  That was easy. Tabby and Astra had lots of secrets. ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Good, because I’ve brought you up here to ask you to make a choice. The choice is yours, but whatever you decide, this conversation has to be a secret between you, me and Gaia. If you tell anyone about it I will get into trouble – big trouble. I might even get taken away, and you wouldn’t see me any more, maybe never again. Do you understand what I’m saying, Astra?’

  Sunlight still hung in golden scarves across the meadow but suddenly Astra felt cold. She rubbed her arms. ‘Why? Who would take you away?’

  Hokma paused. ‘IMBOD might, because IMBOD has a plan for Is-children that I don’t agree with. If you want to take part in their plan, you can, but I want to explain it to you first so that you can make up your own mind.’

  It was as if Astra had swallowed a pebble, but instead of getting warm inside her tummy, it was turning into a lump of ice. ‘But IMBOD takes care of Is-Land,’ she protested. ‘They only want what’s good for us. Don’t they?’

  Hokma lifted a warning finger. ‘I’m not saying that IMBOD is bad, okay? I never said IMBOD is bad, did I?’

  The ice pebble throbbed in her tummy. ‘No.’

  ‘But sometimes I question their methods. And this is one of those times.’

  Oh. Maybe sometimes Chief Inspectors disagreed with the Chief Commissioner’s national strategy, just like constables sometimes secretly argued with CIs. ‘You mean,’ Astra asked, ‘it’s like when I know that I could stay up late and still be fine in the morning, but Nimma says I have to go to bed?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a bit like that.’ Hokma’s upper lip was glistening with tiny speckles of sweat. She wiped her face with her hand, pushing her fingertips just under her eyepatch for a second. ‘Astra, I don’t want you to have your Security Serum shot tomorrow.’

  It was like Klor saying that two plus two made five, or Yoki claiming that he didn’t like ice cream. An error message flashed up on Astra’s brain-screen. ‘But everyone wants to have the Security shot.’ She laughed, and for a moment the ice pebble melted. Hokma hadn’t had the school prep talk – she just needed to be told the facts.

  ‘The Serum makes your muscles and emotions stronger, and your brain work faster at Code. We need it to help us build the Shell.’

  ‘It does do those things; that’s true,’ Hokma said slowly. ‘But it does other things as well. It will make you less sensitive and more willing to follow orders. These are good qualities in constables, but not so good in scientists, are they?’

  The error message w
as replaced with a whole new study-level page. Sometimes learning was complicated, Astra had discovered. It wasn’t always like putting one brick on top of another. Sometimes you learned something that changed what you had learned before – like moving from whole numbers to fractions and negative numbers. When you were little you thought a number was real and solid, like a chair, but then you learned that a number was a concept and in conceptual space all kinds of strange things could happen. Still, she’d never ever thought that IMBOD Rules were concepts. That was like walking through the forest and suddenly realising you were stepping along the edge of a cliff. Astra pulled her hydropac onto her lap to have Tabby near.

  ‘I thought it was good to be less sensitive,’ she said finally. ‘Klor says Yoki’s too sensitive sometimes.’

  Hokma plucked a blade of wild grass and stroked its seedpods. ‘Klor loves Yoki,’ she said, ‘but he isn’t very sensitive himself, so he sometimes can’t understand Yoki’s reactions to the world. Yoki finds bright lights and noise over-stimulating, and he gets upset if other children tease him. You’re not as sensitive as that, but you’re curious and alert – you notice a lot of details in your environment, and you understand how other people are feeling. Don’t you?’

  She wasn’t sure if Hokma was praising or criticising her. ‘Sometimes. I guess,’ she admitted.

  ‘Last summer, when Elpis had her stroke and Nimma was upset, you organised the other children to go and pick wildflowers for Nimma, didn’t you? We talked about it then.’ Hokma gently set down the grass stem. ‘We thought you might feel especially sad for Nimma because you didn’t have any memories of your own Birth-Code mother.’

  Astra padded her hydropac down into her lap. Tabby liked to feel snug. ‘I did, a bit.’

  ‘But not all the children felt like you,’ Hokma continued. ‘Some just picked the flowers because you told them to, and then they raced off and started playing, didn’t they? If you have the Security shot, you’ll become more like those children. Physically and emotionally you won’t feel pain so much, but also you won’t be able to perceive so easily what other people – or animals – are thinking or feeling. You won’t be so curious about the world, and your language skills will level off quite quickly. You won’t be able to make up tongue-twisters so easily, or enjoy poetry, unless you’re reciting it with other Or-children. The world will seem much simpler to you, and you’ll hardly remember when you used to ask questions all the time. You might make a good lab technician one day, but you’d never be a great scientist. I think that would be a terrible waste of your gifts, and that’s why I don’t want you to have the shot.’

  It was like being told that you had to leap off that cliff edge now and walk on thin air.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Astra whispered. ‘Why does IMBOD want to change me – and all the other Or-kids – like that? Why don’t they want to have good scientists any more?’

  ‘It’s complicated. Personally, I don’t think IMBOD has thought it through properly. The first batch of test subjects are now fourteen. They are happy and healthy, and they have always scored well above average on their Code exams. But scientists like me are very concerned about their Language and Creative Problem-Solving scores. Usually, on any test, some children score high, and others low, and the mean average, if the test is a good one, is in the sixty-five-to-seventy range. But the test subjects have all always achieved an average score on their Language and CPS exams. No one ever gets a poor mark or fails, but no one gets eighty or ninety either, or even seventy-five. People like me have been arguing that children should be pre-tested and those with an aptitude for creative thinking shouldn’t have the shot. But IMBOD says that average scores across the board are a good result. I think they’ll regret it one day and change the policy, but that will be too late for you.’

  Astra examined her hand. It still ached, and the scratch stung. ‘It would be good not to get hurt so much any more,’ she offered.

  ‘Pain tells you that there’s something wrong, Astra. Everyone needs a little bit of pain in life, even emotional pain.’

  ‘But I want to be stronger, and learn Code fast, like all the test subject kids. Can’t I just have that bit of the Security shot?’

  ‘Unfortunately not. The Serum comes as one inoculation. I wouldn’t be able to request the separate components without someone asking why.’

  Astra reached for her hydropac. ‘I’m going to ask Tabby what he thinks.’

  Hokma placed her hand on Astra’s wrist. ‘Astra, you promised to keep this a secret and that means you can’t ever tell Tabby about this conversation. Tabby is programmed to tell IMBOD everything you ask him. That’s for your security, but it means you have to be extra careful now. You can never web-search anything we’ve discussed here today.’

  Beneath her, the cliff vanished. Astra was flailing in mid-air with an ice stone in her tummy while Tabby twirled out of her hand to the ground far below. But Hokma wasn’t reaching out for her to pull her to safety. Hokma was regarding her seriously, not as though Astra was lost in space with nothing to grab on to, but as though she was in the Quiet Room doing her homework and Hokma was patiently waiting for her to add up her figures and come to the right answer.

  She wasn’t falling, though. Somehow she was floating, suspended in a strange new world. She put her hydropac aside. ‘Hokma,’ she said at last.

  ‘Yes, Astra?’

  ‘Do you think my Birth-Code mother would have wanted me to have my Security shot?’

  ‘No, Eya wouldn’t have wanted you to. That’s why I’m talking to you now. I promised Eya that I would always look out for you. But I can’t make a major decision for you, especially not one that involves a great deal of risk. So you have to choose what you want to do.’

  But how could she decide? The whole equation was a jumble of unknown variables and millions of minus signs. ‘Will IMBOD take me away?’ she squeaked.

  At last, for the first time ever, Hokma reached into the void and pulled Astra into her lap, into her big, warm nest of muscle and bone. ‘No, they won’t,’ she promised as Astra pressed her cheek against her chest. ‘If we get found out, they’ll blame me. But if you learn to act like the other children we won’t get found out. That means keeping a very big secret from everyone, even Klor and Nimma – especially Klor and Nimma. It means you will always have to be on your guard.’

  Hokma’s heart thudded steadily in her ear like a distant drum – the deep booming drum a constable played to pass emergency messages along the Boundary. Astra pulled away. ‘I can’t tell Klor and Nimma?’

  ‘Not yet. They wouldn’t understand. Later, when they can see you’re okay, we might decide to tell them.’

  Hokma’s lap was like her: strong, but hard to get comfortable in. Astra shifted between her thighs. ‘But what if they find out? What if they get cross with me?’

  ‘They won’t find out.’ Hokma hugged her tight for a moment. ‘Look, Astra: up until now you’ve lived with Klor and Nimma and just spent time with me during the day, but now that you’re older, I’m going to be a more involved Shelter parent. We can spend more time together, and sometimes you can stay with me at Wise House. If your behaviour is different from the other children’s, Klor and Nimma will think it’s because of my influence. And’ – she paused, then kiss-whispered into Astra’s black mop of hair – ‘if you don’t get your shot, I can teach you to train Silver. How does that sound? Do you want to be my special helper with the Owleons?’

  It was an unbelievable question. The best, most exciting, most amazing question anyone had ever asked her. Astra’s own heart did a cartwheel, right off the roof and into the sky. When at last it landed back in her chest, though, she felt a little sick: of course she wanted to be Hokma’s special helper with the Owleons. But how could Hokma ask her not to have her shot? And keep it secret from everyone? She leaned against Hokma’s breasts. ‘What if I do have my shot,’ she asked, ‘and I become like all the other Or-kids? Can I still come and stay with you?’


  ‘Absolutely.’ Hokma patted her back. ‘I’ll always love you the same, no matter what. But you’ll have to stop wriggling when you sit on me, how’s that for a deal?’

  Astra slid off Hokma’s lap, but stayed sheltered beneath her arm. Hokma loved her. She must do if she said so, and wanted her to come and help at Wise House. But if she loved her so much, then surely she wanted Astra to be happy? ‘So if we do that,’ she ventured, ‘I mean, if I have my shot and come and stay sometimes, can I still feed the Owleon chicks?’

  ‘Yes – but you couldn’t train them. You need to be sensitive to do that: you need to be able to listen and watch, to recognise how they are feeling and discover how to train them better in the future. That way you’ll learn how to be a great scientist.’

  Oh. Astra gently stroked the scratch on her hand. ‘I don’t want to only memorise Code,’ she whispered, hopelessly. ‘I want to be a super-smart scientist like you and Klor. I want to train Copper and Silver and Amber and make hypotheses and big discoveries.’

  ‘I know you do, Astra. That’s why I’m giving you this choice.’

  The pebble wrenched around again in her stomach. ‘But I have to have my shot,’ she wailed. ‘It’s the law. They’re coming to school tomorrow to give it to all of us. I don’t want to get into trouble, and I don’t want you to get taken away. And—’ She gulped, and said, ‘I want to do my IMBOD Service and catch Non-Landers like the girl in the tree.’ She hid her face in her arms. She was useless. She had nearly failed Hokma with the worms and she was going to fail her again now, up here on the roof meadow.

  Hokma shook her by the shoulders. ‘Astra, I have a plan for tomorrow. If we work together and trust each other, no one’s going to get taken away. And you can still do your IMBOD Service. You’ll just have to follow special, secret orders from now on.’

  Astra couldn’t listen any more. It was too much. Hokma’s tests were too hard. She’d had to watch her kill worms and now she was being told not to have her shot and to grow up different from every other kid in Is-Land. This was an emergency, yes, a very big emergency. She disentangled herself from Hokma’s arms. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she shouted.