Astra

by Naomi Foyle

  She had reported this to Nimma, Meem, Yoki and Peat that night around the kitchen table when they were having their oatmilk and berry biscuits. Today, Klor made a lady cry.

  ‘Do you know why my words touched them?’ Klor asked. ‘It’s because everyone is at heart a Gaian. Even if they revere a Holy Book, even if they worship science, everyone knows in their hearts that neither religion or science alone can give us meaning. People ten thousand years ago didn’t have books or sequencing machines and yet there was still purpose and beauty to their lives. It is Gaia who gives life meaning, Or-children, and when Gaia took my leg back into her dark womb and I asked her why, She told me to stand up, use my mind and feed Her people.’

  It was part of the speech, the answer he gave if a visitor asked him why he became a Code scientist. Hearing it here at home made Astra frown. Of course she knew that Klor had lost his leg defending Gaia: nearly every Or-adult who was missing a limb or an eye or had burns on their face or muscle tremors or used a wheelchair had been injured fighting the Non-Landers. But though Klor loved explaining how the microprocessor on his ultra-light recycled aluminium prosthesis controlled the knee and ankle joints, and the athletes who represented Is-Land in the Neoparalympics always sparked fierce debate about wheelchair design, no one ever explained exactly how these sacrifices had been sustained.

  ‘Klor,’ she asked, ‘when did Gaia take your leg? Were you doing your IMBOD Service?’

  ‘Astra,’ Nimma said sharply, ‘we don’t ask—’ but Klor interrupted her.

  ‘Perhaps it’s time, dear.’

  ‘Meem’s not nearly old enough. Or Yoki.’ Nimma retorted. She had been cross an awful lot lately, ever since Elpis had her stroke.

  Klor was sitting between Meem and Astra. He tousled Meem’s hair. ‘She’ll be fine, my angel. It’s the truth, and they should all hear it together.’

  ‘I want to hear!’ Meem pleaded.

  ‘I’m older than Astra!’ Yoki was affronted. ‘How come she gets to hear?’

  ‘She doesn’t!’ Nimma snapped. But Klor gazed at her steadily until she gave in. ‘All right, Klor. But if there are wet sheets tonight, they’re on your head.’

  Astra caught Peat’s eye and they both suppressed a giggle. But it wasn’t a joke, she knew.

  Nimma tightened her lips and Klor started telling them all the story of how he lost his leg. It wasn’t during his IMBOD Service, when most people made their sacrifice for Gaia, but later, after he and Nimma had got married and were living in New Bangor, when Sheba was seven years old.

  Astra knew that Sheba had returned to Gaia when she was seven after being ill with a very rare condition, something that she didn’t need to worry about, because other children wouldn’t ever get it. ‘Were you in hospital at the same time as Sheba?’ she asked.

  Across the table, Nimma’s eyes were filling with tears and Astra wondered for a moment if she was going to get told off again, but Klor just patted her shoulder and continued kindly, ‘I was, my darling. You see, Sheba and I went to Sippur for the day. It was going to be Nimma’s birthday soon and we went to buy her a special present. We were going to get some beads for her to make a necklace with. We went on the bus from New Bangor. We thought we’d be back that afternoon.’

  Opposite Astra, Peat was chewing his lip and sliding his thumb along the edge of the table. Nimma wiped her face and put her arm around Yoki. ‘We really should have talked about this first, Klor,’ she complained.

  But Klor continued, speaking in the same even, calm voice he used when explaining how Tablette circuitry worked. ‘We sat in the middle of the bus. Sheba was by the window so she could look out at the steppes and I was right beside her. I had my leg sticking out in the aisle because there wasn’t much room between the seats. Oh my dewy meadow, we were looking forward to our day at the market. It was going to be Sheba’s first time in Sippur. But my darlings, there was a man on the bus who didn’t want us to arrive. I didn’t see him board the bus, but someone told me later that he got on at a stop in the outskirts of Sippur. He sat at the front. He had a hydropac on his back, but it didn’t just hold water. It contained a nanobomb, my darlings, and as the bus arrived at Sippur fruit market, the bomb exploded.’

  Klor paused. No one spoke or moved. The only sounds in the kitchen were the ticking of the cuckoo clock and Nimma’s quiet sobs. For a moment Astra couldn’t breathe. It was as if each hoarse gasp Nimma uttered was rending a hole in the air, and through those holes all the oxygen was rushing out of the room, leaving her stranded in a vacuum. Sheba had died in a bus-bomb. The clock was ticking, yes, but the hand was stuck and time wasn’t moving on. No one sitting round the table could move or speak; they would just sit here forever, shrivelling up, until they weren’t people any more but withered, rotting stems.

  The clock was ticking louder now, like the timer in Operation Is-Land counting down to an emergency. When a bus-bomb exploded in Operation Is-Land there were bodies everywhere: babies and children and pregnant women, all limp and dripping with blood. Astra began to feel hot just thinking about it. In Operation Is-Land, when a bus-bomber struck, you had to take action immediately. You had to send constables and medics to take the dead and injured to hospital, and then the National Wheel Meet had to redouble efforts to round up and expel all the infiltrators.

  ‘It was a Non-Lander,’ she furiously declared, shattering the vacuum. ‘A Non-Lander killed Sheba.’

  ‘Yes, Astra,’ Klor said. ‘The man was a Non-Lander. He killed Sheba, and himself, and seven other people, including the driver. Most of them were sitting near him, but the blast blew all the windows out of the bus and Sheba was thrown halfway out into the street. The shockwaves caused a disruption in the bones in my leg and later it had to be amputated above the knee. But I wasn’t thinking about my leg. I was thinking about Sheba. She was in hospital for three days, like we told you, but she never opened her eyes again. And then Gaia took her back.’

  Klor’s voice was strained now. He stopped talking and an image of Sheba, flung out with the shattered glass, her body rinsed scarlet with blood, flashed into Astra’s mind. What did ‘halfway out of the window’ mean?

  ‘Was Sheba cut in half?’ she blurted.

  ‘Astra!’ Nimma gasped.

  ‘No, no, darling – no she wasn’t.’ Klor said soothingly. ‘She had cuts from the glass and her skin was sooty, but they washed her in the hospital and she looked beautiful, didn’t she, Nimma?’

  Nimma sucked in her cheeks and cast a hurt, angry glance at Astra.

  That wasn’t fair! She hadn’t killed Sheba.

  Peat, sitting beside Nimma, was concentrating hard as if considering a move in chess. ‘Was there a trial?’ he asked. ‘Did you give evidence, Klor?’

  ‘There was no need for a trial, Peat. The man was dead. But later IMBOD rounded up a ring of infiltrators in the dry forest and expelled them all. It’s been safe here ever since. None of you have had to live with the threat of such violence, thank Gaia.’

  Nimma was hugging Yoki so tightly there were red patches on his arms. ‘But mark my words,’ she flared, ‘they’ll try and come back here as soon as we let down our guard. That’s why we all have to do our IMBOD Service. To stop Non-Landers coming here to blow up our children.’

  ‘I’m scared,’ Yoki wailed. ‘I don’t ever want to go to Sippur.’

  ‘I told you, Klor,’ Nimma scolded, pressing Yoki’s head to her breast. ‘They’re not old enough.’

  ‘You don’t have to be frightened, Yoki,’ Klor said. ‘There aren’t any Non-Landers in Is-Land any more. They’ve all been found and taken back to the Belt. The man on the bus was one of the very last ones.’

  Why was Yoki such a mouse? Why did Nimma always baby him? ‘I’m not scared,’ Astra shouted, half-raising herself from the bench. ‘I hate that man. I wish he wasn’t dead so I could kill him.’

  ‘Shhh, Astra,’ Klor said softly. ‘He’s dead, and Gaia doesn’t ever want us to act out of hate.’

  ‘Sh
e can feel angry if she wants to,’ Nimma retorted, even though she didn’t normally ever like Astra to lose her temper.

  Astra sat up straight. Yes, she did feel angry. It was right to feel angry when a bus-bomber killed your sister.

  ‘I feel sad for Sheba,’ Meem whimpered, tears drooling down her face now as well. ‘She was going to buy Nimma a b-b-birthday present.’ Then her voice rose too. ‘It was Nimma’s birthday. Why did the Non-Lander have to get on your bus? You and Nimma didn’t do anything wrong. Why did Gaia take Sheba away from you?’

  ‘I don’t know, darling. Gaia is very mysterious.’ Klor’s voice was choked. Then he put his elbows on the table and his hands up to his brow and Astra, sitting beside him, could feel his whole body began to shake. The sound coming out of his throat was terrible: deep and racking, like the old water pump in the school playground, creaking and groaning, but coming up dry. Nimma, opposite, had her eyes were closed. Her face was wet and she was rocking back and forth on the bench, her arms still clasped around Yoki. Meem was wailing, and across from Astra, Peat’s face was crumpling too. Watching everyone crying, Astra felt her skin burst all over with cold.

  ‘I miss her, my darlings,’ Klor finally managed to sputter. ‘I miss her very much.’

  After that, he’d put his arms around Astra and Meem and everyone had cried all together, the tears running down Astra’s cheeks and dripping onto the table. Finally, Klor had taken his hanky out from his hipbelt and blown his nose like a reintroduced elephant and Nimma had got up to get hankies for everyone else. Then she and Klor had hugged them all and said how much they loved having Shelter children and how Gaia had told them they could still be wonderful parents, even though Sheba didn’t need them any more. Then Nimma had made echinacea tea, and as they were drinking it she told them that because they had lost Sheba, IMBOD had given Klor his mechatronic leg, which would otherwise have been far too expensive. And Klor had said that when he had accepted the leg he and Nimma had also accepted the challenge of being Or co-founders, moving here as soon as IMBOD had made the dry forest safe again. So that had explained that. Then Nimma was quiet again and Klor had said, ‘It’s better we all know, isn’t it, darlings? Better that we all miss Sheba together. That’s what makes us a Shelter family.’ And Nimma had sniffed and said she hoped Yoki and Meem would sleep tonight, but what was done was done.

  Astra had felt better then, for a while. Now, though, looking out over the roof, she felt those small cold flowers blossoming on her skin again. She was afraid, she realised. And she had been scared in the kitchen too: not, like Yoki, of a bus-bomber, but because it was frightening to see Klor weep. That autumn afternoon, talking to the visitors, he had been tall and glorious, a priest of Gaia, and then suddenly he was broken, hiding his face and gagging for air. She never wanted to see him like that again.

  Frost petals were scaling her body now. Today, she realised, she was maybe going to do something that might make Klor very angry. If she did it and kept it secret from him, if he ever found out, he might think she didn’t love him. Would Klor cry, she wondered, if she didn’t have the shot and one day he discovered the truth?

  Between the mountains the sky was slowly turning the colour of a robin’s eggshell. No, she thought, staring at the long rows of fertile soil soaking up the sun’s heat, not if I’m a famous scientist. Then Klor might be angry, but he would be proud too. He wouldn’t cry if she was a top Coder when she grew up, like Hokma and him: Klor definitely wouldn’t cry then.

  * * *

  The sun was climbing over the mountains now. Nimma would be getting up soon, and if she didn’t find Astra in her bed, there could be house punishments in store. She pulled herself away from the window and entered the back corridor to the stapcro lab. One wall of the corridor was glass, a window onto the hillside behind Code House, letting you see the plants and crevices and bird nests in the rock. The other was an ordinary wall full of lab and office doors. Klor’s office was at the far end; the only room past his was Ahn’s chamber. Ahn’s door was closed. Klor’s was open.

  Astra stood on the threshold, her heart pumping in her ribcage. Klor was sitting at his screendesk in the centre of the room. He was facing the window, overlooking the crops, so all she could see of him behind his old office chair were his knobbly elbows, his big ears and the strands of long grey hair that wound like tendrils over his broad skull. Swiping and tapping away, he made no sign that he had heard her. She could still sneak away. But her hand raised itself in the air and she knocked on the door frame.

  ‘Astra. What are you doing up so early, fledgling?’ He swung round on his chair, his tufty eyebrows lifting when he saw her, furrowing his brow. Klor had hair sprouting everywhere except the top of his head: his shoulders and chest and bum were all furry and he even had hair growing out of his nose and ears, though Nimma always tried to get him to trim those bits. ‘Let a man keep the little hair he has left on his head, woman,’ he’d demand as Meem squealed, ‘Cut it, Klor, cut it!’ But not Astra. She liked Klor’s grey mossy straggles. They made him look like an old man of the forest, she’d told him once, and he’d laughed and said Astra was his warrior princess from an Old World fairy tale.

  Now she hovered at the threshold.

  ‘Must be excitement. Security Serum Day today, isn’t it?’

  She nodded. That was true, wasn’t it?

  ‘You’re not usually so quiet. Are you sure you’re not sleepwalking?’

  She smiled. ‘No.’

  ‘Come here, chickpea.’ Klor patted the bench beside him where his assistants and trainees sometimes sat in the daytime, watching him work and discussing their ideas. ‘Tell me what’s on your mind. Dawn thoughts: best thoughts, that’s what my grandfather used to say.’

  Astra sidled over and sat down on the bench. One day she’d work up the nerve to ask if she could sit in Klor’s chair – just for a minute. Klor always said he’d had all his best ideas in this chair and even though it was falling apart he refused to recycle it. Yellow foam was crumbling through the armrests but he just kept mending them with black gaffer tape. Nimma had reupholstered the cushions twice, and he’d replaced the rollerwheels three times. The Or-adults sometimes joked about it, but no Or-kids would ever make fun of Klor’s chair. It was his throne.

  The bench was the next best place to sit, though. In front of her, the angled screendesk was crowded with strings of letters: A, G, C and T, over and over again in different patterns. Klor must have been assessing data when she arrived, making sure his grains would improve people’s health, not cause diseases like some other countries’ Code crops did. The letters A, G, C and T didn’t make any words in Gaian, but they spelled a few in Inglish, and also in Klor’s mother tongue. TAG meant ‘label’ and ‘day’ and a children’s game. ACT meant to do something, or to pretend you were doing something, like she was doing today. TAC was part of another game, TA meant ‘thank you’ and CAT was another word for Tabby. Sometimes she liked to sit beside Klor and count how many CATs she could find in his Code, but right now when she looked the first word she saw was ACT.

  Was it another Gaia sign? She toyed with the edge of the screendesk. The blue nail varnish Meem had painted her nails with last week was starting to chip.

  In the Quiet Room or the Earthship Klor would sometimes tuck his Gaia plough between his legs and say you could sit on his lap. Or if you were crying, he’d put his big knuckley hand on your shoulder and draw you to him. Leaning against his bony ribs and rangy thigh, close to his marvellous, shiny, intelligent leg, you felt safer and stronger. And when your sniffles had faded he’d ask, ‘Are you better now, ping-pong?’ And you always nodded, because you were. And he’d say, ‘Well then, run and play, while you’re still an Or-child.’ Today he just rested his hand lightly on the base of her neck and asked, ‘What’s the matter, Astra?’ Then he waited, as he always did, for her to speak.

  ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ Astra said.

  ‘Ah.’

  She paused. ‘I want to be
a famous scientist when I grow up, like you.’

  Klor’s nut-brown face creased into his toothy smile. ‘I’m sure you’ll be far more famous than I am, Astra. You just have to keep working hard.’

  She had to be careful. She couldn’t let Klor know what Hokma had told her. ‘But if I have my Security shot, maybe I’ll be an IMBOD officer instead,’ she ventured. ‘The teachers said it will make us all super-strong.’

  ‘It will, that’s true. It will make you a good team player too.’

  ‘But what if I don’t want to be a team player?’ she persisted. ‘What if I want to be a genius like you and Hokma and Ahn?’

  Klor wasn’t smiling now. His bright blue eyes were looking at her intently. ‘Astra, I’m not a genius, and neither is Hokma. Or Ahn. We’ve just been very lucky to develop our talents in a supportive environment. The shot will help ensure that everyone in Is-Land lives in such an environment. It will make you feel calmer and happier, and help you use language in a clear, orderly fashion. You and your generation will be able to communicate with each other in a way the rest of humanity can only dream of. Oh my dewy meadow, there won’t be any need for geniuses when so many fine minds are working as one.’

  Astra leaned her head against Klor’s flank and inhaled his clean smell of warm stone. She had to weigh up Klor’s evidence now, she knew, and compare it with Hokma’s findings. Klor was saying she could still be a scientist if she had her shot. But he was also saying she wouldn’t be a genius. And why was he saying that he wasn’t a genius when everyone knew that he was? Nimma was always complaining that Klor didn’t take enough credit for his discoveries. He let the team win the medals, and last year he’d even told IMBOD to give a prize to his assistant, not him. At the ceremony, he’d said that she’d done most of the headwork on the project and he’d just done the legwork – well, fifty per cent of it, at least – and everyone had laughed except Nimma, who had pursed her lips. Klor was a genius, he was just too modest to say so.