by Naomi Foyle
Astra frowned. Pregnancy – and how to avoid it – had been explained recently at school and this part of the story now needed some clarification. ‘How come Eya got pregnant with me?’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t she have the implant?’
‘Not everyone does well on the implant, darling. Some people experience painful side effects and have to have it removed. Eya’s community didn’t encourage its use, and she told me she was using sheath protection but the sheath broke. She didn’t want her father to find out, but she didn’t want to dissolve the embryo either. Her community believed that all pregnancies are gifts from Gaia and she wanted the embryo to grow into a foetus and then a baby and be born. She told her best friend Cora, and Cora said, “Eya, don’t worry. My Code aunt Hokma lives in a place called Or – in Or there are lots of kids with lots of different kinds of parents. Why don’t you go there, and tell Aunt Hokma I sent you? You can tell your papa you’re working in the gardens and after the baby is born Hokma can give it to some Or Shelter parents and you can come back to Atourne.” ’
Astra had to stop Nimma again here. ‘Is Cora Dr Blesserson’s Code daughter?’ she asked.
‘Cora? No. Dr Blesserson doesn’t have any children.’ Nimma paused. ‘Cora Pollen is the daughter of Hokma’s older Code-Shelter sister, Paloma.’
‘Is Paloma my Shelter aunty, then?’
Nimma smoothed the edge of the sheet. ‘Paloma would be your aunty if she was still alive, darling. But she returned to Gaia when she was a young woman. She had stored her egg, though, just in case, for her Gaia partner to fertilise if anything should ever happen to her. He made a request for a professional Birth mother and when Cora was born he and his own parents Sheltered her. They were called Pollen. Hokma used to say it was a good name for Cora because she was seeded on the winds of change.’
This was all a new part of the story, and very interesting. Astra sat up. ‘How did Paloma return to Gaia?’
‘Look, darling, I can’t tell you everyone’s story all at once. Paloma sacrificed her life for Is-Land, and everyone in her family is very proud of her. Cora grew up in Atourne, but she visited here once or twice when she was little. That’s how she knew to send Eya here. All right?’
‘Okay,’ Astra agreed. She had wanted to ask about family and community names as well, and why Dr Blesserson had changed his but Hokma hadn’t, but Nimma was getting impatient now and if she asked too many more questions she might stop telling the story.
‘Now, at first Eya didn’t say she was expecting a baby. She just asked if she could work here. She had some Craft skills, of course, but Craft House was full, so we registered her as a seasonal aglab and she helped Klor with the fruit trees – and if any of my team members fell ill, she helped me, selling handmade cloths to visitors. She wore loose robes, because she said she had a skin rash that got worse in the sun, and for a while no one knew she had a baby in her tummy. But one day she talked to Hokma and told her about the baby. She said it was going to be born in two months, at the end of the summer, and she asked Hokma to help her. She was very frightened of her papa still, and she wouldn’t tell Hokma the name of the baby’s Code father. She cried and cried, until Hokma said she’d ask the other Or-adults what to do.
‘So Hokma called an emergency meeting. She said she would be one of the child’s Shelter mothers, but she wouldn’t be able to look after a baby and do all her work with the Owleons. She offered to stand for the position of School Spoke on the Parents’ Committee to make up for that – and let me tell you, that was appreciated – but she needed other parents to take primary responsibility for you while you were an infant. So we all went away and thought about it, and that night Gaia came to Klor in his dreams. She said the baby was her gift to Or and She asked him to be the baby’s Shelter father, have it as a Shelter sibling for Peat and Yoki. When he woke up, he told me about the dream and because I knew Gaia had really been asking us both, I agreed.’
Another new question occurred to Astra. ‘Did you know I was a girl?’ she asked.
Nimma blinked, and her smile seemed to freeze for a moment.
Oh no. She had said the wrong thing – something that made Nimma feel bad about Sheba. She gripped her sheet-sausage tightly, started to say sorry, it didn’t matter, but Nimma recovered and sailed on. ‘No,’ she said briskly. ‘Eya couldn’t go to the hospital for a scan so no one knew your sex. We didn’t mind if you were a girl or a boy, Astra. We wanted to Shelter you either way, and Eya was very happy because she knew her baby would be safe and well-loved in this world. She did some beautiful crocheting with me then, a little green hat and bootees for when you were born. And when it was Eya’s time, Hokma and I helped her to bring a wonderful baby girl into the world.’
Nimma said the last words in a light, magical tone, as if the story was over. But it wasn’t. ‘Eya and my Code father chose my name,’ Astra reminded her.
Nimma smiled. ‘That’s right, darling,’ she continued, the way she was supposed to. ‘Eya said you were to be called Astra, which means “star” – she said that was the name your Code father had chosen.’
Astra gazed up at the tin stars in the ceiling. Her Code father was the most mysterious character in the story. But lots of kids had anonymous Code fathers and Astra had never really thought very much about him before. Today, though, she wondered for a moment where he was now. ‘Does Cora know the name of my Code father?’ she asked.
‘No, darling. If she did, she would have told Hokma.’ Nimma reached over and stroked Astra’s forehead. ‘I remember that Eya said your curly hair is just like his. You were born with a cap of black curls – that was very unusual.’
That was also fascinating new information. Being born with hair sounded like she had been born older than she really was. Astra wondered if it might be useful to tell Torrent that. Perhaps not. He would doubtless turn it against her somehow.
‘What was Eya’s hair like?’ she asked.
‘It was straight and brown.’ Nimma thought a bit longer. ‘She wore it shoulder-length. From what she said, I got the impression her community was Northern Neuropean in origin, but like everywhere, other Gaians had joined it over the years.’
Astra liked the way Nimma was now talking to her like an adult. ‘What was her community called?’ she asked.
‘She never told us, darling,’ Nimma said. ‘And we didn’t like to pry. I just know that she wanted very much to take you back home with her, but she couldn’t. She stayed in Or for a month, breast-feeding you, but then she had to go back to Atourne. Oh, how she cried – but she said she would come and visit every holiday, and she did come back, once, when you were six months old, and she brought the silver bracelet that Klor and I keep in a special drawer for you to look at and play with on special days.’
They were back in the story now, Nimma’s voice a soft brush painting familiar scenes in her mind. Astra pictured the bracelet, delicate silver links interspersed with five sparkling blue gemstones, one for each lake in Bracelet Valley. It was too big for her wrist still, but she had once put it around her ankle, until Nimma got cross and said it would fall off and get lost. There wasn’t any chance of that, really, because she was never allowed to take Eya’s gift out of Nimma’s sight, but she had removed it and drawn a Tabby picture of it instead.
‘When I’m thirteen,’ she said, ‘I’ll be allowed to wear my bracelet on special occasions, and when I’m eighteen, I’m allowed to keep it, and wear it whenever I want.’
‘That’s right, darling.’ Nimma’s voice sounded far away now. Her face was turned towards the greenhouse corridor, not as if she was counting the parallel light lines falling through the blinds over Meem’s bed but as though she were looking through them to a place no one else could see.
‘Then what happened?’ Astra asked, even though she knew. This was the sad bit; she’d cried a lot the first time she’d heard it. But now, in a funny way, she liked to hear it.
Nimma shifted in her chair and returned to the story. ‘Well, we didn�
�t hear from Eya for a while. Then Cora visited and said that she had got married to a wealthy Shelltech engineer, one of her Shelter Code father’s friends who lived in a mountain stronghold near her community. Eya had gone to live with him there and she wasn’t able to visit Or any more. She couldn’t email or Tablette-talk us either, because her new husband would be very angry if he found out she’d had a baby before she married him. But Eya had told Cora to tell us that she loved Astra very much and would never, ever forget her. One day, if she could, she would come and find Astra, but she didn’t know when that would be. In the meantime, she had left her with Hokma and Nimma and Klor because they were the best Shelter parents Astra could have. And that’s what we’re trying to be, all the time, darling.’
Astra lunged forward and hugged her Shelter mother. Her elbow caught the tray, and her bowl and plate and spoons went clattering to the floor. But Nimma didn’t shout at her; she hugged her back. Her arms went right round Astra, her cheek rested on Astra’s head and her soft breasts enveloped Astra in the smell of wild roses and camomile, the special perfume Klor gave her every birthday. ‘I love you, Nimma,’ Astra blurted. ‘When I meet Eya, I’m going to tell her you’re the best Shared Shelter mother ever in the whole wide world.’
* * *
Then Nimma did have to go back to Craft House, so Astra came downstairs with her and sat on the sofa beside Elpis in her wheelchair. Elpis nodded and opened her mouth, which was her way of smiling. Nimma wrapped Astra up in a loose-weave shawl with the Earthship Tablette, Libby, on her lap, and asked her to make a picture of Craft House. When Nimma left, Astra unfolded Libby – which was short for Libraria, not a real name but Klor had chosen it so you couldn’t argue – to poster size and laid her out on the coffee table, where she drew a big cutaway of Craft House. She put Nimma’s team in red and gold robes and Nimma in a silvery-blue kimono and had everyone working at their looms and jewellery tables, surrounded by the racks of faux-grass skirts and house robes and trays of necklaces and hipbeads. Then she looked up at the mantelpiece above Libby’s wallnook, to the photograph of Sheba with her fifth-birthday cake, her eyes shining like a Fountain lightshow, and she added a drawing of Sheba in a green hip skirt, floating above Nimma and clapping her hands. ‘That’s bee-you-tea-ful,’ Libby exclaimed, but she wasn’t done yet. She scrolled to the blank edges of the drawing and drew the gardens outside Craft House too, adding Is-Land officers, up in the fruit trees and lying in the grass, to protect them all. One was Durga, because Durga was doing her IMBOD Service and had learned how to shoot a gun, and another was Torrent, because even though Torrent was bossy he was good at archery, but the biggest one – of course – was Astra, with Tabby in her pocket and an Owleon flying above her.
‘I like this picture very much,’ Libby said, which made Astra worry that perhaps Libby thought the portrait of Tabby was of her. She thought about writing TABBY underneath it, but she didn’t want to hurt Libby’s feelings so in the end she didn’t. She zoomed out again, and above everyone and everything she painted the Shell, a golden shining dome, and above that missiles veering away from the Shell’s magnetic force field and boomeranging back onto the Non-Landers in their strongholds in the deserts and mountains bordering Is-Land.
‘Wow, you are drawing lots today,’ Libby cheered.
And then the picture turned into a huge movie storyboard, with lots of dead Non-Landers covered in blood, and more grieving Non-Landers killing themselves with sharp sticks, and the leaders of Asfar being put in jail by CONC officers and the Guardians of the Servers.
‘Done now,’ she told Libby.
‘One hour and twenty-two minutes. You’re a drawing superstar,’ Libby exclaimed. Then Astra showed the whole picture to Elpis and explained each part of the story, and when Elpis drooled a little on her pale, brown-spotted chest, Astra dabbed it up with a hanky like she’d seen Nimma do.
When Nimma came back to see if Astra was well enough for dinner and storytelling, she said how wonderful the picture was, and when Astra pointed out Sheba, she gave Astra a special hug. Then Nimma took her temperature and said she could come to Core House for dinner and to the Fountain afterwards, as long as she went straight to bed as soon as Nimma told her. She had a big day tomorrow, travelling with Hokma to meet Dr Blesserson, and she needed to be all better to make sure she wasn’t sick again before her shot.
Yes, Astra thought, she didn’t want to throw up in Dr Blesserson’s office. He was a genius, like she was going to be one day, and she was going to talk to him about Code-working and Owleon design and maybe, if Hokma went to the toilet for a minute, what Hokma was like when she was little. But right now she was starving for her dinner.
1.8
The next morning, when Hokma entered the dining hall and strode over to Nimma and Astra, practically the whole of Or turned and stared. Hokma was wearing a short blue skirt and a lavender linen waistcoat.
Nimma was delighted. ‘Oh my dewy meadow, I’d forgotten I’d made that for you,’ she said, pinching the fabric of the waistcoat. Then she tutted. ‘You’re not twenty-odd any more, Hokma. Let me take it out for you. It will only take half an hour.’ But Hokma said it was her best outfit and the urbaggers were leaving right after breakfast, so it would have to do. She was also wearing a matching lavender eyepatch. Astra thought she looked less commanding in the paler-coloured patch. Perhaps she only wore darker ones when she wanted people to feel afraid of her.
Astra herself was wearing a short sleeveless cotton tunic, loosely belted. It was already damp with sweat between her back and hydropac and would have to be washed later. But Nimma said that most people in Sippur wore clothes and Dr Blesserson would think she was more grown up if she did too, so for once she hadn’t made a fuss. She’d even let Nimma drag a comb through her hair, though she’d refused to wear a gold ribbon in it. Ribbons were either tied too tight and hurt your scalp, or too loose and fell out when you were running. And bunches felt all knobbly under a flap-hat. Nimma had sighed, but put the ribbon back in her shoulder bag.
Hokma and Nimma went to eat at the adults’ table and Astra sat down with her Shelter siblings. Klor was still fixing Tabby, so Peat, holding his own Tablette under the table, server-searched Sippur for her. The city, he said, had a population of nearly 25,000 people, which was ginormous compared to Or’s 282, and even way bigger than New Bangor’s 7,916, though only half as big as Atourne, of course. Astra had known that Sippur was retrofitted like New Bangor. But she hadn’t known until Peat told her that it was made of basalt: not only the houses and the pavements, but also the thick wall with turrets and ramparts that surrounded the city as if it were a castle.
Basalt was the cooled lava from a volcanic eruption. It wasn’t orange though, Peat said; it was black and porous, which meant filled with holes. He couldn’t show her pictures in case Nimma confiscated his Tablette, so as she ate her porridge and apricots, Astra imagined what he meant. Basalt, she thought, would be like black melted wax after it had cooled and hardened and someone had pricked it all over with a needle. It would be a strange shape, pinched bits sticking out everywhere like the coral Nimma kept on the uppermost shelf in the Earthship living room. Yes – Sippur would look like a giant black coral reef, with steps and roads carved between its weird poking-out fingers, which would sparkle at night from their countless tiny porous windows. And winding all around the city the basalt wall would bulge like a gnarled dragon’s tail. She couldn’t wait to come home again and tell everyone all about it.
* * *
The journey took the whole morning. After breakfast, Astra, Hokma and Nimma picked some flowers for Sheba – an armful of daisies from the Earthship botanical cell, because those had been her favourite flowers, and three spider orchid stems from the lawn for Or. Then Nimma Tablette-talked Klor, who came down from Code House to meet them on the lawn. He was carrying a sprig of apple blossom, and – yay! – Tabby.
‘Astra’s first trip to Sippur.’ Klor stroked her head as she hugged Tabby and turned him on
. ‘Hokma, really, I should come with you.’
‘No, Klor.’ Nimma took the apple blossom and added it to the bouquet. ‘I don’t want you going on that bus. We’ll take Astra and the others in the solar van soon.’
Phhwweet. An urbagger whistled from the path and waved at Hokma. Astra kissed the IMBOD Shield on Tabby’s screen, stuffed him in his pocket, grabbed Hokma’s hand and tugged. The van was leaving now. She could catch up properly with Tabby on the road.
‘I’ll take good care of her, Klor,’ Hokma reassured him as Nimma retrieved the gold hair ribbon from her bag and tied it round the stems. Watching her, Astra remembered again that she shouldn’t be excited about going to Sippur.
‘Can I carry Sheba’s flowers, Nimma?’ she asked.
‘Yes, darling. But take good care of them or you’ll have to give them to Hokma.’
The bouquet was big but not heavy. Astra cradled it in her arms. Nimma started dabbing her eyes with a hanky from her bag. Klor put his arm around her. ‘Sheba always wanted a little sister, didn’t she, Nimma?’ he said.
‘Umm.’ Nimma’s response was almost a whimper.
Astra felt frightened for a moment. It wasn’t like Nimma not to talk.
From East Gate, the van honked. ‘We’d better be off, then,’ Hokma said.
Astra let Klor and Nimma both kiss her, then trotted after Hokma to the van. When she got to East Gate she turned and gave a final goodbye wave. Klor and Nimma were hunched together, haloed by the sun behind them, as if they’d disappeared and only their dark shapes were left floating on the lawn.
