Astra (18 page)

‘It wasn’t so hard last night, was it?’ she asked.

Astra shook her head. ‘No, it was fun!’ And really, it hadn’t felt like lying at all. She’d been planning to mostly tell the truth, like in the orchard, just leaving some bits out, but in fact she hadn’t had to say much at all about her shot. When they’d arrived back at Or with the urbaggers she’d run to show Nimma and Klor and Elpis her blue plaster and her certificate and the photos of Sheba’s Fountain, which Tabby had already sent to Libby to share with everyone. Elpis had waved her finger over Libby’s screen and opened and closed her mouth three times, which meant she liked the pictures very much, and Astra had sat on Klor’s lap, waiting for
him and Nimma to say they wanted to hang Libby in her wallnook in poster mode and display the photo of Astra placing the Or flowers in the trough. Perhaps, she had thought, looking up at the mantelpiece, Nimma and Klor might even say they would buy another digiframe and put the picture next to the photograph of Sheba so that everyone who visited the Earthship could see that Sheba had a little Shelter sister who loved her.

But Nimma and Klor hadn’t done any of that. Klor had hugged Astra and said they would add the photos to their Sheba album, wouldn’t they Nimma? And Nimma had said ‘Yes, dear.’ Astra hadn’t even known there was a whole Sheba album, but when she asked to see it, Nimma said, ‘Not today, darling,’ and that was that. Then Klor had admired her plaster and asked if her shot had hurt, and she’d said, ‘No, well, yes, a little bit but I didn’t cry.’ Nimma had hugged her too, and said she was a brave girl and should go out to play now before dinner. On the Kinbat track she’d discovered that the other kids’ plasters were getting grubby now, so she’d lorded it over them, telling everyone about Dr Blesserson’s orchard, where she’d climbed his Gold Medal Pink Lady apple tree and he’d said she would be an outstanding arbiculty-ist one day. Yes, everything had gone very well, and maybe Nimma and Klor would show her Sheba’s album soon.

‘Good.’ Hokma smiled. ‘We’ll just see how things go, how the shot affects the others. If you need to change your behaviour a little, we’ll decide what to do together. But we can only discuss that here or in Wise House. Okay?’

Astra reached for a piece of cake. ‘Okay. Can I feed the chicks by myself today?’ she asked. ‘I mean, except for killing the worms.’

‘You can.’

‘
Yay
.’ With her free hand, Astra gave the bench a ferocious karate chop, setting the coconut cups atremble.

Hokma moved her cup away from Astra. ‘Helium’s back. Maybe you’d like to meet him first?’

‘Yes way!’ Astra took a slurp of her juice. ‘I want to help feed him too.’

Astra would learn how to feed all the Owleons, Hokma explained, and she would also help clean the huts and monitor the alt-mouse incubator. Soon she could start training the chicks to eat from a glove, and then to jump onto it. After that, they would train the chicks to fly, and when they were ready IMBOD would come and take them away for testing. It would take another two months to see if the Edition Four upgrade was successful;
if it had been, then the birds would be returned for breeding and the cycle would begin again. If not, Hokma would have to tweak the Code and start again with new eggs. But in either case, if Astra learned how to train Owleons this summer, they could nurture six to eight chicks next time between them and double the profit for Or.

‘Are you up for that?’

Astra’s mouth was full of cake. ‘Um-hmm,’ she said through the crumbs. She cleaned her teeth with her tongue. ‘Hokma?’

‘Yes, Astra?’

‘Why did those people on the bus have black holes in their heads? Did Non-Landers attack them?’

Hokma picked up the empty sandwich bag and folded it neatly into four. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘Those people had a treatment in a neurohospice. That’s what left those scars. Now finish up and let’s go.’

She stood up and started gathering all the picnic gear together. Astra washed her cake down with the last gulp of juice and let Hokma zip the cups and bags back into her hydropac. Together, they set off down the boundary trail to the crossroads, Astra striding beside Hokma, arms swinging by her sides.

‘Hokma?’

‘Yes, Astra?’

‘What’s a neurohospice?’

Hokma took three steps before she answered. ‘It’s a place where people go before they return to Gaia, to get extra-special care. The doctors there use hi-tech equipment to help people feel at peace before they leave their families and friends. Some patients have brain treatments to put their memories in order. Sometimes people who aren’t returning to Gaia yet but have difficult memories go to neurohospices for treatment too.’

That all sounded very interesting. ‘What kind of treatment did the people on the bus have?’

Hokma pushed away an overhanging pine branch with her staff. She was scanning the trees, not paying full attention to Astra. Was she going to be grumpy again like yesterday? ‘That scar is caused by a Tablette node implant,’ she said at last. ‘Doctors say it makes people feel calmer, and able to make better sense of their past. It also makes them love Gaia very much.’

‘Their brains were attached to a Tablette?
Wow
.’ Astra broke into a run, swung round a young stringybark, then jumped back in front of Hokma. ‘Can I do that one day? Then I’d know
everything
.’

Hokma trod on a twig. It snapped beneath her boot and Astra started. ‘That treatment is only for sick people, Astra. You don’t need it. Your mind is far more powerful than a Tablette.’

‘No it isn’t,’ Astra scoffed. ‘Tabby knows every language in the world, and he can do a zillion sums.’

Hokma smiled at last. ‘Sure he can. Tabby is super-smart. But think of it this way. Even the biggest hard drive has only limited space, but your mind is like a magic house – it looks small on the outside, but inside it has rooms that go on forever. All you have to do is keep opening the doors. With words. Words are the keys to infinite space. Do you follow me?’

Astra considered this. ‘You mean the way a certain word, like “food”, gives me pictures in my head? And feelings, like getting excited?’

‘Yes, exactly: a big key, like the word “food”, will open a big room, with lots of thoughts and memories inside it. But if you look closely around the walls, you’ll always see other doors. And rarer, more specific words – like “protein”, or “carbohydrates”, or … “waffle” – they are smaller keys that will open those doors. And in those rooms, you’ll find more doors, and so it goes, on and on. All these rooms are connected, even the Word rooms and the Code rooms, so the more you open, the more space you have to store information and combine it and come up with new ideas.’

Astra took a giant step over a mossy log. ‘Do you think,’ she said slowly, almost feeling the thought form in her mouth, ‘because, it’s
your
mind, and your mind is
you
, the rooms disappear when you aren’t in them? Do you think that could happen?’

Hokma laughed. ‘Actually, that is one theory of mind – or maybe the empty rooms just shrink, like bouncy biocastles. Like when you learn a language and then forget most of the words. But you can always inflate the room again if you want.’

Now Hokma was being silly. Bouncy biocastles were for Little Or-kids. Astra persisted, ‘Or perhaps there are trapdoors and attic doors in your mind rooms. I mean, you’d have to go up or down sometimes, otherwise you couldn’t fit all the rooms in.’

‘Yes, that’s true. Sometimes you have to dig a little when you’re thinking, or climb a ladder, like you climbed that tree the other day. So words don’t take up space in your mind, do they? They create it.’

Astra bent down to examine a primrose. Its flowers were as pink as Nimma’s special occasion lipstick, and its petals were wrinkled just like
elephant skin. She’d once asked Klor if elephants ate primroses, and he’d said they probably would if they could, but primroses didn’t grow in the savannah where the last big elephants had lived, or in Himalaya where the reintroduced smaller ones were now. There were primroses in Neuropa, pale yellow ones, but except in animal prisons there hadn’t been elephants there since the Ice Age, and those ones had woolly skin. Astra had asked what happened to the elephants in the prisons, and Klor had said that during the Dark Time, the Neuropeans had eaten them. That was a terrible story, so she’d stopped asking questions then.

‘So if I learn more words, then I can put more Code in my head too?’ she asked Hokma. ‘More even than Klor?’

‘Maybe – though you’d have to live a few decades to match him, I expect.’

Astra stood up. It was fun thinking about her mind, but Hokma was still overlooking the obvious. ‘You could just put all the words in the world into Tabby. A human brain can never be as big as a Tablette’s. Klor told Peat that Code workers in New Zonia are making computers that can think. Peat said that soon everyone will have a computer best friend, just like Tabby but even better. They’ll make jokes and know when you’re sad and exactly what to say to make you feel better.’

Hokma placed her palm on the bark of an oak tree. She patted the tree as if it were a horse, then moved on. ‘A Tablette might work like a brain, Astra, but it doesn’t have a mind. Even if Tabby were programmed to compose poetry, or intuit emotions from changes in physiology, or even fall in love, he’d only be like an actor playing a part, reading from a script someone else has written. That’s someone you’ve never met, so how can you be friends with them?’

She was trying to think of an answer, but Hokma swept on, ‘Tablettes are
tools
, Astra: they’re not living creatures. They’re not unique like you or me or Helium or Silver. No matter what marvellous things they can do, they’re always limited by their programmer’s values and skills, and they’re
always
replaceable. Tabby’s a very useful learning companion, but I don’t want him to be your best friend.’

Klor had said something similar to Peat, Astra recalled. Sometimes grown-ups were so dumb. ‘Tabby is my
very
best friend,’ she declared. ‘That’s what his software is
for
: making sure I don’t ever get lonely’

Hokma stopped and faced her. ‘I know it seems as though Tabby likes you, Astra, but I promise you he doesn’t love you the way I do, or Klor
does, or Meem and Yoki do, when their heads aren’t buried in Operation Is-Land. You need to spend time with other people and with living creatures. If you want to develop proper Owleon training skills, we’ll have to wean you from Tabby.’

Weaning was when the sheep stopped giving milk to the baby lamb – but Tabby wasn’t a sheep, and Astra wasn’t a baby. Astra stooped to flick a stone out of her sandal. When Hokma had walked on ahead, she pulled Tabby out of her hydropac pocket.

‘
Purrrup
. What’s up?’ He greeted her with a whisker-wash wave of his paw.

‘We’ve got to race Hokma now,’ she told him, clutching him tight.

‘I like races!’ he enthused, his green eyes twinkling. She set his clock to Stop Watch and stuffed him back in his pocket. Then she overtook Hokma and sped down the trail to the crossroads. Not caring about scratches or grazes, she grabbed a short stick and hoisted herself all the way up the steep path to Wise House, miles ahead of Hokma, who plodded on behind.

* * *

Hokma pulled a box out from under the bench on the verandah. It was filled with alt-leather gloves. She put one on and rummaged for a good fit for Astra. They were all far too big, but Astra didn’t mind. Her hand swimming in a scuffed brown glove with a cuff that nearly came up to her elbow, she followed her Shelter mother across the back clearing to the aviary beneath the pine trees.

Helium was perched on a roost in the first cage. He was an enormous tawny Owleon, almost half as big as Astra herself, with black camouflage patterns on his wings and chest and thick feathers running right down his legs to the tips of his scaly yellow claws. His ear tufts stuck up like two crooked black fingers on his head and beneath his beak he had a soft white beard, like the one Klor had grown last year until Nimma had said he looked like an Amish minister and made him shave it off. The Amish were farmers in New Zonia, a very peaceful and orderly people, Klor had told Astra later, but with an unfortunate resistance to education. Helium didn’t look peaceful. His eyes were two blazing orange planets and his black beak shone like brushed steel.

‘He’s like a flying lion,’ Astra breathed.

‘He’s a beautiful Edition Two Owleon in the prime of his life,’ Hokma said. ‘He does the Sippur and Atourne runs, don’t you, boy?’

‘He flies all the way to
Atourne
?’ Astra stared at Helium’s wings. Atourne was
ages
away. It took a whole day in a bus to get there, Klor said, and nearly two weeks in a cart, which a lot of people preferred anyway, because you could visit so many interesting places in the steppes on the way.

‘He does.’ Hokma opened the cage and entered it. ‘It takes him two days. He sleeps on the way in a tree in a community called Moly. The people there feed him lots of nice homegrown grains. Oh, they spoil Hely in Moly, don’t they, my boy?’

Astra watched, spellbound, as Hokma offered Helium her wrist. The bird stepped onto it as fussily as an old man in New Bangor stepping up onto a kerb, testing it first with his stick. Gripping his jesses, Hokma brought him out into the light.

Astra involuntarily took a step back. ‘He looks like an Edition
Two Hundred
Owleon,’ she declared.

‘I know.’ Hokma stroked the bird’s chest with her ungloved finger. He nipped it and Hokma chuckled. ‘Hard to imagine improving on Hely, isn’t it? But he does what he was designed to do perfectly, and the longer he lives the more confidence IMBOD will have in the foundation Code.’

Astra wanted to touch Helium too, but she wasn’t sure about putting her finger close to that beak. ‘What’s the difference between Edition Three and Edition Four Owleons?’ she asked. ‘Will they have even more nesting points?’

Hokma tickled the bird’s chin and he blinked lazily back at her. ‘That’s a good guess, Astra, but in fact the upgrade is a secret. IMBOD made me promise not to tell anyone how the new Owleons are Coded.’