Astra (3 page)

Astra kicked at a stone. Okay, Hokma had said she was sorry – but she didn’t
sound
sorry. She was being unfair and bossy and ignoring invaluable ground evidence. That was senior officers all over. Most of them, it was well known, had long forgotten what it was like to be out there, vulnerable and under fire from hostile criminals.

Hokma turned and started down the trail back to Or, swinging her staff by her side. ‘Don’t you want to see Wise House?’ she called over her shoulder. ‘If there’s time before supper chores you can help me feed the Owleon chicks.’

Astra stared down the path, her heart bobbing like a balloon in a sudden gust of wind.
Wise House?
Where Hokma lived alone breeding and training the Owleons, and no one was ever allowed to visit? Hokma was inviting her there to feed the chicks?
Yes way
.

She sprang forward to catch up. A pine cone zinged over her head and hit the dirt path in front of her feet. She wheeled round and craned up at the jack pine. The top branches were waving gently but the Non-Lander girl was invisible, camouflaged by a screen of needles and adult indifference.

‘We’ll prove it one day, Constable Tabby,’ she swore. ‘After I get my Security shot.’

‘
Astra
.’ Hokma was nearly at the brook now. Astra glared at the top of the tree and stuck out her tongue. Then she spun on her heel and raced after Hokma.

‘
Wait up
,’ she shouted. ‘Wait for me!’

Astra jumped into Hokma’s footprints then skipped through the pines after her Shelter mother. She was going to Wise House, to
Wise House
, where no one except Hokma, Ahn and IMBOD officers were allowed to go. The officers came twice a year, to inspect the Owleons and take the fully grown and trained birds away. Since Astra had started school she hadn’t seen them arrive or leave, but every few weeks she spied Ahn in his canvas-topped boots and old straw hat, his Tablette tucked in a scroll beneath his arm, striding out towards West Gate of an evening. He and Hokma were Gaia-bonded, Nimma said, a bond of more than twenty years, though it was hard to believe because they never even sat together in Core House at mealtimes, let alone held hands or kissed like Klor and Nimma did. Still, Nimma said that some people liked to kiss each other when no one else was watching.

Ahn’s lips were so thin they were nearly invisible, but still it was just conceivable that Hokma might want to kiss them and give him permission to visit Wise House; what was nearly impossible to accept, however, was that Or-kids – even
her
, Hokma’s own Shelter daughter – were strictly forbidden. Or-kids were noisy and galumphing, Hokma said, and ran around and frightened the birds. ‘
I’m
not galumphing,’ Astra had complained to her last year. It wasn’t fair. Hokma was her Shared Shelter mother so why couldn’t Astra visit her? Peat and Meem went to stay with their Birth-Code-Shelter parents sometimes, and Yoki often stayed with his Birth-Code uncle. In fact,
all
the other Or-kids except her got to stay with
all
their Shared Shelter parents. Especially considering that she didn’t have a Birth-Code mother or a
Code father, it wasn’t right that she should be stuck with Klor and Nimma all the time.

‘You’re the biggest galumpher of the lot, Astra,’ Hokma had laughed. ‘You’re always knocking into people. Better save all that energy for the Kinbat track for now.’

It
wasn’t true
. She could run fast, and sometimes her elbows jabbed into adults who didn’t get out of the way. But she was light, and she knew she could be a silent tracker in the woods if she tried, even with her sandals on. But when she’d tried to explain, Hokma had got cross, and told her to stop arguing or she’d be running extra laps for the next two weeks.

I wish you weren’t my Shelter mother
, Astra had nearly shouted. But what if Hokma had said,
Fine, I’ll stop now
? So instead Astra had stormed off to the orchard, where she’d sat under a fig tree nestling the hurt like a dead bee in a puff of cotton. Later, she’d carefully placed the bee-hurt in a little drawer inside her heart. She didn’t like to open the drawer very often, though, because even though the bee-hurt was dead, it could still sting her.

But now, at last, she was going to visit Wise House. As Astra followed Hokma down to the brook, the drawer in her heart flew open and like a small miracle, the bee took flight.

* * *

Ahead of her, Hokma crossed the small wooden bridge Klor and Ahn had built twenty years ago, when Or was new and the brook little more than a dried-up ditch. The water was deep again now, a smooth umber current nearly as deep as Astra was tall. She bent down, ripped open her Velcro sandal straps and, arm back behind her head like she’d been taught in cricket practice, hurled her shoes across to the opposite bank. The second one landed short of the first and rolled dangerously down towards the water.

‘Astra!’ Hokma’s hands were on her hipbelt again. But the sandal didn’t fall in. Hurriedly, before Hokma could object, Astra slipped off her hydropac and slung it across the brook too. As the pac sailed past Hokma’s head and into the woods, she splashed into the water. Clothed in its silky flow, she swam to the other side, dipping her head beneath the tarnished green reflections of the trees to refresh her hot face. Clean and glistening, she scrambled up the bank.

‘Better?’ Hokma watched Astra put her sandals back on. Leaves and bits of bark had stuck to her wet feet, but they would soon dry. Hokma
tugged her flap-hat back down on her head and Astra lunged up to the path. On this side of the bridge it rambled through a bower of ancient oaks, rare trees that had somehow survived the Dark Time and become a place of solemn pilgrimage for every international visitor to Or. Today Astra and Hokma had the bower to themselves. As Astra pranced through the shady glade, the drops of water sparkling on her skin were consumed by the familiar sheen of sweat. She slowed down and let Hokma catch up with her; now they walked side by side, Hokma marking their strides with her staff, her free hand swinging lightly beside Astra. Quietly, carefully, almost as if she herself didn’t know what it was doing, Astra’s hand reached up and curled around two of Hokma’s fingers. Hokma squeezed. Astra gripped a little tighter.

‘Hokma?’

‘Yes, Astra?’

‘What does bicker mean?’

‘To have a nonsense argument. An argument no one can win.’

‘Oh. I thought it did, but I wanted to make sure.’ Somewhere, a wood pigeon mournfully echoed its own coo. Astra giggled. ‘It sounds like what the birds do outside my window. Bicker.’

Hokma gave a gruff laugh. ‘Birds bicker. Squirrels squabble.’

Astra thought for a moment. ‘And crows crorrel, I mean choral. I mean
quarrel
. Hey, I invented a tongue-twister!
Yay
.’ She risked a skip. Just a little one, so as not to pull too hard on Hokma’s arm and make her let go.

‘You certainly did.’

Astra took a long step forward. She really wanted to ask Hokma about her missing eye. Even though Hokma was her Shared Shelter mother and they went for walks together and Astra could sit in her lap in the Quiet Room, as long as she asked nicely first, Hokma had never talked about it properly with her. The only time Astra had asked what had happened, Hokma had said she lost her eye because she wasn’t looking. Then she’d said, ‘Look!’ and pointed at the ceiling. There’d been nothing there and Hokma had laughed and said, ‘You missed it!’

But then last autumn, after Klor and Nimma had told Astra, Meem, Yoki and Peat the terrible story of Sheba, and Klor’s leg, Astra had begun to ask them more about Non-Land and finally they’d also told her that during the Southern Offensive a Non-Lander had shot Hokma in the face. Hokma had been on patrol in the Southern Belt and the armed
criminal had tried to shoot her CO. She’d stepped out in front of her officer and taken the bullet for him. Afterwards, IMBOD had given her a medal. Klor and Nimma had said that Hokma didn’t like to talk about it because she was very modest, but she still had the medal, at Wise House, which was private, and no, Astra couldn’t ask Hokma if she could go there and see it. As a rule, she shouldn’t ask people personal questions, not even Shelter parents. They would tell her themselves when they were ready, or when they thought she was ready, like she and her Shelter siblings were now ready to hear about Sheba.

Hokma had stopped walking. She dropped Astra’s hand and began poking at a rock in the path with her staff. She was frowning a little. Astra scratched her belly. Maybe now wasn’t the right time to ask about Hokma’s eye. Not if it was worse than the story about Sheba, which had made them all cry, even Peat and Klor. Especially Klor. Maybe soon, when Astra had an IMBOD medal of her own and everyone was celebrating in Core House, she would ask Hokma to bring hers down from Wise House to show people and Hokma would go and get her medal and put it next to Astra’s and tell the story then.

Luckily there was another question pressing forward in the queue, one she had been wanting to ask all week and now was inescapable.

‘Hokma?’

Hokma was inspecting the underbelly of the stone. ‘Yes, Astra?’

‘Torrent said you feed the Owleon chicks
real worms
. But that’s not true, is it?’

Astra waited confidently for a reply she could snap back to Torrent, who fancied himself the leader of the eleven-year-olds – and everyone younger than him. He was just being mean, she knew, trying to make Yoki cry as the three of them spread that evening’s food scraps into the vermi-compost bins outside Core House. The bins were filled with trays of red wigglers that worked day and night turning Or’s vegetable peelings into rich, nutritious soil for the gardens. The wigglers didn’t get paid, not like horses, sheep, cows and llamas did, because the bins were like luxury worm hotels they could stay in their whole lives so they didn’t need retirement funds; but worms were Gaia’s creatures, just the same as megafauna, insects and worker animals: they had rights and there was no way Hokma would Code a bird to eat them.

‘Don’t tell lies, Torrent,’ she’d said scornfully. ‘Don’t worry, Yoki. The Owleons are grain-eaters. Everyone knows that.’

But Hokma didn’t scoff at Torrent’s claim. With a twist of her staff she dug the rock out of the path and flicked it into the undergrowth. Then she peered into the hole,
tsked
, and straightened up.

‘That’s a good question. Let’s sit down and talk about it, shall we?’

They had left the oak bower now and were skirting a bushy glade. Hokma pointed with her staff to an almond tree at the far edge of the clearing. Astra looked at it doubtfully. Why couldn’t they just talk here? As Hokma headed for the tree, she examined the hole in the path. Where the rock had been, a fat nightcrawler was squirming its way back into the dry ground. Astra placed a leaf over the hole to protect the worm from the sun, then scuffed her way through the sun and shrubs after Hokma.

At the tree, Hokma hooked a branch down with her staff. It was thick with green almonds. ‘Here.’ Hokma pressed one of the nuts into her hand. It felt like a hard, fuzzy little mouse. As Astra fingered it, Hokma tugged at her hydropac and dropped handfuls more into the back pocket. ‘Give those to Nimma tonight for a stew,’ she said, buttoning the pocket back up. ‘They won’t be around for long.’

Why was Hokma talking about stew? Astra threw the almond into the glade and swivelled round. ‘Is Torrent right?’ she challenged. ‘Do you
really
feed the Owleon chicks
worms
?’

‘Sit down, Astra.’ Three large, flat stones were arranged in a semicircle beneath the tree and Hokma lowered herself onto one. If she were Klor or Nimma, she would be patting the place beside her, but Hokma said she liked to look at a person properly when she spoke to them. She pointed with her staff at the stone opposite. Astra hesitated, then sat down with her arms crossed in front of her chest. The stone was warm but hard, and it felt gritty against her bottom. Sunlight was dappling Hokma’s face and breasts through the almond tree branches; suddenly everything seemed uncertain, shifting, not one thing or another.

‘The answer to that question,’ Hokma said calmly, ‘is one of the reasons you couldn’t come up to Wise House before. You were too young to understand. But now you’re older and I can explain. Astra, I Coded the Edition One Owleons to eat grain, but they didn’t live long. So for Edition Two I reverted to the owl’s natural diet, with some minor adaptations. You see, to fly at night on silent wings, and for other applications, IMBOD needs the birds to be more owl than pigeon. And owls are carnivores. They won’t be healthy and strong if they don’t eat meat.’

Astra struggled to understand. ‘But aren’t the Owleons like cats and dogs? Don’t you feed them alt-meat?’

‘I do,’ Hokma said. ‘I have an alt-mouse incubator, and I freeze what I don’t use right away. But Wise House is off-grid so I don’t have unlimited electricity, especially in the rainy season, and I can’t count on being able to always run both the incubator and the freezer. My solution, which IMBOD has approved, was to add a short sequence of Blackbird Code to the Second Edition so they could eat worms too.’

It was as if Hokma had calmly told her that Nimma had tied Yoki to a chair and stabbed him with a kitchen knife. ‘But … don’t the birds
peck
them to death?’ Astra stammered. ‘Worms are
Gaia’s creatures
. We have to
protect
them. Not
torture
them.’

‘Of course we do. But Astra, you remember studying the self-defence law last month, don’t you?’

‘Yeah.’ Who could forget
that
lesson?

‘Well, the Owleons are classified as an Is-Land self-defence project, so IMBOD allows me to feed them unendangered creatures. But even so, IMBOD won’t let anyone be cruel to worms. I keep them in a lovely vermicompost and I feed them special vegetables from my garden. Then I give them an injection to put them to sleep before I feed their bodies to the Owleons. It’s not nice, but it has to be done.’

Individually, the sentences made sense, but Astra was struggling to make sense of them all together. Killing worms was cruel, wasn’t it, no matter how you did it? Behind her the woods emitted a groan, swiftly pursued by a thundering crash. She spun round on her stone.