Astra (57 page)

KALI BELDOTT AND ELPIS SHIPDOTT

PLANT THE FIRST OAK TREE

IN THE GROUNDS OF THE NEW

IS-LAND NATIONAL WHEEL MEET.

The images of the tree planting were followed by others: Elpis at school, Elpis riding a pony, Elpis picking tomatoes, Elpis cleaning between her toes with a flannel and looking up giggling. In every shot she looked more and more like Sheba – Sheba, the Shelter sister Astra had never met but knew so well, Sheba dancing, laughing, running through the photoshow on the Earthship mantelpiece:
Sheba
. Now an image of Sheba’s Fountain, her delicate tree of tears, rose in her mind, merging with the pictures of the Pioneers, and faintly, oh so faintly, a chorus of young children joined their voices in the ‘O Shield’ hymn. Astra was overwhelmed with yearning.
Sheba. I miss you. Sheba, where are you? Sheba, I need you. Sheba, teach me how to
be
you
.

* * *

When she woke this time, she was in a room with white walls, facing an opaque window. Her head hurt – not the throbbing in her temples she
sometimes got when she’d studied too much, but a deep fireball of pain cannoning up from the base of her skull into her frontal lobe. She shut her eyes again. Her throat was fissured, a jagged crevice in a rock face.

‘Water,’ she begged.

‘Astra. You’re back,’ Klor said. His spade-callused palm was grasping her wrist and he was pressing a cup into her hand. ‘It will take a little while for your brain to adjust. This is some medicine to help take the pain away. Just drink slowly. I’ll wait.’

‘Ugh.’ She grimaced as she swallowed the bitter chalky-pink mixture. ‘I was having such weird dreams. Silver was there, but he wasn’t Silver, and he was bringing me – I don’t know, like a Tablette playlist of my whole life. It went on and on – it felt like I was there for months.’

‘Astra, darling.’ Klor was sitting on a chair beside the bed. ‘What’s the last thing you remember?’

She blinked. The dream was still vivid in her mind. ‘There was a Tablette tray, and it talked to me,’ she said. It was sore at the base of her skull; as she spoke she reached round and touched the spot. It was covered with a plaster, but she couldn’t feel the rubber nib she remembered from the dream … She looked around at the stark walls. She wasn’t on a balcony but in a small, bare, whitewashed room, facing a window open onto the steppes. The bed had a railing, just like the one in the dream, but not a Tablette tray. ‘Klor?’ she asked. ‘Where am I?’

‘You’re in a neurohospice near Atourne. You’ve been here for three months.’

She frowned. ‘Why am I in a neurohospice?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Am I
dying
?’

‘No, no!’ Klor leaned forward and took her hand. ‘Good Gaia, no – this is the best neurotreatment centre in Is-Land. You’re on the memory reordering ward.’ Klor’s skin was pallid, as if he hadn’t had any sun for weeks. He gave her hand a little shake. ‘Astra, listen to me. I may only be able to visit you this once. You have to tell me: do you remember what happened? What you did in Ahn’s office?’

She was on a
memory reordering
ward? Like the women on the bus to Sippur? She sat up, but her movement was restricted. There was something tied around her waist. ‘I’m in a
madhouse
!’ she cried, scrabbling at the restraint beneath the sheet.

‘No, Astra, that’s not a Gaian term – you know we don’t call people with mental health issues mad.’

‘
Ahn
does.
Ahn
called me mad.’ Images came flooding back to her: hurling the Kezcams, Ahn’s Gaia plough flopping with fright. ‘He’s had me locked up,’ she yelped. ‘He wants me to
die in a madhouse
.’

She retched, and a thin stream of bile emerged from her lips. Klor passed her a bottle of water and she rinsed her mouth and spat over the edge of the bed. She couldn’t lean all the way over and some of the water splatted the edge of the mattress and Klor’s arm. She bent over, clutching her stomach. She remembered everything now: the meeting with the counsellor, her march from Wise House, Hokma’s letter –
Hokma’s death
.

‘No, no he doesn’t,’ Klor urged. ‘IMBOD put you here, Astra – it was for your own safety. You hurt Ahn very badly. If Russett hadn’t stopped you, you could have killed him.’

‘Then put me on trial!’ She tried to rise in the bed, but the belt around her waist prevented her. ‘Let me stand up and tell everyone what he did. He hated Hokma for Sheltering me. He was jealous of me from when I was a
baby
– so he told IMBOD about my shot. He knew they would kill her, but he didn’t care. He wanted to punish her, to get rid of her, so he could have a Code child with Congruence. Klor, he Gaia-played with Congruence when she was
seventeen
.’

She was pleading with Klor, but he was regarding her with pity, as if she were a suffering animal. ‘You’re confused, darling, Conguence is twenty-one, not seventeen. Her parents have spoken to her and she says she and Ahn have become close since working together, that’s all. It’s not ideal, and I know Vishnu was upset with Ahn, but it happens sometimes.’

‘She’s
lying
—’ she bleated.

‘Astra,
no
. And you mustn’t think Ahn would ever try to hurt Hokma. She died of a stroke, sweetheart. No one killed her – and especially not Ahn. He didn’t hate her – that’s simply not true. He loved her, for many years. We all knew you were a little jealous of
him
, but we thought that was normal. We never dreamed you would attack him the way that you did.’

Her
– jealous of
Ahn
? She opened her mouth to protest, but Klor shook his head, kindly but firmly. He didn’t believe her; he would never believe bad things about Ahn. Not after what she’d done.

She sank back into the pillow. ‘Did I really hurt him?’

Klor paused. ‘Astra, you cost Ahn his fertility. He can still Code a child by cloning, but not by Gaia-bonding. It’s a psychological wound as much as a physical one. If you were eighteen, you
would
be on trial.’

She couldn’t meet his eyes – she couldn’t show Klor her pleasure, hard and bitter as a cough lozenge. Good: she had done it, she had taken something precious from Ahn, just like he had taken something precious from her: the most important person in her life.

‘He didn’t love Hokma,’ she said stubbornly. ‘He wanted IMBOD to take her away. That’s why he—’

‘Enough, Astra,’ Klor interrupted, his voice raised. ‘I understand that you were angry with Ahn, but he had to tell IMBOD the truth about your Security shot: it’s what anyone would have done. And in any case, your shot had nothing to do with Hokma’s arrest. It’s all come out now, as part of Dr Pollen’s trial.’

She punched the bed with the sides of her fists. ‘What has? What’s come out? What does everyone except
me
know?’

His sigh was as heavy as a bag of damp sod. ‘Hokma
was
a traitor, darling. She was sending top-secret Codes to Dr Pollen in Atourne, and Dr Pollen smuggled them into the Southern Belt on her field trips. They were part of a cell of dissidents, helping the Non-Landers breed Owleons and grow protein-enhanced grains and drought-resistant vegetables – they were giving away all these things other governments pay a lot of money for – to our
enemies
.’

He didn’t want to believe it, she could tell, but she had read the letter; she knew it was true. She opened her mouth, then shut it again. She couldn’t mention the letter. There would be hidden cameras in here, microphones, and she couldn’t get Klor into trouble. But everything Hokma had written was worming its way back into her mind and there were a thousand things she desperately needed to know: did IMBOD really torture Non-Landers and massacre children? Why had no one ever told her about the rare-earth mines in the Belt? And, above all, why on Gaia’s green earth had Hokma confessed? She had said in the letter she was going to use her trial to speak out about her beliefs. There was no way she would
confess
.

‘What happened to her?’ she demanded. It was too big a question, she knew. ‘To her
body
?’

Klor sighed. ‘She was cremated, darling, like Dr Greenleafdott told us. Her ashes were used for fertiliser.’

‘Then how do we know she’s dead?’

‘Oh, Astra … They sent us photographs, and the coroner’s report. I’m glad you didn’t see them, but perhaps you should.’

If IMBOD could wipe three months from her life, they could make a drugged woman look like a corpse. But why would they keep a traitor alive? Tears welling in her eyes, Astra slid back down on her pillow. Hokma had been returned to Gaia by anonymous aglabs without anyone to cry over her, without any stories to sail away in.

‘Did we have a ceremony for her?’ A tear seeped down her cheek into her ear. ‘At Birth House?’

Klor looked troubled. ‘No, darling, we weren’t allowed. And people didn’t want to. But I went to Wise House for you. I climbed onto the roof and picked some wildflowers, and then I went and sprinkled them in the brook.’

‘You climbed onto the roof?’ Astra sniffled.

‘I did. I strapped my leg on my back and hopped and hauled myself up.’

‘Nimma wouldn’t like that.’

‘Ah well. Nimma doesn’t know everything this mad old man does when she’s not looking.’

It was a Klor eyebrow moment. She smiled weakly, though the relief didn’t last long. There was a dead weight on her chest, burning a hole right through it. ‘What happened to Dr Pollen?’ she asked at last.

Klor was serious again. ‘She was sentenced to life imprisonment – and not a day too long.’

‘Did she say anything at her trial?’

‘Say anything?’ He was puzzled now.

She had to get this right. ‘About IMBOD? About Hokma?’

‘Oh Astra, she was incoherent – she was a
traitor
. You really don’t want to think about her right now. We need to think about
you
.’

But she wouldn’t let him change the subject. ‘What do you mean, incoherent?’ she demanded. ‘What did she say about Hokma?’

‘She accused IMBOD of killing her, of course.’ Klor shook his head in disgust. ‘She’s delusional, Astra, and deeply misguided. You don’t want to
defend her or people will start thinking you’re their accomplice and not their victim.’

It all made sense now. She clutched the sheets in her fists, leaned forward and hissed, ‘But they
did
. IMBOD killed
Hokma
. She was going to speak out against IMBOD and the Wheel Meet at her trial, and … and—’ In a rush, she finally understood
everything
. ‘Ahn and Dr Blesserson didn’t want their reputations to suffer. They only agreed to testify against her as long as she was killed so they would never have to!’

‘
Astra
,’ Klor roared, ‘you cannot talk like that! It’s
wrong
– very wrong. And if you keep accusing people falsely you
will
have to stay in here forever.’

He was standing up, pointing his finger at her, and she was breathing at a gallop, but at last she shut up.

Klor sat down again, patting his hair back across his scalp. ‘Astra,
please
try to understand. You’re here because you assaulted Ahn, a grievous attack that permanently damaged him. You were sedated afterwards for your own good. Out of his
love for Hokma
, rather than take you to juvenile court, Ahn suggested that you come here for memory pacification treatment. Normally three months would be an effective first course, but frankly, I’m not sure it has helped you at all.’

She couldn’t blame him for not understanding. She would need proof, hard proof, before she got Klor on her side. Right now, she needed him.

‘Three months,’ she repeated, twisting the sheets. Her fingernails were very short, she realised. Much shorter than she liked to cut them. ‘But—’

‘I know.’ Klor’s anger sank without trace back into his kindness. ‘It seems like you’ve been dreaming – that’s the nature of the treatment. It helps many people, and it helps Is-Land too, to build a national archive of memories, especially childhood memories still fresh in a young person’s mind. That was another reason Ahn wanted you to come here, so you could give something back to us all. But it troubles me, Astra, for you to be getting this treatment. The other patients are old, or have a long history of mental illness: they need to be calmed. But you—’ Klor slapped his aluminium knee and stood up. ‘Oh Gaia,’ he exclaimed, ‘you just have a temper and we didn’t realise you needed extra discipline. We brought you up like a Sec Gen when we should have been much tougher on you. I blame myself, Astra. I should have known, right from the start. When you
came to visit me that day, before your shot, you remember? You were worried, and I understand now: you were worried that I would know you hadn’t changed.’

She let him pace, though his gait did not lull her. She was in a neurohospice for dying,
mentally incompetent
people, and Ahn had put her here in order to add her like a specimen to his National Museum. Dr Blesserson had given him the idea, no doubt. She was tied to the bed. And even though she’d been dreaming for
three months
, Hokma was still dead.

‘What’s going to happen to me?’ she asked dully.

His face flushed, Klor sat back down. ‘I can’t get you released, Astra, but you’re my legal responsibility until you turn eighteen and until then I have some influence over your treatment. You’ve had a full introductory course of memory reordering, as we agreed with Ahn, and it’s clear to me it didn’t work. I’m not going to authorise another treatment course, not unless you want it. But if you don’t, your options are limited. Ahn doesn’t want you back at Or unless you’re cured.’

His words whirled in her head. Flying among them was an image of small Elpis, snatched from her dreams. ‘What about Nimma?’ she asked, in a small voice.

Klor hesitated. ‘Nimma wants you to get better, angel.’

‘She doesn’t want me to come home.’

‘It’s not just Nimma who’s concerned, darling. The Parents’ Committee is anxious too. It’s been agreed that Or isn’t the right Shelter home for you right now.’