Astra (6 page)

In an instant, Astra’s heart was a puddle of love. ‘
Oooohh
,’ she cooed, ‘I’m
sorry
.’

‘Astra, meet Copper, Amber and Silver.’ Hokma pointed to the birds from biggest to smallest. ‘Amber’s a girl and Copper and Silver are boys. Normally it’s hard to tell with birds, but I Coded them, so I know.’

Astra couldn’t take her eyes off Silver. ‘Why is he so
small
?’

‘Silver is the youngest. The eggs are laid several days apart, so if the parents can’t feed them, the oldest can eat the smaller ones and survive.’

Astra’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Copper’s not going to
eat
Silver, is he?’

‘Not if we feed them plenty of worms.’

Hokma reached into the bucket, pinched a dead worm between her thumb and forefinger and dangled it over the box. When Copper seized the creature’s body in his beak, Hokma let it drop. As the three chicks jabbed and clawed at the worm, she nudged Astra. ‘They’re Coded to be assertive. But if you give them another one, they won’t have to fight.’

This was the moment. Astra peeked into the bucket. Waiting in their spirals, the worms looked like tiny pink ziggurats, the ancient desert temples the school hallway wallscreen sometimes showed. Hokma would say the worm-temples were there to help her worship Gaia. And if Astra didn’t pick one up to feed the Owleons, Hokma might say she could never come back to Wise House. But she didn’t want to touch their lifeless bodies with her bare hands.

‘Can I wear a pair of gloves?’ she whispered.

Hokma laughed. ‘Okay – but you’ll have to wash them afterwards. I’m not wasting expensive lab gloves on a squeamish girl.’

Hokma went back into the lab. Astra sat waiting, her stomach squeezing. Hokma thought she was being silly, but she
was
going to feed the Owleons. She
was
. Then Hokma would see she was a good Wise House worker. She just needed some practise, that was all.

The biolatex gloves Hokma returned with were way too big for Astra and the tips of the fingers flopped into the bucket. She chose a worm, hoping it wasn’t the one that had looked up at her. As she pressed her fingers around it she flinched, half expecting a current of pain to jolt up her arm. But there was nothing: the worm felt squidgy through the eco-latex, no different from a living one.

She picked it up and quickly dropped it in the box in front of Silver. The little Owleon pounced and sucked up its meal with three gulpy hops.

Astra laughed. ‘He likes it!’

‘He certainly does. Worms are their natural food, Astra, so we’re working in harmony with Gaia when we feed them.’

Hokma fed Copper, dangling the worm so it could slide down the chick’s throat, and Astra tried that next with Amber. It was like the Tablette films she’d seen at school: steppe farmers feeding baby lambs with a bottle. Soon she was eagerly picking up worms and cheering as the Owleons gobbled them down. Then the bucket was empty and the chicks were waddling around, bumping into each other and the sides of the box.

She sat back on her heels, her heart shining in her chest.

Hokma scooped up Silver. ‘Do you want to hold him?’

Oh!
‘Yes, please!’ Astra pulled off her gloves and cupped her hands and Silver, light as a dandelion seed head, explored her palms. The chick’s long claws gently clutched at her fingers as if trying to prise them up into the air.

Her heart began to evaporate. ‘I feel like I can fly now,’ she whispered.

‘I know. I called my own Owleon Helium because of that feeling.’

‘Can I see him too?’

‘Not today. He’s on his way back from Atourne.’

‘Is he on a secret IMBOD mission?’

Hokma laughed. ‘If he was and I told you, he wouldn’t be any more.’

Astra flushed. It wasn’t a stupid question. Owleons were sneakernets, everyone knew that. They carried memory sticks and encryption keys on their leg clips, classified material that was too sensitive to trust to the internet. That’s why they were half-pigeon Coded – so they could be trained to fly between home bases – and half-owl Coded, so they would
live a long time and fly silently at night, when it would be harder for criminals to see them. In the cities, some rich people used them for love letters and junk like that, but the Or Owleons were all professional IMBOD Code couriers.

‘I didn’t mean
secret
,’ she corrected herself as Silver nearly toppled over in her hands. ‘I meant
important
.’

‘I know what you meant, but no, he’s just on a regular update flight.’ Hokma stood up. ‘You can see Helium when he gets back, but right now I have to talk to you about something very important.’

‘About my IMBOD Service?’ Astra sprang to attention. This mission wasn’t over yet.

‘Yes, partly. Let’s go outside. You might need to ask Gaia for Her wisdom.’

That was unexpected. Astra opened her mouth, then closed it again. She wasn’t sure if she was allowed to ask Gaia for Her wisdom: Klor and Nimma always said that was only for emergencies. They said the Pioneers had asked all the main questions about how to live in Is-Land and they were happy to follow the guidance She had given them. Because if everyone was out in the woods all the time pestering Gaia with personal dilemmas, what would happen to the kitchen dishes and all of Or’s IMBOD contracts, not to mention the Boundary? The best way to commune with Gaia, Klor and Nimma said, was to work hard to revere and defend Her: if Gaia really wanted to speak to you individually, She would visit you in a dream.

But Sheba had been an emergency, and Klor had asked Gaia for help then. Was this an emergency too? If so, no one had properly prepared Astra for it.

‘I don’t know how to do that,’ she said doubtfully.

‘That’s okay. I’ll teach you.’ Hokma stood. ‘Come on. We’ll go up on the roof.’

Astra put Silver down gently back inside the box and scrambled to her feet. ‘Can Tabby come?’ she asked. ‘Gaia might help make him better.’

‘Okay. But he has to stay in your pac until we get to the top.’

Housecoats off, sandals and boots on, Tabby secured in his transport, the mission was back on the move.

‘I like to sit there when I’m speaking to Gaia.’ Hokma pointed at a clump of poppies near the middle of the roof meadow. ‘Beside Her vision plant.’

They had climbed the ladder at the side of Wise House to get up to the roof. The sky was paler now, the sun a diffuse orb, and even though it was only ten past five, Hokma had let Astra come outside without her flap-hat. All around them the early evening light was gilding the long grasses and wildflowers that first Ahn, then the forest winds, had seeded for Hokma. At the Earthship Nimma kept the outer botanical cells full of white flowers, daisies and lilies and yarrow, transplanting anything else that seeded; here though, within the gilded border of wallflowers and wild cosmos, was a whole Tabby paintbox splattered all over the L-shaped roof. Disturbing damselflies and red admirals, Astra bounded through blue flax and cornflowers, pink-tinged daisies, yellow dandelions, magenta sweet williams, purple and crimson and gold baby snapdragons and a host of other blossoms she couldn’t identify yet. At the tall poppy crown she grasped a hairy stem and pulled its flimsy scarlet flower to her face. ‘I love you!’ she declared and settled herself down on the grass. Hokma joined her, arranging herself in half-lotus.

‘Look – Or’s flower!’ Astra pointed at a stand of spider orchids, the plant Or was named for.

Hokma smiled. ‘Ahn brought them up from Core House lawn. What’s an Or building without orchids?’ She paused. ‘And Or-kids. It’s wonderful to be able to invite you here at last, Astra.’

Astra didn’t know how to say how much she loved being here. Instead she bent over an orchid and gently fingered its lime-green sepals and
big brown velvety lip. When Klor had given the Or-kids their first orchid lesson at Code House, he’d said that the mouths of the flower were called ‘labella’. They enticed insects deep inside to the anther lobes, which were pollen sticks that got stuck on the bugs’ heads – standing up like antlers at first, but then falling down like Yoki’s floppy fringe – so that when the insects flew away they carried the orchid’s pollen to the stigma of another flower. Torrent and the older boys had teased Yoki all day after that.

‘Klor says the orchid is one of the most efficient flowers in the meadow,’ she told Hokma. ‘Not like us Or-kids, he said.’

‘They’re certainly one of the most beautiful. I love the purple H on the lip: H for Hokma, Ahn says.’

The labellum’s three shiny purple stripes did make an H shape: Astra had never thought of it as Hokma’s flower before but of course it absolutely was. ‘
I
think they’re efficient
and
beautiful. Like you,’ she blurted.

‘Like me?’ Hokma raised her dark eyebrows.

Astra’s face burned, but she couldn’t stop now. ‘Yes – you breed the Owleons
and
you’re the School Spoke of the Parents’ Committee, and Ahn said that you used to be one of the most beautiful women in Is-Land.’

‘Did he now?’ There was an edge to Hokma’s voice that made Astra’s face flare as hot as one of Nimma’s pancake pans. Actually, when you thought about it, it sounded like Ahn was saying that
now
Hokma was old and ugly. But he hadn’t meant that at all, she was sure.
There goes a formidable woman
, Ahn had said to the head of an Old World delegation as Hokma passed by the vegetable garden on her way to Code House. Astra had been weeding, not exactly hiding, but the grown-ups hadn’t paid her any attention. Astra hadn’t known what ‘formidable’ meant – she’d asked Tabby later – but the visitor had nodded and added,
She’s certainly very handsome
. Then Ahn had sounded almost puzzled.
I suppose she is now
, he’d replied,
but when she was younger she was one of the most beautiful women in Is-Land
.

Defiantly, Astra continued, ‘
I
think you’re still beautiful. I hate dangly earrings and silly grass skirts.’ Oh dear. That wasn’t right either. ‘Except when Nimma wears them, I mean,’ she concluded, stupidly.

Now Hokma really laughed: a throaty peal that echoed out across the roof and into the woods. ‘Thank you, Astra.’ Then, though she was still
smiling, she sounded serious again. ‘But Ahn knows that all women are beautiful. We’re all different faces of Gaia. You’re beautiful too.’

Astra grimaced. ‘I don’t want to be beautiful. I want to get my Security shot and be smart and strong and do my IMBOD Service and be a great scientist and win an IMBOD medal.’ She jutted out her chin. ‘I want to be a Boundary constable and patrol the Southern Belt when it’s my turn, like you did. I want to help save Is-Land from the Non-Landers when they attack us again.’

For a moment Hokma’s face tensed as though she’d sipped something nasty by mistake. But when she spoke, her voice was as deep and calm as a morning lake. ‘Astra, did you like feeding the Owleons?’

Astra wiggled on her bum. The grass was tickly, but it felt nice. ‘Uh huh. Especially Silver.’

‘And would you like to feed the chicks every day, and when they are old enough, help me to train them to fly?’

Astra gawped at Hokma. Her Shelter mother’s olive skin was burnished by the lowering sun. She was more than beautiful: she was like a Buddhist Tara, shining with mysterious knowledge. She had set a test, an enormously difficult spiritual test, and Astra had
passed
. ‘
Yes
,’ she yelped.

‘I thought you would. But first I have to know: can you keep a secret?’

That was easy. Tabby and Astra had lots of secrets. ‘Definitely.’

‘Good, because I’ve brought you up here to ask you to make a choice. The choice is yours, but whatever you decide, this conversation has to be a secret between you, me and Gaia. If you tell anyone about it I will get into trouble – big trouble. I might even get taken away, and you wouldn’t see me any more, maybe never again. Do you understand what I’m saying, Astra?’

Sunlight still hung in golden scarves across the meadow but suddenly Astra felt cold. She rubbed her arms. ‘Why? Who would take you away?’

Hokma paused. ‘IMBOD might, because IMBOD has a plan for Is-children that I don’t agree with. If you want to take part in their plan, you can, but I want to explain it to you first so that you can make up your own mind.’

It was as if Astra had swallowed a pebble, but instead of getting warm inside her tummy, it was turning into a lump of ice. ‘But IMBOD takes care of Is-Land,’ she protested. ‘They only want what’s good for us. Don’t they?’

Hokma lifted a warning finger. ‘I’m not saying that IMBOD is bad, okay? I never said IMBOD is bad, did I?’

The ice pebble throbbed in her tummy. ‘No.’

‘But sometimes I question their methods. And this is one of those times.’

Oh. Maybe sometimes Chief Inspectors disagreed with the Chief Commissioner’s national strategy, just like constables sometimes secretly argued with CIs. ‘You mean,’ Astra asked, ‘it’s like when
I
know that I could stay up late and still be fine in the morning, but
Nimma
says I have to go to bed?’

‘Yes, it’s a bit like that.’ Hokma’s upper lip was glistening with tiny speckles of sweat. She wiped her face with her hand, pushing her fingertips just under her eyepatch for a second. ‘Astra, I don’t want you to have your Security Serum shot tomorrow.’

It was like Klor saying that two plus two made five, or Yoki claiming that he didn’t like ice cream. An error message flashed up on Astra’s brain-screen. ‘But
everyone
wants to have the Security shot.’ She laughed, and for a moment the ice pebble melted. Hokma hadn’t had the school prep talk – she just needed to be told the facts.

‘The Serum makes your muscles and emotions stronger, and your brain work faster at Code. We need it to help us build the Shell.’

‘It does do those things; that’s true,’ Hokma said slowly. ‘But it does other things as well. It will make you less sensitive and more willing to follow orders. These are good qualities in constables, but not so good in scientists, are they?’

The error message was replaced with a whole new study-level page. Sometimes learning was complicated, Astra had discovered. It wasn’t always like putting one brick on top of another. Sometimes you learned something that changed what you had learned before – like moving from whole numbers to fractions and negative numbers. When you were little you thought a number was real and solid, like a chair, but then you learned that a number was a concept and in conceptual space all kinds of strange things could happen. Still, she’d never
ever
thought that IMBOD Rules were concepts. That was like walking through the forest and suddenly realising you were stepping along the edge of a cliff. Astra pulled her hydropac onto her lap to have Tabby near.