Astra (9 page)

But close to Hokma again, enveloped in the glow of their secret, Astra didn’t want to change her mind. She wanted Hokma to piggyback her to the Earthship and even though Nimma looked up from her knitting and said not to baby her, Hokma carried her out of the Quiet Room and Core House and up the path to East Slope. The night air was warm on her skin and the stars were scattered across the sky like salt on a jet-black tablecloth.

‘Oof, you’ve grown, Astra,’ Hokma said as they crunched over the gravel, but she didn’t put Astra down and make her walk. She carried her upstairs, tucked her up in bed and made sure her nightlight was on and Tabby safe on her bedside table. Astra wanted to ask Hokma to tell her the story about her Birth-Code mother, but she was so tired she couldn’t get the words out, so tired she couldn’t remember closing her eyes, couldn’t remember Hokma leaving.

* * *

The next morning, Astra woke up an hour before Tabby normally yowled his alarm. Today he was broken and turned off, but her eyes were tickled open by the mild light tiptoeing in through the bamboo blinds that divided her room from the greenhouse corridor. She watched the light gently toying with the plants on the table, the dolls’ hospital and building-block games on the shelves, Meem’s bundled form in the next bed. Birds were bickering outside, and in the distance the gate to the vegetable patch clanged shut as one of the Or-adults went to pick some herbs for breakfast. Meem gave a hiccoughy gurgle and stretched her arm out from beneath her duvet. It was all so peaceful.

Except that Astra wasn’t dozy and dreamy. She was wide awake and her tummy hurt.

Today was supposed to be the day she got her Security Serum shot, but instead it was the day she
wasn’t
going to have her shot; it was the day she had to start pretending that she had.

She stared up at the ceiling where Klor had nailed a constellation of tin stars to reflect Tabby and Blotto’s nightlights. Right now they were a soft metal grey. Hokma had said she could change her mind, but good scientists didn’t make up their minds after just one trial. They got their research checked by other scientists. What if she asked Klor about the Security shot? She had to see him anyway, to ask him to fix Tabby. She wouldn’t tell him what Hokma had said but she could test out the topic with him. If Klor said that the shot would stop her being a great scientist, then she definitely wouldn’t have it. But if he said that the shot would help her think better, then she would get it like everyone else and she’d ask Hokma if she could train the Owleons anyway, or maybe just Silver, not the IMBOD birds.

She sat up. Klor would be awake. He got up at 5 a.m. every day and went over to Code House to work for an hour and a half before returning to help Nimma get her, Meem, Yoki and Peat ready for school. All she had to do was go to Code House. She’d never done it before on her own, but no one had ever said she wasn’t allowed to either.

She swung her legs out of bed and slipped her feet onto the cool, slate-tiled floor. The school had emailed Or to say that students had to wear something today – something special to mark the occasion – and Nimma had draped a yellow faux-grass hipskirt over her desk. Everyone
knew
she hated wearing skirts. Hokma would never have done that. Carefully, so as not to wake Meem, Astra tugged open her dresser drawer, stuffed the hipskirt back in and pulled out an armband for later. That would be formal enough. Then she popped Tabby into her hydropac and crept out along the greenhouse corridor toward the stairs, stopping just long enough to pick a banana and a peach to eat on the way to Code House.

* * *

It was hot already, and as Astra passed Craft House she wished she’d showered before leaving the Earthship. But that might have awakened Nimma and anyway, by the time she reached the foot of North Slope she had forgotten her grimy skin. Code House loomed above her like a giant lantern, its glass chamber walls glimmering in the candy-pink and sherbet-orange dawn light. Code House was different every single time you looked at it. Standing on the empty Kinbat track beneath it, Astra
marvelled again at the massive glass and cedar structure that ten years ago had won a gold medal for Ahn in the annual International Biotecture Congress living building competition.

It wasn’t just a living building but a working one, the Or-adults always proudly told international visitors. Teams of microclimate specialists worked in the two vast ground-floor chambers, managing a series of controlled-temperature grow rooms and developing tundra, rainforest and desert vegetation. On top of these giant greenhouse labs sat three smaller chambers, the indigenous plant labs. These chambers opened onto the sloping sod roofs that gave Code House its distinctive appearance; in this arable soil the scientists planted the seeds they’d Coded to grow in Is-Land’s climate.

Klor was an Is-Land plant specialist and a Code House Co-Director. He worked in the central upper chamber. The smallest chamber in the top tier was Ahn’s office – he wasn’t a Code scientist, but he had designed the building so of course he could work there. His chamber was set off to the right and jutted out over the ground level like the prow of a ship. Astra had never been allowed inside it, and Ahn’s windows were tinted so you couldn’t even see his silhouette, but Klor said Ahn had angled the chamber so that he could see the Shugurra River and the steppes from his screendesk. One day Ahn would invite her to visit his office and she would see the river too.

The roofs of the upper chambers collected rain in the autumn like the Earthships, supplementing the water piped down from the tanks in the forest. The perimeters were planted with miniature fruit trees that hid the rainvats and blended the building into the hill foliage behind. Klor’s roof was currently testing restricted-growth apple trees. Last autumn a lady had complained about the apples dropping onto visitors’ heads, so Klor’s team had fixed netting below the gutters, even though Ahn had objected to ‘the scar’ on his design. Two weeks ago the trees had been black and tangled, like Astra’s hair after a day in the forest. Now they were in blossom and Code House looked as if it was wearing pink eye shadow, like one of the older girls going to a dance in New Bangor. Later, in the summer, the grains on the main roofs would be high, shading the scientists at their desks, but today the plots were still just mounded earth. If Klor was looking out of his window, he might be able to see Astra dawdling on the Kinbat track. Just in case, she waved.

But Klor probably wasn’t looking out of the window. Probably he was deep in Code Thinking, or what Hokma called ‘administrivia’. Klor didn’t
like that term. He took his administration duties very seriously. She’d heard other Or-adults tease him, saying that all he did before dawn was alphabetise their work schedules. ‘And that means I can tell you where to go!’ he’d boom in reply.

She could still go back to bed …

But she mounted the steps to Code House as if she were a baby bee and the building a massive orchid, its labellum enticing her deep inside. Soon she was hovering on the decking outside the two lower chambers. In front of her were the two huge cedar doors to Core House and at the far end of the deck was the Owleon aviary: three tall wood and wire-mesh cages housing the six birds that flew to New Bangor and Sippur, delivering Code House discoveries to the IMBOD offices there. One of the birds, the little black-feathered one, was out on its perch.

The aviary was off-limits; only scientists were allowed to touch the Owleons. Or-kids could get in big trouble for going near them. Were there any scientists about? She stepped up to the left chamber window and cupped her hands to the glass, peering inside through her own reflection: a tiny black-haired figure framed by mirrored hills and a swirly pink sky.

During the day the chamber would be filled with a phalanx of scientists, intent on their tasks, but now it was eerily empty of people; now the computers and plants reigned. Deep in the chamber, ranks of glossy white sequencing machines stood like sentries, stiff at their stations, waiting to be powered up into a whirring sense of purpose. In front of them, the window was planted with a mass of tropical orchids; further down, in another temperature-controlled zone, was a wall of flowering cacti. These serpentine vines, spongy blossoms and spiky succulents were the mysterious silent royalty of Or. Code House was a palace, built to cater to their every need.

The sun was brightening and behind her she could hear people calling to each other on the Kinbat track. She’d come early and peek at the Owleons another day, but now she had to hurry up. She took three giant steps to the front doors. On the lintel were carved the words ‘Conscious Evolution’. She placed her finger on the keypad and passed under Is-Land’s founding creed into its most beautiful bastion: Code House.

The atrium was flooded with light. Resisting the temptation to bounce on the visitor sofas or explore the empty lower chambers, Astra mounted the cedar staircase that curved up like a helix from the centre
of the green slate floor. There was an elevator too, for wheelchair users, but it was wasteful for other people to ride in it. Besides, she liked climbing. Trailing her fingers along the polished banister, she gazed down into the rainforest micro-biome at the back of the atrium, hoping to spot the parakeets that occasionally flashed their vivid emerald feathers or the shy toucans who hopped from branch to branch in their ungainly, top-heavy way. She wished that Or could house rainforest animals too, so she could help feed baby monkeys and tapirs until they were ready to be reintroduced. But reintroduction animals had to be reared in their own countries, Klor had explained. Transporting them across vast distances was cruel. And besides, animals were a lot of work. ‘Do
you
want to shovel a tapir’s poo every day before breakfast, Or-child?’ he’d asked. ‘No? Well neither do I.’

Thirty-two steps. She emerged from the staircase into the foyer between the upper chambers. This was her favourite place in all Or. Behind her, either side of the elevator doors, two corridors ran along the back of the building, one leading into the Urban Agriculture lab on the left, the other to Klor’s Staple Crops lab on the right. In front of her was a massive window overlooking the living roofs of the lower chambers. These were the field labs where the urbag team tested high-vitamin miniature fruits and vegetables for balconies and patios and where Klor and his stapcro scientists planted new varieties of oats, barley, kamut, rye, wheat and spelt: Gaia’s holy grains. When they were fully grown in the summer the grains were like a golden sea, the wind caressing their feathery spikelets and glumes, ruffling their bristly awns, so the whole roof seemed to flow on forever, wave after wave of goodness and beauty and hope for the whole wide world. Astra stepped forward, pressed her nose to the window and breathed a small cloudy patch on the pane.

Right now the most exciting thing out there was a big bag of horse poo at the head of the oat plot. But beyond the mounded earth the mountains parted and faint pink clouds trailed away over the steppes. Astra opened her heart and drank in the immense, distant beauty. Up until yesterday, when she’d climbed the pine tree, the vista from Code House roof was the most amazing view she’d ever seen. It was even better out in the furrows, with the sun on your skin and Klor talking to you and the visitors all about the miracle of new life sprouting everywhere. One day this last autumn the combination of Gaia’s magnificence and Klor’s eloquence had made one of the lady visitors cry. It was later that same day, Astra
remembered, her nose grazing the glass, that Klor had cried too. Until yesterday, that had been the most important day in her life.

* * *

‘It’s not sexy!’ Klor had announced. ‘It’s not plums or hibiscus or … Venus fly traps,’ he’d said, winking at the lady visitors. They were older ladies, wearing strange cloth cups strapped over their breasts and flowery underpants beneath the faux grass skirts Nimma had lent them, but they’d all giggled like little Or-girls. ‘This work,’ Klor had raised his voice, ‘is the
bread of life
.’ Then, his right hip rolling ever so slightly as his mechatronic leg lifted and swung across the furrows, he’d guided the guests up and down the roof plots. Astra had tripped along behind, wearing her red wellies to keep her feet clean and carrying Klor’s spade in case he asked a visitor to plant something. The spade was heavy and taller than she was but she’d carried it proudly and the visitors had smiled and nudged each other, and when Klor wasn’t looking she’d let one lady take a Tablette photo of her. Klor had walked ahead listing Code House’s accomplishments until finally they were all standing at the edge of the roof, overlooking Or and the steppes beyond. The visitors fell silent then, clustered around Klor as he gave his final speech, the sermon Astra herself knew by heart now. She thought she could hear it every day without getting bored.

‘Friends,’ Klor had started, beaming, his big gravelly voice carrying over the roof, ‘Gaians are a resilient people. We suffered during the Dark Time – as did so many – but we never lost faith in our way of life, a way of life founded on the imperative human need and duty to form a sustainable relationship with our beloved Mother Earth. When we donated our patents for nitrogen-fixing wheat, rice and barley to the CONC seed bank, we gave humanity a vital tool to globally implement this clean, sane vision. No longer do farmers need to poison the earth with chemicals in order to produce high-yield basic crops. Three staple grains can now take the nitrogen they need from the air itself. A miracle, you might say – or perhaps you might suspect your eccentric Gaian preacher believes it to be one.’ He paused to let the ladies giggle again. ‘But no, this is not the act of a distant god; rather, it is the result of human intellect and moral vision working hand in hand. It is
conscious evolution
, the Gaian creed, in action. In return for our donation, we Gaians were given our own country, land that had lain blasted and empty since the Dark Time, and CONC protection to ensure Is-Land’s security. In a world filled with refugees we do not take this immense blessing for granted. Rather, we see it as our duty to
continue to develop crops that will grow and thrive in the unpredictable ecologies of the Regeneration Era.’ As the visitors murmured agreement, Klor gestured behind them at the harvest-time roof fields. ‘The grains you see here are resistant to drought and flood and a whole host of insects. All are high yield, biofortified and gender neutral, so their introduction will never threaten native species. Some contain bamboo Code, creating faster-growing crops for use in situations of severe food shortage. Unlike Code labs in other countries, we test all our crops thoroughly and without harming animals, using artificial stomachs and the very latest in computer modelling. This may make our seeds expensive, but we don’t want innocent people to pay the cost of our work with their greatest treasure: their health.’ The visitors were all nodding now, even the gentlemen, like dolls with springs for necks. Everyone loved Is-Land, Astra knew, because Is-Land scientists were the best in the world. They gave people nutritious and delicious food, free of all the health problems other Code producers caused.