Astra (39 page)

‘Bedtime, girls.’ Hokma gathered the cards back together.

Lil flicked a little look at Astra, then gave a big yawn. ‘Okay, Hokma,’ she agreed.

Perhaps Lil really was tired. They’d hardly slept at all during siesta, after all. And surely Ahn would come very late, if he came at all. But though Astra closed her eyes immediately when she got into bed, she just lay awake on the edge of the futon, her body tense, Lil’s breathing beside her stealthy and light, not hoarse and slow like it was when she was sleeping.

After what seemed like forever, she heard Hokma’s loft ladder creak.

She sat up. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘Shh. I’m just getting a glass of water. I might sit on the verandah for a while. You go back to sleep.’

Hokma padded out onto the verandah and shut the door softly behind her.

‘She’s going to meet him outside,’ Lil whispered triumphantly. ‘We can watch from the window and when they go into the woods, we can follow them.’

Lil was clambering over her to the loft ladder.

Astra grabbed her leg. ‘Stay here, Lil. We can play priest and priestess while they’re gone.’

Lil shook her off. ‘They’ll be gone for hours. We’ve got lots of time to come back and play.’

She was halfway down the ladder. Astra lay in bed, clutching the sheet in her fists. She could just stay here – but then Lil might make good her threat and tell Ahn that she hadn’t had her shot. And anyway, she couldn’t let Lil spy on Hokma during Gaia worship. She’d been thinking hard all evening, and she had come up with a plan to stop her; two plans in fact. She would now have to put at least one of them into action.

* * *

‘There he is.’ Lil was crouching at the back window, peering out across the lawn. Astra’s fingers were gripping the sill. Over them she could see Ahn’s head, his blond hair luminous and floating in the trees. Hokma was striding across the lawn towards him, her bottom like two bronze orbs in the glow from the verandah nightlight. There was an unfamiliar thin dark line around her hips. Was
Hokma
wearing
hipbeads
?

‘As soon as she gets to the woods, we can leave,’ Lil instructed.

‘They’ll hear us. Let’s just stay here.’

‘Stay if you want, but if you do I’ll find Ahn tomorrow and tell him what I know.’

Even though there was zero chance of being seen inside Wise House, Lil crept to the verandah door, hunched close to the wall, like a Boundary constable. She opened the door a crack and slipped out. Astra had no choice but to follow.

Outside, Lil ducked right to avoid the pool of light spilling onto the lawn. Keeping low to the ground, Astra went left. She was going to do this her way.

They met at the edge of the wood. Moonlight speckled the leaves and it was just possible to make out the glimmering shapes of individual trees. Lil put her finger to her lips and pointed at the path to the flying field. If Hokma and Ahn had gone down it, they must be nearly at the gate by now.

Lil took the lead, Astra close behind as they passed the back of the Owleon aviary and penetrated the forest. If only she could somehow fly Silver to Hokma, send her a message. But what would she say? And she couldn’t stop, she had to keep close to Lil. The important thing was not
to be heard.
Not yet
. It was impossible to move silently: twigs and leaves crunched underfoot and her breathing was a roar in her ears. But there were other noises in the forest too: distant screechings and abrupt scurryings, and everywhere the hushed sway of branches in the canopy. Surely Hokma and Ahn would be listening to each other. She had to reach them soon, before it was too late to interrupt.

The cedar hedge was towering ahead of them. There was the gate, a tall frame of silver bars. Between them, Astra could see Hokma and Ahn silhouetted in the moonlight flooding the field. They were standing up to their waists in the long grass, holding hands and stretching their arms up to the night sky. She moved back behind a pine trunk.

‘They go to the top of the field, by the juniper tree,’ Lil whispered. ‘I saw where the grass is all flattened.’

Lil hadn’t gone further than this before. Maybe they could still go back. ‘They’ll see us if we go through the gate,’ Astra objected. ‘It squeaks, and we’ll be right in the open. C’mon, Lil, we’ve seen them Gaiaworshipping. We can go back now.’ That was Plan A: to convince Lil to abandon the mission.

‘That was
nothing
. They’ll be doing way better stuff than that. I bet she hangs off the tree. There’s a hole in the hedge, further up, and then we can come up the dark side of the hill and watch from behind the rock pile.’

It was like being in Debating class. You had to reject everything your opponent said. ‘What if they go to the rocks too?’

‘We’ll see them coming. We’ll hide in the grass.’

‘What if they—?’

But Lil had set off up along the hedge. Astra kept pace. She was going too fast now to feel frightened.

‘Here,’ Lil hissed. At their feet, there was a small gap between the hedge and the soil. Astra knelt. The soil had been dug out as if by animals, perhaps dogs, years ago when Or was new and community mammals were still allowed. There was fine dry dirt in the air; it tickled her nostrils and she stifled a sneeze.

There
had
to be a way to talk Lil out of this. ‘It’s way too small for us,’ she claimed. ‘It’s for … I dunno …
rats
.’

Lil was on her knees, peering into the hole. ‘We’ll crawl on our bellies, like snakes,’ she crooned, placing her palms together and waving them about in the dirt.

‘We’ll get scratched,’ Astra insisted. ‘Then Hokma will know we were out.’

‘If we get scratched we can wear our housecoats in Wise House and our hydropacs outside. We can go for a walk in the morning and say it happened then.’

Lil threw herself down on the ground and began inching through the hole. Her head and her slim back disappeared, swallowed up by the hedge. Then her legs wriggled through, and finally the soles of her feet.

‘C’mon, Astra. It’s easy. I didn’t get scratched one bit.’ Lil’s whisper echoed back through the twiggy tunnel. ‘Okay. Maybe the tip of my left shoulder blade.’

There was no help for it. Astra lowered herself to the earth and entered the black bush.

She had to grab in the dark for roots and branches, drag her chin through the dirt and propel herself forward with her toes. Lil had lied, of course: the poky fingers of the hedge
did
carve into her back, and there was a rock in the dirt that scraped her chest until she stopped and reached beneath herself to dig it out. She was going to be grazed and bruised all over tomorrow. There was no way Hokma wouldn’t see the marks.

But once she had started, she had to continue. At last her head was out the other side and Lil was pulling at her armpits, tugging her through into the moonlit field.

‘My knee hurts,’ Astra scowled, fingering the tender spot. She was sure it was bleeding.

‘Oh, it’ll be all right. You’ll soon forget about it. Look—’

They were at the foot of the slow rise to the centre of the field. Astra followed Lil’s finger. She could see the solitary juniper, a writhing black mass sucking the moonlight out of the night air, and in front, their bodies barely visible against a smear of stars, Hokma and Ahn. They were embracing, their silhouette like a broken column, jagged at the top. Hokma’s head, Astra realised, was pressed against Ahn’s chest and his face was in her hair. Why was she doing that? She looked small in Ahn’s arms. But Hokma wasn’t small: she was a giant. Then, in a slow slithery motion, Ahn slid down Hokma’s body and began sucking one of her nipples. Hokma threw her head back to stare at the stars.

Astra had seen enough. She picked at a twig that had got caught between her foot and her sandal and threw it back under the hedge.

‘Wow.’ Lil exhaled. ‘We’re just in time.’

‘I don’t like it,’ Astra muttered. ‘Why is she letting him act like a baby?’

‘C’mon, let’s go to the rocks. They’ll be lying down soon.’ Lil was scrambling to her feet. Her back hunched, she sneaked left, along the edge of the field as it curved behind the tree. Astra watched her go, moonlight grazing her hair, her body flowing into the dark crescent of the slope.

She had tried everything, but Plan A had failed. Lil had left her no other choice. Astra got to her feet and crept after the small, intent figure, letting the gap between them widen until she could barely see the gleaming curve of Lil’s shoulders, the silver ghost of her hair. When Lil reached the path to the rocks, she looked back once, pointed into the field then turned and disappeared into the grass. Astra stopped and breathed in the dusty scent of soil and wild grains. Plan B depended on her and Lil not being together. She placed both palms on the earth.
Please Gaia, help me protect your secret mysteries
.

She continued to the path, and entered the field. Lil would be nearly at the rocks by now. She stood up and started running.

‘
STOP, LIL, STOP
,’ she yelled. ‘
Hokma, Lil’s running away
!’

* * *

‘Okay, girls. What was going on out there? One at a time. Astra, you first.’

Hokma and Ahn were sitting on one sofa, Astra and Lil on the other. There were four mugs of hot barley oatmilk with honey on the table. Lil was scrunched up against the sofa arm, refusing to look at anyone; Astra was perched on the edge of her cushion. Hokma was unsmiling, but Ahn was regarding her and Lil with an almost amused expression. Astra didn’t like his look at all. Why did he think this was
funny
?

‘I woke up,’ she started, addressing Hokma, ‘and Lil was getting out of bed. I thought she was going to the toilet. But she didn’t come back, so I got up too. She wasn’t in the toilet, so I went to tell you. You weren’t there either. So I put on my shoes and went outside. I thought maybe you were night-flying an Owleon, so I went to the field. Then I saw Lil, and she was standing at the gate, I didn’t know why. But she didn’t open the gate. She went along the hedge and crawled under it, so I followed her. When I got into the field I saw you and Ahn standing by the tree. Lil was going in the other direction. I thought she was running away.’

She’d devised most of the story beforehand and rehearsed it in her head. It sounded true, she thought. In fact, all the actions in the story were true, which made it easy to say with conviction. That would show Lil: she
wasn’t
a lousy liar.

‘Thank you, Astra. Lil?’

Lil was twirling a strand of her hair with her finger. She stopped, picked up her drink, took a sip, then set the mug back down on the table.

‘I’m not
stupid
,’ she said, airily. ‘If I wanted to run away, I’d have taken my hydropac and some food. I wanted to watch you and Ahn Gaiaworshipping. Astra said she wanted to watch too, but then she changed her mind because she didn’t like seeing Ahn acting like a baby. So she decided to try and stop me and be a
hero
at the same time.’

The corners of Ahn’s mouth turned down for a moment and at the same time his eyebrows raised. It was a strange expression. He seemed not just amused now, but almost …
impressed
. He looked at Astra next, as if to say …
so?

Hokma sucked her lips, and sighed. ‘Okay, folks, I’m hearing two different stories. Astra?’

‘She’s
lying
. I would
never
want to watch you and Ahn doing stuff like that. That’s
illegal
.’

Ahn laughed. Hokma shot him a cross look and he leaned back against the cushions, his hands clasped behind his head.

‘Full moon, Hokma,’ he said. Astra hadn’t heard him speak for so long she’d forgotten how raspy his voice was, as if he had a permanent sore throat. ‘Gaia plays tricks on us all. There’s no harm done. Let them go back to bed.’

‘No, Ahn, I want to get to the bottom of this. One of them is lying.’

Lil plucked at a splinter in the sofa arm. ‘Okay. I didn’t
exactly
tell the truth. Astra didn’t want to watch you Gaia-play, but I said that if she didn’t come with me I would tell Ahn that she never had her Security shot.’

* * *

It was the risk she had taken: that Lil would make good her threat. All Astra had hoped to do was establish her own innocence and Lil’s guilt, and thereby cast doubt on any accusation that might follow.

‘See? She’s crazy! She’s a total liar!’ she shouted, bouncing on her cushion.

Hokma’s face was immobile and her gaze was trained on Lil. Beside her, Ahn lowered his arms and leaned forward. His mouth was a still, thin line and his eyes were darting between Hokma and Astra and Lil like quick colourless minnows.

‘What do you mean, Lil?’ he asked in his fine, sandpapery voice.

‘I mean she’s not like the other kids, is she? Look at her now. She’s getting upset. And she asks me lots of questions about everything. She’s curious, but my dad said he didn’t want me to have the shot because then I would just accept everything I was told. He said he wanted me to think for myself, even if it meant I felt sad or angry sometimes.’

Lil sounded so smug, Astra wanted to punch her. ‘I did so have my shot,’ she yelled. ‘Hokma was
there
. It just affects kids differently, that’s all. Yoki still cries sometimes, and I still get angry. Especially when people
lie
about me. Hokma, make her
shut up
.’ She slammed her fist into the sofa arm and burst into tears.

Hokma was still staring at Lil. Ahn, though, leaned forward and watched Astra cry. Aware of his gaze, she dried her eyes and stuffed her hands down into her lap.

‘Hokma?’ Ahn’s elbows were resting on his knees and the tips of his forefingers were pressed together like a steeple at his lips. ‘Lil’s made some observations. What’s your hypothesis?’

‘It’s true Astra’s different from the other Sec Gens,’ Hokma said slowly. ‘I’ve often wondered about it. I think she was immune to the emotional component of the shot. Do you remember, she ate poison berries that day and was sick at school? Maybe that interfered with the uptake levels. Lil,’ she addressed the girl, ‘Dr Blesserson gave Astra the shot in his office. Ahn can check the records if he likes.’