Astra (47 page)

It didn’t come when she expected it. Not during Year Eight, her year as the Gaia Girl, when she appeared at all the bioregional seasonal celebrations and was interviewed for the national news on Founding Day; when she buried her memories of Lil, Torrent and Stream in the drifts of leaves that rustled beneath her and Tedis, or Sultana, or Forager, or Leaf, entangled for hours in Woodland Siesta; the year Hokma and Ahn dissolved their Gaia bond and – though Hokma said the break up had nothing to do with her or the shot, and that she was still very good friends with Ahn – she would sometimes turn at dinner to find him scrutinising her with those pale grey eyes, and the danger of exposure felt like a cold wind stealing up her spine. It didn’t come in Year Nine either, when the thin cloak of protection her fame had provided began to fray and she became just Astra again, a student of slightly less than average height and weight, not-quite-significantly higher than average language skills and a perfectly average number of Gaia play pals – six. Year Nine was the year her long-simmering battles with Nimma erupted into all-out war, provoked by her decision that after a year of Nimma insisting she stick to just one loc, pinned back for Gaia Girl photos, she was going to dread the rest of her head. The war raged for a week until the evening Hokma got angrier than Astra had ever seen her and shouted, ‘
What’s
wrong
with you, Astra? You
must
be more careful! She’s working with Ahn now – do you
want
them to talk about you?
’

Which was how Astra learned that Ahn had sub-contracted Nimma to design the curtains and upholstery for the Arts and Crafts Gallery in Sippur, and though she screamed at Hokma in return – ‘
You try living with the frigging bitch!
’ – in the end her fury was swamped by her fear and
she returned to the Earthship to say sorry, promising to be content with one dread until she had finished her IMBOD Service, inwardly resolving to trudge on through Nimma’s petty restrictions and blatant favouritisms until that magic time Hokma had promised her: when she’d be at college in Atourne and could make new non-Sec Gen friends, people with questioning minds and independent spirits, just like her.

It helped that Nimma was busy, commandeering the kitchen table to cover with swatches of fabric and blueprints of Ahn’s temple she would pore over until late into the night. The threat of Ahn receded too, as he spent more and more time in Sippur at the gallery building site, until, when Astra started Year Ten, he moved there entirely, visiting Or only on occasional weekends. In Year Ten Wise House, while comfortingly familiar, began to feel boring in comparison with the challenges of school, the pleasure-pull of Woodland Siesta, the engrossing discovery of penetrative Gaia play and the urgent necessity of Tablette talk with her school friends late into the night. In Year Ten she began to feel safe again, and in Year Eleven she forgot to worry entirely. Year Eleven started with the spectacular opening of the Arts and Crafts Gallery, with Nimma pink-cheeked with pride at the national reviews of her curtains and upholstery. Ahn came striding triumphantly back into Or, but Astra barely saw him. He re-established his long working hours at Code House, and otherwise he and Nimma were often in Sippur now, giving talks at the Gallery, while as Year Eleven rolled on Astra herself learned what it meant to have a full schedule. She had to study and fitness-train round the clock now; she couldn’t visit Wise House every evening – or even every weekend – but had to leave the Owleons to Hokma. And when she did visit, Hokma spoke less and less often about anything interesting, and Silver was like a toy she’d outgrown.

It came when she had stopped expecting it. It came in Year Twelve: the year that began with the crushing introduction of a nearly doubled school workload, a roster of deadlines the Sec Gens managed like clockwork but she struggled to cope with, harnessed like a
mule
to a chafing routine of studying for college aptitude tests and training for IMBOD Service fitness exams, the joys of eating, sleeping and Gaia play just briefly scheduled feedbags in the whole draining ordeal. It came when she was ground down, short-fused, her entire life stifling, her dreams insignificant; when Nimma had started to turn her critical attention back to Astra’s study habits, the state of her room, what she ate for frigging breakfast. It didn’t
come as she had always imagined it would, in one fell swoop, with a thunder of horse hooves and boot steps and a circle of IMBOD officers blocking out the light. It came, not like a hawk seizing a chick, but incrementally, like a crow trapping a wounded rabbit and then, with beak and claws, tearing its guts out in a slow, inexorable flaying of hope. It started with a meeting.

* * *

Hokma hadn’t been at breakfast, but that was nothing unusual. Now she was looking after the Owleons on her own again, Hokma came down to Or just once or twice a week. Her eccentricities had multiplied over the last two years; she lived on a diet of raw fruit and vegetables now, drank only water, and kept her salt-and-pepper hair shaved to within an inch of her scalp. The Owleons still brought IMBOD funding into the coffers, and most Or-adults spoke of her as if she were a legend, but some people called her
la hermitrice
, not always respectfully – and something had soured between her and Nimma. Astra had noticed the rift two years ago on Is-Land Founding Day, when Hokma had refused Nimma’s gift of a new sateen housecoat, saying she preferred to mend the old one. In front of everyone at the celebration, she’d given the hand-embroidered emerald coat to Sorrel. After that, Nimma had begun grumbling about the state of Hokma’s boots and hipbelt, saying they were an embarrassment to Or. The alt-leather was scuffed and worn and their cuts were out of date, that was true, but when did Hokma ever go to meetings outside Or? Astra hadn’t paid much attention, but then one day she’d tried to invoke Hokma’s productive seclusion to justify taking some time for herself. Brandishing her fabric scissors, Nimma had launched into a stream of bitter complaint.

‘No you
can’t
eat breakfast in the Earthship on school days,’ she’d snapped. ‘I know
Hokma
doesn’t eat meals with us, but look what that’s led to. She’s stepped down from all her committees; she barely shows her face in Or any more – what kind of community member is she? You’d think she’d try a bit harder after the last inspection, but no, her attendance points are going to be even lower next year, and Gaia knows what she’ll look like if she does turn up to the banquet. She’s expecting my work and Ahn’s to make up for her negligence, that’s what she’s bargaining on. Her isolationism is setting a terrible example for you, Astra. What’s wrong with eating with all the other Sec Gens anyway? None of them ever want to squirrel themselves away.’

Astra had remained clamp-lipped under this tirade, then mumbled something about having just wanted more quiet time to study, but she herself increasingly felt frustrated by Hokma. Her Shelter mother was useless to talk to about homework, she still wouldn’t reveal any of her Owleon Code breakthroughs, and when Astra tried to ask her about Is-Land history – even once broaching Lil’s balloon story – she’d assume a professorial tone, saying there were different points of view about certain events, but it was best to wait until college to explore them. Hokma was mainly wrapped up in the Owleons as usual, working with a composer in Atourne, trying to Code them to sing in harmony, which might have been interesting, but when Astra had asked if there would be a concert she’d snorted, ‘They’re not performing seals, Astra.’ The reason for the research was classified, as usual, and Astra resented being kept out of the loop. She’d kept the biggest secret of all tight shut, hadn’t she? So she cleaned the cages and flew Silver once a week and stopped asking questions.

Otherwise, Hokma treated Astra like a little girl still: she sometimes sent Silver down to Or with cutesy messages – pictures of the new chicks or plants flowering in the garden. But when Astra looked for him that morning, he wasn’t on his Earthship perch. The sky was dark – the cyclone season was arriving, and probably Hokma hadn’t wanted to risk him getting whisked away by the wind.

She devoured her bowl of muesli and dried fruit, her Tablette hidden on her lap so she could review the Code equations she’d fallen asleep memorising the night before. Beside her Yoki was doing the same. They took the bus into New Bangor together, sitting at the back, away from the noisy excitement of the younger children up near the driver. For some, it was the first time on the cyclone school bus, with its heavy reinforced frame, huge wheels and set of high steps at the door. Meem was tired too; she leaned her head against the window in the seat in front of Astra, catching a nap before another long day of lessons. Meem’s hair was freshly styled in a cornrow-and-flat-twist updo; Astra had refused Nimma’s offer to French-braid her own. French braid pigtails and a dread? Did Nimma think she was an Old World scarecrow?

The cyclone started at noon. Whirling skirts of high wind tore over the steppes as a fringed hem of rain whipped the mountains. Astra spent Woodland Siesta in a rocking treehouse, water rushing from the banana-leaf roof. She had been Gaia-playing with a Year Eleven girl recently, but
Cotton was sidling up to a boy pal today and Astra was drooping so she slept the full two hours nestled on a mat between Tedis and Leaf, who stayed awake reviewing their Law lessons. Being in Year Twelve put Gaia play in perspective. Soon you would be gone, and in the meantime you were preoccupied with tests and exams and thoughts of leaving home. Now it made sense, the way that in Year Nine and Ten your older play pals had ignored you in the hallways and returned your long romantic Tablette-talk messages with a bare minimum of greetings. She and Yoki walked back to the school building together in what had become a torrential downpour, dried off beneath the hot-air fans in the gym and took two more hours of classes before the bus came to take them back to Or.

The rain had stopped by the time she arrived home. Pendulous drops of water glistened on the trees and the air was laden with the smell of warm, steaming earth. Strangely, the lawn and gardens were empty; perhaps the teams were all working to deadlines, or in a meeting. The clutch of Or-kids dispersed through the silence to their various destinations, Astra walking with her Shelter siblings along the Kinbat track towards the East Slope Earthships. She enjoyed it, in a strange way, the feeling of wandering through a deserted community. It reminded her of training for the dry forest marathon last year, when she and Yoki and a few others got up early to put in a few kilometres along the Kinbat track before anyone else was awake, caught up in a brief spell of solitude before the hectic day began.

Though the track wasn’t completely empty – Vishnu was striding quickly ahead of them. That was also unusual. Normally he hared straight to the Core House crèche to pick up his two young daughters. He and Sorrel must have a different arrangement today for some reason – perhaps Florence, the girls’ other Shelter mother, was looking after them this afternoon.

‘Vishnu’s in a hurry,’ Meem remarked. ‘I hope the girls are okay.’

‘Yeah, weird,’ Yoki commented as the teacher began to jog.

‘If one of the kids were sick, he’d be going to his Earthship,’ Astra pointed out. ‘They’re probably with Florence and he’s just going to see Sorrel.’

‘But the urbaggers are really busy right now,’ Yoki said reasonably. ‘Why would they want Vishnu hanging around?’

It was a favourite game, sitting on the Earthship living roof and guessing where everyone was going; sometimes they even bet on it – Meem had
won big when she realised before anyone else that Florence had bonded with the new Craft worker Blossom. You could also score points for funny answers. As Astra was trying to think of one, someone came pounding up the track behind them. It was Congruence.

Astra and her siblings moved aside. Congruence was a dedicated distance runner, doing twenty Kinbat laps a day while listening to music on her Tablette armband. Astra liked pacing herself against her, but the older girl didn’t mingle with the high school Or-kids. Congruence had finished her IMBOD Service last summer and returned to Or with the other twenty-year-olds. But instead of starting Biotecture College in Atourne in the autumn, she had stayed on, helping Luna and her Shelter father care for Gloria, her Shelter mother, who was dying. This summer she had begun working as Ahn’s apprentice. Now that the Steppes Arts and Craft Gallery had been received with such acclaim, he had started preparing a design submission for the new National History Museum in Atourne, and after some negotiations, the college had agreed that Congruence could get credit for the work she did to help him. Astra rarely saw either of them, but Nimma, who was advising on interiors, said the designs were coming along beautifully and Congruence had a real gift for siting and landscaping.

Congruence backhanded a greeting and ran on, her long black plait swaying like a bell rope down her back.

‘Nimma said Gloria wants to go to a neurohospice soon,’ Meem reported when the girl was out of earshot.

‘Really?’ Yoki stared after Congruence. ‘That’s sad.’

‘Yes,’ Meem agreed. ‘But she’ll return to Gaia at peace then. And that will help Congruence be at peace too.’

‘We’ll all go to a neurohospice one day,’ Yoki agreed. ‘As long as we return to Gaia in Is-Land.’

Astra couldn’t contribute to the Sec Gen platitude-fest. Gloria had cancer – not skin cancer, which did still occur sometimes, but a tumour in her stomach which had been treated but then returned, spreading to her lymph system. No one knew why, when everyone in Is-Land was Coded against cellular malignancies, but sometimes, Klor had said, like damp against damp-proofing, cancer found a way through. He had been troubled though, Astra could tell. It was wrong to have cancer in Is-Land; it might be a sign that one of the crop Codes was faulty – or that Gloria had a hidden genetic weakness, one Congruence might have inherited. The
Sec Gens knew all this, but they blithely assumed the best: Gloria was an isolated case. Still, they loitered with Astra, watching Congruence, hands at her waist, slow to a walk. At the exit to Code House she showered quickly with a hose, stripped off her running bra, wrung it out and stuck it in a hydrobelt pocket. Then she trotted up the steps. Vishnu was ahead of her. As she passed, the teacher reached forward and touched her arm.