Astra (48 page)

Congruence wrested her elbow away. She took the next four steps two at a time, then she turned and tapped her Tablette –
I’m late
– and resumed normal-but-speedy step climbing. Vishnu stopped to observe her. Then he climbed on too, steadily, not attempting to catch up.

‘Whay hey. What’s Vishnu done to her?’ Yoki wondered.

‘Nothing. She’s just jumpy,’ Meem explained. ‘I said hi to her the other day and she nearly dropped her dinner tray. Nimma says it’s because she’s not Sec Gen and she’s finding saying goodbye to Gloria very difficult.’

‘Come on,’ Astra said. Talk of non-Sec Gens still made her nervous. It was nice to not have so many of them around in Or any more to confuse her. ‘We shouldn’t be wasting time like this. She’s just late for Ahn. You know what he’s like.’

They headed up the path to the Earthship. Silver wasn’t there, but Astra didn’t register even mild disappointment at his empty perch. Sometimes filling his memory clip with bland news to send back to Hokma was just another chore. Right now, she was hungry. When they were small, Nimma used to take a break and meet them at home; she’d stopped doing that when Meem started high school, but she still left out a plate of fruit and biscuits every day. They had their snack, then Yoki and Astra turned on their Tablettes and Meem left to visit Honey, who had just started Sheltering Dew, her bond partner’s Code baby with a professional Birth mother from New Bangor. It was better without her: Year Elevens didn’t fully understand the pressure yet and Meem would often ask for help with her own homework, a distraction Yoki didn’t mind, but Astra resented. At last, after a set of mind-splitting equations, it was time to head down to Core House for dinner.

Because of Ahn’s commitment to the gallery project, it had taken nine months to design and erect the new dining hall, but he had insisted on creating a memorial to Torrent and Stream and the new building had been amply worth the wait. Its skylights and white wood beams pressed a healing poultice of light and space to the wound of the fire. The official cause of the blaze was still
Accidental; herbal cigarette suspected
, but just in
case, there were now metal slat blinds instead of curtains and the candles were all in glass jars. A wood sculpture of a young man and woman entwined stood in the corner, and at the request of the Parents’ Committee the seating was more varied: there was a row of banquette booths along one wall, to encourage adults to sit in small groups and play games or chat after dinner, reducing the noise levels in the Quiet Room and ensuring that children or young people would not play unattended here again.

Today, though, the dining hall was empty, no clacking of serving spoon on pan or nostril-perking scent of garlic emanating from the kitchen, and there wasn’t a member of the kitchen team in sight.

‘We’re not early, are we?’ Astra asked, puzzled.

Yoki checked the wall clock. ‘No—’

Behind them the door opened and they turned to see Meem lunging into the room.

‘
Astra
. You’re
here
.’ Meem flung her arms around Astra, nearly knocking her backwards. This was peculiar too. She and Meem had hardly been parted an hour.

Awkwardly she patted her Shelter sister on the back. ‘Yeah – but where’s everyone else?’

Meem peeled away from the embrace but gripped Astra’s hand and Yoki’s and started tugging them towards the top end of the children’s table. ‘They’re in a meeting. Yoki, we have to sit with Astra tonight.’

‘Okay.’ Yoki, accommodating as always, fell in step with Meem. ‘Why?’

‘I can’t tell you. Honey made me promise.’

Meem’s tone was playful, but Astra was confused and getting irritated. She resisted Meem’s insistent pull. ‘
Meem. Tell us
. What’s going on? Why are they
all
in a meeting?’

She was pushing it, she knew. When they were younger, her Sec Gen friends and siblings had never questioned an adult’s authority, and as a group, her schoolmates were still slavishly obedient. But lately Astra had found that if she got a Sec Gen on their own, simple curiosity could sometimes get them to override a promise to a parent or teacher. She had to sound confident, that was the trick. It was almost as though the Sec Gens responded to a certain tone of voice. She didn’t push often, in case people noticed, and it was risky to try it in front of Yoki, who could corroborate any story of coercion, but a spiral of annoyance and anxiety was rising in her torso and she needed to know what was happening.

‘I can’t. And anyway, they’re going to tell us all together. After dinner.’

The Sec Gens were all bigger and stronger than she was. Astra had little choice but to let herself be dragged across the floor.

‘So why do you know now, then?’

‘Honey and Storm were talking about it when I came in. They left the meeting early because Dew was crying. They think he’s sick.’

‘If
you
know now, why can’t we?’ Yoki asked, very reasonably, Astra thought.

‘Because …’ Meem hesitated. ‘Because if I tell you that, Astra might get upset.’

The irritation was shrinking now and the anxiety was swelling, pressing against her ribs.
Was the meeting about me?
she wanted to ask, but she couldn’t. And anyway, Meem couldn’t know she wasn’t Sec Gen or she wouldn’t have hugged her. ‘Why would I get upset?’ she probed cautiously. ‘Were Honey and Storm talking about me?’

‘No.’ Meem sat down. But Sec Gens couldn’t lie. ‘Well, yes. A bit.’

It was like ‘Animal, Vegetable, Mineral’. As she said the words she knew they were the answer. ‘They were talking about Hokma.’

Meem pulled her hand, hard. ‘Sit down, Astra. They’re going to tell us soon. I just wanted to make sure you were here, that’s all.’

Astra yanked her hand away. ‘Where’s Hokma?’

Meem looked pleadingly at Yoki. ‘I didn’t mean to break my promise, did I?’

‘You didn’t break it.’

‘I’m going to Wise House,’ Astra announced, heading for the door.

‘
No
.’ Meem stood up, and snatched at her elbow. ‘She’s not there. IMBOD took her. Last night. They took her and Helium and all the Owleons away.’

* * *

She was running like a river, frothing over rocks and surging around bends, churning under bridges, charging against banks. Her right arm was pumping the air, grabbing at vines and branches, her left was clamping her breasts to her chest. Her throat was scorched, her lungs burning as the soles of her feet went blazing over roots and stones. Meem and Yoki were far away, tiny bewildered figures clinging to the door of Core House; the adults coming down en masse from Code House were a clump of insentient beings, oblivious to her escape from the lies they were bringing for dinner. She was going to find Hokma: Hokma and Helium and Silver and the chicks.

Up ahead was the crossroads, and someone was there. Not Hokma: someone tall and pale-skinned, who ducked back into the trees as Astra approached. She cut up through the stringybarks, flitting like a bat between the trees.
Someone was guarding the path to Wise House
. Her heart was a chiselled flint, scraping at her chest. There was a roaring in her ears, muffling the sound of the world.
IMBOD had taken Hokma away
. She crept forward at an angle, plotting her way up the slope, aiming to emerge at the gate. It was twilight now and she could slip among the shadows heading for the ghostly trunks of the lacebarks ahead.

‘
Astraaa. Aaaastra
.’ Below her on the path, adults were calling her name. She pressed on through grey veils of dimming light. She could hear people following her now, their heavy boots squelching and cracking through the mulch, swearing as they slipped on the steep muddy slope. They would catch her, but first she was going to see for herself what IMBOD had done to Wise House.

But she couldn’t see Wise House. She was crouching behind a lacebark and she could only see the fence. It was wrapped in a long yellow and black ribbon and guarded by two IMBOD officers. One was talking into her armband Tablette, the other was standing in front of the gate, scanning the woods. They both had pistols strapped to their thighs. One was holding the lead of a straining Alsatian.

‘Understood,’ the dogless officer said, and clicked off her Tablette talk. ‘
Astra
,’ she called, ‘you can come out now. You’re not in any trouble.’

She couldn’t go forwards. She couldn’t go back. She sank to her knees behind the tree and flattened herself into its roots like a hare into her form. Her cheek was rubbed raw against the scabrous grey bark, her breast was squashed on top of a spongy tree fungus. Her face was a silent monsoon. That was how Vishnu found her.

‘Astra. Oh thank Gaia.’ He knelt and put his arms around her. ‘Come, Astra, come home.’

Then Russett was there, and Moon, and others too, vague figures hanging back in the trees.

‘Sweetie.’ Moon stroked her back. ‘You must come home now. Hokma’s not there. Come home and we’ll explain.’

Russett and Vishnu hooked their elbows beneath her armpits, helped her to her feet and showed her to the IMBOD officers. Then as the dark clouds reopened, they escorted her down the steep path and back to Core House.

* * *

‘
Why?
Why did they
take her
?’ They were in the Quiet Room but she was bellowing like a bull. She knew that she shouldn’t be shouting, but she didn’t know how to behave any more. She couldn’t pretend. How would a Sec Gen kid act if IMBOD took their Shelter mother away? Did anyone know? Had they done tests? She wasn’t in trouble, the adults kept saying, their faces blanched with concern as they cosseted her with pillows and glasses of water. She could just feel what she felt for once, couldn’t she?

‘Hush, hush,’ Vishnu fretted. You’d never guess he was a teacher and a father of two, or branded for an invincible god; he was floundering like an international visitor confronted with an upset Or-kid. Beside him on the sofa, Nimma was dabbing her eyes with a hanky; Klor had his arm around her and looked too dazed to speak.

‘You
let them
!’ She accused the circle. ‘You let them take her!’ They shrank back, a confused woolly ball of theories and responses – except for Ahn, of course. He was sitting on a chair between Congruence and Moon, and though each woman had at one point been stroking his arm – obviously considering that as Hokma’s ex-Gaia partner he was in need of support – he was now doing that steeple thing again with his fingers at his lips, his expression tight and alert, his reptilian eyes flickering between Astra, Nimma and Klor.

Russett was the only one unperturbed. Since the deaths of Torrent and Stream he had changed. At first, people had thought he would leave Or, but he’d said he had nowhere to go. He had undergone two years of therapy: not only bereavement counselling, but anger management and parental skills lessons. Flint and Thor and Tulsi’s Birth-Shelter mother had accompanied him on his journey, and Russett was now Tulsi’s Shared Shelter father. He was also back coaching the under-ten archery team. As Astra’s scream reached glass-shattering pitch he stepped forwards; looming over the armchair, he leaned down so his pouchy, broken-veined face was bang up against hers.

‘Astra,
be quiet
,’ he ordered in a low voice, ‘or you are going to your Earthship and no one is going to be telling you
anything
for a very long time.’

His voice vibrated through her like a gong. The men, and Moon, had dragged her down from Wise House. They could drag her away from Core House too. She gulped for air and shut up.

Russett turned back to the other adults. ‘Now tell her. She has the right to know.’

People looked at Nimma and Klor, but Nimma was sobbing now and Klor shook his head helplessly. ‘Vishnu, you tell her,’ he croaked.

Vishnu sucked his lower lip. It was so strange to see him so anxious. The only time Astra had ever seen him close to distress was the evening Sorrel had collapsed in the Quiet Room, going into labour early with their second Code daughter Kishar, and he’d come barrelling from his Earthship down to Core House. ‘It was Helium, Astra,’ her old teacher said at last. ‘He died on a flight back from Atourne and a farmer found his body on the steppes. He turned it in to IMBOD and when they checked his memory clip they found some things that shouldn’t have been there.’

Helium was dead? Astra choked – but the adults weren’t grieving, she suddenly realised; they were
afraid
. At the sight of Moon’s drawn face, a trickle of fear crept into her too. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘
What
shouldn’t have been there?’

‘We don’t know, darling,’ Sorrel said. ‘We just know that IMBOD has taken Hokma in for questioning. They couldn’t leave Silver and the other Owleons there by themselves so they’ve taken them too.’

‘We’re sure there’s an explanation,’ Pan spoke brightly, with faux-confidence, as if she were a child. ‘She probably had permission from Dr Blesserson or the National Wheel Meet – she’ll tell IMBOD what she was doing and she’ll be back soon.’

At the mention of Dr Blesserson the alarm in Astra’s belly twanged up a note.
Your little experiment
, Hokma’s brother had called her all those years ago.
Your project
, Ahn had sneered. But Hokma couldn’t possibly have been keeping records of Astra’s behaviour, could she? Or sending information about her over the steppes?

‘Astra,’ Vishnu asked, ‘you don’t know what she could have been working on, do you? Anything unusual at all?’

The fear was rising in her throat now. Astra glanced at Ahn. He wasn’t saying anything; he was
watching
, she realised. Beside him, Congruence’s face was scrunched up like a sponge, positioned to soak up the tension misting from his frame.

Ahn was a snake and she wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of seeing her panic. She folded her arms. ‘Erm, the
Owleons
?’

‘Leave the girl alone, Vishnu,’ Ahn said, his soft, loathsome voice sprinkled with threat Astra knew was intended for her. ‘She’s not on trial.’

‘Of course not,’ Vishnu replied shortly, not looking at Ahn, ‘but she’s in a better position than most of us to know what Hokma may have been doing lately. I’m sure we’d all rather know what was going on, wouldn’t we?’