Astra (5 page)

* * *

The Wise House entrance chamber was spacious and cool, with a stripped pine floor. There were doors in all four walls and three holes in the ceiling: two air vents and one bean-shaped translucent solar panel, which cast spirals of light over Astra and Hokma as they removed their outdoor gear. Paintings and carvings of Owleons hung on the walls and the housecoat hooks were carved hardwood talons. Hokma rested her cedar staff in a corner rack, then unlaced her boots and bunged them under a bench with Astra’s sandals. Astra took off her flap-hat and hydropac, wondering where to put them.

‘We’ll have to get a lower row of hooks for you,’ Hokma said, hanging Astra’s things up on a talon. ‘How about red pigeon toes?’ As Astra protested – she wanted talons
too
– her Shelter mother took down a towel and rubbed her all over, wet feet last. Then she pulled two pairs of curvytoed slippers out of a basket on the bench. Astra’s were new, and just her size. ‘Here.’ Hokma held out a small sateen housecoat. ‘I thought turquoise would suit you.’

Astra scrunched up her nose. ‘Do I have to wear clothes?’

‘Wise House isn’t an Earthship, Astra. It can get a bit nippy in here. I don’t want you catching cold.’

Cold? Cold was the walk-in fridge in the kitchen or an ice cube on your tongue. ‘I’m not cold.’

‘You might be soon. Now come on.’

Astra blew a raspberry, but slid her arms into the soft sleeves and tied the belt as loosely as possible. If you had to wear clothes, sateen was just
about bearable. At least Hokma wasn’t dragging a comb through her hair like Nimma always did the second she stepped indoors.

Hokma had slipped on a short green kimono, which she tied loosely over her hipbelt. From right to left, she pointed at the three interior doors: ‘Living room. Bathroom if you need it. Lab.’ With that, she gripped the carved handle and opened the door.

Astra realised she was trembling. Luckily Hokma’s back was turned. She followed her Shelter mother into a large, luminous room, a proper, organised Or workspace, humming with industry and tingling with the scent of pine-water disinfectant. To her right, light from the front window danced over a stainless-steel countertop, a sink, a cooker and a shuddering brushed-steel fridge, behind which glass doors gave a view of a back verandah and a grassy clearing. Jars of nuts, berries and grains were arranged neatly on shelves above the countertop, which was like a kitchen surface with cupboards and drawers beneath it. But the rest of the room was all lab. Opposite Astra, an ergonomic chair knelt beneath a long wooden table. One end was an easeled screendesk, its black tail plugged into a socket in the blue-tiled floor; the rest was neatly equipped with microscopes, scales, test-tube stands and, at the far end, a large wooden crate. All of this paraphernalia was immensely impressive, but the magnet that drew Astra’s gaze was stationed in the centre of the room: a sleek, transparent alt-meat incubator.

Or’s alt-lamb, -beef, -chicken and – fish came from a plant in New Bangor. Next year Astra’s class would go and visit it, but up until now she’d only ever seen pictures of alt-meat incubators: giant industrial vats stored in large buildings in all Is-Land towns and cities. Hokma’s was tiny in comparison; about a square metre in area and around thirty centimetres deep. It rested on its table like a shallow aquarium filled with green algae. Through the murky, bubbling liquid, Astra could see the artificial mouse muscles growing from coils of polymer tubing, absorbing proteins from the algae and fatty tissues from the biodegradable scaffolding.

She placed her fingertips on the incubator lid. The strips of pink muscle immersed in their plant-based bath were peacefully flexing in time to pulses emitted by the biodegradable tubing. ‘I like alt-fish sticks,’ she said. ‘They’re nice and flaky. And I like roast alt-chicken. I think alt-beef is too tough, though. And Yoki says he wants to eat only hydroponic vegetables now.’

‘Yoki might have to go and live with the Jain Gaians when he gets older. And you’d better not tell him what we’re going to do now.’

Hokma stepped around the incubator and over to the wooden crate on the desk. It was a vermicompost, Astra realised: there were holes in the lid and a tray of liquid underneath it. Worms couldn’t get too hot or they died, so the big vermicompost boxes at Core House were housed in a thick-walled lean-to. This one was small enough to keep indoors, where the temperature wasn’t
cold
but, she had to agree, cooler than at home in the Earthship. Together Astra and Hokma lifted the lid. Hokma took the worms from her hipbelt pouch and added them to the compost. Astra stood on tiptoe and gazed down at the familiar sight of red wigglers, clumped together like tiny pink socks in a drawer full of worm castings, vegetable scraps and earth. Or-soil was dry and dusty, but this humus was as rich as Nimma’s fruitcake.

It was very strange, looking down at the worms knowing you were going to kill them.

‘The bins at Core House are like worm hotels,’ she said. ‘But this one’s sort of like a worm Death Ship, isn’t it?’

Hokma put her hand on Astra’s forearm. ‘Astra,’ she said quietly.

Astra turned, alarmed. What had she done?

‘You must never talk about the Death Ships like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘You mustn’t ever compare the people in the Death Ships to worms. Remember, Elpis’ father died in the Ships, and her mother had terrible dreams about them all her life.’

She hadn’t meant to insult Elpis or her parents. She
hadn’t
. ‘But we’re all Gaia’s creatures,’ she defended herself. ‘Worms and people too.’

‘I know. But this vermicompost is like our beehives: a nice place for worker creatures to live, not a prison. You’ll learn more about the Death Ships in Year Seven. Then you’ll see what I mean.’

‘Oh.’ Astra picked at a splinter on the edge of the wormery. Maybe she shouldn’t tell Hokma she’d called the Non-Landers slugs. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s okay. Now let’s find some juicy ones, shall we?’

Hokma took a bucket from under the desk and pulled on a pair of biolatex gloves. One by one, she picked up a dozen worms, small ones the chicks could swallow easily, she said, and dropped them gently in the bucket. As they landed, Astra felt the little thumps echo in the pit of her stomach:
Doom doom. Doom doom
.

‘Are you all right?’

Astra looked down into the bucket. The worms were tangled in a writhing knot around the edge, all seeking to escape in that slinky way worms had: squeezing their coils of muscles together into a blood-red bunch, then stretching out again into a thin pink ribbon to move forward. Klor had told her about a Gaian scientist in New Zonia who had used this principle of locomotion to design a better, less painful colon cancer detection camera, one that pulsed gently up inside the patient’s body to take pictures of what was wrong. Like all Gaia’s creatures, worms were so inspiring if you just stopped and observed them for a while.

One of the worms, the skinniest one, twitched its blind head as if beseeching her for help. Her mouth dried. ‘I guess.’

‘I know it’s hard. But they aren’t going to be hurt, not for a moment.’

Hokma crossed the room, put the bucket on the stainless-steel counter and took down a cutting board from a shelf beside the fridge.

‘Do you want to help? There’s another pair of gloves here. You could pass me the worms.’

It was a test – but she hadn’t studied; she wasn’t ready to take it. Suppose she squished a worm too hard and killed it by mistake? Astra shook her head dumbly.

‘Okay.’ Her Shelter mother opened a drawer and took out a medical syringe and needle and a bottle of yellowish liquid. Holding the bottle up to the light, she filled the syringe from it. ‘This is a special solution I make up here,’ she said. ‘It paralyses the worm and stops its hearts beating. It also contains a special Code sequence that will customise the chicks for particular IMBOD applications.’

Astra only had one heart, not five, and right now it was shrinking in her chest into a tight, squirming little knot. ‘Are the worms Code-vectors, then?’ she asked, trying to sound professional. ‘Like the Security Serum?’

‘Exactly.’ Hokma reached into the bucket and plucked out a worm. She placed it on the cutting board. Pinned between her fingers, it contracted and expanded in a long, slithery S shape. Just at the point Astra thought of as the neck – though Torrent always said worms were like Mr Banzan and didn’t have necks – Hokma inserted the needle between two of the worm’s muscles.

‘It’s just a tiny prick,’ she said as she depressed the plunger. ‘Far better than being stabbed to death by a blackbird.’

The liquid drained into the worm and its crimson body rippled for a moment more, then it stopped moving and lay there on the board, limp and still.

‘Can’t you grow alt-worms in the alt-mouse incubator?’ Astra asked. Her eyes felt wet and prickly and there was a lump in her throat. Squeezing past it, her voice had turned all thin and squeaky. She felt her face turn red, but she couldn’t cry. She couldn’t let Hokma know she was upset. If she acted like Yoki, Hokma would decide not to tell her important things either.

‘No, it’s not big enough, and it’s too expensive to run two.’ Hokma set the needle down and rested her wrist on Astra’s shoulder. Her gloved hand, the hand that had just murdered the worm, hung in the air in front of Astra’s face. ‘There’s no need to cry, Astra,’ she said. ‘These worms have lived a very full life, much longer than they might have done in the wild. And the Owleons protect us in all sorts of ways. They need to be fed.’

Astra rubbed her eyes dry. ‘I know,’ she said, defiantly. ‘I just felt sad for a minute, that’s all.’

‘That’s okay,’ Hokma straightened up. ‘In life we often feel different emotions at the same time. Being able to do that is a sign of great strength.’

Meem would be crying if she were here, and Yoki screaming. Torrent, though, would want to have a go with the needle. And Peat would ask questions. Astra swallowed. ‘My teacher said that complexity is difficult. Is that what she meant?’

‘Partly, yes. Complexity is difficult in all sorts of ways. Now, are you sure you want to watch me kill the rest?’

Kill
. The word ricocheted around the room like an acorn hitting glass, steel, skull. The sound of it hurt. But killing was what Hokma was doing, and Astra wanted Hokma to know she understood: killing was sometimes necessary.

She nodded and one by one, Hokma injected the rest of the worms. When she’d done, she carefully lowered their dead bodies back into the bucket.

‘They have returned to Gaia now.’ She stripped off her gloves and handed the bucket to Astra. The worms were arranged in motionless heaps, small pink spirals dotted across the bottom. Was she going to have to pick them up now? Was that the next test to fail?

Carrying the bucket with both hands, trying not to look at the worms, she trailed after Hokma through the sliding glass doors and onto the verandah. The wooden deck was supported by three massive stripped tree trunks and opened onto a wide, wild lawn behind Wise House; the long grass was studded with stumps and what looked like roughly made stools.

‘Those are the perches,’ Hokma said. ‘I put the Owleons on them in the mornings.’

Beyond the lawn a pinewood beckoned with raspy fingers. Between the trees was a row of brown hutches.
The Owleons
. The birds were invisible in the dark interiors, but Astra’s heart lurched in her chest and she made towards the verandah steps.

‘Not yet. The chicks are in here.’ Hokma strode past the frosted bathroom window to the door at the right end of the verandah where another wall jutted out at the back of the cabin.

* * *

Astra entered a swirl of shadows. Hokma flipped a switch and the living-room window blinds silently retracted, letting light spill into another large room, this one lined with plants and shelves and smelling of sage and liquorice tea. Oddly, the ceiling was higher in the middle of the room; that, Astra realised after a moment or two, was because there was a loft at either end, accessed by two sets of narrow steps running up the wall in an interesting V shape she instantly wanted to climb and jump between. The front loft, she quickly determined, held a futon and a lamp; she was standing beneath the other, beside a low-angled screendesk that faced out through the back window into the clearing. Some curious objects were lined up on the edge of the screendesk: several metal sticks displayed in a mug, and a row of bottles filled with blue, red and green water. These were even more interesting than the staircases and Astra was just going to ask Hokma about them when from the other side of the room came a faint scrabbling and scratching, then a strange wheezy
psh psh psh
.

Beneath the front loft, a sofa and a comfy chair sat at angles to a handcrafted coffee table. The noises were coming from a large wooden box sitting on top of the table.

‘Yes, wake up, my pretties.’ Hokma crossed the big greeny-blue rag rug on the floor. ‘I’ve got a friend I want you to meet.’

Astra followed and knelt beside Hokma. She put the bucket down carefully between them and peered over the edge of the box.

‘
Ohh!
’ she whispered, recoiling.

There, blinking up at her, were three small balls of snowy-white fluff. Their wings were tiny, just little fingers of feathers, but what should have been the most adorable things she’d ever seen were disfigured by enormous hook-like beaks. It was a wonder the chicks could stand up, the beaks were so ridiculously big. They made the baby birds look like crabbed
old men or ancient demons in fairytales: more than just old, a
million years
old.

‘Why are they so
ugly
?’ she blurted.

‘Ugly?’ Hokma smiled and offered her finger for the littlest bird to nip at. ‘You’ll hurt their feelings.’

As if seeking protection from Astra’s disgust, the middle chick shuffled over and huddled against its bigger sibling. The tiny one was left stranded in the corner of the box. Like Mr Banzan, it didn’t seem to have a neck; its head simply emerged from its puffy body as if it were a tiny snowman. But then it stretched out a claw and turned towards her. Face-on, its beak curved like a crescent moon, its eyes were two onyx pools and its bewildered expression was framed by a heart-shaped ruff.