Astra (55 page)

She let the letter drop to the ground and sat staring blindly out over the field. Part of her mind was numb, as if it had been sprayed with anaesthetic. Part of it was inflamed, raging at Ahn. But beneath the stupor and the fury an awakening pulsed:
Hokma was a dissident
. She had said so, proudly, in the letter. This was no forced confession; this was her statement: what she believed, why she lived on her own in the woods – why she’d stopped Astra from getting the Security Serum shot –
why she had been arrested
. Cora Pollen was a dissident too. She and Hokma had helped Eya because … her stomach turned … because
Astra’s Code father was a Non-Lander
.

She knew it was true. It explained everything – why she didn’t belong, why she had never fit in. She dug her fingernails into her scalp and rubbed hard, as if her head were infested with nits. She had her Code father’s hair. She had a head of Non-Lander hair and a false stamp of IMBOD approval burned on her root chakra. She was a freak – a
fraud
. She was a cross-Coded bitch, half-criminal, half-untouchable. Hokma might know who her parents were, but her dreams were delusional – fairy tale horseshit. Even if what she’d said about Non-Land was true, Astra was no frigging saviour. She was a pariah, and she would be wherever she went.

She sat breathing hard, her scalp burning, blood rising beneath her ragged fingernails, staring down at the letter on the ground. Had she always suspected this? When she was a child, she had always begged to hear the worst part of any story: the ending of her Birth-Code mother story, when Eya went away; the part in Kali’s story when the prisoners were left to starve on the Death Ships; exactly how Torrent and Stream had died. She had always pressed and poked and squeezed until she was told the ugliest truths, or until she had seized them for herself from the adults’ pile of lies – except, she remembered with a sick streak of shame, on the ledge with Lil, when she had retreated into Sec Gen dreams of safety, into Woodland Siesta, battle sports, Code study.

But she wasn’t Sec Gen – she had
never
been Sec Gen. And now, no matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t live that lie any more.

A trail of ants crawled over the scroll of paper: workers, carrying on, just like the Sec Gens. But who was she? She’d been a worm, squirming beneath the rock of Hokma’s love, Hokma’s authority – but not any more. She was exposed now, and Hokma was right: whatever it was Astra had been chosen for, she would have to decide for herself. The throbbing in her head intensified and she squeezed her eyes shut. Something was
coming: something else, something not in the letter. The letter was finished now, and proved false in the most basic way, for in the letter Hokma was alive – but Hokma was
dead
: killed for saving Astra from the Serum, for daring to dream her own dreams about Is-Land, for wanting to speak out against IMBOD. Hokma hadn’t had a stroke; only a Sec Gen would believe that. IMBOD had murdered her, with the help of Dr Blesserson and that malicious, festering,
child-frigging
pus-maggot Ahn.

She opened her eyes and looked up to see a kestrel hovering over the field. She stood and put Silver’s feather in the pouch on her hipbelt. Walking in a circle around the rocks, she read the letter again, this time out loud, feeling the rhythm of Hokma’s voice in her mouth, tasting the love in her words, testing Hokma’s implacable confidence against her own knowledge, her own strength, her own self. When she had finished, she looked up at the kestrel, and as she watched, the raptor plummeted to the ground, hunting a mouse or a vole. She rolled up the letter and slid it back in the jar then found another stone and dug a hole between two rocks. She buried the letter, then camouflaged the site, piling on some of the earth and stones she’d dug out.

She turned around and marched across the field into the woods, the stone still clutched in her hand. Klor was at the crossroads. If she cut through the lacebarks and then the stringybarks and pines below them, she could veer back down the slope to the path and leave him stranded far behind.

Her mind was whirring like a circular blade, clear and sharp as broken glass. Her boots were kinetic battery packs, each pounding step she took charging her body with the heat of Gaia’s molten core. Her limbs were pistons, pumping acid through her veins. The stone clenched in her hand chanted
kill kill kill
. The leaves on the trees whispered
now now now
.

She surged through West Gate and onto the Kinbat track. Behind her, Moon was power-walking; she called out ‘Astra—?’ but Astra ignored her. Her heart rate accelerating, her ears roaring like the wind around the yurt at night, she pounded round the track, past the vegetable garden, past East Gate, past the swimming pool and then, her muscles glowing, her pace slowing to a brisk walk, she swerved up the path to Code House. Her heart was thumping in her throat as she took the steps two at a time, passing Sorrel on her way down, absorbed in her Tablette screen. ‘Astra?’ She looked up, a startled expression on her face, but Astra was already crossing the deck and pulling the cedar doors open.
Yes yes yes
the stone hissed. The dark, brooding clouds overhead murmured
calm calm calm
.

A couple of Code House guides were herding a group of visitors around the lobby, their chatter bouncing off the high glass walls and roof. She elbowed her way through to the staircase. ‘Hey,’ one of the guides, a bony Seed Coder in red-rimmed glasses complained, ‘watch where you’re going, Astra.’ She ascended the staircase one solid step after another, breaking the skin of the lobby’s bubble of commotion, leaving the din of exclamations far behind her. On the second floor she turned right down the back corridor; picking up speed again she passed the gushing cliff waterfall and swerved around Russett, who lifted his coffee mug in the air
to avoid her. ‘Klor’s not in,’ he called over his shoulder, but she was striding past Klor’s office and at last arrived in front of Ahn’s door.

She grabbed the handle. It couldn’t be locked, not now. The office couldn’t be empty. No.
Slow slow slow
the stone sang.

The door swung open. She shut it tight behind her.

* * *

‘Hello?’ Ahn was standing behind a large screendesk at the other end of the room. The surface was tilted towards him and Congruence was leaning forward to fingerswipe the surface. His hand, Astra could see, was grazing her bottom. As he looked up, he removed it.

‘Astra,’ he frowned. ‘What are you—?’

She stepped forward, took aim and hurled the stone at his head. Congruence dropped to the floor as it blasted an arc through the air.

‘
Good Gaia
,’ Ahn shouted, swerving and ducking and shielding his face with his arms. The stone crashed into the shelves behind him, rattling a row of award sculptures and knocking one down to the floor with a deadening clunk.

FRIGGING GAIA –
MISSED
. But target still off-guard. Advantage retained.

She cast about the room for more ammunition. The right wall was sheer gold-tinted glass with a one-way view of the escarpment, stretching out to the steppes beneath the lowering sky. In front of the window-wall, a couple of cushion-chairs were arranged around a low table: she clocked a teapot, two celadon cups and an elegant biolamp. Possible … but no, better, right here, closer, sheathed in decorative steel cases and displayed on a candelabra on a shelf beside the door were the three Edition One Kezcams: the perfect ammunition, ripe for the plucking. She snatched one up. Empty of helium, encrusted with enamelling, the sphere was not quite a shotput, but it was still promisingly heavy in her hand.

‘You let them
kill
her!’ Like a nuclear-powered windmill, she fast-bowled the Kezcam at Ahn, aiming this time for his heart. He crossed his arms over his chest and turned sideways, grunting as the missile cannoned into his shoulder.

‘
Ahn
!’ Congruence shouted from under the screendesk. She was thrusting the fallen award, a planed chunk of bronze, up into Ahn’s hand; he grabbed it and moved into the room, sliding in front of the window-wall, his hurt arm across his torso and groin, the award raised in front of his head.

‘Stop this
now
, Astra,’ he demanded, his voice harsh as dried bark.

She snatched up the two remaining Kezcams, one in each hand.

Then everyone shouted all at the same time.

‘You
carnivore
,’ she yelled, charging forward. ‘You frigging
cannibal
!’

‘Astra – don’t make me do this.’ He was backing away, teetering, his face suddenly – gloriously – jaundiced with terror.

‘Throw it, Ahn,
throw it
,’ Congruence urged. She was half-standing herself now, reaching up to the shelf for another weapon. Astra threatened her and she ducked back down. By the window, twisting his hips and leaning back like a bowler, Ahn threw the award at Astra – but Ahn had only ever
filmed
cricket games and he hadn’t been in IMBOD training for decades – or maybe she’d lucked out and struck his dominant arm. Whatever the reason, his throw was a wobbler, a dud, with no force behind it.

Astra dodged easily, and the award sailed into something behind her, a ceramic, from the sound of the smash.

‘Frig!’ Ahn screamed, perhaps at the loss of some expensive vase. He was off-balance, teetering, full-frontal, his Gaia plough swinging like a curtain tassle.

She aimed low and the Kezcam slammed straight into his testicles. With a blood-curdling groan, he fell to his knees, doubling over, clutching his genitals.

‘
Ahn
,’ Congruence screamed again.

In the gleam from the biolamp his thinning hair was a half-blown dandelion seed head, his bald patch a high shiny bullseye a child couldn’t miss. Breathing heavily, Astra raised her final missile.

The door banged open, startling her.

‘
What in Gaia’s name is going on in here?
’ Russett roared.

‘She’s … gone … mad!’ Ahn gurgled. He was reaching for the arm of the chair now, his face purple and sweaty, contorted with pain. The moment was lost.

In her peripheral vision she saw Congruence leap up from behind the screendesk, her fingers curled around the first thrown Kezcam. As Congruence hurled it at her, Russett barrelled across the room, head down. Just before he rammed her against the wall, knocking the wind out of her lungs, she pitched her final Kezcam as hard as she could. Congruence’s shot missed, but over Russett’s shoulder Astra saw the windowpane shatter as her own hard black missile went sailing out through a golden blizzard of glass and disappeared into the air.

She was running down a long, bright corridor, the doors flying open on either side. Samrod Blesserson was laughing in the distance, waiting for her to catch up, then disappearing as soon as she reached him. She ran on and on, past rooms full of screens, screens full of rooms, flickering with images of everyone she knew, everyone she could never leave behind, no matter how far or how fast she raced: Nimma making biscuits, her fingers sticky with dough, her eyes sour and red as dried berries, saying,
None for you, Astra, none for you
; Klor tumbling down the slope from Wise House, grasping at roots which came up in his hands, his aluminium leg rolling after him, the foot kicking his temples as he cried out,
Stop, stop
; Lil standing on a chair gyrating her hips, Silver fluttering on her shoulder and then, as Astra moved closer, plucking a hipbead from her string and placing it under Astra’s tongue where it dissolved into a bitter, chalky sludge and trickled down her throat until Lil dissolved too and she was watching Russett and Torrent wrestling at the centre of the Boundary labyrinth, hands at each other’s throat, spotlights raking their contorted faces as an IMBOD officer jabbed them both in the ribs with a stick while in the next room Ahn and Congruence Gaia-bonded, his long blond body covering hers as she lay face down against the screendesk, her fingers gripping the edge, her small breasts flattened against the plans for a circle of traitor wells; and beyond them all, locked, trapped, hidden away, was Hokma … Hokma caged in Wise House, the rooms cobwebbed and empty, the lofts broken, the windows boarded up as Hokma stood in the gloom with Helium on her wrist, turning to Astra again and again, saying,
Live the truth, Astra, live the truth
, as Helium spread his wings and pulled
her up by the wrist, up to the low, flat ceiling that vanished as they reached it and soared up into a pouring shaft of red light and downy feathers, filling Astra’s mouth and nostrils and ears with the dry smell of bird dust and the warbling cries of an orchestra of Owleons.
Whooot-whooot. Cooloo-loo. Pree-pree-pree
.

Light flooded the room, all the rooms, all the screens, until she was swimming in a sea of pale, translucent, watermelon red.
Kra kra kra. Kra kra kra
. Her ears were whorled echo chambers, a wild carousel of sound. The
whomph whomph
of wingbeats disturbed the air and there was a scuffle of claws on cement.
Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Phweeeee. Phweeeeee. Trrrru trrrru
. Birds: an eternal soft cacophony of birds, and, through her nostrils, a trickle of fresh air infiltrating her brain.

* * *

She opened her eyes. She was propped up in bed on what appeared to be a balcony. The mattress was raised behind her back and she was looking out over a wrought-iron railing into a large round courtyard tangled with cedars, cypresses, orchids and birds. She couldn’t see the ground, but between the trees she could glimpse a far tier of balconies as the building curved round to meet itself. She looked up: above her was a white ceiling with a patch of bubbled paint and a creeping black blossom of damp. Her head felt – not cold, but somehow exposed; there was a slight tension at the base of her skull and between her legs was a faint burning sensation she dimly remembered having experienced before. The courtyard was a deep green well. She had no idea how high up she was, how tall were the trees – she could have been one hundred storeys up a hollow tower, or floating in the sky. Her body felt as far away as the invisible sun. She looked down at it, its distant form moulded by the damp, wrinkled sheet. Her breasts were blanked out, bandaged tight by the sallow yellow cotton; her arms lay like two dead branches. Experimentally, she splayed out her fingers. They obeyed the commands of her mind and she lifted them to her head. Her scalp had been shaved. The short hairs were soft, like a pelt. She reached to the back of her head and gently investigated the tense spot at the base of her cranium. A round cloth sticker sprouting a rubber nib was plastered at the top of her neck. She tried to peel it off, but her finger nudged the nib and she experienced a jabbing pain deep inside her head, as if she were threatening to rip a taproot out of her own brain. She smoothed the plaster back down and returned her hands to her lap, palms up, the tips of her fingers gently interlaced. It
occurred to her to also probe the dull pain between her buttocks, but lifting the sheets felt like too much effort, so on second thoughts, she left her hands at rest.