Astra (40 page)

Lil stood up. ‘No, Dr Blesserson didn’t. You made him pretend that he did. That’s why he doesn’t like you. I can prove it.’

Lil walked to the foyer door and left the room. They could hear her enter the lab.

‘What exactly is going on here, Hokma?’ Ahn’s dry voice had hardened now.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied.

Astra wiped her eyes. ‘I did
so
have my shot,’ she repeated, bitterly.

Lil returned, gripping a long thin object, dusted with ice. She thrust it in front of Ahn.

‘This is Astra’s shot. It’s been in the freezer. My
hypothesis
is that Hokma was keeping it in case Astra ever got tested.’

‘Thank you, Lil. Please sit down.’ Ahn took the needle and examined it carefully. Lil walked around the table and sat back down, this time in the middle of her cushion.

‘Hokma,’ Ahn said. ‘This is a Security Serum shot. It is dated 77
RE
. That was the first year of GeneIsis. Why do you have it in your freezer?’

‘Samrod gave it to me,’ Hokma replied.

‘Why?’ Ahn rotated the needle slowly in his hands, scrutinising it again from every angle. It was still in its original sealed bioplastic sleeve, which was shedding ice crystals onto his thighs.

‘Because I was interested in the Serum.’

‘All the Serum research is available online to a scientist of your standing. And you haven’t even opened this hypodermic.’

‘I thought I might be able to develop something for the Owleons based on the Serum principles. But it was low-priority and I forgot about it. That’s the truth, Ahn.’

Ahn put the needle down on the table, stood up and walked to Hokma’s desk. His back to the sofas, he picked up one of her pens, tapped it twice on the desktop and put it back in its mug. Then he turned and leaning on the edge of the desk, said as if to no one in particular, ‘Owleons don’t have emotional thresholds or intellectual capacities worth moulding, do they? Help me out, Hokma. Tell me something I can believe, why don’t you?’

Astra was shivering and a salty trail of snot was running down her upper lip.

Beside her, Hokma swallowed. ‘I didn’t want her to have the shot, Ahn. Her Birth-Code mother wouldn’t have wanted it. And she’s got too good a mind to dull.’

The words hung in the air like a flag on a windless day. ‘And Samrod?’ Ahn asked.

‘He didn’t want to, but he helped me. You know he owed me a favour.’

Ahn placed his fingertips on his temples now, and closed his eyes.

‘Who are her other Shelter parents? Nimma and Klor?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do
they
know?’

‘No. No one knows.’

He wiped his cheeks with his hands now, and opened his eyes. ‘And this other child. Yoki? Is he another of your projects?’

‘She’s not a project. And Yoki had the shot. He was just hyper-sensitive to begin with.’

Hokma was speaking reasonably, but Ahn wasn’t even
trying
to understand. ‘So Astra is the only one you’ve
interfered
with,’ he sneered. He was gripping the edge of the desk now so his rangy body looked bigger,
blocking the window behind him. Astra longed to run from the room, far from Wise House, but she was glued to the sofa, riveted to the fight the adults were having about her.

‘I didn’t
interfere
with her, Ahn – quite the opposite.’ He’d got to Hokma now; her voice was tense and hostile too. ‘She’s exactly the same as the older children; as
you and me
.’

Hokma’s voice broke then, and she stood and took a step forward, her arms out, but Ahn was looking at her as if she’d committed the worst crime in Is-Land. ‘Is this why Samrod relieved you of your post?’ he snapped. ‘It is, isn’t it?’

‘Ahn, no!’ Now Hokma did nearly shout. ‘I missed a few meetings. It was time to move on anyway. You know I only had the post for so long because no one else wanted to stand for it!’

But Ahn wasn’t listening at all now. He had closed his eyes again and was pressing his fist into his forehead. ‘What have you done, Hokma? What in Gaia’s holy name have you done?’

Hokma turned to Astra. ‘Girls – go to bed. Astra, sleep in my loft. I’m going outside with Ahn for a minute.’

‘Isn’t
she
in trouble?’ Astra hissed. ‘She
told
!’

‘We’ll talk about it in the morning. Now do as I say.’

Lil was already climbing the ladder to Astra’s bedloft. Astra watched her ascend, her steps almost jaunty as if she were performing a dance exercise. From the desk, Ahn was watching her too. His grey eyes were sharp as quartz now, as if Lil were a member of some volatile species who might suddenly grow wings and fly through the ceiling.

‘
Now
, Astra,’ Hokma ordered.

Astra stood up. She climbed Hokma’s ladder and got under the covers. There was a cup of cold herbal tea by the futon and the loft smelled of cinnamon, and Hokma’s skin. She curled up on the edge of the bed closest to the wall, her back to Lil’s loft. Beneath her, the door to the foyer swished open and closed, and then the front door to Wise House clunked shut.

‘ “That’s the
truth
, Ahn?” ’ Ahn’s explosion was muffled by the straw-bale walls. ‘How frigging long have you been frigging
lying
to me, Hokma?’

The two adults moved away, down the path to the front gate, and though she could hear them shouting at each other for a while she couldn’t make out what they were saying. Eventually she couldn’t hear anything
except Lil’s breathing, a gentle rasping wheeze far away on the other side of the room.

* * *

In the morning, apart from Hokma’s breakfast commands, no one spoke for a long time. Astra made berry and almond porridge and Lil laid the table. After they’d eaten and washed the dishes, Hokma took Astra and Lil outside to the verandah to talk. They sat in a semicircle on the three wicker chairs.

‘Astra,’ Hokma began, ‘don’t worry. Ahn isn’t going to tell anyone. I’ve told him how dangerous that would be for me, and he won’t do it.’

‘Did he promise?’

‘He doesn’t have to promise, Astra. As long as we’re Gaia-bonded, he won’t do it. A bond of our duration is worth protecting. So he won’t tell, okay?’

Hokma’s bond with Ahn hadn’t seemed very strong to Astra last night. Right now though, she had a more pressing anxiety. ‘But what about
Lil?
She could tell
everyone
!’

‘I don’t think Lil will. For two reasons. Lil, let me know if I’m right. First, I think you didn’t know quite how much trouble Astra and I could get into if other people knew she didn’t have her shot. Did you?’

Lil was looking out over the lawn as if she were bored.

‘She
did
know,’ Astra burst in. ‘I
told
her!’ Now she’d blown her cover story, but it didn’t matter. Hokma didn’t seem to care any more about who was lying last night.

‘All right, Astra,’ Hokma quietened her. ‘Lil?’

Lil scowled. ‘Astra said you could get taken away,’ she muttered at last. ‘But I didn’t think Ahn would tell anyone. Not if you’re Gaia-bonded.’

‘You took a big risk there, Lil. Ahn and I have a long relationship, but he has a career to think about and if anyone finds out he’s covering up for me, he could get into a lot of trouble too.’

‘Then he’ll keep it secret, won’t he?’ Lil scowled and folded her arms.

‘Yes, he will – and so will you, won’t you, Lil? Because you don’t want Astra and me to get taken away, do you? I don’t think so. I think what you wanted was to see Ahn and me Gaia-play.’

Astra sat up. At last, Lil was going to get punished. ‘She tried to make me watch too,’ she informed Hokma. ‘I told her it was illegal!’

‘Thank you, Astra. I’m sure you did. But let’s all remember that Lil hasn’t had Gaia-play education at school, like you’re getting. She doesn’t
have any Shelter siblings and she doesn’t know any boys, or even any girls apart from you. She probably has a lot of perfectly natural questions about Gaia play and she just wanted to see how it worked.’

It was unbelievable. Lil could scratch Hokma’s other eye out and Hokma would say that she just wanted to see how the retina worked.

‘She
knows
how it works! She did it with
me
!’ She was blubbing again. Her vision was blurry, her voice choked. She stood up and marched to the end of the verandah. At the living-room door she turned and shouted, ‘She probably did it with her
dad
too! She’s mentally
ill
and she wants to star in
borno
in New Zonia when she grows up.’ Then she slammed the door, went inside and threw herself on the sofa, crying.

* * *

‘Astra, I’m sorry. All right? I’m sorry.’ Hokma was sitting beside her, awkwardly patting her shoulder as she wailed into a cushion. ‘But why didn’t you tell me what was going on? We could have talked about it, sorted it all out.’

No we couldn’t
. Astra couldn’t explain that if she’d run like a baby to Hokma, telling tales on Lil, even if Hokma didn’t force Lil into counselling, at the very best Lil would never take her to see the ancestors again, and at the worst Lil would be furious and tell
everyone
about her shot, and she and Hokma would be taken away. She couldn’t say anything. She could only keep crying into the wet cushion beneath her cheek.

‘Astra,’ Hokma said wearily, removing her hand, ‘talk to me, please. You’re nearly thirteen. You can’t keep having tantrums like this.’

She
was to blame?
She
was being told off? The injustice triggered a fresh round of sobs. Finally, over the edge of the cushion, she managed to sputter ‘She’s
huh-huh-huh-horrible
. I
hate
her. Look what she
did
. Why isn’t
she
in
trouble
?’

‘Lil’s in big enough trouble already. She grew up in the woods, her dad’s died, and we still don’t know if she has a family.’

‘Her dad was
crazy
.’ Astra wriggled round and scrunched up against the sofa arm, hugging the cushion to her stomach. ‘He taught her hunting and told her weird things. I think he Gaia-played with her, because’ – she didn’t know exactly and faltered – ‘because she wants to play like a boy sometimes,’ she finished lamely.

Hokma regarded her calmly. ‘Lots of girls like to play like boys. That’s normal. We especially asked Lil about her dad, and she said he never Gaia-played with her. It sounds to me that when he got ill and knew he
might be dying, he told her some things she was really too young to hear. Some of them are nasty, I know, but they are mostly true, and you’ll learn about them in high school. In the meantime, we need to be kind to Lil and give her a home and then she’ll learn how to be nice to us too.’

Astra wiped her face. ‘She
won’t
,’ she whispered ferociously. ‘She found the needle. She’ll tell Nimma and Klor.’

Hokma took her by the chin and looked into her face. ‘Astra, listen to me. You don’t need to worry about anything. Lil’s going to say sorry to you, I promise. She was mean to you and you’re right, she should have a punishment. She’ll have to do extra chores so that you can concentrate on your sewing this week. And she definitely can’t go to the Blood & Seed ceremony. How’s that?’

Extra chores and missing a ceremony she hadn’t even asked to go to? It wasn’t a harsh enough punishment – not nearly enough. Lil had Gaia-played with her and then she had betrayed her biggest secret to Ahn. She had hurt Astra. Hurt her
heart
.

Astra shook her head, tears spilling down her face again.

‘Oh, I know.’ Hokma sighed. ‘She was a Gaia playmate, wasn’t she? But that’s what happens sometimes: Gaia playmates aren’t always nice to us all the time. That’s why we don’t Gaia-bond until we’re much older.’

It wasn’t fair
. Now she was being accused of breaking the rules. ‘I
didn’t
Gaia-bond with her. I
didn’t
. It was just Gaia play, that’s all.’

‘I know you thought you were just playing. But maybe you bonded a little, without knowing it. It can sneak up on you, especially if you’re not playing with anyone else. You’ll have other Gaia play pals soon at school. Let’s just try and keep working with her here, okay? You had good times on your walks, didn’t you? She’s taught us lots about foraging and she knows all the Gaia hymns.’

She almost did tell Hokma about the ancestors then, and what Lil had said about Is-Land and Non-Landers. But what was the point? Hokma would just take Lil’s side and Lil would never take her back to see the arrowpain. She kept crying, the tears dripping off the end of her nose as she balled her fists in her eyes, dumbly shaking her head.

‘I know, I know,’ Hokma kept repeating, but
no
, no she
didn’t
. She didn’t know anything at all. At last Hokma pulled Astra into her lap, like she was seven again, and whispered into the top of her hair, ‘Look, I really am sorry, Astra. Maybe I did the wrong thing taking her in. Let’s make a
deal. You give her a week to show you she’s sorry too, and if you’re not friends again by then, I’ll find somewhere else for her to live. How’s that?’

* * *

Hokma brought a damp cloth for Astra to wash her face and Lil came in and said she was sorry. She brought a bunch of wildflowers for Astra and said she hadn’t known how important it was to keep the secret, but she did now. She said she would do all the cleaning this week, so Astra could sew. Then Lil went out to the aviary with a bucket and brushes and Astra got to sit on the verandah with Hokma and rehearse all her lines for the Blood & Seed ceremony, which Hokma remembered word for word from her own ceremony all those years ago. At lunch Astra and Lil said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and in the afternoon she went back down to Or for the hymn rehearsal.

When Nimma asked her if everything was okay at Wise House she nodded, and said ‘Hokma just needed to tell Lil off, that’s all.’ Then she got in line with Meem and Yoki and said all her lines perfectly, in a high, piercing voice.

Over the next week, most of Astra’s free time was taken up with Blood & Seed sewing and rehearsals. The ceremony was to be held on Arkaday, at the Bioregional Congregation Site north-west of New Bangor. Year Seven students from all the dry forest Foundation schools would be there: three from New Bangor, four from Vanapur and seven from Cedaria. There would be smaller ceremonies in the ash fields and the white desert, which didn’t have many schools, and larger ones in Bracelet Valley and the steppes, where the Congregation Site was massive. The Blood & Seed ceremony lit the five beacons of the Boundary. It was one of the biggest nights of the year. There would be bioregional prizes for the most polished appearance from a school, so all the celebrants needed to practise their choral hymns until they were word-perfect.