by Naomi Foyle
It was hopeless. She was just running Kinbat laps with an empty hydropac. She sank back on the bed. Klor lay back down but kept the light on. He was looking at her, she could tell.
‘You’ve been so brave, Astra. Just be brave a little longer.’
She stared up at the circle of light dancing on the yurt canopy above their heads. How long would she and Klor be here? Everything could all change again tomorrow. And there was something she hadn’t told anyone yet – would never tell IMBOD, or Nimma – but she had to tell someone.
‘Klor?’
‘Yes, darling.’
‘I had a Gaia vision. That’s why I did it.’
‘Did you now? What kind of a vision?’
So she told him about the living roof, and Hokma’s poppies, and the orchids. Klor listened, and thought, and then he said, ‘Maybe the vision was right, maybe Gaia does want you to stand apart.’
Stand apart. Behind his bed, the aluminium joints and segments of his intelligent leg were quietly reflecting the lamplight. The mechatronic limb could have been made of knotted gold.
‘Gaia told you to stand up,’ she said. ‘That’s what you told all the visitors.’
‘She did, many times, until I finally listened. But standing apart, even on your own two feet, is much harder.’
‘Why did She choose me?’ Her voice broke, and she gulped back the salty self-pity.
‘Because She admires you, Astra, just like I do. But I know She doesn’t want you to sacrifice yourself on Hokma’s pyre. Listen to the rain. Isn’t it saying be gentle with yourself?’
She didn’t know what the rain was saying. There were thousands of drops falling on the tent, each one cancelling the next one out. Stop stop stop, they were saying. Stop thinking, stop talking. She’d thought she understood Gaia visions, but maybe Nimma was right: maybe they were just a way of telling yourself what you wanted to hear.
‘All they want you to do is express loyalty to Or, darling,’ Klor urged, ‘so as not to confuse the Sec Gens. You can still feel loyal to Hokma in your heart. Then you can come back and visit here after college, even live nearby, if you like. And maybe Hokma will serve her time and come out. There are sure to be appeals.’
The wind rose outside, and a branch crashed to the ground. Traitors were never let out.
* * *
She was going to do it: she would save herself and help destroy Hokma. Then she wasn’t going to do it. Then she was. And though in the end she didn’t have to, in her heart – in the wet, raw wound gouged out by the whittled tip of the pain Hokma had persuaded her to risk – she understood that if the game hadn’t changed the way it had, she would eventually have said the words IMBOD wanted to hear.
And so the fact she hadn’t was no comfort at all.
It was their fifteenth session. That morning the counsellor had Tablette-texted Nimma and Klor, asking them to join the meeting. Klor came in with Astra to find Nimma already there, sitting next to Dr Greenleafdott in one of four chairs arranged in a circle. Astra sat beside Nimma just so that she didn’t have to look at her. Nimma would expect to see progress, and even though she did often wish she was Sec Gen now, she didn’t want to say that in front of Nimma yet. Probably, she thought, the counsellor has some trick in mind, to use my Shelter mother’s presence to get me to say how much I miss the Earthship, how much I want to come home.
‘This is not my usual way of working,’ Dr Greenleafdott began. ‘Normally I wouldn’t bring parents into a session without my client’s permission. But I’m afraid to say that this is not a session. IMBOD has asked me to break some sad news to you all. Astra, Dr Grunerdeson, Ms Shipdott, I regret to inform you that, tragically, Dr Hokma Blesser died in her cell last night. She appears to have had a stroke. That was always a possibility for her, ever since the head injury that cost her her eye.’
* * *
‘Ohh,’ Nimma gasped.
‘Astra, darling, I’m so sorry—’ Klor reached for her hand, but the four chairs were on a merry-go-round, spinning faster and faster, and Astra’s head was bursting and her vision was a blur and the adults’ voices were streaming away in the wind. It wasn’t real here any more – nothing was real; nothing was true …
She got up to walk out, to walk away from this woman and her dizzying lies, but her knees had disappeared and instead she collapsed back against the edge of her seat. Klor was there, his arm supporting her.
Somehow, she found her voice. ‘Where is she? I want to see her,’ she whispered.
‘She’s in Atourne still,’ Dr Greenleafdott said, ‘but I’m afraid she won’t be released to Or. The day before she died, Dr Blesser signed a full confession to treason, so her body is now IMBOD property. The autopsy is being performed today, and when the results have been documented, she will be cremated and her ashes will be used as fertiliser for farm animal feedage, following standard IMBOD procedure for the bodies of traitors.’
Astra was barely listening. She’d been flung from the whirligig onto the hard stony dirt and now she was limping in the wilderness, holding her head. There was a rushing sensation in her ears and her eyes hurt as if the sun were blinding them. Her skin was a crust of ice, her teeth were chattering and she was rocking back and forth, clutching her ribs.
Hokma was dead.
Klor leaned forward. ‘What exactly did she confess to, Doctor? What did she say?’
‘I don’t have a copy of her statement, I’m afraid. But I understand that among other misdeeds, she did confess to abusing Astra and manipulating the trust of her brother and Gaia partner. She begged for everyone’s forgiveness.’
‘Do you hear that, Astra?’ Nimma hissed. ‘She knows she did you a great wrong. Why can’t you see that?’
Her hands were over her face. She couldn’t look at any of them.
‘We’ll take her home,’ Klor said. ‘Doctor, please, may we take her to the Earthship?’
‘Yes, you may. The quarantine and counselling are suspended for two days.’
‘Klor!’ There was a note of panic in Nimma’s voice. ‘What about the other children? Doctor – can we tell them?’
‘Yes, the news is now public. I have called a meeting for the rest of the Or-adults this morning and a press release will go out this afternoon.’
Astra was at the door, with Klor. She turned to him: her only ally.
‘I don’t want to go to the Earthship. I want to go to Wise House.’
3.4
They couldn’t stop her. They told her Wise House was boarded up and the gates were locked and it would be detrimental to her treatment, but she tore herself free from their lame chorus of warnings and stumbled across the Kinbat track and over to West Gate, and in the end, though Nimma fell away, Klor walked behind her until she slowed to let him catch up, pacing in silence as far as the crossroads, where he sat at the top of the steps to the Fountain and waited for her to return.
Her vision was streaked, the world was wobbling and her tears splashed on the roots and leaves like fat drops of rain. Hokma was dead. IMBOD said Hokma was dead. They said she had confessed. But she couldn’t be dead – she couldn’t be guilty. She couldn’t be a traitor. She would be waiting for Astra at Wise House with Helium and Silver and a plate of berry biscuits and a list of chores. She just had to reach the crest of the slope and she would see the open gate ahead and the path leading to the yellow front door, and Hokma would be on the living roof, picking wildflowers for the table. The Owleons would be on their perches and after tea she and Hokma would take them out to the field and fly them. Then they’d clean the aviary and work in the garden and play whist and fill the antique pens with ink and write in Hokma’s homemade notebooks. Hokma’s notebooks. Why couldn’t she have one? IMBOD had taken them all away in big boxes. Why couldn’t she have a small one, with recipes or poems? She wanted something to hold, to keep forever – one of Hokma’s eyepatches; a talon from the coat rack; one of Helium’s feather quills; a snippet of Hokma’s brushcut.
But the gate was
locked and the fingercode had been changed and barbed wire looped along the top of the fence. She couldn’t even see Wise House through the trees. She clung to the wire and pressed her body against the links as though her flesh might squeeze through, like clay through a sieve. Then she remembered: there was a way through.
She ran right along the fence until it met the cedar hedge. The barbed wire above her head turned the corner too, a coiled ridge of sharp metal teeth biting into the foliage. She ran through the lacebarks, tripping over roots, and out into the flying field. A veil of sunlight was falling through the clouds over the wild grass, bronzing the juniper tree and the rocks at the top of the slope. She picked up speed as she passed the gate, not even bothering to try it, and headed for the gap where she had wormed through on her belly after Lil.
She missed it on the way up, but when she realised she’d overshot she retraced her steps, crouching and patting the ground, and she found it. The lower branches had grown down to the earth, but beneath them the soil was still scooped out and she recognised the place: her rough passageway into disaster, betrayal and exile. IMBOD had missed it.
A reintroduced fox could slip through, and maybe a small child, but she was far too big now. She needed secateurs. She would have to come back – or, wait – the earth was soft from the rains; could she dig out the hole? She hunted in the field for a sharp stone the right shape and heft and when she’d found one she knelt and began to scrape at the soil, which came up easily in great lumpy handfuls she flung behind her like a dog digging for a bone. For a minute or two it felt as though she could dig down to Gaia’s molten core, but then she hit a rocky layer and as she pushed her head into the hedge to gain leverage, she saw that the trunks were closer together than she’d remembered. She’d never get her shoulders and hips past them.
No. She would. She would dig deeper, that was all, until she could squeeze through on her side. She redoubled her efforts with the stone, scrabbling at rocks, picking away worms and a large green beetle, until her fingernails were torn and a mealy grit coated her lips.
But there was a massive rock at the base of the hole and she couldn’t find its edges. She slammed her stone against it and the stone broke in two and she dropped her head, sobbing in frustration.
That was when it fell, chinking against the rock, from the depths of the hedge, into the hole in front of her: a jar. She recognised the lid: it was Hokma’s berry jar – but the berries were gone, replaced by a thick roll of hemp paper. She seized the jar and brought it out into the light. Through the glass, in Hokma’s handwriting, in peacock-blue ink, was her name: ASTRA.
She took the jar to the rocks, the glass feeling smooth and calm in the palm of her hand. She sat with her back against the largest rock, facing the hedge, so she could see if Klor came looking for her. She opened the jar, pulled out the roll of paper and unfurled it. The paper was covered in small, spidery handwriting – carefully printed, not joined up or rushed – and it was wrapped round a downy white feather.
Dear Astra,
Helium has not returned from his Atourne flight and I fear his absence will lead to mine. If you are reading this, then I expect you are facing a crisis, one you may think I should have prepared you for. I am sorry for your pain and confusion, but I decided it was better you had nothing to hide except the Serum Shot decision. Astra, I am not afraid of IMBOD. They will never believe that Samrod helped us, so you should tell them that I gave you the antidote, no matter what the consequences may be for me.
I want to tell you that I love you. Though I am not a natural mother, caring for you has been the greatest joy of my life. I know people will think I have deprived you of belonging to the next stage in human evolution; perhaps you yourself will come to hate me for your impossible choice when you were only 7. I take full responsibility, for you were too young and I knew that. But I was compelled to act out of love for you and respect for your Birth-Code parents. I planned to tell you your parents’ full story when you were 20, but I will have to do so here, and trust that Gaia will lead you to this letter. If She does not, then She does not want you to know.
You are like Lil, in more ways than one. Your father, Zizi Kataru, is a Non-Lander. Eya swore me to secrecy; even Nimma and Klor do not know. Zizi was an aglab from the Southern Belt who stayed in Is-Land when the Boundary was closed. Gaian dissidents helped him get forged Is-Land identity documents, those of a petty criminal who hadn’t been allowed to do IMBOD Service, and he worked in a restaurant as a cleaner and later a prep chef. Those same dissidents sent Cora and Eya to me, because I share their vision of what Is-Land should be: not a walled-in land filled with child soldiers and wounded veterans but part of a borderless world, sharing Gaia’s beauty and abundance. I do not believe Non-Landers are our enemies, or that it would be impossible for us to live together. Some of their customs are different, but there is room for all of us. Many Non-Landers, including your Code father, share this vision of peaceful co-existence. Gaia knows, it is a difficult hope to sustain, but if we abandon it we abandon our humanity too.
Zizi was not an ‘infiltrator’ but a man who wanted to live in the land of his grandparents, even though this cut him off from his family. His name, Kataru, means ‘alliance’ in his language, and from a young age he felt he was destined to form a strong bond with Gaian people. He adapted to our ways and wanted to marry Eya, but this was impossible. When she returned from Or after your birth, he had disappeared; he had been arrested and expelled to the Southern Belt, where he still lives. Lil is there too, reunited with her father’s family. She used a tunnel under the Eastern Boundary and people living in the Barren Mountains helped her get to the Belt. I told Zizi about her and I understand that they now see each other often.
Zizi will always welcome you, Astra. Tragically though, I must tell you that your Birth-Code mother is no longer alive; Eya died 15 years ago after the difficult birth of your half-Birth-Code sister, Halja. Halja lives in Bracelet Valley still, but I don’t advise you to try and find her. Her community’s rules are very different from ours, and her father and grandfather would be furious if they knew about you.
I know this must all come as a terrible shock, but a shock can be transformative; it can expose painful truths our everyday lives disguise. You know I lost my eye trying to protect Samrod’s Gaia partner. The time has come for me to tell you exactly what happened. The boy who shot me was 15. Our troops interrogated him for information. IMBOD thought I would like to see his body when they were done with him. He was slender, just a whelp. His hair was thickly curled, like Drake’s and Brook’s. His eyes were swollen and purple, like baby aubergines left to rot in the sun. His fingers were broken like kindling snapped for the fire. His skin was polka-dotted with burn marks, and his Gaia plough was charred black. I was never told his name. I was supposed to be glad he had suffered, but that night I wept for him. I vowed never to wear a prosthetic eye. My wound would speak – silently, just to me – of his gaping pain. He had taken my sight, but he had also given me a vision: I would never see Is-Land in the same light again.
IMBOD will tell you this kind of treatment is necessary to prevent greater atrocities against us and against Gaia. That is not true. The Non-Landers are not a cruel people. The original returnees were unarmed. Their violence has only ever been a weak echo of ours. I intended to tell you our true history after your IMBOD Service, when you had seen the conditions in the Belt for yourself: the acres of faded tents and open sewers; the toxic mines that supply the rare earths for our Tablettes; the queues of Non-Lander women and their scrawny, often deformed babies, waiting patiently for parcels of dried food from CONC medics. You would have seen the IMBOD snipers patrolling the Boundary, aiming at old men with the scent of mint on their fingers and children playing football with tin cans for goal posts. You would have seen those same old men and children lying lifeless on the dirt roads of the Belt.
I ran the risk that you would have believed IMBOD’s lies about the reasons for these horrors, but I gambled that t
hese lies would be so simplistic, crudely tailored for gullible Sec Gen minds, that you would have begun secretly to doubt them. If not, if you had become a good Is-Land soldier – for make no mistake, it is a war we are waging in the Belt – I would have accepted that I deserved to lose you, precious child, for the crime of forcing you to grow up far too soon.
If you are reading this, then we have been separated by forces stronger than us both. I am sorry if you have lost Silver too; here is the chick feather I meant to give you on your 18th birthday. But no gift can express my love for you. Every day watching you grow has been a privilege I thank Gaia for, and memories of you will sustain me as I await the greatest challenge of my life. My trial will be an opportunity to speak openly about my vision for Is-Land and my disagreements with the dark direction IMBOD and the National Wheel Meet have been taking us since you were born.
You must not worry about me, or try to protect me. But I must warn you: do not trust Samrod or Ahn. I know there is no love lost between you and them, but they may try and win you over in order to hurt me, or to neutralise any threat they believe you pose to them. Whatever they do or say, believe me, they do not have your best interests at heart. Samrod took a huge risk for us and I never expected him to sacrifice himself for me, but over the years he has ingratiated himself with IMBOD to an extent I could never have believed possible. To be frank, I simply don’t recognise him now. He’s not the person I grew up with any more and I cannot predict his actions.
Ahn is a different matter. I am afraid you were right: he has always resented you. When we were young he wanted to have a child with me, but I refused; I had no interest in pregnancy or babies. But then Eya arrived and left you – a child of two lands and no home. Ahn could never understand why I chose to Shelter you; he was hurt and jealous and I can’t blame him for being angry with me. I tried to give you both the best of my attention over the years, but things were never the same between us and we started to argue more, sometimes bitterly. Still, we gave each other pleasure, and when you get older you’ll understand that no matter how things change, it’s very hard to leave someone you’ve bonded with. When he discovered that I had been lying to him about you he was furious with me. He thought I should tell Nimma and Klor, and he was also afraid that he would be punished for keeping our secret. Though I told him how dangerous exposure would be for both you and me, I was terribly afraid he would do it anyway. Then a kind of awful miracle occurred: Astra, I learned that he had committed a serious crime, and in exchange for his silence I protected him.