Astra (11 page)

* * *

The sun was climbing over the mountains now. Nimma would be getting up soon, and if she didn’t find Astra in her bed, there could be house punishments in store. She pulled herself away from the window and entered the back corridor to the stapcro lab. One wall of the corridor was glass, a window onto the hillside behind Code House, letting you see the plants and crevices and bird nests in the rock. The other was an ordinary wall full of lab and office doors. Klor’s office was at the far end; the only room past his was Ahn’s chamber. Ahn’s door was closed. Klor’s was open.

Astra stood on the threshold, her heart pumping in her ribcage. Klor was sitting at his screendesk in the centre of the room. He was facing the window, overlooking the crops, so all she could see of him behind his old office chair were his knobbly elbows, his big ears and the strands of long grey hair that wound like tendrils over his broad skull. Swiping and tapping away, he made no sign that he had heard her. She could still sneak away. But her hand raised itself in the air and she knocked on the door frame.

‘Astra. What are you doing up so early, fledgling?’ He swung round on his chair, his tufty eyebrows lifting when he saw her, furrowing his brow. Klor had hair sprouting everywhere except the top of his head: his shoulders and chest and bum were all furry and he even had hair growing out of his nose and ears, though Nimma always tried to get him to trim those bits. ‘Let a man keep the little hair he has left on his head, woman,’ he’d demand as Meem squealed, ‘Cut it, Klor, cut it!’ But not Astra. She liked Klor’s grey mossy straggles. They made him look like an old man of the
forest, she’d told him once, and he’d laughed and said Astra was his warrior princess from an Old World fairy tale.

Now she hovered at the threshold.

‘Must be excitement. Security Serum Day today, isn’t it?’

She nodded. That was true, wasn’t it?

‘You’re not usually so quiet. Are you sure you’re not sleepwalking?’

She smiled. ‘No.’

‘Come here, chickpea.’ Klor patted the bench beside him where his assistants and trainees sometimes sat in the daytime, watching him work and discussing their ideas. ‘Tell me what’s on your mind. Dawn thoughts: best thoughts, that’s what my grandfather used to say.’

Astra sidled over and sat down on the bench. One day she’d work up the nerve to ask if she could sit in Klor’s chair – just for a minute. Klor always said he’d had all his best ideas in this chair and even though it was falling apart he refused to recycle it. Yellow foam was crumbling through the armrests but he just kept mending them with black gaffer tape. Nimma had reupholstered the cushions twice, and he’d replaced the rollerwheels three times. The Or-adults sometimes joked about it, but no Or-kids would ever make fun of Klor’s chair. It was his throne.

The bench was the next best place to sit, though. In front of her, the angled screendesk was crowded with strings of letters: A, G, C and T, over and over again in different patterns. Klor must have been assessing data when she arrived, making sure his grains would improve people’s health, not cause diseases like some other countries’ Code crops did. The letters A, G, C and T didn’t make any words in Gaian, but they spelled a few in Inglish, and also in Klor’s mother tongue. TAG meant ‘label’ and ‘day’ and a children’s game. ACT meant to do something, or to pretend you were doing something, like she was doing today. TAC was part of another game, TA meant ‘thank you’ and CAT was another word for Tabby. Sometimes she liked to sit beside Klor and count how many CATs she could find in his Code, but right now when she looked the first word she saw was ACT.

Was it another Gaia sign? She toyed with the edge of the screendesk. The blue nail varnish Meem had painted her nails with last week was starting to chip.

In the Quiet Room or the Earthship Klor would sometimes tuck his Gaia plough between his legs and say you could sit on his lap. Or if you were crying, he’d put his big knuckley hand on your shoulder and draw
you to him. Leaning against his bony ribs and rangy thigh, close to his marvellous, shiny, intelligent leg, you felt safer and stronger. And when your sniffles had faded he’d ask, ‘Are you better now, ping-pong?’ And you always nodded, because you were. And he’d say, ‘Well then, run and play, while you’re still an Or-child.’ Today he just rested his hand lightly on the base of her neck and asked, ‘What’s the matter, Astra?’ Then he waited, as he always did, for her to speak.

‘Nothing’s the matter,’ Astra said.

‘Ah.’

She paused. ‘I want to be a famous scientist when I grow up, like you.’

Klor’s nut-brown face creased into his toothy smile. ‘I’m sure you’ll be far more famous than I am, Astra. You just have to keep working hard.’

She had to be careful. She couldn’t let Klor know what Hokma had told her. ‘But if I have my Security shot, maybe I’ll be an IMBOD officer instead,’ she ventured. ‘The teachers said it will make us all super-strong.’

‘It will, that’s true. It will make you a good team player too.’

‘But what if I don’t want to be a team player?’ she persisted. ‘What if I want to be a genius like you and Hokma and Ahn?’

Klor wasn’t smiling now. His bright blue eyes were looking at her intently. ‘Astra, I’m not a genius, and neither is Hokma. Or Ahn. We’ve just been very lucky to develop our talents in a supportive environment. The shot will help ensure that everyone in Is-Land lives in such an environment. It will make you feel calmer and happier, and help you use language in a clear, orderly fashion. You and your generation will be able to communicate with each other in a way the rest of humanity can only dream of. Oh my dewy meadow, there won’t be any need for geniuses when so many fine minds are working as one.’

Astra leaned her head against Klor’s flank and inhaled his clean smell of warm stone. She had to weigh up Klor’s evidence now, she knew, and compare it with Hokma’s findings. Klor was saying she could still be a scientist if she had her shot. But he was also saying she wouldn’t be a genius. And why was he saying that
he
wasn’t a genius when everyone knew that he was? Nimma was always complaining that Klor didn’t take enough credit for his discoveries. He let the team win the medals, and last year he’d even told IMBOD to give a prize to his assistant, not him. At the ceremony, he’d said that she’d done most of the headwork on the project and he’d just done the legwork – well, fifty per cent of it, at least
– and everyone had laughed except Nimma, who had pursed her lips. Klor
was
a genius, he was just too modest to say so.

Klor squeezed her shoulder. ‘Does that answer your question, little one?’

Her elbow was on the armrest of his chair and between the screendesk and his furry chest she could see his lap. Between his legs his soft Gaia plough was drooping on its wrinkly seed bag. Sheba’s Code had come from there – well, half of it, and the other half from Nimma’s egg, which was hidden in a nest deep inside her Gaia garden. You weren’t allowed to touch adults’ Gaia ploughs or Gaia gardens. They were like expensive microscopes or Owleons: important, delicate things that only other adults could play with.

Her eyes strayed over Klor’s black stump-sling and mechatronic leg. She wasn’t allowed to touch the leg either, because he always said little fingers could get caught in the complicated joints. And of course she’d never touched his stump, but once at home, when he was lying on the sofa with the prosthesis recharging in the corner, she had seen it. The stump was bumpy and scarred. Even though Klor never complained she knew that it hurt sometimes still. On those days his face looked strained and he didn’t always answer you right away. Other times the straps on the sling made his skin chafe and Nimma had to put lotion on his thigh. Klor also had to go to the doctor in New Bangor once a year to have his gait and circulation checked and his prosthesis adjusted. It wasn’t right, Astra thought, that he spent his life making other people healthy but no one could fix him.

‘If I have my shot,’ she slowly asked, ‘will I be able to discover how to make your leg regrow?’

Klor patted her fingers. ‘Oh my sun-drenched garden, that’s a kind thought, fledgling. But mammalian limb regeneration simply isn’t possible. Even lizards do it very badly.’ Laughing, he tweaked her nose. ‘My word, you
would
have to be a genius to learn how to regrow my leg.’

He tickled her tummy and she laughed too. Everything was as clear as rainwater now: she was going to be a genius and make a world breakthrough in limb regeneration. When she won a medal she would give it to Klor, because he was her inspiration. Then she might tell him she’d never had her Security shot, or she might keep it secret forever.

‘Happy?’ he grinned. ‘Good. Now, where’s Tabby? Hokma said you’d broken him again.’

Astra opened her mouth to explain it was the Non-Lander girl who’d broken Tabby but changed her mind. She had better start acting now. It would be good practise for later.

‘I didn’t mean to. I was climbing a tree and he fell out of his pocket.’ She should have said ‘my hand’ but ‘his pocket’ was better – she shouldn’t have been climbing with Tabby in her hand anyway. She retrieved him from her hydropac and without meeting Klor’s eyes, handed him over.

‘I don’t know why they call these things childproof.’ Klor chucked her cheek. ‘They ought to give you a job testing them. That would bring in a little funding for Or, wouldn’t it?’

He had believed her. Astra bounced on her seat. ‘Really?’

‘If I see the position advertised, you’ll be the first to know. Now where is my Tabby-fixing kit?’

Acting was going to be
easy
. Astra raced to the window and rummaged in Klor’s IT drawer for his set of tiny Tablette tools. Outside, the sky had brightened to a pale powder-blue and the green shoots poking through the roof turf were glinting like dagger tips. In the valley, people had started work in the gardens and orchards, and the kitchen team were heading to Core House to start making breakfast. Or was awakening, just like any other day. All she had to do was help Klor fix Tabby, show Nimma she was dressed properly for school, go to Core House for special Security Shot Day waffles and syrup, then meet Hokma at West Gate with Meem, Yoki, Peat and the others. Hokma would give them special goody bags to celebrate Security Shot Day, with carob bars to eat after the needle. When she got to school, before class started, she had to drink the bottle of orange juice Hokma was going to give her, all in one go. That was very important.
Don’t sip it
, Hokma had said.
It won’t taste very nice, but you have to drink it down all in one go. Promise?

What would happen next would be disgusting and horrible and make Tedis Sonnenson laugh at her for the whole of the term. But it would also turn her into a famous genius one day.

Clasping the toolkit to her chest, Astra ran back to Klor with a hop, skip and a Neolympic-length jump.

As the rest of the school filed into the gym, Astra tried to memorise every detail of the IMBOD medical officers’ appearance. They were the most impressive officers she had ever seen and she also had to do something to distract her from the strange feeling that had been bubbling in her tummy ever since she’d drunk the orange juice on the bus. It had tasted disgusting but she’d managed not to pull a face as she drank it,
all in one go
. Now she just needed to get through Assembly without drawing any attention to herself. She wished Tabby was here to give her moral support, but after their joint examination of his wounds Klor had said fixing him would take a little time so she was on her own. At least no one was allowed to take photos in Assembly, so she didn’t have to sit there like a mushroom while everyone else thrust their Tablettes in the air to snap the officers in a massive competition she would have wanted to win.

The officers were both Corporals, but one had two stripes. The lower-ranking Officer was small, round and blonde. The First Officer was tall and muscular and her skin was as dark as one of Nimma’s ebony spoons. Both were wearing black peaked caps trimmed with silver, black army boots and hydrobelts, black thigh-knife straps and IMBOD armbands displaying their silver stripes. In front of them, Astra felt proud of her own wardrobe. She had won her morning battle with Nimma and the skirt had stayed in the drawer. Instead she was adorned with her green and white Or-kid armband, the one she usually wore for Sportsdays. Today was like a Sportsday prize-giving ceremony, in fact, because behind the officers the stage was draped with a huge IMBOD flag. The Is-Land Shield on a white background was exactly the
same as the national flag, except curving beneath the Shield were the bold black words Is-Land Ministry of Boundary Defence. Astra didn’t need to memorise the Shield, of course; she could draw it in her sleep: a sea-green downward-pointing triangle halved by a vertical crimson line and surrounded by a radiant golden circle. But the flag still commanded her attention: it was enormous and shiny, made of sateen and handstitched in the kind of plush, richly-coloured threads Nimma never let young sewers use.

At last, when the gym was full, the teachers had finished shushing from the sidelines and the children were all quiet, the Head, Mr Watersson, got up from his chair on the stage and stood at the lectern. ‘Happy Security Shot Day, Golden Bough School,’ he greeted them. ‘Please rise and welcome our guests with your best rendition of the National Anthem.’

The officers stood up, and Astra scrambled to her feet with the rest of the children. She loved the National Anthem – though she would have to concentrate, to make sure she remembered the new version. ‘
O Shield
,’ she recited, gazing devotedly at the flag and wishing Tabby was there to hear the stirring words.