Astra (20 page)

But Kali’s story was one of the most important stories there was; that was why they were hearing it again tonight. And, even though Nimma wasn’t a real Teller, she was Elpis’ Birth-Code-Shelter daughter so her place tonight was on the Teller’s Trunk.

We are. We are. We are
. Around her, the Security Generation shouted and bounced, waggling their hands in the air. Astra shifted uncomfortably. Even with the Fountain, it was a hot night. The Sec Gen section was three or four deep in places and she was squashed between Hokma’s hipbelt and a squirmy seven-year-old called Sprig. Behind her another seven-year-old, Tulsi, was sitting in her Shelter father’s lap and butting her feet into Astra’s back – kicking, actually. She reached behind and firmly pushed Tulsi’s sandals away.

‘
Waaaah
,’ Tulsi protested. She and Sprig had only just had their Security shots, so they weren’t placid yet.

‘Shhh.’ Her father bundled the girl closer to him.

Hokma turned her head and frowned. ‘Astra,’ she warned.

‘Sor-ree.’ Astra stuck the tip of her dreadlock in her mouth and sucked. Nimma hated her doing that, but Nimma wasn’t looking.

‘Don’t do that either.’ Hokma reached up and tugged the dread back into place behind Astra’s ear.
Frigging Gaia
. Hokma was pushing it tonight. Astra scowled but kept quiet. She was already getting away with selfish behaviour, she knew, plonking herself down near the cool Fountain mist when the older Sec Gens should be sitting behind the little ones. She was on the edge of the group, though, like always, and for once Hokma hadn’t argued with her. She probably thought Astra wanted a good view of Nimma. Up beside Klor, Peat and Yoki were also close to the front, while Meem was in the back row between her Birth-Code mother’s legs – even though you weren’t supposed to stand up during a Telling, Astra knew Honey would let Meem do so if she wanted a better look. Honey spoiled Meem, Nimma said, and for once Astra agreed with her.

Me. I am. Hear hear. Hear Her
. From around the Circle adults and non-Sec Gen Or-kids chipped in with shouts and cheers. People’s faces swam like glinting fish in the supernatural Fountain light. Behind them, the pine trees bristled up into the night like a forest palisade.

‘Good. Very good. Now, remember … Oh … Wait a minute.’ Klor pulled a perplexed face and scratched his head. ‘What must we all remember?’ Nimma, looking watery in a silver faux-grass hipskirt and a mother-of-pearl necklace, put her hand to her ear and looked expectantly round the Circle.

Astra winced. Her Shelter mother was tonight’s
frigging Teller
. Why did she have to act like an overdressed kindergarten teacher? She’d be wagging her finger and telling people off next. And sure enough, when her gaze settled on Torrent and Stream – the two older teens every Or-parent had been talking about for weeks – Nimma lifted a warning eyebrow. Astra pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. As the eldest Shelter daughter of this control-freak Teller she suddenly felt horribly exposed.

Stream’s slender brown arms were entwined around Torrent’s pale torso. Seeing Nimma’s disapproval, the girl straightened up and as if asserting her independence, she shook her glossy chestnut mane; at the same time she tucked her right hand firmly behind Torrent’s knee. She was all over him like an army of red ants these days. Astra didn’t know why he put up with it. It must be awfully hot – and besides, didn’t he care about Congruence any more? His ex-Gaia play pal was sitting with her friends just a few metres away, staring quietly into the Fountain opposite the Ancestors’ Place.

Watching her now, it was hard to believe that Congruence, as was whispered, had cried
all day
and
all night
after Torrent and Stream made their Gaia bond public, kissing in the back seat of the bus all the way home from school. She had done so in private, behind her Shelter family’s own doors; in public she maintained a fragile silence.

‘She’s too mature for Torrent,’ Astra had heard Nimma tell Luna, one of Congruence’s Shelter mothers. ‘Imagine forming an exclusive bond at his age.’

‘Praise Gaia we won’t have these problems with this lot,’ Luna had sighed, patting Astra’s head. She had meant the Sec Gens, which was worrying. Astra was almost afraid to ask Hokma if
she
might end up like Congruence one day.
Traumatised
, Nimma had said in her most ominous tone.

Astra hugged her knees tighter. Thinking too hard about the older teens and their non-Sec Gen world made her feel queasy inside.

‘
Don’t look at the Kezcams!
’ All around the Circle, a chorus of voices harmonised like a morning chant-hymn before pealing into laughter. Beside Astra, the Sec Gens clapped and wriggled. Astra, as usual, was the only person not positively frothing with delight. Maybe she
should
have sat at the back, where she wouldn’t have to wrench her face into a different expression to match each new line in the story. Because the story was going to be dull, that was guaranteed. Nimma wasn’t a proper Teller, for Gaia’s sake. She’d been fretting about tonight for weeks, spending hours in her room practising, and not listening properly when people asked her questions. You’d think, considering how self-absorbed she’d been, she could have just ignored Astra: but no, she’d been nagging her about absolutely everything until it was all Astra could do not to scream, ‘
Leave me alone
’.

To top it all off, when Astra had complained to Hokma, Hokma had nearly frigging exploded: ‘You can’t afford to lose your temper!’ she’d yelled, so loud she’d practically blown a hole in the roof of Wise House. ‘Do you want Nimma to find out you’re not Sec Gen? You’ve nearly finished Foundation School now, Astra. You have to
grow up
!’

Yeah, well, that was easy for a
grown-up
to say. Grown-ups got to lose their frigging tempers whenever they frigging well wanted to. And besides, Astra didn’t frigging
want
to grow up, thank you very much. Not if it meant behaving like Nimma, with her pettifogging rules, or Hokma with her grunts and silences and complete lack of interest in the world beyond Wise House. The problem with her Shared Shelter mothers, she had realised lately, was that apart from the Owleons and language lessons, Hokma didn’t care a dried fig about Astra’s life, and Nimma cared way too much.

‘The Circle is ready to roll!’ Klor hollered over to Ahn. Astra glowered over the Fountain to the real reason she’d bagged a place in the front. Sitting alone on a bench behind Stream and Torrent, his face hidden by his battered straw trilby, oblivious as always to the micro-dramas playing out at his feet, Ahn tapped at the notebook Tablette resting on his knees. Craning her neck, Astra peered through the fine Fountain spray, straining to catch a glimpse of the Kezcams lined up on the bench.

The Kezcams, three small helium-filled biotech balls with thin shells of black steel and retractable kestrel-Coded wings, were the nicest bit of
IMBOD kit to arrive in Or since bendable Tablette screens – but, extremely unfairly, no one except Ahn was allowed to touch them. Astra was barely allowed to
look
at them. As if to torment her, Ahn walked around Or with the Kezcams bunched in a string bag on his hydrobelt, each hidden in a heavy enamelled case that protected the delicately jointed wings and weighed the sphere down. She had finally spied him practising his operating technique out on the lawn yesterday, but as she’d stood mesmerised, watching the Kezcams dart and hover like hummingbird moths over the gladioli, Nimma had come and chased her away, saying she mustn’t spoil his concentration. And at rehearsal today, Klor had told them all that if a Kezcam hovered in front of them, they were to ignore it. Later Ahn would edit the footage into a film that would be shown weekly at the Boundary Congregation Site on the way to Sippur. Is-Landers and visitors from all over the world would see the film so it was important to give him lots of good shots to choose from. Anyone behaving in a
frivolous manner
– here Klor had directed his eyebrows at Stream and Torrent – would have to run extra Kinbat laps for weeks.

‘Don’t worry, folks, you won’t even notice them.’ Ahn made an adjustment to a Kezcam and set it back down in its case – annoyingly out of sight. ‘Nearly ready now.’

‘Ready, Congruence?’ Klor asked.

‘I am.’ The girl nodded, her dark eyes shining. The Parents’ Committee had given Congruence the role of Asker partly, everyone knew, to make up for the misery Torrent and Stream’s inexplicably exclusive relationship was causing her. But Astra had to agree that she had the dignity required of the role. Congruence was sitting in full lotus, her hands in
chin mudra
on her knees, her long black hair falling straight to her waist, her skin gleaming like polished oak. Her calm, melodic voice betrayed no sense of pride and no hint of bitterness towards the couple she could surely see in her peripheral vision. She was well defended though: to her right, her friend Ariel sat up straighter, on her left Holaa peeled a stray blade of grass from Congruence’s arm and further along a whole squadron of adults was regarding her with pride – not only Luna, Gloria and Arjun, her Shelter parents, but a doting flank of Parents’ Committee members, and Sorrel and Mr Ripenson too.

Astra shrank back a little behind Hokma so Mr Ripenson – or Vishnu, as he’d told her to call him outside school – couldn’t see her if he looked this way again. The teacher had joined the school staff last year when
Mr Banzan left, and had met Sorrel on one of her urbag deliveries. Before anyone even knew they had bonded she was pregnant and soon after that, with the approval of the Parents’ Committee, Mr Ripenson had moved to Or. He’d been on the school bus that fateful day when everything had started going wrong for Congruence, and had played a special role in counselling all the teens, Nimma had said. She and all the other Or adults admired him now. Astra didn’t
dis
like Mr Ripenson –
Vishnu
sounded wrong – he was always friendly to everyone and good at cricket; she just didn’t like having a teacher living in Or, an adult with more chances to observe her behaviour than practically anyone. Hopefully he – and everyone – would keep staring at Congruence tonight.

‘Ahn?’ Klor raised a knuckley forefinger in the air – the signal for filming to begin.

Astra couldn’t help it. Moving her eyes only, she watched Ahn release the three Kezcams from their cases. One by one, they drifted up into the air, unfolding their transparent wings. Brushing his Tablette screen with his fingers, Ahn directed their ascent. They were barely visible as they entered the Fountain light, their wings grey blurs, their shiny surfaces reflecting the changing colours of the spray. The Kezcams soared to a height of three metres, then as Ahn expertly choreographed their movements, one began a slow circle overhead and the others descended into the Fountain pit to take up their starting positions: one facing Nimma, Klor and the Ancestors’ Place and one suspended in front of Congruence.

Swipe. Swoop. Swap
. Controlling the Kezcams, especially three at once, was an art, a dance involving your whole body; Astra could see that. But it wasn’t like flying an Owleon. It wasn’t like knowing that one of Gaia’s fiercest creatures would come arcing back to you through the air at your call and clutch your wrist as if it owned you. Silver should be here, listening to the story, hooting softly to Elpis after all the sad parts.

‘Welcome all, to the first Or Story Night of Summer 82
RE
.’ Klor’s voice tugged Astra back into the Circle. The Kezcam in front of her Shelter father was barely visible in the Fountain glare, but its lens could rotate 360 degrees and Ahn would see if Astra was trying to spot it. She did her very best to stare resolutely past it. ‘Our Teller tonight is Nimma,’ Klor continued. ‘What story shall we ask her to tell?’

‘I want to hear Kali’s story,’ Congruence said, her voice as soft and clear as a bamboo wind chime. ‘I want Nimma, Birth-Code daughter of Elpis, to tell it.’ Beside her, Ariel and Holaa solemnly nodded.

‘Nimma?’ Klor turned to the Teller. ‘Do you hear the Asker?’

All heads turned to Nimma. As Astra stared, not at her Shelter mother but the Ancestors’ Place, just for a moment she found herself touched by the spell of the Asking. This was Kali’s story and Elpis’ story, and telling it would bring Elpis back into the Circle.

‘Thank you, Asker,’ Nimma replied in the time-honoured manner – except that her voice had a hairline crack in it. She paused and swallowed before continuing, her voice fuller now, ‘With Gaia’s help – and another flame in the Fountain – I’ll tell the tale.’

Klor took the remote control from his hydrobelt and pointed it at the Fountain. Tulsi, Sprig and the other younger Sec Gens gasped as a stream of fiery sparks flew up through the mist. The story was starting now and there was nothing Astra could do except listen and hope Nimma wouldn’t make too big a hash of it. She stared into the heart of the lightshow. Tall orange flames were flowing in the spray like the silky sleeves of summer dresses, and the churning surface of the Fountain pool glowed like jagged jewels.

‘This is a story from the Dark Time,’ Nimma began. Her voice was stronger now, and Astra had to admit that it carried well across the Fountain. ‘Many stories from that time have been lost, for even golden eagles may not survive a cyclone, but this one is still with us because its first Teller, Kali, survived that terrible period. It was a painful story for Kali to tell, but because so many people wanted to hear it, she mastered her fear and grief and became a powerful Teller. Kali’s Telling helped create Is-Land: that is how powerful it was. But before she was a Teller, Kali suffered – not as a child, no: she had a very happy childhood because her parents were Gaians and she grew up in a beautiful community called Beltane in the mountains of Yr Widdfa, which, despite a fierce independent spirit, was governed by the kingdom of Yukay. She and the other Gaian visionaries of Beltane lived in yurts and tipis and Earthships. The people in yurts and tipis burned wood for heat, and everyone used wind turbines and photovoltaic cells to power their Tablettes and washing machines. It was cold in Yr Widdfa, so in the winter Kali wore clothes outside, but inside the Earthships and on the hot days of summer she and her family lived sky-clad and free, just like us. But though they were naked, they were not vulnerable. As the Great Collapse accelerated, Beltane constructed an Earthcastle with a moat and ramparts. For Beltane Gaians were Pioneers. They were among the first Gaian communities to
realise that
if we truly want to defend our Mother, we have to defend ourselves
.’