Astra (37 page)

‘You’re welcome, Lil,’ Hokma replied. Under the table Lil nudged Astra’s leg with her knee.

‘Thank you, Hokma.’ Astra reached for her glass and took a sip.

She understood now.
It was all an act
. Lil was playing the adults like a game, acting like an infant so that she could get her own way, sit in the best vantage point and observe the room without distraction. She and Lil finished their salads in silence, but it was a purposeful silence now. They were alert to the Steering Committee table, to the way Dr Blesserson was dominating the conversation, using his hand gestures to attract everyone’s
attention, but turning respectfully to Ahn every few minutes to allow him to address the group as well. Congruence was serving their table, and when she came to dish out the main course, Ahn placed his hand on the small of her back and pushed her towards Dr Blesserson, who looked up at her and said something that made her smile. Ahn gave her back a little pat and dropped his arm.

‘Enjoyed that salad?’ Hokma asked.

‘Yes, thanks,’ they replied in unison.

‘Good girls.’

Then Torrent was back, collecting their salad dishes and passing out bowls of tofu and alt-prawn gumbo with brown rice.

‘There’s brandy in the broth,’ he said as Astra took her own bowl and set it down in front of her. ‘Better keep an eye on the girls.’

‘
Thank
you, Torrent,’ Russett said. Astra remembered that tone from archery coaching. He didn’t mean ‘thank you’, he meant ‘
that’s frigging enough
’. Torrent was silent as he passed around the rest of the dishes.

‘He’s a bold one, that boy,’ Sorrel said as Torrent trundled the trolley back to the kitchen.

‘Takes after his Code father, does he?’ Mr Ripenson joked.

‘Takes after his Code mother, actually,’ Russett replied, shortly.

Mr Ripenson glanced over the table at Sorrel, and Astra remembered that Torrent’s Code mother had gone to work in New Zonia and never come back; that was why Russett had come to live in Or. Torrent had two Shared Shelter mothers now, a pair of Gaia-bonded women he stayed with in New Bangor every other week, but Russett never settled long; he had had various Gaia partners.

‘I like gumbo,’ Lil announced. She had saffron-coloured spots on her chin and her eyes were gleaming.

‘Yes, gumbo’s good, Lil,’ Mr Ripenson agreed as Russett drained his wine glass. ‘I’m glad you’re here to share it with us.’ Lil didn’t reply. She was lifting another brimming spoonful to her lips.

‘She’s very helpful in the kitchen,’ Hokma said approvingly. ‘She’ll be a good cook herself one day.’

The broth was rich and spicy, and maybe it did go to Astra’s head a little. Spoon in hand, she forgot to spy on Ahn and Dr Blesserson and instead concentrated on not spilling a drop. Beside her, Lil was doing the same. Her leg was still pressed against Astra’s and as their spoons dipped in the gumbo and the chillies and brandy warmed her blood, it began to
feel as though they were one being: a strange three-legged, two-headed creature, its life force swirling between its two hearts. By the time Torrent arrived to take the dishes away and bring them their pudding, Astra’s Gaia garden was humming.

Pudding was a slice of chocolate torte with raspberry sauce. It was almost unbearable to have to wait to eat it until Torrent’s trolley was empty. At last he was offering the last slice to Russett. ‘
Voilà, Papa
,’ he said, flourishing the dish.

‘
Ooh la la
.’ Moon laughed. ‘Who says French is a dead language?’

Russett raised his hands to take the plate. Torrent pulled it away. ‘Or are you still on a diet?’ he asked.

‘
Boy
!’ Russett slammed his palm down on the table. ‘If I have to tell you one more time to show some
respect
for the table, you’ll be running Kinbat laps for a
month
.’

The candlestick was trembling and Hokma’s hand shot out to steady the base. Lil dropped her spoon on the tablecloth and put her hands over her mouth. Her body was shaking. Astra couldn’t look at her.

‘I thought you wanted to lose weight.’ Torrent’s tone was hurt, that of the unjustly accused, but his eyes were silently laughing with Lil.

‘Your father’s right, Torrent,’ Hokma said. ‘Servers shouldn’t make personal remarks to table-sitters. Please apologise to Russett or I’ll have to make a note of this in your school file.’

Torrent raised his eyebrows. ‘Sorry, Hokma. I thought you weren’t the—’

‘She’s the School Spoke until the Parents’ Committee appoints her successor,’ Russett thundered. ‘Now you apologise to her too, you insolent cub!’

Torrent gave a little bow. ‘
Mesdames et Messieurs
, your banquet waiter enjoyed your company so much he forgot he wasn’t at home with his esteemed Code father. He unreservedly apologises for any misunderstanding, offence or inconvenience caused.’

Torrent turned on his heel and wheeled the trolley away. Russett shook his head, like a dog clearing its ears of water. ‘If I’d known what he’d be like at this age,’ he declared, ‘I’d have volunteered him for the Security Serum trials when he was a baby.’

The adults laughed, but Astra wasn’t sure Russett was joking. His cheeks were red and his eyes were hard blue stones.

‘He’s a bright lad,’ Hokma said. ‘He’s just trying out a bit of banter.’

‘Fine for you to say,’ Russett barked. ‘You don’t have to worry about Astra talking back every chance she gets. She was a handful as a youngster, but look at her now. Good as gold.’

Mr Ripenson looked troubled. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t talk about the children’s behaviour in front of—’ he began, but Hokma cut him off.

‘If you’re having difficulties with Torrent, Russett,’ she said, ‘you can always talk to the Parents’ Committee.’

‘Kids don’t listen to
committees
,’ Russett bellowed. Beside Mr Ripenson, Aesop started to cry. Russett lowered his voice. ‘And I don’t appreciate being told how to bring up my Code child by someone who doesn’t even go to half the meetings.’

Moon’s eyes widened. Mr Ripenson made a little moue at Hokma, as if to say ‘don’t worry’. Russett stabbed his torte with his fork, took a big mouthful and washed it down with more wine. He clunked the glass back down on the table and the wine sloshed up the edges. Aesop’s wails subsided as Moon pressed him to her chest.

‘I’m
full
.’ Lil broke the silence. ‘Can I eat my cake at Wise House?’

Or-kids never got to take Core House food home with them. That rule existed so that Core House plates and mugs didn’t end up in bedrooms or under bushes all over the bioregion. But Hokma drained her wine glass and pushed her own torte aside.

‘You’ve done very well, Lil. If you can carry your plate all the way without dropping it, you can eat your cake at home. Astra, you can take yours to the Or-kids’ table if you like.’

Hokma and Lil stood up. They were leaving. Astra got to her feet too. She wanted to go with them and talk with Lil about what they’d seen, but it was clear that she was being ordered to join Meem, Yoki and Peat and the other Sec Gens. Trailing behind Hokma and Lil with her dessert plate, she noticed Dr Blesserson’s head clocking his sister’s departure. Hokma didn’t acknowledge anyone sitting at the oval table. She kissed Astra goodbye at the Or-kids’ table and Lil, suddenly, leaned forward and kissed Astra too, lightly on the corner of the mouth. Then she stared intently into Astra’s eyes as if sealing a pact. Something had been definitely been decided between them, though watching Lil leave, Astra had no idea what. She sat down, a tremor running through her. Maybe Lil didn’t have schizophrenia. Maybe she was just very good at lying.

‘She doesn’t look feral,’ Peat said. Astra realised he was talking about Lil.

‘She’s got tidier hair than Astra,’ Meem laughed.

To be fair, thanks to all the stuff her dad had told her, Lil probably didn’t know half the time that she was lying. ‘She’s not
feral
,’ Astra said haughtily, spearing the last bit of torte with her fork. ‘She just isn’t educated yet, that’s all.’

‘Hokma’s going to Gaia-worship with Ahn tonight,’ Lil whispered, her breath caressing Astra’s ear. ‘In the meadow. Do you want to sneak out and watch?’

It was Wise House siesta time and they were lying in Astra’s bed, which they now shared when Astra was staying. Hokma was in the lab, doing her weekend clean. Astra shifted onto her side. Lil’s eyes were glinting, daring her to say yes.

‘How do you know that?’ she asked, sharply.

‘They did last night. I followed her when she went to meet him. They argued first, but then they lay down. And last Full Moon she went out for three nights in a row.’

Astra raised herself on her elbow. ‘You’ve been watching them Gaia-play?’

Lil rolled onto her back and idly stretched her arms up to the ceiling. ‘Not yet. I was too far away. But I checked today and I found a spot we can see from.’

‘No we can’t,’ Astra said firmly. ‘Gaia play is private. You’re not allowed to watch other people doing it.’ That was Rule 3: an Is-Land law. She’d tried to tell Lil the rules but as she’d suspected, Lil hadn’t been a jot interested. Still, it wasn’t against the rules to get a head start on Gaia play – Tedis had asked Mr Ripenson, and then the next week told the class that he had been playing with the daughter of an international long-stay visitor. The daughter was fifteen, he’d said, and had already been penetrated, but he, of course, had practised self-control, even though he knew he wouldn’t bond with her because she was going back to New Zonia
soon. Everyone had been impressed and for a moment Astra had itched to tell the class about her and Lil. That would show Tedis he wasn’t the only one ahead of his age group. She had suppressed the temptation, though. Yoki hated Lil and she didn’t want to upset him or inadvertently say anything that might make Mr Ripenson suspect she was bonding.

Because she wasn’t. She and Lil didn’t make plans together, or promises or sacrifices, they just played again – out by the watercress stream, or quietly in the loft during siesta when Hokma was sleeping, with Astra making sure they didn’t break any of the rules. Yesterday, by the stream, she had even tested Lil, pretending to feel ill and saying she wanted to stop. Lil hadn’t been very sympathetic, but she had stopped kissing her. She’d rolled on her back, twirled a strand of her hair in the air and said, ‘You should go and ask Hokma for some medicine, then.’ Astra had waited a minute and then said she felt better, and they’d continued.

Later, though, Lil had whispered, ‘If I was a boy I would stick my Gaia plough right inside you, whenever I wanted,’ and afterwards she’d asked Astra if there was a boy at school she liked, all of which made Astra feel uncomfortable. She’d said no, but when Lil pressed she said that Tedis Sonnenson was a good cricketer, but he told a lot of stupid jokes. Lil had nodded and said sagely, ‘My dad said boys are stupid. He said they don’t grow up until they have a baby, so if I bonded with one I might have to put up with him being an idiot for a while.’ It was stupid, of course, to say that all boys were stupid just because they were boys; Astra had tried to tell Lil about gender then, but Lil didn’t know any boys so they couldn’t have a proper discussion. Astra had given up and they’d lain in silence on the warm rocks until Astra had suggested going back to see the ancestors again. Lil had refused to take her. She said they had to wait until the autumn. The ancestors needed lots of time alone to talk with Gaia.

‘Gaia play isn’t private everywhere.’ Lil sniffed her armpit, then folded her arms behind her head. ‘In other countries people make Tablette videos of themselves Gaia-playing and put them on the internet for everyone to see.’

‘They do
not
,’ Astra scoffed. Lil had said a lot of preposterous things over the last few weeks, but this really took the spelt cake.

‘They do.’ Lil sat up, her head grazing the low ceiling of the loft. ‘It’s called borno. My dad told me. Before he returned to Gaia. I told you: he said I had to know everything about the world.’

My dad said this. My dad said that
. Astra was getting sick of it. Lil’s dad had apparently travelled for three years after Code College and had returned to Is-Land oozing bizarre and unnecessary information. Admittedly, some of the things he’d told Lil were interesting: men who wore white dresses and danced in whirling circles to worship the moon; Old World communities where people rolled cheeses down hills and chased them with a wooden spoon; a hotel made of glass and shaped like a ship, where twenty thousand people had survived the Dark Time drinking fizzy wine that Lil swore tasted like berry biscuits. But others were horrific: countries where people sucked sheep brains through straws, or lived in underground cities where they never saw the sun; cities where women paid doctors to stuff their breasts with plastic bags to make them look bigger. She didn’t want to hear any more of that stuff. ‘Yeah, well,’ she snorted, ‘that’s the reason we’re Gaians, isn’t it, so we don’t have to do disgusting things like play borno, or – or – or eat megafauna.’

It was mean, she knew, to throw the hunting in Lil’s face, but it was the only way to shut her up. She’d done it once before and Lil had looked furious and not spoken for an hour, until Astra had been afraid she would tell Hokma. But she hadn’t squealed, and this time she didn’t react with hurt. Instead she narrowed her eyes and curled her upper lip. ‘If you ever tasted real spit-roast chicken you’d never eat that pathetic alt-chicken again,’ she declared.

Astra drew breath to reply, but as she was trying to think what to say, she heard the lab doors grumbling open onto the verandah. The girls froze, then rapidly slid back down between the sheets. The bathroom door clicked shut and a minute later the faint sound of the shower came whistling through the thick straw-bale walls.

Astra’s heart was galloping in her chest. How did Lil always do this to her? Spin things around, make her feel flushed and disoriented, like she was running a race with no finish line. As she was trying to sort out her thinking, Lil slipped her fingers into the crease of her elbow. ‘I’m sorry, Astra,’ she whispered. ‘You’re right. My dad said that borno is bad, and if I ever go to New Zonia when I grow up I must be careful not to do it by accident.’