Astra (52 page)

‘Is it really too late?’ Nimma pleaded. ‘Can’t she have the shot now?’

‘It wouldn’t be effective, I’m afraid.’

It couldn’t be happening. Why was only
she
being punished? ‘What about Dr Blesserson?’ she pleaded, breaking out of Klor’s embrace to thrust her arm towards the table. ‘You haven’t taken my blood.
Test it
– you’ll see. He gave me a teaby injection.
He knew the whole time
.’

Dr Wolfson shook his head. ‘There’s no need to test your blood, Astra. It’s clear from your behaviour that you didn’t have your shot. Dr Blesserson has agreed to also act as a witness for the prosecution. He’s certainly not on trial here.’

Dr Blesserson’s impassive face was an enormous toad waiting for its next fly. Klor put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. Once. A warning. Somehow she knew she should heed it.

‘Astra,’ Dr Petaldott said, ‘you were only seven when Hokma abused you and your memory of events is unreliable. As you’ve heard, your choices now are to co-operate with your Shelter parents and stay at home, or resist them and be taken to the IMBOD Shelter school in Sippur. I suggest that you consider these options very carefully.’

‘What about the questioning?’ Nimma had stuffed her hanky in her hipskirt band, ready for her next set of histrionics. She twisted her emerald ring round and round on her finger. ‘Are you going to call her in again?’

‘We appreciate that she will be hostile to questioning about her Shelter mother,’ Dr Wolfson said, ‘but at the same time, we are concerned that Hokma may have misled her in serious ways. The purpose of the counselling will be to ascertain the extent of the damage she has sustained. In the meantime, if she tells you anything we ought to know, then you are duty-bound to report it.’

The IMBOD officers stood up. ‘Of course we will.’ Nimma clasped Dr Petaldott’s hand and shook it until the officer’s teeth must have been rattling in her head. ‘Thank you, Dr Petaldott, thank you, Dr Wolfson, thank you
so much
, Dr Blesserson.’

‘I’m sure Astra will benefit from having her secret out in the open at last,’ Dr Blesserson pompously intoned. ‘My best wishes to you all.’ Then his face was gone, replaced at last by the pastel yellow standby screen.

Klor pulled Astra to him. ‘Come on, Astra, let’s go home and have a cup of hot chocolate,’ he said as Dr Wolfson crossed the room and unlocked the door.

* * *

Back at the Earthship Nimma flew into a tornado-sized fit. ‘All these years,’ she announced, her arthritic forefinger ripping through the air as she paced in front of the sofa where Astra sat huddled with a cushion in her lap beside Klor. ‘All these years, you’ve been
lying
to us. Staying up there with Hokma, laughing at us, laughing at Yoki and Meem. Who do you think you are? Who
are
you? Klor, I can’t look at her, I can’t look at her any more.’

‘I
wasn’t
lying,’ Astra pleaded. ‘You never asked me if I had the Serum. You just asked if the needle hurt.
Dr Blesserson’s
lying – test me for the teaby shot,
please
, Klor.’

‘
Ohhh
. Don’t you ask
Klor
to accuse
Samrod
of
Hokma
’s crime!’ Nimma punctuated each name with a finger jab. ‘She’s embroiled enough people in her schemes already. Poor Ahn – burdened with
your
secret all these years.

‘Poor
Ahn?
’ Klor said it for Astra. ‘Darling, it would have saved a lot of trouble if he’d—’

But Nimma was having none of it. ‘That man’s a complete innocent, Klor. I’ve worked with him, I know. He’s an
artist
. He lives on another plane entirely. Has he ever even had another Gaia partner? He was
devoted
to Hokma, and she betrayed and manipulated him just like she did us. What an
impossible
position she put him in.’

‘Surely that’s not Astra’s fault, is it?’ Klor stood and opened his arms. ‘Nimma, let me hold you. We must deal with this together. All together. All three of us. Astra, you too.’

‘No, Klor. I can’t hug her now. Don’t ask me to hug her.’ Nimma let him hold her and he made a kind face at Astra over her head. Then she burst into tears and pushed him away. ‘It’s
not
just all three of us. It’s everyone. Astra’s been lying to everyone.’

‘I haven’t been
lying
,’ Astra repeated dully. ‘I’ve been trying so hard, Nimma—’

‘Don’t you wiggle words, young lady. Your
whole life
is a lie and now
ours
is too.’

‘Darling, darling,’ Klor implored, reaching for her shoulders. ‘It’s the same Astra –
our
Astra. She should have told us, Nimma – of course she should have. But she was afraid to, weren’t you, my angel?’

Nimma brushed him aside like a ratty bead curtain. ‘I can’t believe this is happening. What about the others, Klor? Yoki and Meem and Peat? How will it affect them? And what if it makes the news? How will it affect our Or inspection next year? And the National History Museum? Will they disqualify Ahn’s submission now? Did you ever think of that, Astra? All the people you were getting in trouble?’

On and on she went. Astra stared at the llama wool carpet, a gift to Nimma from the Gallery directors. ‘She said if I wanted to be a great scientist I shouldn’t have the shot,’ she muttered. ‘She said Eya wouldn’t want me to have it. How was
I
supposed to know it would be such a big deal? I was only
seven
.’

‘You’re not seven now! You should have told us, years ago.’

‘And then what? What would you have done? You would’ve told on Hokma and she would have been taken away!’

‘Darling, she’s right. She was only a child.’

But Nimma ignored him. She drew herself up. ‘We would have spoken to Hokma,’ she said regally, ‘and perhaps saved her from herself. We would have reported the situation to IMBOD, of course, but we would have supported Hokma too. We would have said that she’d made the wrong decision for the right reasons. Perhaps then she would have realised that not everyone in Or is against her. Perhaps she would have decided to stop betraying us and Is-Land with whatever she was doing with Cora Pollen. Perhaps we could have prevented this whole disastrous course of events.’

It was unbearable. ‘Oh, so it’s
my fault
again?’ Astra implored Klor. ‘My fault she sent Helium to Atourne?’

‘Now, now, darling.’ Klor was rubbing his forehead. ‘We don’t know what would have happened if we’d discovered the truth earlier. It isn’t fair to—’

‘For Gaia’s sake, Klor, stop
defending
her. Can’t you see the trouble she’s caused? Now we have to babysit her all through Year Twelve – and Yoki
and Meem have to suffer too! Why should they lose their Shelter home because of her?’

‘They can still come here. We’ll sort out a schedule. I’m sure IMBOD will relax the quarantine if Astra co-operates with the counsellor.’

‘Look at her: sullen, surly, utterly unrepentant. Is she going to co-operate with anyone? I don’t think so.’

‘I’m sure—’ Klor began again.

‘We took her in after our own Birth-Code daughter died.’ Nimma’s voice split. ‘And this is how she repays us. I’m tired of struggling with her, Klor. I’m sixty-three and I’m tired. If you want to keep her in Or, you look after her. You can stay at Wise House or in a tent, I don’t care – just not here. Yoki and Meem and I aren’t going anywhere.’

‘Yes, dear, that’s a good solution. It won’t be for long, will it, Astra?’

But Nimma was already sailing out of the room.

Sometimes –
before
– she had imagined that telling everyone would be a relief. But every day the worst thing about her situation changed. First came the three days spent getting IMBOD approval for Klor and Nimma’s custody plan, during which Yoki and Meem were barred from the Earthship and Nimma refused to speak to her. Then IMBOD rejected Klor’s application to stay at Wise House with her on the grounds that Astra needed to make a clean break with Hokma and everything Hokma represented. And besides, Nimma argued vociferously to Klor, ignoring Astra even though she was sitting right beside him, Wise House was impractical. The climb was too steep for Klor, and he needed to visit the Earthship every morning and evening. So he and Astra pitched a visitors’ yurt behind the Kinbat track and IMBOD approved a schedule which accounted for every frigging millisecond of her day.

In the morning, while the Or-kids were having breakfast, she was to do yoga; after they had gone to school she was allowed to eat their leftovers at Core House. Then she was to go to Code House for her counselling sessions; her downtime and studies would be in the same spare office. She could go outside in the afternoon, to garden or swim, but she was not allowed to mix with the younger children. After the Or-kids got back from school she had to return to Code House to study. While they were eating dinner, she was to do her Kinbat laps. She was not allowed to visit the Quiet Room after her own late-shift meal at a table across the hall from the kitchen staff; instead she had to return to the yurt for meditation or studying. Her Tablette would be monitored, and under no circumstances was she to Tablette-talk any of her siblings or schoolmates.
Any infraction of these rules would be treated very seriously. If she were found attempting to communicate with another Or-kid she would be removed from Or and placed in the special school in Sippur. In addition, Klor, as her guardian, would be punished with a heavy fine.

It was crazy – even Klor said so. Well, ‘an understandable overreaction’ was how he put it, but when he wrote to IMBOD attesting that Astra’s siblings hadn’t been harmed by her so far, and suggesting she be permitted supervised contact with them for an hour a day, he was rebuffed by a firm letter from Dr Wolfson saying that the effects of such a prolonged and intimate deception on the Sec Gen loyalty trait had not yet been tested, and absolutely no chances were to be taken. If Astra wanted to protect her siblings and classmates, she would willingly keep away from them. Isolation was also in her own best interests: she needed time to think deeply about her options, and she couldn’t do that if she was caught up in the turmoil of explaining her situation to everyone and coping with all their responses. She was to consider the period a welcome rest and retreat that would benefit her immensely in the long run.

And in fact it was a relief to be away from Nimma and her constant accusatory silence, and that first evening in the yurt Astra slept long and dreamlessly.

But in the morning came her meeting with the counsellor, with Klor, to hear the rehabilitation plan.

The office she’d been allocated was on Klor’s side of the upper chamber. It overlooked the Staple Crops plots, now harvested for the year, beyond which the mountains opened out onto the steppes. Other than the minor variations in the view, it was exactly like the room where the IMBOD interview had been held. The only furniture was a table and several chairs, and the obligatory orchid.

The counsellor was an older woman with heavily lined olive skin and greying hair cut in a short bob. She stood up when they entered and shook Klor’s hand. ‘Good morning, Dr Grunerdeson. Good morning, Astra. I’m Dr Greenleafdott. Well, Astra,’ she said as they all sat down, ‘it’s been an eventful few days, hasn’t it? How are you feeling?’

Astra rubbed her hands together in her lap. She had to play this right – but what was right?

‘Yes, Dr Petaldott told me you didn’t feel like talking. Not to worry. The purpose of these sessions is to help you open up and return as soon as possible to normal life. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

Return to normal life? Her life had never been normal.

They sat for ten minutes in silence. This was ridiculous. Why wasn’t this woman asking her anything? ‘Why am I in quarantine?’ she asked at last. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. Why am I in
jail
?’

‘Quarantine isn’t jail, Astra. You’re still at home in Or, aren’t you? You can still go outside.’

‘I can’t go to school,’ Astra pointed out, ‘or see anyone, and they said I can’t do my IMBOD Service. So what’s going to happen to me? Am I going to be punished my whole life?’

‘Not at all, Astra: this period of solitude is designed to help you reflect on what’s happened to you, to think about who you are – and who you want to be. Your future is yours to decide. You have many options, and that’s what I want to discuss with you and your Shelter father today.’

Dr Greenleafdott explained that Astra was currently in distress, for many reasons and at many levels, but the depth and complexity of her emotional crisis was being masked by the volatility of her anger. Astra, it had been observed, was a person with a powerful sense of anger, and currently that anger was being misdirected towards the people who loved and cared for her, causing her and her family conflict and pain. This was not Astra’s fault; she should not have been burdened with the capacity for uncontrolled anger in the first place. For Sec Gen children, anger was a short-term emotion triggered only by urgent, life-threatening situations. For Astra, though, anger appeared to be a chronic condition, triggered by insignificant conflicts. Fortunately, psychological techniques existed to help her control her temper – but first, she needed to channel that anger towards the source of her current difficulties: Hokma. Once Astra was able to recognise that Hokma had abused her, she could begin to work on her anger management and start the journey of reintegration into Is-Land society. She would never be able to fully bond with the Sec Gens, of course, and she would have to perform special duties during her IMBOD Service, but she could certainly take up a place at a college in Atourne, and as she was just a couple of years younger than the non-Sec Gens, she would certainly find suitable friends and colleagues and Gaia partners in future.

If, however, these sessions failed and Astra was unable to distance herself from Hokma, then the situation would become very complicated. Astra could not perform IMBOD Service if she was known to harbour feelings of loyalty to a traitor, and though she would be able to work as an
aglab during those two years, without completing IMBOD Service she would not be qualified to attend college, and that would mean all high-level jobs would be closed to her. She wouldn’t be able to remain in Or, because her siblings would be distressed by the conflict she posed to their own loyalty, so she would have to work in another bioregion as a basic-rate member of a domestic team all her life, in the kitchen or gardens. Of course, this kind of work was a valuable service to Gaia, but Astra was intelligent and surely she wanted to do more with her life than weed and wash dishes.