Astra Read Free

me at West Gate at four.’
    ‘You are ten minutes late to meet Hokma at West Gate,’ Tabby piped up helpfully. ‘You are ten minutes Hokma late to meet West Gate at four. You are ten Hokma West to late minutes …’
    ‘He’s got shell-shock!’ Astra cried.
    ‘I said he’s damaged. Turn him off.’
    ‘
No!
He has to stay awake or we might lose him.’
    ‘All right. Put him on silent then.’
    Astra obeyed and slipped Tabby back into his pocket. ‘Klor can fix him,’ she offered, scuffing the ground with her sandal. ‘Like he did last time.’
    ‘Astra. Look at me.’
    Constable Ordott straightened up and obeyed her Chief Inspector’s order. This could be big-trouble time.
    But fire wasn’t flashing from Hokma’s hazel-gold eye. Her brows weren’t scrunched together, forcing that fierce eagle line between them to rise, splitting her forehead like it did when Or-kids neglected their chores or fought over biscuits that were all exactly the same size, as Hokma had once famously proved with an electronic scale. Instead, her square face with its prominent bones was set in a familiar, patient expression. She looked like she did when explaining why a certain Or-child rule was different for under-tens and over-nines. And when Hokma was in explaining mode, you could usually try to reason with her. She always won, of course, but she liked to give you the chance to defend yourself, if only to thoroughly demonstrate exactly why you were wrong and she was right.
    ‘Klor’s got better things to do than mending your Tablette every two weeks, hasn’t he?’
    Hokma’s tone was calm, so Astra risked a minor contradiction. ‘Klor said it was a good teaching task,’ she attempted. ‘He showed me Tabby’s nanochip. I learned a lot, Hokma!’
    ‘You take Tech Repair next term. Tablettes are expensive. You should never play with them while you’re climbing trees.’
    ‘But I was looking for the girl. I needed Tabby to take photos.’
    The ghost of a frown floated over Hokma’s features. ‘What girl?’
    Astra whipped Tabby out again. Maybe he couldn’t talk properly, but he could still see. She clicked his camera icon and speed-browsed her photos. Hokma was getting dangerously close to impatience now, but in a minute she would be praising Astra and Tabby for their valour and initiative; she would be calling Or to raise the alarm and gather a team to bring the enemy down.
    ‘The girl in the tree.
Look
.’
    But the photo was just a muddy blur of greens and browns.
    ‘I don’t have time for these games, Astra.’
    Astra stuffed Tabby back in his pocket. No one would believe her now. ‘It was the girl I saw last week,’ she muttered. ‘The one who lives in the forest. She’s a Non-Lander. An
infiltrator
. She threw pine cones at me. See.’ She held out her bruised hand. ‘So I dropped Tabby, and the photo didn’t turn out.’
    Now it deepened: the warning line between Hokma’s eyebrows. Silently, she examined Astra’s knuckles. When she spoke again, it was as if she were talking to somebody young or naughty or slow: to Meem or Yoki.
    ‘There’s no girl living in the forest, Astra. You’ve just scraped yourself again.’
    ‘But I saw—’
    Hokma bent down and grasped Astra’s shoulders. Astra was supposed to look her in the eye, she knew, but she didn’t want to. She stared down at her feet again and dug her sandal toes into the garlic patch. Torrent was going to tell her she smelled like an alt-beef casserole when she got back to Or.
    ‘There are no Non-Landers in Is-Land any more,’ Hokma said, using her instructor voice as if Astra was stupid, as if Astra hadn’t just completed Year Two Inglish Vocabulary a whole three months ahead of her class.
    She folded her arms and glowered up at Hokma. ‘Klor and Nimma said there are still
lots
of infiltrators in Is-Land,’ she retorted. ‘They’re disguised as Gaians with fake papers or they’re still hiding in the off-limits woodlands.’
    Sometimes