Stained Light

Book 4: The Gaia Chronicles

by Naomi Foyle

Genres: Science Fiction; Dystopian

Synopsis

Astra Ordott tried - and failed - to deny her destiny. The final installment in the critically-acclaimed SF quartet 'for Hunger Games fans of all ages' ( Library Journal). Perfect for fans of Ursula K. Le Guin, Joan Slonczewski and Joyce Carol Oates. For ten years Astra Ordott has lived as a traitor, hated by most of her fellow prisoners and abused by the guards. She made the ultimate sacrifice to save those she loved, voluntarily giving up her freedom when she handed herself over to the Is-Land authorities. Now long-simmering conflicts are beginning to boil over again as the wider world faces devastating threats both old and new. Non-Land and Is-Land are further from reunification than ever. Outside Astra's fortified Gaian homeland, an infertility crisis is threatening the survival of the human race, while the world's reliance on rare earth metals is infuriating the ancient spirits of the planet. Astra may have found her voice as a messenger of cosmic harmony - but is anyone listening?

Release date: September 6, 2018

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 366

Sample

IS-LAND

The Ashfields

Astra Ordott

Political prisoner; Oracle

Cora Pollen

Political prisoner; friend of Astra’s Birth-Code mother, Eya, and niece of Astra’s Shelter mother, Hokma Blesser [both deceased]

Charm

Political prisoner

Rosetta

Political prisoner

Pallas

Political prisoner

Fern

Political prisoner

Sunflower

Political prisoner

Lichena

Prison guard

Bircha

Prison guard

Atourne: capital city of Is-Land, home to the National Wheel Meet and its various Ministries, chief among them the Is-Land Ministry of Border Defence [IMBOD]

Superintendent Dr Samrod Blesserson

Code Scientist; Hokma Blesser’s brother; Member of IMBOD’s secret Vision Council

Chief Convenor Stamen Magmason

Head of National Wheel Meet; Head of the Vision Council

Deputy Convenor Riverine Farshordott

Deputy Head of National Wheel Meet; Member of the Vision Council

Crystal Wyrdott

Wheel Meet Chief Minister of Spiritual Development

Justice Blade Stonewayson

Prosecuting Judge in the Ministry of Penitence

Harald Silverstreamson

National Prosecutor in Stonewayson’s office

Bracelet Valley ~ Yggdrasila

Freki Yggdrasiladott

Child (pre-Sec Gen), twin to Ggeri

Ggeri Yggdrasilason

Child (pre-Sec Gen), twin to Freki

Sif Yggdrasiladott

Code Shelter mother to Freki and Ggeri; partner to Vili

Vili Yggdrasilason

Code Shelter father to Freki and Ggeri; partner to Sif

Fasta Yggdrasiladott

Birth Shelter mother to Freki and Ggeri

Esfadur Yggdrasilason

Community Elder; Code Shelter father to Eya

Brana Yggdrasiladott

Community Elder; Birth-Code Shelter mother to Eya

Eya Yggdrasiladott

Birth-Code daughter to Esfadur and Brana; Birth-Code mother to Astra and Halja [deceased]

Halja Yggdrasiladott

Birth-Code daughter to Eya; Sec Gen

Bracelet Valley ~ Springhill Retreat

Chief Superintendent Clay Odinson

Director of Springhill Retreat; Former Head of the Non-Land IMBOD Barracks

Tulip Hiltondott

Wheel Meet Minister of Penitence

Ahn Orson

Celebrity bio-architect; Hokma’s ex-partner

The Dry Forest

Klor Grunerdeson

Astra’s Shelter father; Code worker

Nimma

Astra’s Shelter mother; Craft worker

Sheba

Klor and Nimma’s Code daughter [deceased]

Peat

Astra’s Shelter brother; former Sec Gen [see Shiimti]

Yoki

Astra’s Shelter brother; Sec Gen

Meem

Astra’s Shelter sister; Sec Gen

Congruence

Ahn’s partner, a relationship begun secretly and illegal in her teens; non-Sec Gen

NON-LAND

Occupied Zabaria

Lilutu

CONC worker; YAC activist; AKA Tira Gúnida

Anunit

Mother; Former sex worker in Pithar

Girin

Son of Anunit

Bud

IMBOD communications officer

Neperdu

Sex worker [deceased]

Shiimti

Peat Orson

Former Sec Gen Constable; Astra Ordott’s Shelter brother

Bartol

YAC Trainer and Warrior

Dr Tapputu

Physician; former CONC medic in Kadingir

Zizi Kataru

Astra Ordott’s Code father [deceased]

The Zardusht

The High Healer of Shiimti

Ñeštug

Dream Voyage Guide

The Non-Land All Action Revolutionary Commandos (NAARC)

Enki Arakkia

NAARC Commander

Muzi Bargadala

Shepherd and Forager; Astra Ordott’s husband

Ñizal

NAARC Commander

Sulima

NAARC Commander; married to Enki

ASFAR

The Mujaddid

Ruler of Asfar

Colonel Akira Thames

CONC Envoy; Former CONC Compound Director in Kadingir

Tibir Ögüt

Billionaire and secret patron of NAARC

The Non-Land Alliance (N-LA) [Non-Land Government-in-Exile]

Una Dayyani

Lead Convenor

Marti

Personal Assistant to Una Dayyani

Artakhshathra

Chief Researcher

Tahazu Rabu

Chief of Police

The Youth Action Collective (YAC) [Non-Land resistance group, allied to N-LA]

Ninti

Speaker and Warrior, Voice of YAC in N-LA

Malku

Speaker and Warrior, Voice of YAC in N-LA

Tiamet

Singular

Simiya

Singular

Asar

Singular

Sepsu

Asar’s Carer

Muzi Bargadala’s Family

Habat Bargadala

Daughter-in-law of Uttu, widow of Kingu

Nanshe Emeeš

Daughter-in-law of Uttu, widow of Gibil

Geshti Bargadala

Daughter of Kingu and Habat

Hadis Bargadala

Daughter of Kingu and Habat

Suen Emeeš

Son of Gibil and Nanshe

Esañ

Husband of Geshti

Ahmad

Husband of Hadis

Mordi Bargadala

Infant son of Geshti and Esañ

Uttu Dúrkiñar

Elderwoman; grandmother of Muzi [deceased]

Kingu Dúrkiñar

Eldest son of Uttu [deceased]

Gibil Dúrkiñar

Second son of Uttu [deceased]

AMAZIGIA

Jasper Sonovason

Astra’s lawyer

Calendula Goldstone

Cora Pollen’s lawyer

NEUROPA

Photon Augenblick

Blogger; Former CONC Mobile Medical Unit Medic

NUAFRICA

Rudo Acadie

CONC Officer; Former Mobile Medical Unit Medic

NEW ZONIA

Sandrine Moses

CONC Officer; Former Mobile Medical Unit Supply Coordinator

Bracelet Valley

‘Whaaor.’ Breaking the first rule of the willow tree hideout – silence during active surveillance – Ggeri plopped back down behind the cedar log, the spyglasses clutched to his chest. Crouching beside him in the dirt, Freki stifled a giggle. Ggeri’s face changed expression so often his nickname in Yggdrasila was Little Windwolf. Right now, his eyes bulging like grapes and his lips puckered with shock, her twin looked like a catfish: one of the giant, bug-eyed bottom feeders that hoovered dead fish off the muddy bed of Lake Asgard, keeping the water clean for the manatees and freshwater dolphins. He was even the right colour – the light filtering through the spring branches had turned his skin a blotched, clammy green.

‘See, I told you,’ she hissed – she had made the rule and could ignore it if she liked. Plus, it was clear Ggeri had forfeited the rest of his turn with the spyglasses. She wrested them from his grip and crept, stealthy as a snake, up to the top of the log.

Shady and fragrant with cedar and soil, the space she and Ggeri had created beneath the willow tree was a secret chamber, a hidden playroom, but its jewellery boxes of scarlet ladybirds and turquoise caterpillars, its world-record-tall twig tower and the hnefetafl board they had scored in the earth with a stone were all just silly kids’ toys compared to this new game. Leaning in close to the lacy curtain of willow leaves, Freki trained the glasses into the mossy heart of the glade, scanning the broad trunks and spreading branches of the oaks until the sunlit shapes of the man and the woman filled her vision.

The man was the same man as the other day. He was tall and thin, with a cloud of fuzzy white hair like a dandelion clock. When she fiddled with the focus, she could see his eyes rolling back inside his head and his mouth twisting like he was a llama trying not to sneeze. He looked a lot like a llama, actually, his woolly chest and legs gilded gold in the late-afternoon sun. He wasn’t all hairy, though; when he bent down to shake the woman’s shoulders, she could see a shiny round bald patch on the top of his head, as if someone had sneezed and blown some of his dandelion seeds away. The woman was a different woman. She was small like the one before, with the same glowing bronze skin, but she had long, straight black hair and, instead of crouching like a dog in the grass, she was kneeling in front of the man, her head at his hips. Through the spyglasses, Freki could see clearly that her head was bobbing up and down on his Gaia plough. You’d never see dogs doing that! She inched her elbows forwards and shifted her belly up the log for a better view.

Ggeri lunged for her arm and pulled her back down beside him, scraping her wrist against the cedar bark and making her knock over the twig tower. She rubbed her arm and glared at him. ‘Look what you made me do.’

‘They’ll see the glass shining, stupid!’ he scoffed.

‘No, they won’t. They’re busy.’

‘Yeah, until the sun hits the glass and sends a blast of light to blind him in one eye and—’

‘Shhh!’ She bared her teeth and stuck out her tongue like a dagger. Yggdrasila didn’t call her Little Firewolf for nothing.

Ggeri puffed his cheeks out hard with air, flared his nostrils and crossed his eyes, but followed her orders at last. She was in charge here. She had found the glade, tracking a trail of deer spoor one afternoon when Ggeri was in the Warrior Hall watching the Sec Gens practise their judo moves. Ggeri couldn’t wait to have his Security Serum shot and take his place on the mat. He wanted to lose his puppy fat and earn Black Belts in judo, karate and taekwondo, and be ready to pulverise any Non-Lander and international troops that might try to invade Is-Land after the Hudna was over. But that was because Ggeri played too many Tablette games. Now that the Boundary had been clad it was impossible to breach, everyone said so, and the Sec Gens were just-in-case. Who wanted to be super-strong just-in-case? Freki liked it when Oma Fasta blew kisses into her tummy and called her roly-poly, and watching the Sec Gens was boring. The older children could throw their judo instructor across the gym, but where was the fun in watching them do that over and over again? Even their parents found it boring, she could tell. They looked up and clapped, but most of them were reading on their Tablettes in the stands.

What was happening in the glade was a million times more exciting. Yesterday and the day before, out playing on her own, she had discovered what happened here in the afternoons. Today she had sneaked a pair of birding binoculars from Oma Sif’s desk and, swearing Ggeri to secrecy on their twin bond, had tempted him out to the woods to help her build the willow tree hideout. He’d wanted to know why, of course, but she had only said it would be worth it. Now she had been proved right. Just like she had promised, this was way better than watching the Sec Gens; better, even, than watching the community dogs mate. She slung the spyglasses strap around her neck, rose up on her knees again and peered back out at the glade.

‘It’s my turn now.’ Ggeri bobbed up beside her, but she elbowed him away. The man was digging his fingers into the woman’s long black hair, his eyes were closed now but his mouth was stretched wide open and drool was coming out of it. She snickered again. The man made funnier faces than Ggeri. That must be why you weren’t allowed to watch adults mating, in case you burst out laughing when they were trying to boss you around later on.

Then, in a single movement that nearly gave Freki a crick in her neck, the man whipped the woman’s head away from his groin, pulled a stick out of his hipbelt and brandished it high. A willow branch was in the way, but Freki fingered it aside and through the glasses she could see the stick was big and jagged and made of silver metal. It flashed in the sun like a lightning bolt.

‘What’s he—’ Ggeri pressed closer to her. It was as if they were glued together with sweat and dirt, unable to stop watching, barely able to breathe. The man shouted but Freki couldn’t make out the words. Then his arm plunged down and he stabbed the woman in the chest with the lightning stick.

Freki and Ggeri’s gasps were lost in the flutter of birds flying up from the trees. Jerking and flailing, the woman fell to the ground.

Run! Run away! Freki silently screamed. Ggeri was tugging at the spyglasses but she kept them jammed to her eyes. The woman just kept wriggling and writhing and arching her back, her hair falling in a black wing over the grass. The man was panting and his pale face was all red. He raised his arm again, holding the lightning stick high, like a storm god in one of Oma Fasta’s Tablette stories. He jabbed the woman again, and again her body convulsed, her arm knocking something beside her – a pink hydropac – and sending it tumbling over the grass. With a sudden blurred arc, the man kicked her in the ribs. It was warm in the hideout, sticky and warm, but Freki was as cold as ice. She let Ggeri take the glasses and squeezed her eyes shut. There was a roaring in her ears, like a storm in the forest. Why wasn’t the woman fighting back?

Ggeri leaned close and spoke into her ear. ‘She’s not grown up yet, Freki.’ He gulped, as if he was about to cry. ‘She’s just a girl. I dunno, Year Eight or Nine?’

Heat blazed in her chest. That was so stupid. Adults weren’t allowed to Gaia play with girls, not even Year Twelves.

‘No, she isn’t.’ She glared at her twin. ‘She’s just short.’

‘She’s a girl, Freki. Her hydropac has got Gaia World characters on it. This is bad.’ Ggeri held his stomach, as if he felt sick. ‘I want to go home.’

She grabbed the spyglasses back and peered again at the pink hydropac lying in the grass. Was that Acorn’s green hat, or just a pattern? It was hard to tell. And grown-up women could be small. Then the woman let out a high, weird shriek and her fist hit the pac again, getting caught in the straps and flipping it over. With a hot, acid spurt, Freki’s stomach turned with it.

There on the bag were the familiar, friendly, big-stitched outlines of Acorn and Seedling – Year Seven characters – smiling their goofy smiles at the girl as she lay twitching beside them in the grass, her hips rocking up towards the man. For she was a girl, there was no denying it: the way she was lying now, Freki could see that her breasts were just starting to bud. And her cries were the whimpering cries of a child.

Freki wanted to run down into the glade, grab rocks and big sticks and throw them at the man, dash the lightning bolt out of his hand. But she couldn’t move. She just stared and stared until her eyes felt hard as marbles. The girl was slender, dainty as a fairy dancer, but she kept on taking the kicks, rolling her body as if begging the man to kick her everywhere. And he did. He kicked her in the head. Tears boiled up in Freki’s eyes.

Ggeri yanked her back down into the dirt. ‘We have to go and tell someone. Quick, while they’re still here.’

Battling back sobs, she kneaded the earth, barely feeling its moist peatyness, cool and dark between her fingers. ‘No,’ she blubbered. ‘We can’t.’

The tears burning down her cheeks now, she dug her fingers into the bark of the cedar log. The reddish-brown bits crumbled over the hnefetafl board drawn in the dirt, and she scuffed the game out with her heel, gouging a hole in the ground and scattering the pebble pieces amongst the wreckage of the twig tower. Over in the glade, the girl shrieked. The girl who could be kicked and punched and struck by lightning without getting hurt. The unbreakable girl.

Ggeri pulled his sandals on and tossed Freki’s against her legs. ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course we can. We can tell Oma Sif and Oma Fasta and Apa Vili, and they’ll tell Apa Esfadur and he’ll tell Major Brockbankson.’

‘Major Brockbankson won’t help us!’ Freki rubbed her swollen eyes dry. ‘He’s in IMBOD and IMBOD won’t care because IMBOD made her, Ggeri.’

‘What?’ He recoiled. ‘No, they didn’t.’

‘Yes, they did.’ Freki threw a fistful of dirt down between them. ‘She’s a Sec Gen. Isn’t she? That’s why they make Sec Gens so strong, even the fairy dancers. Don’t you see? It’s so that grown-ups can kick them and hit them as hard as they like.’

‘No, it isn’t!’ Ggeri’s whisper foamed with outrage but her words had hit home: fear rippled in the air between them.

‘It is.’ She overpowered her brother’s doubtful gaze with her fiercest Firewolf stare.

Ggeri’s lower lip wobbled. ‘She looks like Bluebell.’

She leaned close and pressed her forehead against his. As their breaths mingled and their knees touched, at last she felt it: their twin bond pulsing between them. Her teachers said that when they became Sec Gens they would feel a deep bond with their entire generation, but she didn’t need to run in a murmuration with a hundred other children. For all his bossiness and stupidity, all Freki needed was Ggeri; all she wanted to do was spend her life squabbling, playing and prowling through the forest with her womb brother, like the wolf cubs they’d been named for.

She looked into his big, black eyes, all doubled and floaty and swimming with sadness. ‘We have to run away,’ she whispered. ‘Run away to Lake Asgard and hide in the woods.’

‘We can’t do that!’ Ggeri pulled back, kicking the rest of the twig tower into the hole she had dug with her heel. But the twin bond still connected them, bound them together as if they shared the same heart.

‘Yes, we can.’ She hooked her finger into his elbow. ‘We’re the wolf cubs. We can live on nuts and berries and wild mushrooms and salad leaves, and sleep in a cave where no one can find us.’

‘I don’t know . . .’

He trailed off. It was as quiet as the bottom of a lake in the glade. A muddy, poisoned lake that an army of catfish couldn’t clean. Freki took one last peek over the log. The man had stopped shouting. He was on his knees now, straddling the girl’s body, staring at her face and doing something to himself that Freki didn’t want to watch. She stuffed the spyglasses into her hipbelt, then dropped onto all fours and crawled out from under the willow, back into the forest. Ggeri crept with her, on hands and knees through the dirt and roots and softly crackling twigs and leaves, until they were far enough away from the glade to stand up and run, run as one being, safe in the breath of the forest.

At last they reached the sweet chestnut stand and the thatched roofs of Yggdrasila came into sight between the trees. Freki stood in front of Ggeri and, panting, blocked his way.

‘We can’t tell anyone, Ggeri. Promise.’

He folded his arms and pouted, but didn’t argue. She stepped closer, chest-to-chest.

‘We have to run away.’ She pointed with an earth-black finger back at the glade. ‘That’s what’s going to happen to us if we have the Security Serum shot.’

The Ashfields

She was naked in the sun, her body cradled in a hollow of tall grass, her limbs wrapped around a smooth, lean, endless young man, his arms enfolding her, his embrace somehow uniting her with the clean blue sky above. She could smell the man: he smelled of wild honey and mountain sage. His face was a dazzle of sunshine, but beneath her fingertips his spine was a road home; clasped in her palm, the stump of his right wrist was a staff to lean on; planted on her neck and her face, his kisses were soft steps to heaven. ‘Are you ready?’ Muzi whispered in a language she’d forgotten she knew. ‘Are you ready, Astra?’

‘Yes,’ she murmured, closing her eyes, her vision shading to red. ‘Yes.’

Muzi thrust his groin against hers. She awoke with a gasp, to darkness and the stink of shit. Her hand flew down her body, over the steel shield of her tankini breastplate, to the steel crotch of her girdle. Tears pricking her eyes, Muzi’s mouth still wet on hers, she thumped her hips against the bed mat. As she tipped into orgasm, the cell flooded with light. A harsh white glare burnt into her brain, ice-cold air blasted down from the ceiling vent, and, in a great spasm of beating wings, scissoring beaks and flashing eyes, the giant wallscreen opposite the bed exploded into vigilance.

‘Penitent AO202,’ Vultura hissed. ‘You have engaged in Gaia play. Ten marks have been deducted from your Privilege Account.’

The last traces of the dream vanished. Astra pulled the sheet up over her goose-pimpled flesh and its steel cage. ‘Fuck you, Vultura,’ she muttered.

‘Penitent AO202.’ The avatar’s hooded eyes bored into her, two acid-yellow pinpricks in a cratered grey face. ‘You have spoken before six a.m. An Impertinence Penalty has been deducted from your Privilege Account.’

She lay curled up beneath the sheet, shivering and rubbing her arms. The light dimmed to a spectral glow and Vultura resettled into brooding watchfulness, a huge, hunched, black silhouette against a granular grey background. Vultura was not sleeping – Vultura never slept – but the avatar’s eyes were half-closed again, its massive bald head still, the only movement on the wallscreen the remorseless progress of the clock. 21.3.99 · 05:42:15 . . . 16 . . . 17 . . . The seconds flickered like insects and the minutes crawled like snails: over one hundred and eighteen to drag by before breakfast. Nine more of freezing-cold air to endure.

But she had bested the girdle. She had peaked, right under Vultura’s black beak. As the last tremors of triumph and pleasure flushed through her veins, Astra willed herself back to sleep, back to her oasis with Muzi.

It was no use. She was cold, the tankini breastplate and girdle cut into her flesh, her loose upper-left molar nagged at her jaw and the sheet was scant protection against the stink in the cell. Running on the spot was the best response to the ceiling vent, but if she got out of bed she’d be punished again. Her teeth chattering so hard she feared the rotting one would crumble, she rolled onto her back, the most comfortable position the chastity shackles allowed. It was nearly morning: a new day soon to be welcomed. But as the grey dawn light seeped into her cell through the frosted window, and the brickwork vaults and cameras above her came into focus, another, deeper darkness washed over her.

Being in jail was like being swallowed by a whale. A dead, frozen whale with a twenty-four-hour surveillance system implanted in its guts. And why was she still clinging to dreams of Muzi? In twelve years in jail, although her lawyer secretly communicated regularly with his family, she had never received a message from him, not a single, smuggled word. As the creeping morning sunlight etched the limits of her world, absence, the complete absence of everyone and everything she loved, scraped her hollow again. If it weren’t for her medication and the Old Ones, she’d be just like the self-harmers: trading in razor blades, cutting her wrists, her throat if she could.

If you choose to merge with Istar you will suffer – but your suffering will have meaning.

The words rose up from the core of her being. Hokma’s words, first soulspoken in that other stone cave more than a decade ago. Astra had repeated them so many times over the years, if they’d been a scrubbing brush they would have worn away the walls of her cell. With them came a glow of resolve, a light to repel the darkness welling up from within her. She waited. She was good at waiting. At last, the air vent closed and then, eight minutes later, the clock finally leapt over the threshold to 21.3.99 · 06:00:00.

‘Astra Ordott!’ she declared, out loud, but not quite loud enough to incur another burst of cold air, or to disturb Charm in the next cell.

Vultura’s eyes snapped open and the domed head began its warning swivel, not scanning the cell – the cameras did that – but reminding her that she was being watched.

As if she ever forgot that. She shook her fist at the camera above the toilet. ‘Fuck you, Vultura. I have chosen to endure this ordeal. Not just cold and loneliness, fucking chains and fucked-up guards. I have chosen to wage an emotional war with myself. For a reason!’

As if on command, a strong beam of sunlight poured across the cell to light up the shelves beside the door: metal shelves crammed to bursting with rows and rows of paper, that archaic technology, sheaves and files and bundles of news articles, case notes and letters, all, thanks to Jasper’s persistent defence of her rights, stamped APPROVED by the prison censor, their edges gilded by the dawn. Yes. Let Vultura stare: Sun was on her side, sending light through the darkness, to recharge and sustain her, to renew the failed promise of her existence. She sat up. What was she doing, lolling around in bed? Today was a Visitors’ Day. Jasper was coming. Her lawyer, travelling all the way from Amazigia to bring news of her campaigns, documents for her files, defiant reminders of her reasons for choosing to live in this Gaia-forsaken hole. She had work to do, hours of work. Thank frack she had woken early.

06:02:18. She scrambled out of her bunk to the sink, took her head pills and brushed her teeth, flinching as the bristles frisked the rotting molar. Then she squatted over the blocked toilet and urinated through the grille in the tankini girdle. As she was hosing herself down, her bowels shifted. She pressed a button on the wall, the back of the girdle slid open and Vultura’s eyes began to flash. She defecated, cleaned herself as quickly as possible and waited for the girdle to close.

It didn’t. Sometimes this happened to tempt you to Gaia play with yourself. She clapped her hands on top of her head. The squat was good for her thighs.

At last the girdle shut. Vultura’s eyes resumed their default acrid smoulder. Astra stood in the small oblong of floor space between bed, narrow desk, shelves, door, toilet and sink. Facing the cloudy window above the bed, feet alive on the cold stone, she opened her arms wide. Vultura was watching from the wallscreen, the giant head swinging back and forth, but Vultura couldn’t stop her worshipping. She was a human being and she had a right to worship her gods. Sun, she petitioned silently. Great Globe of Fire. Please infuse me with your power.

Even at noon on a summer’s day, kneeling on the bed with her face pressed to the window, she could barely see anything through the frosted glass. The best view she ever got was a dark smudge of what she knew was a lavascape, and above it a fuzzy white sky. But she had a right to natural light and she never took it for granted. As the sunbeam flowed into the cell, Astra lifted her face, invited a gentle wealth of photons to tiptoe over her lashes, dance on her cheeks, cascade down her body. The light polished the tankini, but it also sheened her skin until she exuded a honey-gold aura to repel Vultura’s gaze, the stink from the toilet, any shit the day might throw at her. As the cell steadily brightened, stealing the gleam from Vultura’s eyes, she did her morning yoga: sun salutations, Warrior One, Warrior Two, Warrior Three. Corpse pose.

Afterwards, she lay on the bed, observing her breath. Yoga prepared her for visitations from the Old Ones, and even if the Old Ones didn’t come, the exercise and meditation were a good use of time. Time, not an endless ladder of numbers, but a healer who brewed bitter herbs, the doctor she must never perceive as her enemy. Hokma had said that. Hokma, whose presence she hadn’t felt since . . . The memory clouded her mind, trailed by a pale, hopeful thought.

Old Ones, she soulspoke. Jasper is coming today. I would be grateful for a message for my people. And if You don’t mind, she added, I have a question for You.

Istarastra.

Istarastra: the name the Old Ones called her when they expected her to be solemn and wise, to accept all the hard, impersonal truths of the universe. The sibilant cellular transmission sent a nervy quiver running down from her scalp to her toes. She raised her arms behind her head and braced them against the wall.

Earth. Thank you for coming.

Earth sniffed, setting all the hairs on her body erect. It smells good in your den. And you taste . . . like the desert.

She was never quite sure if the Old Ones understood that she was in prison. Perhaps they had soulspoken to so many cloistered mystics over the millennia the distinction was not clear to them. And probably a blocked-up toilet would smell delicious to Earth.

Thank you. I drank long of Sun.

One day you shall swim again in Sun’s heat. That day has not yet come!

Earth’s roar jerked through her and her arms began to ache. She was prepared for it now, but soulspeaking with Earth was nothing like she’d imagined it would be. Earth was no nurturing mother deity, more like an irate Abrahamic god.

You ask Me for a new message, Earth rumbled. I have an old message, an old message from all of the Old Ones. Today Earth, Air, Fire and Water send your people the same message as always, but for one crucial difference: today it comes as a final warning. Today, Istarastra, you must tell the Creatures of Clay that the Old Ones have run out of patience. Your miserable species has one year left: one year in which to end your vain romance with Metal or perish.

The bed rattled, her brain wobbled like a sack of jelly in her head and a spark of fear ignited in her stomach. Perish? Already? But I’m only just starting to get Your messages out to the right people—

Hah! Earth scoffed, a sensation rather like having one’s kidneys scrubbed with sandpaper. The right people are irrelevant, Child. It is the wrong people who should be heeding the Old Ones. The wrong people who are digging more mines, plundering the planet for rare-earths metals, copper, iron and tin, creating sink holes and swamps, toxic lakes, erosion that scatters the soil to the winds. The wrong people who are building more bombs, courting war and disaster. The wrong people who are proliferating, year on year, in thrall to Metal, a renegade force that seeks ever to attain dominion over the family of elements, desires only to disrupt the balance of the universe. I tell you again, Child: the Old Ones searched for billions of light-years to find this planet and garland it with every beauteous form of life, and We will not allow Metal to transform it into a barren rock, populated only by robots and devil worms. The Creatures of Clay may hold life in contempt. We do not!

She winced. I know. I know mining and weapon-making are happening, and they shouldn’t be. We should have learned more from the Dark Times. But we did give up fossil fuels, Earth. And we banned war, for a hundred years. To keep making p