Wolf Logic

by Masha du Toit

  It was a relief to leave that dark, breathless space. Gia hoped that she would not be asked to spend too much time there.

  -oOo-

  Captain Witbooi was waiting for them in the kitchen. It seemed very bright in there, after the darkness of the midnight row. Next to the weathered Kemp, the captain looked neat, his uniform perfect and crisp, the silver of his purist bracelets gleaming against his dark skin.

  “Morning, Cadets. Sergeant Kemp’s been teaching you all about werewolves, I see! They settling in, sergeant?”

  Kemp gave a noncommittal grunt.

  “Very good,” said the captain. “I’ve just got a few words to say, then I’ll let you get on with it, sergeant. Cadets, I see there are still a few of you who’ve not handed in certificates of purity.” He glanced at a slip of paper. “Cadets Motsepe, Van Niekerk and Ford.” He looked up at them. “I’ve contacted your parents and it seems the three of you have not, in fact, been deep tested yet.” He folded the paper and slipped it in his pocket. “That is not in itself a problem, of course. We’ll simply perform the test this afternoon. It will mean that you will miss your data capture training, but that cannot be helped. The three cadets I named, present yourselves at the Annex at two pm and we’ll quickly get that paperwork sorted and you can get back into the programme.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the three cadets. Motsepe and Ford both looked unworried, but Gia thought that Van Niekerk seemed a little anxious. She remembered her own test, not so long ago and wondered what would happen if one of these cadets turned out to have a magical talent. Could one join the Youth Brigade as a magical? She doubted it. But, on the other hand, what about Cadet Lee, who’d visited her school with Captain Witbooi and who’d come out of the Special Branch children’s programme? She was a telepath, after all.

  “Well!” said the captain. “I’m always glad to see the new recruits hard at work. You’ll find many opportunities to learn new skills here. As you may have heard already, I like to say that the Special Branch constables are more like soldiers than like cops, but that’s not really true. Soldiers must be obedient. They must follow an order even if it goes against common sense. So soldiers are put through a training process that strips them of their individuality, removes that irritating tendency to think for themselves.” He smiled and the cadets laughed obediently.

  “But here at the Youth Brigade, the ability to think is exactly what we are after. I call the graduates from this programme our warrior scientists. And scientists need, above all, to think for themselves. Reason! That’s what it is all about. Conquering the superstitious fear that feeds the likes of the Belle Gente and all other magical terrorists. That’s what we’ll be doing. Teaching you to think for yourselves, so that you can come up with the weapons, the strategies, the inventions that will protect our country from the beasts and monsters that threaten our peace.” The captain glanced at Sergeant Kemp. “But I’m taking up your time, sergeant. I’m sure Sergeant Kemp has a lot more to show you. Well, cadets, back to work. Pure and true!”

  He brought his arms up in the silver salute—crossed at the wrist, silver bracelets flashing.

  “Pure and true!” responded the cadets. Caught by surprise, Gia made the gesture, but did not say the words.

  -oOo-

  The rest of the morning was spent learning all about the work done in the wolf cages. Sergeant Kemp gave a first aid demonstration of treating a were bite that nearly had several of the cadets fainting, to the immense amusement of the controllers. She also showed them the proper way to hold a sharp knife and how to sharpen it to a keen edge. The recruits learnt how to defrost meat and how to cut it up into chunks without endangering their own fingers.

  “Not that the doggies mind a bit of blood,” joked one of the controllers. “But it’s probably best not to give them the taste of it.”

  Not all the meat was red meat. There were buckets full of fish and squid, all of which had to be cleaned and cut up, weighed and stored in the correct containers. Here too, there were tricks to learn. Squid eyes, unless treated with care, squirted dark red liquid over the unwary. And hidden in the slippery flesh of their heads, Gia found that each one had a little nut-brown parrot beak that had to be picked out and thrown away.

  Preparing the werewolves’ food was a complex process. Each individual werewolf had to be fed exactly the right mix at the right time. The correct fluid or powder had to be measured out and stirred in and then marked off on a checklist.

  “You fuck this up, you fuck up badly,” the demonstrating controller said as she dripped a clear fluid into a cup of water, then poured the water over the ground meat mixture in the bowl. “This is what keeps them in phase, or pulls them from one phase into another. Put too much in, you can drive the doggies crazy.”

  They were shown how to clean the food bowls and the safest way to put fresh food and water in the cages. How to clean the muzzles and leashes and which pegs to hang them on. Everything had to be done just so, everything had a label, or a checklist.

  The controllers clearly enjoyed having the cadets there to do the slog work. “Almost as good as having the brakke back again,” said Controller Pienaar. He and another controller, a woman called Klaasen, were standing in the doorway, having a smoke break.

  “Yes,” said Klaasen. “I almost miss those scrawny little buggers.”

  The unfamiliar term caught Gia’s attention. Brakke reminded her of Brakman. And, until recently, she knew, Brakman had been working here at Special Branch. Pienaar and Klaasen seemed friendly enough, so she decided to risk a question.

  “Who were they?” she asked as she rinsed her hands and arms. “The brakke? Did they work here?”

  “That’s what we call the werewolves who got fixed,” said Pienaar. “Years ago, when the doctor still worked here in the cages, he used to experiment with curing the weres. Was kind of an obsession with him. Didn’t really work, but he did manage to stall some of them in the human stage permanently. In a way. Poor buggers.” He took a drag at his cigarette. “Some of them just went nuts. It worked better the younger you did it, but for some reason it stunted their growth. Skinny little runts, all of them, but good workers.”

  That description certainly fit Brakman. Gia remembered his missing fingernails and the scars where his ears used to be.

  “What happened to them?” she asked, although she already guessed the answer. Brakman had told her, after all.

  “The purge,” said Pienaar. “Special Branch got rid of all magical staff recently. Supposedly a security risk.”

  “Yep. Some things got leaked, that’s what I heard,” said Klaasen. “The Belle Gente just seemed to know a little too much about what was going on in here. Made the high-ups nervous.”

  “And now we’re stuck with doing all the slog work ourselves,” said Pienaar. “I hear things are even worse in data capture. Lost a lot of staff up there.”

  “But now we have you poor buggers,” said Controller Klaasen with a grin. “So all’s well that end’s well.”

  -oOo-

  After lunch, the two groups or recruits swapped duties. The group that had been doing data capture training went with Sergeant Kemp to the wolf cages and Gia’s group followed Warrant Officer Naudé to the Annex. The last time Gia had been in this building, was when she had been tested. That felt like another life. Another, different girl had walked here, in these same corridors.

  Warrant Officer Naudé led them into a long, windowless room, filled with the hushed hum of air-conditioning. There were four rows of computers and the walls were lined with shelves and filing cabinets. Gia wished she’d thought to put on her long-sleeved jacket. The air was distinctly chilly.

  “Each of you take a seat,” said Naudé. “Please don’t touch the computers until you are instructed to do so.”

  Naudé was a scrawny man with a receding hairline and a thin moustache. His slouched posture made him look untidy, despite the perfectly ironed creases of his uniform. He glanced rapidly over the group, making notes
on a clipboard as the cadets took their seats.

  Gia looked curiously at the computer in front of her. She’d used one before, of course, but only during the computer literacy training at school. This machine looked a great deal sleeker and newer than the school computer.

  “Right,” said Naudé and pushed up his glasses. “Let’s get going then.” He blinked at them, pursing his lips so that his moustache bunched. “This is the data centre.” He gave a sharp nod. “This is the mind, the brains, the nerve centre of the entire Special Branch operation. This is where we enter, control, test and retrieve data. Information. Results. Evidence. Officers go out on patrol and gather information and here their notes are entered into the database. Civilians and prisoners come to the Annex to be tested and the results of those tests are entered into the database. Undercover operatives make contact and report their findings and that highly volatile information is recorded in the database.”

  He nodded significantly. “Yes, indeed. Some top-secret information is handled here in this room. The first thing you will be learning today is how to access the database with your own, unique password. But, before that, you will need to know how to switch your computer on.”

  Step by precise step, Naudé showed them how to enter the coded phrase that gave each of them access to the computer system. Then they practised calling up various parts of the database and typing in sequences of words and numbers. The lesson was slow and repetitive, and Gia found it difficult to concentrate. The smells and sights of the wolf cages crowded back into her mind.

  What was it like, for the werewolves? Only going out when they were muzzled up and drugged nearly senseless? But maybe they didn’t know any other way of life. Did that make it better, or worse? She wondered why the sight of the cages had upset her so. It was not as though the wolves were innocent, after all. They must have done something to deserve imprisonment. Werewolves were dangerous creatures. Monsters, even. They couldn’t be allowed to just go where they liked, to walk the streets of Cape Town unseen among the real humans.

  Real humans. And what are those? She saw again the flash of white feathers bursting out along her mother’s arms, Saraswati’s eyes turning flat and black as she transformed into a swan.

  Gia jerked with shock as a hand touched her shoulder.

  “Are you stuck with something, cadet?” Warrant Officer Naudé stood over her, peering at the screen.

  “Oh. No, sir. I just lost my place.”

  “Indeed. This is not place for wool gathering, cadet. We need your full focus here. Now. If you remember the code of the last item you entered, you can do a search for a particular string...”

  Gia sat back as he reached for the keyboard. Naudé seemed already to have forgotten his impatience, but she could not afford to annoy any of these officers. She had to be more careful.

  “Next exercise,” said Naudé, moving to the front of the room again and picking up a pile of papers. “This is something a bit more complex. On these sheets, you will find a number of different types of information, not just a single list as we had before. You will call up the file in the same way as before, with the BEVUC number stamped at the top of the sheet, but this time you need to check that the information filled in on the paper form corresponds with that on the digital version. As before, you don’t have access rights to correct any discrepancies, but you should create an alert by typing the correct data into the ‘alert’ box in the column on the left...”

  Gia took her pile of sheets as they were handed to her and looked them over. These were easier to interpret than the numbers and codes they’d been filling in up to now. Each had a name at the top and then places for other information. Date, age, weight, blood pressure—a whole list of similar details, followed by codes.

  Something caught her eye and she flipped back to the first sheet and went through them again.

  Botha, Christo Age:10 years, 2 months. Macmillian, Elizabeth Age: 6 years, 9 months. Malan, Nicolene Age:8 years, 1 month.

  It was as she’d thought. None of the ages were more than ten. These must be the records of children that had been tested by Special Branch. She had—she counted quickly—ten sheets. And each of the cadets had a similar pack.

  How many of these children had tested positive for magical abilities? And what had happened to them then? The answer must be in those codes. Was there some way for her to find out what those meant? Maybe that was the kind of thing that the Belle Gente wanted her to find out for them. In fact, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t entirely sure what she was supposed to be doing, as their spy.

  They’ll let me know, somehow. In the meantime, I can’t do anything that might draw attention. It’s just too dangerous.

  -oOo-

  The spicy scent of bobotie filled the kitchen. That was good. Nico liked bobotie. Lately, Mandy had been trying to get him to eat all kinds of hard, crispy, cold things such as celery and cucumber. But bobotie was an old favourite. That was the worst thing about being seven years old. Everybody thought they could tell you what to do all the time, what to wear, what to eat. He watched as his father served a steaming spoonful of the yellow food into his plate.

  “That enough?” asked Karel.

  That enough, that enough. Enuff. E-nouf. Ff. Nico savoured the word, rolling it in his mouth. The “f” sound at the end was like a puff of steam escaping between his lips, tasty, bobotie-scented steam. He caught his father’s raised eyebrows and quickly played back the memory of Karel’s words. That enough? It was a question. Yes. Still blowing the f-sound, he nodded.

  But his father’s eyebrows were still raised.

  He was supposed to say it too. He swallowed the “f” and said, carefully, “Yes.”

  Speaking the words was one of the things his teacher, Miss Winterbach, insisted on.

  His father was still looking at him expectantly.

  Clearly, he’d left something out. “Thanks!”

  Karel smiled and handed him the plate. “It’s a pleasure.”

  Karel served a plateful for himself then took his seat. He sat where he always did, across from Nico, which was right and good, but the rest of the table was all wrong. Nico’s mother, Saraswati, should be sitting on the right and Gia should be on the left. Both those chairs were empty. His mother and his sister were gone. For a moment Nico felt the stirring of the old panic, but he remembered Miss Winterbach’s advice. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes, if you have to.

  He looked down at the tablecloth, focusing on the lines woven into it. The pale blue horizontal lines and the darker vertical lines that crossed one another in such a pleasing, regular way. He thought about Miss Winterbach. He liked her. She helped him make sense of things. She was not as good as the caretaker, but then, nobody was.

  When he was with the caretaker, Nico could forget about everything except the thing he was working on. Even Miss Winterbach didn’t make him feel like that. She wanted to make him change himself and that was often uncomfortable. The caretaker never told him how he was supposed to act, or what he was supposed to say. He just showed Nico how to make things. How to use his hands and his mind. And he did it as though Nico already knew these things, just had to be reminded how. It was comforting.

  “Nico.” He looked up and saw that his father was holding out his hand. He took a moment to understand.

  Oh yes.

  This was the thing they did before every meal. Everybody held hands around the table for a few moments, with their eyes closed. “Giving thanks,” was what Karel called it. Nico had always held his mother’s and Gia’s hands. But now they were not there. How would this work? He felt the panic stir again. Karel held out his other hand as well and Nico realised what his father wanted. Both hands. He’d hold both his father’s hands.

  “I know this is a bit strange, Nico,” said Karel. “But let’s make the best of it, hey, old man?”

  Nico nodded. He watched as his father closed his eyes and bent his head and then looked down at the tablecloth again himself. His kn
ife lay near a vertical line on the tablecloth, at a slight angle to the line. He wanted to straighten it but of course he could not, with Karel holding both his hands. Nico looked at his fork. That was better. It was exactly on top of its line, so that the tines lined up on either side. He liked it like that. If only the knife were straight too. He thought about nudging the knife with his mind, the way the caretaker had shown him. It would be easy. Just that morning, he’d managed to turn a bolt without touching it at all, just by thinking at it and that had required much finer control. Moving something just with his mind had been a good feeling and he wanted to do it again.

  But his father had finished saying thanks and released his hands.

  “Let’s eat!” said Karel.

  -oOo-

  Later that evening, Nico lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. The house was so quiet. Karel had read him his bedtime story and gone back down to the studio to finish something he was working on. Nico wished he could go downstairs and sit with his father, but Karel would never allow this. Once the story had been read, he was supposed to sleep.

  What happened if he could not sleep? The house felt far too quiet. In the past, he’d hardly ever been alone. If his mother had been away for some reason, Mandy had been there or Gia. In their old home, the one in which they’d lived before they moved here, Mandy used to sleep in a little room at the back and whenever he’d been scared at night, he’d gone and knocked on her door. She’d always let him in and sometimes, if he was lucky, she’d let him crawl into bed with her.

  But in their new house there was no place for Mandy to stay, so she went back to her own home every evening.

  With surprise, Nico realised that he’d never seen Mandy’s home. He’d not even thought about it as a real place where somebody could go. He wondered how far away it was. Would he be able to link to her while she was there?

  He closed his eyes and allowed himself to drop into the half-dreaming state that was best for reaching out for somebody else’s mind. He’d linked with Mandy often before, but only when she was fairly near him.