The Strange

by Masha du Toit

  “I think they took Thandeka back to where she works, in the infirmary. And Noor is with the menha.”

  “What? How the hell did that happen?”

  Elke shifted uneasily. “That’s kind of my fault. We were in the harbour, and the guards were distracted. There were some menha nearby, and I asked Noor to talk to them. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We need all the allies we can get, and from what you’d told me...”

  “Noor talked to them? What happened?”

  “She was fantastic, that’s what.” Elke shifted, trying to ease her bruised limbs. “She knew exactly what to do. Last I saw, she was swimming in the harbour with them.”

  Kiran laughed. “I shouldn’t be surprised. She’s no push-over, Noor. She’s quiet, but fierce where it matters. And then what happened?”

  “The guards came to get me. I was shit scared that they would notice Noor out there with the menha, but they didn’t. They dragged me back here. Thandeka said that she would get Esseret Sadh to help get Noor back—”

  “Sadh?”

  “That’s right,” said Elke. “Apparently Esseret Sadh and Thandeka work together. They fix paperwork, help slaves escape. I’m pretty sure the menha help them get slaves out of here.”

  “And now what?” Kiran turned her jacket so that a damp patch was closer to the fire.

  “And now we wait. Thandeka said that she might be able to do something to get us out of here, but honestly, I can’t imagine how. She doesn’t have much authority, apart from, you know, sheer force of personality.”

  By now, several of the pugios had come out on the roof and were lighting fires of their own. More than one sour glance was thrown in their direction.

  “What about Mell?” Elke asked. “What happened to her?”

  “She never came back today.” Kiran looked over at the pugios. “I don’t know. Maybe she was moved to a different unit. Elke, these guys really don’t look happy with us. I wish Nehi was still around.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Elke. “But I don’t like our chances out in the courtyard either. Do you?”

  Some of the pugios were staring directly at them, with no attempt to disguise their hostility.

  “No. I don’t.”

  A man with a broken nose called something at them.

  Kiran laughed, a friendly sound to anyone who wasn’t close enough to see how tense she was. She replied, and to Elke’s relief several of the pugios laughed.

  “There’s going to be trouble soon,” Kiran said softly. “That guy just about came out and called me a menha spy.”

  She was right. His friends were still enjoying Kiran’s joke, but the broken-nosed pugio looked far from pleased. He spoke, loudly and belligerently, and Elke caught the word “menha” once again.

  This time Kiran’s response did not go down so well. Two pugios rose to their feet, one of them bending to pull a burning branch from their fire.

  “Shit.” Kiran leaned back against the crate she was using as a back rest, stretching out as if she was utterly relaxed. She shot a look at Elke. “Here we go. Just don’t let them think they can intimidate us.”

  “What are you worried about?” Elke said as several more pugios rose to their feet, some with their hands on their belt knives. “I’m sure they just want to invite us over for a cup of tea.”

  Kiran snorted a laugh, and grinned at Elke. “Of course. With milk and sugar.”

  As the first pugio stepped into the circle of light from their fire, a voice called from below. The pugio hesitated, looking towards the sound. One of his friends answered the call, frowning.

  Kiran stood up, dropping her pretended languor.

  The voice called again, and Elke heard a door slam below. Somebody was coming up the ladder.

  “I think this might be—” began Kiran, and then two guards came through the trapdoor. They spoke to the pugios, one of whom answered reluctantly, as the others all turned to look at Elke and Kiran.

  Esseret Sadh emerged behind the guards, climbing through the trapdoor.

  “Ah! Veraart,” he said. “And Ghatak. Just who I was looking for. Come. I’m taking you to Ashurbanipal.”

  Ashurbanipal

  It was only when the slave-court door slammed behind them that Elke relaxed enough to speak. “Who’s Ashurbanipal?”

  Esseret Sadh shook his head at her, his expression warning her not to ask again.

  The pugios had let Sadh and the guards take them, but not without some argument. The walk out through the slave-court had been nerve wracking. People had turned to watch their progress the entire way across the courtyard. Elke had been keenly aware of the shifting balance between the outnumbered guards, and the slaves who knew the consequences of any show of defiance.

  As soon as they left the slave-court, Sadh led them up flight after flight of stairs until they reached a broad landing and a pair of double doors, intricately carved. Sadh rang a bell, and then spoke to somebody through an intercom.

  The guards stood chatting to one another, not paying much attention to their prisoners.

  “You think Thandeka planned this?” whispered Kiran.

  “I guess so,” said Elke. “What else could it be?”

  “Nick of time,” said Kiran. “I’m just glad to be away from those pugios.”

  The doors swung open with a click and a sigh, and the guards ushered them inside.

  They found themselves in a small but elegant hallway, floored with marble and panelled in stone. Carved and gilded lions reared on the walls, writhing on the end of spears, or roaring in the faces of axe-wielding warriors.

  The guards pushed them through a pair of sliding doors into a tiled cubicle. Before Elke or Kiran realised what was happening, the guards stepped back and closed the doors, shutting them in.

  “Oh, no—” Kiran put her hands over her eyes but before Elke could react, a hissing came from above and they were both drenched in a fluid that reeked of lemons.

  All Elke’s scratches and grazes flared up into painful life again.

  When the spray died down, somebody opened a pair of sliding doors in the opposite wall. Elke, still blinking the stuff from her eyes, could not see who had opened the doors, or who was handing her a towel.

  “Takes you kind of by surprise, doesn’t it,” said Thandeka.

  Elke lifted her face from the towel.

  Thandeka’s eyes were smiling at her above papery mask that covered her nose and mouth. “You look like a drowned rat. And you must be Kiran.”

  ”Hey,” said Kiran. “Nice to meet you!”

  “Here, put these on.” Thandeka handed Elke what seemed to be a bowl full of folded bits of paper. “Masks,” she said at Elke’s obvious bafflement. “And gloves. Just put them on. You too, Kiran.”

  “Where’s Noor?” Elke struggled to tie the fiddly straps of her mask behind her head. “And what is this place?”

  They were in a large room that opened onto two balconies, one on either side. It was crowded with a forest of statuary.

  Stone women balanced stone vessels on their shoulders, water trickling over their carved breasts into mosaic-encrusted basins. Sculpted deer stood poised, forever on the point of flight, and cats sat with their tails tucked round their paws. Every surface was crowded with figurines and carvings, jumbled together like goods in a storeroom. Despite this, the air smelt oddly fresh, as if there was a waterfall nearby, or many living plants.

  “I’ll fetch Noor as soon as I can get away from here,” said Thandeka. “It’s taken all our time just to organise for the two of you to be brought here, and I can’t go without Sadh to escort me.”

  Before Elke could ask what she meant, Thandeka ushered them through the room and onto one of the balconies.

  Esseret Sadh already sat there, masked and gloved just as they were. Opposite him sat a richly dressed old man, an imposing figure with a bush of slate-grey dreadlocks that cascaded over his shoulders, and a neatly sculpted beard rather like those of the lion-spearing men in the e
ntrance hall. He sat in a wheelchair, Elke saw as she drew closer.

  “I thought we had an understanding, Sadh,” the old man was saying in an aggrieved tone. “I let you do what you do, no questions asked, but the less I know about it, the better. That’s what we agreed. Gives me deniability, and you have free rein. Is it really necessary, to bring these people into my rooms? Isn’t there somewhere else—”

  “My lord Ashurbanipal. Here are Elke and Kiran.”

  Thandeka’s voice was so elaborately solemn that Elke glanced at her to check whether she was joking.

  The old man turned, eyebrows rising as he took in Elke and Kiran’s presence. “Well! Well. Here we are then.”

  Those dreadlocks. Elke tried not to stare. The last time she’d seen this man he hadn’t been in a wheelchair, and his body had been obscured in the folds of a biosuit.

  No mistaking him—this was Sneeze, the eccentric tourist who liked to hang out in bars on the Garden’s level, the old hypochondriac, butt of so many jokes.

  “Elke Veraart. Constable of the Babylon Eye.” Sneeze looked Elke up and down, ignoring Kiran completely. “Thandeka told me all about you. And so, we meet, who have not met in this life before.” His eyes slid sideways towards Sadh, as if checking his reaction.

  He doesn’t want Sadh to know I’ve met him in the Eye, Elke realised. It added to her confusion. While she’d seen Sneeze wandering around the Eye often enough, she didn’t think she’d ever spoken to him. What did he have to conceal?

  And here was another puzzle—Sneeze spoke with the unmistakable accent of a realsider, and what’s more, a realsider from the poorer areas of Kaapstadt.

  An outrageous answer suggested itself, but Elke quickly dismissed it as impossible.

  “Please, sit! Sit!” Sneeze gestured at the chairs around him. “You won’t mind if I don’t shake your hands.”

  Sneeze was the only one not wearing a mask and gloves.

  “Hygiene, you understand.” Sneeze smiled benignly at her. “At my age, my immune system simply isn’t what it used to be.”

  The balcony was comfortably furnished with cane chairs and a low table nearly invisible under the piles of books and manuscripts. A miniature version of the air-filtering slug-beast crouched next to Sneeze’s chair, combing the air with its filigree of tendrils and exuding the waterfall scent Elke had already noticed.

  The balcony overlooked the slave-court, but the court was screened from view not only by the branches of the thorny creeper, but by swathes of plastic sheeting that had clearly only recently been put in place.

  Maybe Sneeze was worried about cut-gas as well as germs.

  Elke edged her way to the nearest chair, never taking her eyes from Sneeze. The suspicion that had planted itself in her mind expanded and she blurted it before she could stop herself. “You’re Maxwell Jali!”

  Sneeze—or was it Maxwell—swivelled to regard Elke, eyes twinkling with self-satisfied humour. “The very one. The very one. And it’s a testament to your powers of deduction, Constable Veraart.”

  Elke just stared at him, trying to absorb the surprise. Here sat Maxwell Jali, the legendary founder and financier of the Babylon Eye. He must be—what? More than a hundred and thirty years old by now.

  Kiran, who had lowered herself onto a footstool near one of the tables, spoke up. “So that’s where it came from!”

  She was looking at a large, old-fashioned record player set up near the balcony railing.

  Maxwell Jali turned to her in chilly surprise, as if she was a servant who had spoken out of turn.

  “I wondered where that music came from,” Kiran went on, not noticing Maxwell’s reaction. “We’ve been hearing it every night. It came from here! Now I know the bitter cold, and the bitter wind,” she sang, her voice low and melodious.

  “That was you?” Maxwell stared at Kiran. “Last night, and the night before? That was you, singing?”

  “You could hear me all the way up here?” Kiran grinned. “Yes, that was me.”

  “Kiran’s a singer,” said Elke. “She was the vocalist for—what was your group called again?” Elke turned to Kiran and was surprised to see a hint of blush rising in her friend’s cheeks.

  “The Jali Steppas,” said Kiran. “But that was years ago.”

  “The Jali Steppas?” Now Maxwell was clearly electrified. “That was you? Down Below Beat, right? And Shark Town.” He hummed a phrase in a light, wavering tenor. “I loved that band. I saw— Uhm, I mean, I have the recordings here somewhere—”

  “Maybe we can look at that later,” Thandeka said dryly. “Right now, we have some practical issues to discuss.”

  “Two realsiders, so close to me, and I never knew it.” Maxwell Jali shook his head as if marvelling the exquisite irony. “And one of them the vocalist from the Steppas! I’m overwhelmed. You cannot guess how I have longed for the presence of citizens from my long-lost home. All these years. All these years.”

  Maxwell fished a tissue from a pocket, dabbed at his eyes, and blew his nose.

  “I am so moved,” he continued. “For so long now, Esseret Sadh has been my closest link to the Real, and he is only second generation, having been born here in the Carsera. His parents were from the Real, you know.”

  Nobody responded, but Elke was sure the same thought was in all their minds.

  What about Thandeka? And what about the hundreds of realsider slaves right here in the Carsera, in the slave-court within sight of the balcony? Elke looked at Maxwell wonderingly. Does he not know? Or does he choose not to know?

  Maxwell was still talking. “For so long, I have been yearning for reminders of my home. That is why, when I heard your voice, Kiran, rising up out of the night, I simply knew you were a child of my home-world.” He turned to Elke, eyes damp with emotion. “Who could not know from the moment they heard her, that she was a true child of the Real?”

  But she isn’t. Elke caught the sparkle in Kiran’s eye. Surely, Maxwell Jali must know that Kiran was no pureblood realworlder. It took just one look at her tattoos and body-modifications to make that clear. But maybe that didn’t matter to him. It certainly seemed to amuse Kiran.

  “It has been more than eighty years since I’ve been home, to the world of my birth,” Maxwell Jali continued, his voice taking on a slightly sing-song quality. “Babylon the Great, mother of harlots! For that world is indeed Babylon, destroyed Babylon the Great, your gardens withered, your wells poisoned! How the mighty is fallen, and all beauty turned to dust.” He sighed, settling deeper into his chair with a satisfied air. “My friends, is it not said, for God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled—”

  “Indeed,” Thandeka said dryly. “For one thing—”

  “What?” Maxwell frowned grumpily at Thandeka. He clearly didn’t like having his oratory interrupted.

  Esseret Sadh spoke up quickly. “My lord, I’ve always thought how ironic it is. You are without a doubt the realworlder who has travelled the furthest into the Strange and made travel through the worlds possible to so many. And yet, you no longer travel yourself. I’ve often wondered about that—why you stay here. You’ve not left these rooms for years. There is doubtless great wisdom in that.”

  Maxwell seemed struck by this idea, and mollified. His frown cleared.

  “But my lord,” Sadh continued. “Medic Thandeka tells me that there’s an urgent matter we need to attend to. Her daughter, Noor, is still not with us. Can I have your permission to go and fetch her?”

  “What— Another one?” Maxwell flapped a hand at Esseret Sadh. “Of course, man. Go and get her, if you must.”

  “I’ll go too.” Thandeka got to her feet, then, looking at Elke, she hesitated. “You feeling okay?”

  Elke sat as quietly as she could, fighting the urge to be sick. Her headache had ramped up and was pounding at her temples again.

  “I shouldn’t have let those idiots drag her up here.” Thandek
a moved to Elke’s side. “Look at her. She’s hardly recovered from being half drowned.” She hesitated, clearly torn. Elke wanted to reassure her that she should go, she was fine, but didn’t dare speak in case she threw up again.

  “Thandeka, you must come with me,” Sadh said. “Maxwell has medics on his staff. They can look after Elke.”

  Elke closed her eyes and fought the wave of dizziness that threatened to engulf her. Blood roared in her ears. People spoke, but she could not follow what they said.

  She was vaguely aware of somebody guiding her onto her feet and somebody—Kiran? Helping her to kneel so that she could be sick into a bowl. Very little came up, just a trickle of bitter fluid, but her whole body convulsed and her head felt as if it was exploding.

  Gentle hands held her and wiped her mouth and face. Kiran spoke to somebody. Elke was picked up and carried and placed on a firm but yielding surface.

  “Drink,” said Kiran, and Elke drank while somebody held a glass to her lips.

  Cool, cool water. She’d surely never been so thirsty before. It had a bitter aftertaste, but her headache was receding.

  Somewhere in the distance, Maxwell Jali’s voice, raised in alarm. “You’re sure? It’s not contagious? She was sick! You’re sure?”

  “I’m perfectly sure, my lord. It is concussion. Nothing contagious.” The answer came from close above her, a male voice, cool, precise, and utterly assured.

  “But the vomiting?” Maxwell Jali insisted.

  “That’s what happens when you get a blow to the head,” the same cool voice replied. “I’ll run some tests, but I see no signs of anything infectious.”

  Elke opened her eyes. A man was smoothing patches onto her temples. An old man, whose hands seemed much too large for his thin arms. Something about him reminded her strongly of Crosshatch, although he clearly wasn’t a shade.

  “Ah. Feeling better, are you?” The man raised one iron-grey eyebrow, then took hold of Elke’s face, and shone something bright first into one eye, and then the other. “Had quite a knock on your head, I hear.”