Crooks and Straights

by Masha du Toit

“What does that mean?” said Gia, frowning at Paddavis. “Wipe his records?”

  Paddavis twinkled at her, clearly enjoying himself immensely.

  “Brakman here, he’s a hacker.”

  “A cypher,” corrected Brakman testily.

  “Whatever,” continued Paddavis. “He works on the Special Branch computers. That machine over there speaks through the phone lines, or something, to their machines, where they keep all their records. Soon as little Nico is tested, Brakman can change their records to whatever we want it to be.”

  “Really?” said Gia.

  “No,” said Brakman. “It’s nothing so simple as that.”

  He nibbled at the knuckle of a glove.

  “The caretaker sent you, you say?”

  Gia nodded.

  “You owe him, don’t you?” said Paddavis.

  Brakman shot him an angry glance, but Paddavis was unimpressed.

  “You want me to tell him you’re not helping?”

  “Okay, yes, okay. Give me a chance,” said Brakman. He worked his jaw about, as if chewing something distasteful.

  “Well, some of it is true,” he said reluctantly. “I can access the Special Branch servers remotely from my machine here, and do what is necessary to change the results of a test.”

  “But how’s that possible?” said Gia. “Surely they notice? And have some— I don’t know, some security thing to stop that from happening?”

  “Indeed, they do,” said Brakman. “But I’m very good.”

  “Oh,” said Gia.

  “He works for Special Branch. Computer mechanic,” said Paddavis. “In and out of Valkenberg all the time, no problem.”

  “Not any more, I’m not,” grumbled Brakman. “Or anyway, not for long. Those Purists are getting rid of all the crook staff, haven’t you heard? Or anyway, all the magicals except for their pet sniffer-weres and such, and those kids they’ve got trained up in their Youth League or whatever the hell they call themselves. I’ll not be able to get in to bypass the new security codes, once those are set again.”

  “Really?” said Paddavis, for once at a loss.

  “I’m sorry,” said Gia. “I don’t understand. I thought that you were part of the Belle Gente. So how is it that you also work for Special Branch? Don’t they check up on that kind of thing?”

  Nobody said anything. Brakman picked nervously at his gloves, avoiding her gaze. Clearly she’d said something wrong. She tried again.

  “If Special Branch are getting rid of all magical staff, does that mean you’ll lose your job? You are, um, a magical, aren’t you?”

  “Good question,” said Paddavis.

  This brought another glare from Brakman.

  “Well, I’m magical enough for the Belle Gente to keep their hooks in me,” he said. “And I’m magical enough for Special Branch to treat me like dirt.”

  He turned back to Gia. “You want to know if I’m a magical?”

  He pulled off his gloves and held up his hands to her, palms inward. Each finger ended in a flat pink scar where the nail should have been.

  “And this!” He took off the knitted cap and turned his face away, pushing the side of his head toward Gia, who could not suppress a gasp at the scarred stubs of his ears.

  “Oh! What happened?”

  “They cured me, that’s what happened.” said Brakman. “Special Branch. Cured me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Brakman met her eyes for a moment, then looked down at his scarred hands. His shoulders slumped.

  “Can’t you guess?” he said in a softer tone. “I used to be a were. Changed every month. Lucky they got me early, when I just hit puberty so they could stop the changes taking hold. So I’m not really fish, nor flesh, as your friend here will tell you. Neither crook nor straight.”

  All the anger had gone out of him, and he seemed greyer than ever. Gia wanted to apologise, but he was still talking.

  “Not the worst fate, for a were. Got proper training. Information technology, network management, all those are the coming thing, you know. I’m a qualified security expert.” His back straightened a fraction. “Good enough that the old ones at the Belle Gente pay me a pretty penny. Get them the data they need. Change a file here and there. Needs a subtle touch, that.”

  “But you said you can’t do that anymore?” asked Gia.

  “It all depends,” said Brakman. “When is the test happening?”

  “On Friday.”

  Brakman sniffed.

  “Hmm. That’s still before they’ll be doing their next reboot and changing the passwords.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you are lucky. I still have access to the system on Friday. Special Branch change their passcodes soon after, and after that, I’m out. If you can tell me the exact time, and all goes well, I should be able to intercept and adjust the test data. Put stuff in there, do you see? Make it so they won’t be interested in doing any further tests. He’d end up with a certificate of purity too, which comes in pretty useful.”

  “Really? You can do that?” said Gia, hope flaming up again.

  Brakman shrugged. “If you can afford it.”

  Gia blinked at him. “I’m sorry?”

  The old man got up and went over to the filing cabinet.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these,” he said, riffling through a drawer. “Let me get the contract…no, that’s not it. Ah.”

  He pulled out a cardboard folder, and came back to his chair. “Here you go.” He gave Gia a printed page from the folder.

  “That’s the contract. You’ll have to sign that, before I can go any further. Agree to the fee.”

  “The fee,” said Gia. She felt knocked off balance. “What— fee?”

  “There’s always a charge,” said Brakman. “I do the work so I get the cut, but the contract is with the Belle Gente. That’s who you’ll be paying. Look, you’ll see, it’s all written down there.”

  Of course there would be a fee.

  Gia felt a blush sting her cheeks. It made her feel like a foolish child, to have been taken by surprise. She tried to read, but the words seemed to make no sense. “Where does it say the amount?”

  Brakman leaned over to show her. “There. See?”

  Gia read. “But this says in gold.”

  Brakman gave her a wintery smile. “The old ones are old. They still do things the old way. You’ll just have to convert it into rands, that’s all.”

  “And how much does that come to?”

  “About five thousand.”

  Gia stared down at the contract again. Five thousand rand was a lot of money, but it was not impossible.

  “By when?” She ran a finger along the lines of print. “Says here, twenty-four hours before the ‘procedure’. So that must mean we have to pay by Thursday?”

  “That’s correct,” said Brakman.

  “And— how do we pay? I mean, who do we give the money to? You?”

  Brakman opened the folder again.

  “No. They would never trust me with that much money. Here.”

  He handed her a plastic card. Gia turned it over in her hand. It was perfectly white, with a magnetic strip along one side.

  “What’s this?”

  “That’s what you’ll pay with. Take it to any bank machine that has a deposit facility. Punch in the number that’s on that form— the one that’s stamped on the top there. That’s your procedure number. Punch that into the teller. Then you’ll get instructions on how to go on from there.”

  Gia looked at the contract again. There was something baffling about its bland normality. It looked like a utilities bill, or a demand letter from the municipal library.

  What am I getting into?

  But what choice did she have? Nico would still have to go for the tests, and that was bad. But it would be only the one set of tests, and then he’d have a certificate of purity. The way things seemed to be going, having a piece of paper that certified you as ‘no
n-magical’ might turn out to be very useful indeed for Nico.

  She turned to Paddavis. “You have a look at it. I’m not sure I understand it all.”

  “Sure!” Paddavis took the contract and looked it over in a most business-like way, nodding, and tapping his finger on the paper.

  “Looks all square to me,” he said, handing it back to Gia.

  “Well then,” said Gia. “Okay. Let’s do it. What do I have to do?”

  “Just sign it,” said Brakman. “Come over here by the table so you’ve got something to press on."

  He took out another copy of the contract. When Gia had signed and dated both of them, he handed her a pin. Gia took it, unsure what he meant her to do.

  “Give your thumb a prick with that, and press it top of your signature,” said Brakman. “That seals it.”

  She ran the pin into her thumb. It went deeper than she’d meant, and the bloody fingerprint made the ink of her signatures blur a little.

  Brakman signed too, and took off one glove to prick his thumb and seal both his signatures in blood. “There,” he said, blowing on the paper to dry it. “One more now, so you have a copy.”

  She repeated the procedure, and Brakman put her copy of the form in an envelope.

  Now that she’d made her decision, Gia was in a hurry to get back home. She’d been away much too long already, and her mother would be wondering where she was.

  “Thanks,” she said, and took the envelope from Brakman. “I’ve really got to go now. Thanks so much for agreeing to help.”

  She hesitated. “You’re sure it will work? We just take Nico in to the test— we don’t have to do anything?”

  “It will work,” said Brakman. “Done this many times before. Nothing for you to do. Just go in and have the tests done, just as normal.”

  -oOo-

  On the walk back, Gia was so preoccupied that she hardly took in her surroundings.

  Paddavis lay in the curve of her arm, and at times seemed to be dozing. It was getting late, and she did not feel at all safe walking by herself, even if Paddavis was still making her invisible.

  When she got home, she found Saraswati in the studio, working on the toile of Kavitha’s wedding gown. For a moment, Gia forgot about her own concerns. Even in this unfinished state, and made from cheap fabric, she could see that the final version was going to be glorious.

  “It’s looking great, Mom!”

  Saraswati was on her knees, pulling out the skirts to see how they would fall.

  “It’s turning out rather well,” she said. “Can’t really know until she’s tried it on.”

  Her hands moved over the garment, touching here, moving a seam there.

  “The true test is how it looks with a moving body inside it.”

  “Has she bought the fabric yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  Gia watched her mother for a few moments longer. She’d spent most of the walk trying out explanations of where she’d been, but now that it came to the point, she did not know how to start. At last she just held out the contract.

  “Mom, I think I’ve found a way to get Nico out of having to take that test. Or— at least, he’ll still have to go to the test, but that will be it, they won't…”

  Her voice trailed off as her mother took the envelope. “What do you mean, Gia?” she said as she opened it. “What’s this?”

  Saraswati’s brows gathered in a frown as she read through the contract.

  “Gia, what’s this? Where did you get this?”

  “It’s a contract. The caretaker told me where to go. To contact the Belle Gente. They’ve agreed— well, actually, just this man called Brakman, he can get into the Special Branch’s computer system and...”

  Saraswati felt behind her for a chair, and sat down, still reading.

  “Gia.” Saraswati spoke quietly, but Gia felt her whole body tensing as if she expected a blow. Her mother’s face was very pale.

  “Where did you get this? Who did you speak to?”

  “I was just telling you,” said Gia, trying to keep her voice light. “That contract is with the old ones of the Belle Gente. I met with this, um, representative of theirs called Brakman. He’s the one who can help us. I know it’s expensive—”

  “You went somewhere, to speak to— a ‘representative’ of the Belle Gente?” Saraswati’s voice had lost some of its calm now. “Gia, what— I don’t even know—”

  She got up from her chair.

  “How did you contact this, this—” she gestured wordlessly. “You went off somewhere, with a strange man, Gia, have you lost your mind? And then you actually signed a contract, and in blood too, without even thinking to—”

  Her voice ran out and she shook her head in disbelief. But her silence was only for a moment.

  “You shared our private family matters with some— some stranger. It’s bad enough that you put yourself in danger. But to drag our private troubles through the muck in public, and with these— ” She seemed unable to find a word that was bad enough to express her distaste.

  By now she was up and pacing, and Gia had to back away. Anger came off her like heat from an oven.

  “Have you ever stopped, just for a minute, have you ever stopped to think why it is that I never have anything to do with the magicals? The Belle Gente? That there might be a reason, Gia, a reason that you know nothing about? That these people are not to be trusted? Haven’t you seen the news? Haven’t you seen their slogans? These are people who will sacrifice anything, Gia, they will do anything to further their cause. I saw it happen, in Italy. I saw—”

  But by now, Gia’s blood was up too. “How am I supposed to know anything, if you won’t tell me anything? There’s nothing but secrets with you! No, I don’t know what happened in Italy because nobody ever wants to talk about it!”

  They stood, breathing hard, glaring at each other.

  Saraswati was the first to recover. She put a hand over her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out. “Well, most likely this person you spoke to is nothing but a confidence trickster and has nothing to do with the Belle Gente. You did not give him any money, did you?”

  Gia shook her head. She held her breath, waiting for her mother to reach out to her, to do anything that would make it possible for her to apologise and end the fight. But although the heat of her anger had died down, Saraswati was still pale and grim, and as tense as ever.

  “Mom,” said Gia, trying to speak calmly. “The caretaker himself said that Brakman worked for the Belle Gente. And it’s like a standard procedure. I mean, he’s done this before. He can get into their computer system. If you pay them, Brakman will make sure that Nico only has to do the first set of tests and he’ll get a certificate of purity. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Some way to make sure that Nico will be safe?”

  Surely, once Saraswati understood that she’d only been acting with the best intentions, she’d understand?

  But Saraswati kept her eyes on the contract, smoothing it out on the table. Her face was rigid, and her lips thin and her hands were trembling.

  “It’s very unlikely, Gia, that this person you met is anything but a conman. That’s how it works, I’m afraid. When times are bad people like that gather like vultures. It’s not surprising you were taken in.”

  She rubbed her hands over her face, and raked her fingers through her hair. “I’ll speak to the caretaker. I want to know what on earth he thinks he’s doing, getting you involved in this mess.”

  -oOo-

  Saraswati would not allow Gia to go with her to the caretaker.

  “Go upstairs and stay there until your father gets home and we can discuss this matter.” She came back a few minutes later, frustrated. The caretaker was nowhere to be found.

  Gia wanted to go on arguing, but she could see that her mother was still too worked up for there to be any point in it. The more she thought about it, the more she doubted. Had it all just been an elaborate trick?

  In any case, all her efforts wer
e wasted. If Saraswati did not believe in the contract, she would not pay. And if the money was not paid on time, Brakman would not do whatever it was he did, and— what would happen then?

  Nico would be tested, and life would go on, just as it had before.

  Had she worked herself up over nothing?

  When Karel came home, the situation was discussed again, this time more calmly.

  Nico had been put to bed, and Gia and her parents sat around the kitchen table. Although her father spoke to her more sternly that he usually did, Gia found his words easier to take than her mother’s anger. Even being grounded for a week did not seem to matter much.

  “No visits from friends, and no hour-long phone-calls either,” said Karel, winding down at last. “This is serious, Gia. You acted without thinking, and could have been involved in a serious situation, going alone into a stranger’s house.”

  Not alone, she thought, but did not speak her thoughts out loud. Somehow, she’d not got around to explaining about Paddavis, and doubted that it would make much difference.

  Saraswati, who’d been reading through the contract again, reached out and touched Karel’s sleeve.

  “Karel,” she said with a slight frown. “Have you read this thing?”

  “No,” he said. “Why?”

  “Just have a look at this clause.”

  He read the paragraph she pointed to. Then he read it again.

  “What is it?” asked Gia, feeling once again that stir of unease.

  “Well, it doesn’t really matter,” said Karel, folding the paper away. “It’s not as if it’s a real contract, after all. I mean, we know this guy must be a conman, right? He was just hoping we’d pay the money, and then we’d never have heard from him again.”

  But Gia could see that whatever he’d read had worried him.

  “What is it, Dad?” said Gia.

  Karel glanced at Saraswati. “If I understand it right— and that language is hideously old fashioned, so I might have it wrong—”

  He unfolded the contract again and pointed to a paragraph just under the place that stated the fee. “It says here, that if the fee is not paid by the stated time, the Belle Gente reserve the right to claim the test subject in lieu of payment.”

  Gia looked at him blankly. “What does that mean?”