Wolf Logic

by Masha du Toit

  It was the first time ever he’d been out alone at night and he’d not been ready to give up yet. His mother was at the quarry park. If he could only get his bearings...

  There had been a van blocking the road, he remembered it now. Its back doors had been standing open. A sound had made him look up at a nearby house, to see a figure emerging from an upstairs window—a pale figure that climbed with the ease of a lizard. Nico had been so amazed he’d never thought of hiding.

  And then—

  Nothing. That’s the last he could remember.

  The car slowed and again he heard the voices. “You’re sure nobody’s following?” and the rumble of the other voice answering. The tick-tick-tick of an indicator as they turned, going slowly now, he could tell by the tone of the engine. There was another sound, a rushing and shushing that came and went in slow rhythm. They shook and bumped as if driving over uneven ground and at last, came to a stop.

  The rushing sound continued and Nico realised he was hearing the sea—waves breaking and retreating. Then his breath caught as something near him stirred. There was somebody in here with him, had been all along. Nico kept his eyes tightly shut. Maybe if they thought he was still unconscious—

  The sharp voice spoke again, this time much closer and louder. “He still out of it, Hitam?” Then the sound of feet on metal and he felt somebody move near him. Something cold touched his face. A hand?

  There was a thump and squeak and Nico guessed that somebody had opened the back of the van. “Well, he’s not dead, Billy,” said the sharp voice. “But you must have knocked him good. I say we just chuck him in the sea and be done with it.”

  “We can’t do that, Spyker,” said the deep voice. “Anyway, I’m not swimming out into that cold water and we don’t have a boat.”

  “What are we going to do with him then?” said Spyker. “We can’t keep him.”

  “I don’t see why not. Anyway, it was you who told me to thump him.”

  “Yes, because he saw us! If you’d given him the chance, he’d have raised the alarm on us.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He’s a straight, isn’t he?”

  Nico knew what a straight was—somebody who had no magic at all. He certainly was no straight, but he kept his mouth shut. It seemed safer.

  The van rocked. Billy must have climbed in the back. “Let’s have a look at him then.”

  Nico tried to lie as still as he could, his skin crawling at the idea that they would soon be touching him.

  “Poor little dude,” said Billy, much closer now. “I wonder what it was doing out so late, all by itself. I didn’t mean to hit it so hard. Do you think I’ve damaged it?”

  Something brushed Nico’s face. It tickled and reminded him of Pouf’s whiskers. He could smell it too, a damp, woolly scent. Something, some kind of animal, was sniffing at his face. It made a noise, a grating, growling noise like a big rusty cog turning. “Oh really?” said Spyker and laughed. “Looks like you were worried for nothing, Billy. Hitam says he’s awake.”

  Hands seized his shoulders and somebody shook him. “Come on! Open your eyes. No use pretending!”

  A Midnight Meeting

  Gia’s group were back at the wolf cages the next morning. They were put to work preparing food for the werewolves. Chopped-up vegetables had to be mixed with minced meat and then the resulting meaty porridge divided into exact portions for freezing. There was something calming about the methodical work and Gia was able to do some planning.

  Her best idea so far was to try to access Special Branch records during data capture training. It seemed unlikely that she would find anything, even if Special Branch had seized Nico, but it would be a start. And, unless she’d misunderstood Ochre’s message, she’d be meeting a Belle Gente agent that very night. If the Belle Gente had broken their side of the bargain by taking Nico, it was unlikely that anybody would show up. If somebody did show up, she’d have a chance to ask them what was going on.

  But what if they lie to me? She pushed down that thought. Whatever happened, she’d think of something to do. There was nothing worse than just waiting, not knowing what was going on.

  When the food preparation was finished, the cadets were set to cleaning the cages in daylight row, near the main entrance. They swept up droppings, hair and fragments of much-chewed bones, hosed down the concrete and mopped the entire area with disinfectant.

  “Smells kind of nice,” said Van Niekerk as Gia slopped the disinfectant over the floor of a cage. “What is it?”

  “Some kind of herbal thing,” said the controller who stood watching them work. “One time, somebody got it mixed up with bleach and none of the weres could smell anything for a week. Hey! Careful now. Don’t go too near that fence.”

  Gia, forgetting where she was, had moved right up to the cage next door. A werewolf stood within arm’s reach just beyond the metal grid. Gia stepped slowly backward.

  “They can’t really do much damage through the fence, but you’d be surprised how hard they can hit it,” said the controller.

  The werewolf was one Gia had not seen before. Like all the weres in these daylight cages it had wolf head on a human body and she guessed it was a mischling. The spurhunde were slightly built. This one was big. His heavy head seemed to sit directly on the powerful shoulders, his hair short, black and glossy. Gia relaxed as she saw that his eyes had a glazed, unfocused look. “He’s drugged?” she asked the controller.

  “Yep. They get a cocktail of stuff in their breakfast. Just enough to take the edge off. This one’s going out on a routine patrol this morning, so he’s fairly well spiked. Makes him easier to control but still enough brain cells firing to be useful.”

  As she worked, Gia saw that not all of the outside pens were individual cells. Beyond the mischling and spurhund cages was another cage, large and sand floored, with several raised concrete platforms. The werewolves there were in their full wolf form. They lounged on the concrete, asleep in the morning sun. Or not quite asleep, Gia realised as she caught a gleam of a slitted eye, watching her.

  There was a clang on the far side of the cage, Sergeant Kemp closing a gate, a metal bucket on one hip. Gia watched as Kemp walked slowly out into the centre of the cage. The wolves turned to look, one or two getting to their feet. None of them looked directly at Kemp, but soon all of them were moving, converging on the sergeant. As they got close, they dropped their heads, ears back, tails sweeping slowly from side to side. At first Gia thought that Kemp was ignoring the circling wolves. Then she saw that she was allowing first one wolf and then the next to touch her knuckles with its nose, or bump a shaggy shoulder against her knees. One wolf had not moved. It was lying, head up, ears pricked, looking at the approaching woman—a shaggy grey-and-black beast with torn ears and one silver-blind eye.

  “Hello, old girl,” said the sergeant. “Got your mid-morning treat here.” She took a bone from the bucket and placed it in front of her. The other wolves hung back, watching as the old female got stiffly to her feet and nosed at the bone. She picked it up and made her slow way back to her spot.

  Now the other wolves stared directly at the sergeant, ears pricked. One by one, she tossed each of them a bone. When the bucket was empty, she stood for a while, watching as each of the wolves carried their loot to a private spot and dropped down to gnaw at it. Then she made her way over to the gate where Gia stood watching. At first Gia wondered if she was about to be reprimanded for slacking, but Kemp just raised a hand in greeting.

  “Cadet,” Kemp said as she locked the gate behind her and to Gia’s surprise, came to stand next to her. She looked so relaxed as she stood there, that Gia decided to risk a question.

  “Why don’t they attack you, ma’am?”

  “Training, mostly, force of habit,” said Kemp. She put the bucket down. “Weres are like us in many ways. Get them into the habit of obedience and they forget how strong they are. After a while, you hardly need the drugs and the muzzles anymore. But it takes s
kill to command them like that, by the force of will alone. I can do it, but not many others can.”

  Gia glanced at the sergeant. There was no arrogance in her tone. How many more questions will she answer? She decided to push her luck. “And the old one there, she’s the leader?”

  “That’s right. Linda is the alpha in this group.”

  “She also commands by force of will?”

  The sergeant shot Gia a look. “You could say that. She just doesn’t give them a chance to realise that she’s just an old biddy.” Kemp shrugged. “And maybe that proves that they are not stronger after all. Now, this has been a pleasant chat, cadet, but I’m sure there’s somewhere you are supposed to be with that mop of yours.”

  Gia said, “Yes, ma’am!” and hurried off to the kitchen where Controller Pienaar set her breaking apart bags of frozen bones. She was working on a particularly large lump when she heard the sound of the entrance gate and a hubbub of voices. “Is Lizzie ready?” somebody shouted. Controller Pienaar swore. “Early again.” He went over to the door. “Just a moment,” he called. “I’ll get her.”

  He stripped off his gloves and apron and washed his hands hurriedly at the basin. A constable put his head in the door. “You coming, Pienaar? Bit of a rush. We got a call in about a shapeshifter of some kind at the Cape Town station.”

  Pienaar swore vehemently as he dried his hands, using some words that Gia had never heard before.

  “I agree,” said the constable. “It’s going to be crazy with so many people about. Which is why they want Lizzie.”

  “Yes, yes, okay,” said Pienaar as he pulled on his bulletproof vest and shrugged his uniform jacket over it. He grabbed a muzzle off the rack. “Okay, let’s go then.”

  Gia, after a glance to see if anyone objected, went to the door to watch. Lizzie, she remembered, was the spurhund female, the one with the elegant, fine-boned head like that of an Afghan hound and the rose-tattooed arms. Two controllers were already leading Lizzie from her cage, holding her by the collar. She stood between them, her head to one side as if it were to heavy for her neck to support and Gia realised she must be heavily drugged. She watched as Controller Pienaar lifted the muzzle to Lizzie’s jaws and slipped it on, passing a bar under her lolling tongue. The controllers released their hold and stepped back and Lizzie lifted her hands to cover Pienaar’s, taking the straps of the muzzle from him and fastening the buckles herself.

  Not quite as out of it as she seems. Gia watched the slender fingers tighten the straps.

  “Buk!” barked Controller Pienaar and Lizzie bent forward so that he could inspect the buckles himself. He tugged at a strap or two. As she straightened one of her hands went up to pat the back of her head, a gesture Gia had seen her mother use when putting up her hair. A careful pat to test whether everything was in place. For a moment Gia stopped breathing, overtaken by the strangeness of it all—the sight of the graceful, dog-headed girl weaving a little as the men led her towards the exit.

  “Who’s chopping these bones? There’s juice dripping all over the place!”

  Gia hurried back to her workstation.

  -oOo-

  As the day wore on, Gia became more and more nervous, worrying about the approaching meeting with the Belle Gente. She found an opportunity, just after lunch, to go out near the fence and see the spot that Ochre had described—a wide ditch that led down to the river, the end near the fence partially screened by a line of bushes.

  The meeting was to be at midnight and Gia wondered how she’d get out without being spotted. What explanation could she give for wandering around outside after lights out? Maybe she could pretend to be on some kind of initiation-related dare.

  After lunch she went to data capture again. Training was over for the moment and the cadets were set to work entering lists of names and numbers. Gia found it easier than she’d thought to do some of her own exploring in the database. The cadets around her were completely focused on their own screens and Warrant Officer Naudé stayed at the front of the room, working at his own machine.

  She typed in her brother’s name and was surprised when the machine obligingly regurgitated some lines of text. But her first surge of excitement died down as she saw that it was just a confirmation of his name and the fact that he’d been tested. She could see no way to retrieve more of his records. Either she simply did not know the necessary commands or she’d have to find out how to log in as somebody with more permissions on the system.

  Gia thought of Brakman, the ex-Special Branch technician who’d helped her alter Nico’s records so that he would appear to be non-magical and get the certificate of purity that kept him safe from Special Branch. Brakman would know how to get those records up onto the screen, but Special Branch had gotten rid of Brakman, so there was no hope there.

  -oOo-

  That evening, it seemed to take the other girls longer than usual to settle down and go to sleep. Gia was desperately aware of the time. Midnight was creeping closer and still she could hear people stirring and soft conversations. At last, the various noises died down and the only sounds were the sleepers’ breathing and the traffic along Liesbeek Parkway.

  Gia sat up and held her breath, listening. All was quiet.

  There was also no sign of masked figures sneaking in the window. The last thing she wanted was to bump into Cadet Jooste. She could not wait any longer. With extreme care, she slipped from her bed and drew out the clothes she’d hidden under her pillow. The grey trousers and top of her Youth Brigade uniform would be good camouflage in the dark.

  The window slid open noiselessly and Gia leaned on the sill, waiting for her heartbeat to subside. No point in rushing things. A look at her watch told her that she still had time. In a moment she’d lowered herself down onto a ledge, then she dropped onto the paving. The lights from the quad threw a dark shadow all along the foot of the wall and she didn’t think anyone had seen her.

  So far, so good. To her surprise she was enjoying herself. There was something thrilling about being out at night, by herself, alone for the first time in days. The air was crisp and filled with noises not audible from inside—the chirping of crickets and far-off music.

  The worst moment was when she had to slip from the end of the building across an open stretch of ground to the bushes that sheltered the ditch. Her instinct was to run, but if somebody saw her, running was the worst thing she could do. She walked as slowly as she dared. At last she reached the bushes and ducked in behind them. Here she paused to recover her breath and wait for her heart to slow. Footsteps sounded nearby and Gia nearly squeaked with fright as she saw a guard approach. Shrinking down behind the bushes, she waited to be discovered.

  The footsteps came closer, loud on the gravel, then hardly audible on the nearby grass. They stopped.

  Gia waited for the stabbing beam of a flashlight, the voice commanding her to rise. But nothing happened. Instead, she smelled the unmistakable scent of cigarette smoke. Still hardly daring to breathe she peered out from behind the bush. The guard stood just a few steps away, the glow of his cigarette bright in the surrounding dark. Captain Witbooi did not approve of guards smoking on duty. This spot, out of sight of the guard post and the main buildings, must be the where they came for their smoke breaks. In fact, she now noticed the ground around her was dotted with the pale corpses of cigarette buts. Would he smoke the entire cigarette? Gia did not think she could stay still for that long. One foot was bent uncomfortably underneath her and twigs dug into her hands and knees.

  At last, the guard pinched out the cigarette, slipped it back into a pocket and to Gia’s immense relief, continued on his way. When she was sure he was out of sight, she moved further down the line of bushes and crawled into the ditch behind them. It was a relief to be in deep shadow. No one could see her here, unless they shone a torch right at her. The ditch sloped gently down and, after some crawling, Gia reached its end. The perimeter fence stretched above her and a heavy metal grate blocked opening between the ditch and the
river. There was a trickle of water. One by one small voices started up all around her. A piping chorus of insects and things that she thought must be frogs—a sound like pebbles clicking together.

  Now that she was in place and waiting, it seemed unlikely that anyone would appear, least of a Belle Gente agent. She suddenly felt sure that she must have misunderstood Ochre’s message. She’d come on the wrong day, or at the wrong time. It was cold too. The damp silt at the bottom of the ditch soaked through her trousers and she wished she’d thought to wear something a little warmer.

  Then the insect chorus fell silent and Gia realised that there was somebody kneeling on the other side of the grate, close enough to touch. Her heart thudded and she must have made a sound, because the figure raised a peremptory hand. Then it pulled back its hood and Gia saw a pale face surrounded by long, white hair.

  The girl from the Playground. The white-haired girl who’d shown her into White Crane’s room.

  “Good.” The girl’s voice was just above a whisper. “You’re here after all. Ochre wasn’t sure you understood. You sure nobody followed you?”

  “Yes. Sure.”

  “Okay. I’ve got something for you.” The girl looked up at the fence above them. “I’m going to toss it over, all right? It’s very small so you better not lose sight of it.”

  “Can’t you just pass it through this grill?”

  The girl shook her head. “There’s a chance this barrier is charmed to detect that kind of thing. Now have a look at it before I throw it so you know what to look for.” She held up a small plastic container about the size of a lipstick tube. “All right? Right.”