The Strange

by Masha du Toit

  It was a memorable face. Dusky skin patterned with pale tattoos. A prominent but finely chiselled beak of a nose, and amused eyes with a glint of amber in their depths.

  Elke stared. I know you. Where do I know you from?

  “Hi.” The woman lifted a wet hand in greeting. “Kiran Ghatak. Biotech. You interviewed me the other day about poor old Kipper.”

  “Oh!” Elke felt her face flush. “Sure.” She signalled for Meisje and Danger to lie down again.

  “Sorry to butt in.” Kiran smiled at the others, who looked at her with a mixture of surprise and doubt. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”

  “You said you can speak to them?” Ndlela was sitting bolt upright. “These fugados?”

  “I might,” said Kiran. “I’d need to know more about it.” She tapped the rim of the tank. “Let me just get out of this so we can talk properly.”

  Before anyone could respond, she sloshed away from them, walking down the length of the tank and pulling the straps of the rebreather off her shoulders as she went.

  How long has she been listening to us— And why? Elke wanted to say something to the kids, to warn them to be careful, but before she could get the words in order, Kiran Ghatak came pushing through the sheeting that draped the door between the kitchen and the restaurant.

  She’d pulled back the hood of her wetsuit and was drying her face on a towel. Her bare feet left a trail of wet prints on the untiled floor.

  “So, tell me.” Kiran chose a chair and sat, catlike, legs neatly folded. “All I got was that you’re looking for somebody. Your mom?” She looked at Noor.

  “I—” Noor cast a helpless glance at Elke. She, at least, seemed just as taken aback by this stranger as Elke was.

  “All of ours mother,” Isabel piped up, quite unperturbed. “At least, mine, and Ndlela, and Noor’s.”

  Elke tried to think what to do. This woman acted friendly, but who knew who she really was?

  “You think she’s hiding somewhere in the Eye.” Kiran pulled the towel round her shoulders and tucked a wet strand of hair away from her face. “Possible, actually. There are lots of places, and lots of reasons to hide. The fugados will tell you, if you can get them to talk to you.”

  “And they’ll talk to you?” said Noor.

  Kiran nodded. “As Elke can tell you, I’m a biotech down in Works level. Aquaponics, algae, all that stuff, but specialising in strangeside tech. I have to spend a lot of time down there. I’ve been lucky enough to get to know some of the fugados. They’re useful people to know.”

  “And why are you up here?” Elke winced at the bluntness of her own words. It was hard to believe harm of this woman, who now turned her amused gaze on Elke, but she couldn’t afford to let Kiran’s undeniable charm get under her guard. She made herself press on. “Setting up restaurant aquariums— Do you do much of that?”

  “Pays well.” Kiran shrugged. “Earn a little bit on the side. Fun, too, these big tanks. Get to experiment a little with the exotics. Hey, dude!”

  This last was directed at Mack Jack, who was shouldering his way in through the restaurant door, arms full of bags.

  “Ghatak!” He looked pleased. “What are you doing up here?”

  “Setting up a tank.” Kiran looked at the food he was carrying. “You need a hand?”

  But Ndlela and Isabeau were already taking the bags out of the big glim’s arms.

  “Smells good,” said Isabeau. “What’s this?”

  “That one’s for Meisje,” Mack Jack said, and then, spotting Danger. “And I’ve got another one just like it for you, boy.”

  He moved behind Elke’s chair and put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, Veraart.” A breath on her cheek, and then the merest brush of a kiss. Elke was keenly aware of Kiran’s amused reaction as she touched his hand in greeting.

  “You know Kiran?” she said, twisting a little to look up at Mack Jack.

  “Sure. Been trying to get her to become a business partner for years.” He must have seen something in Elke’s face, because he gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “She’s one of us. Bloody good biotech, and a singer too, did she tell you?” He grinned across the table at Kiran, who made an exasperated face at him.

  “You always bring that up. It’s been years since I’ve done any actual singing.”

  “Kiran used to be the vocalist for the best band in the Eye,” said Mack Jack as he pulled aside a chair. “The Jali Steppas. You guys were hot.”

  “What happened?” asked Noor. “Why aren’t you together anymore?”

  “We didn’t even last a year,” said Kiran. “The trombonist had an affair with the drummer, and they had an ugly breakup. That was it, for the band. Never did another gig. And I seem to remember you were not entirely an innocent bystander yourself, MJ.”

  Mack Jack laughed, and shrugged. “Could be. Could be.”

  Elke relaxed a little. If Mack Jack thought Kiran was okay, that went a long way to reassuring her. It made sense that he’d know a biotech. Mack Jack’s full-time job was shuttling cans, but his real passion was for his bottle gardens.

  “Got some shrimp to show you,” Kiran said to Mack Jack. “They’d look pretty good in one of your globes.”

  “There’s lots of food here,” Noor said to Kiran. “You must have some too.”

  “Thanks!” Kiran pulled her chair closer to the table. “I think I will.”

  “Which of these is for the gardags?” Elke was on her feet, peering in the cartons. “This is it, right?” At Mack Jack’s nod, she slid a carton over to Tomas. “There you go. No carrots, but he should like that.”

  Meisje was already sitting at the ready, watching as Elke placed her container on the floor and tore off the lid.

  Danger waited for Meisje to start eating before he lowered his head to his own meal, even though the white gardag hadn’t so much as glanced in his direction.

  Mack Jack was rooting round in the bottom of one of the bags. “Got some spoons and chopsticks and things in here somewhere...”

  “Do we just eat straight out of the containers?” Noor looked doubtful.

  “Here.” Kiran leaned over and popped the lid off one. “And then like this—” She gave it a twist and it clipped into shape, a little bowl.

  “Dish a bit from any of these.” Elke pushed some containers towards the kids. “You can pick and choose, figure out what you like. This here’s quite sharp—it’s a grass soup sort of thing. And this is brinjal stew. These fritters are made with the fish you saw down in Works, Isabeau, the ones in aquaponics. And this is rice. Just normal, realside rice.”

  For the next few minutes conversation was limited to requests for food, cutlery, and serviettes.

  Noor ate with precision, inspecting each new dish before sampling it. Ndlela tried a bit of everything, even when the scent or texture made his face screw up. Isabeau quickly found her favourite—the fish fritters—and stuck to that exclusively, along with generous helpings of rice.

  Kiran didn’t use cutlery or chopsticks but ate with her fingers which, Elke noticed for the first time, were delicately webbed. She ate neatly and quickly, all her attention focused on her food. She’d pushed the sleeves of her wetsuit halfway up her arms, revealing the curls and dashes of her extensive tattoos.

  “Oh!” Noor stared. “You’re with the Marine Guard!” Her eyes rose to meet Kiran’s, and her hand clasped her own wrist.

  Kiran held up her arm to display the twisting symbol that was the mark of the Marine Guard, a curved-back swoop that made a bracelet around her wrist.

  “That’s the Marine Guard chop, all right,” she confirmed. “But I’m not with them anymore.” She touched the tattoo. “See that?” A white line bisected the curved shape. “It’s cancelled.”

  Noor’s eyes grew large. “Oh! I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t be! Didn’t work out, is all.”

  Isabeau leaned over, inspecting Kiran’s wrist. “Noor’s nuts about the Marine Guard,” she confided. “She wants to jo
in them.”

  Noor blushed. “Really, Issy—”

  “What’s the Marine Guard?” asked Tomas from the far side of the table.

  “A sort of official eco-gang here in the Eye.” Kiran pulled her sleeves down to cover the tattoos. “Started by our favourite rich gangster, mijnheer Maxwell Jali. The Guard patrols the sea around the Ishtar gate and a lot of the coastline too. Hunting poachers, mostly.”

  “The Guard are pretty cool,” Isabeau told Tomas. “Most of them are bio-hacked to breathe under water.” She looked at Kiran. “Have you seen that? People who can breathe under water?”

  In answer, Kiran pulled down the neck of her wetsuit and lifted her chin. Thin red lines appeared along her jawline and down her throat. They spread and flared into a delicate filigree. “Gills,” she said, and smoothed the skin down again. “Comes in handy for underwater work.”

  “Man, that’s so cool!” Ndlela, food forgotten, stared at Kiran in fascination. “But why were you wearing a rebreather just now, if you’ve got gills?”

  Noor frowned warningly, but Kiran was clearly untroubled by the intensity of Ndlela’s interest. “Gills give off ammonia when they extract oxygen from the water,” Kiran explained. “Out in the ocean that doesn’t matter, adding a bit of ammonia to thousands of tons of water, but in a volume as small as an aquarium it can cause problems. I prefer to keep things clean, so, rebreather does the trick.”

  “So, you’re a Stranger, then?” Isabeau looked every bit as fascinated as her brother. “With those tattoos and everything.”

  Diesel stirred, and Elke noticed the odd look she gave Kiran.

  “Sort of.” Kiran reached for another container of food. “My father was a Stranger. Ma was realside. I was born in the Eye.”

  “Oh.” Isabeau seemed satisfied by that answer. “Okay. Can I have a bit more rice, please?”

  ¤¤¤

  Later that evening Isabeau lay staring up at the dark ceiling of the cubby she shared with Ndlela.

  Her body was exhausted but her head still buzzed with everything she’d seen and heard that day. She rolled, tugging impatiently at the blankets, trying to find a more comfortable position. It was no good. She couldn’t sleep.

  And if she did, she’d probably just have nightmares again.

  “Ndlela?”

  Her whisper sounded loud in the confined space of the cubby, but Ndlela’s breathing didn’t change its rhythm. For a moment, Isabeau considered yanking at his foot, but she knew her irritation wasn’t fair. It wasn’t Ndlela’s fault she couldn’t sleep, and he’d probably grumble at her if she woke him.

  She slid noiselessly out of her bed.

  Noor slept in the cubby next door, so as long as she didn’t wake Ndlela...

  The cubby door was not locked, but Isabeau winced at the metallic bong it made as she opened it. She waited, but Ndlela didn’t wake and challenge her.

  For a few moments she sat in the open doorway, legs dangling. The cubby was in the top row of the roost, so she had a good view. Here and there the light of colls gleamed through unshuttered windows, but everyone seemed to be asleep.

  Isabeau wondered where Elke and Meisje’s cubby was, and whether Tomas and Danger were close by. Kiran probably lived somewhere down in Works, with all those tanks and things.

  Tomas was cool. He’d told her all kinds of stories about his time as a trainee handler, the funny things Danger got up to. Thinking about the gardag made Isabeau feel a little better, but soon enough the unhappy thoughts returned.

  Why is it taking so long to find Mom? Isabeau didn’t know what she’d expected once they reached the Eye, but she’d hoped to find some hint of where her mother might be. Somebody who’d seen her. Some trace, maybe even a message—a letter or a note.

  Elke’s incomplete and cautious answers had baffled Isabeau. Surely the Eye wasn’t all that big. There couldn’t be that many people here. Couldn’t they just look a bit?

  All at once Isabeau made up her mind. It was dark, of course, but this dark was nothing like the Muara. She couldn’t sleep now, anyway.

  Might as well have a look around.

  No music sounded from the speakers. That meant the Eye was in that peculiar state they called sinister, when the Strange world influence stopped electronics from working. For a moment, Isabeau considered looking for a torch or something else to switch on just to see it fail, but that might wake Ndlela.

  She slid down the ladder and stood listening for a moment, before setting off in the direction she guessed the Works level stairs would be. Everything she’d heard about the Eye suggested that Works was the place to start looking.

  After a few wrong turns she found a wide flight of stairs. She ran lightly down, one hand skimming the handrail. Where should she start?

  Diesel had told them about the hollow walls of the exterior shell of the Eye, what she called the shell-cavity. Meisje had lived in those, back when she’d been hiding in the Eye. Isabeau would have to ask Elke about that story. The fugados had been involved then as well, although Isabeau was not clear about how they fit in.

  She’d seen some fugados during their tour of the Eye. Odd figures, with red scarves wrapped around their faces, sorting through the compost heap or cleaning out rubbish bins. They hadn’t looked scary, exactly, but far from friendly.

  The stairs came to an end, and Isabeau paused again. Works level looked much as it had earlier, except there were fewer colls uncovered, so the corridors were darker.

  Everything was louder in the dark, bubbling and gurgling like the digestive system of an enormous beast. Isabeau shook herself free of that unpleasant image. Focus. First thing to do is find the outer edge, and a way to get into those hollow walls.

  The corridor took a turn to the left, a gradual curve, but Isabeau knew that she hadn’t reached the outer corridor yet. She walked rapidly, glancing into the rooms as she passed.

  Workshops, store rooms, the aquaponics room, the tanks bubbling green with a swirling mist of brine-shrimp. Isabeau hesitated at this door, tempted to have another look at the catfish lurking at the bottom of the waist-high bins.

  Later. I can always come back here. The important thing was to start searching for—

  What exactly?

  It had seemed simple, up in the cubby, but now her certainty faltered. Would her mother really be somewhere down here? Hiding among the pipes and wires— And not just for an hour or two, but for months and months?

  Wouldn’t it be amazing if I found her? There would be surprise, of course, and tears, and hugs. That was easy to picture. And what then? Somehow Isabeau’s imagination failed her.

  Thandeka would come back into the Real with them, but best of all, she’d explain why she’d stayed away so long.

  Isabeau would tell her about everything that had happened while she’d been gone. She’d tell her about meeting Elke and the gardags, and Xun and her sons. How their old friend Crosshatch had known Maxwell Jali, many years ago when he was young. How the thugs had broken into their home, and that they now had a new home, and Noor’s new job, and the biologicals that had been hidden in the underground room.

  Will she want to come back?

  Maybe there was a reason she’d stayed away. Or maybe she wasn’t in the Eye at all.

  Isabeau tripped over a pipe that snaked along the corridor floor. She caught her balance, skinning her knuckles on the rough metal of the wall.

  The corridor curved out of sight in front and behind. The colls that lit the way were widely spaced here, so that stretches of the corridor were dim and shadowy. The pipe at her feet shook and gurgled. The humming, rumbling noise of the Works level was louder than ever. This was a part of Works she’d not seen before. The panelling to her left was rougher, with many pipes and wires running along it.

  The outer shell.

  Isabeau touched the panelling tentatively at first, then spread her hands, listening, feeling. This was the shell between the Eye and the Void, insulated to keep out the utter, unimaginable cold.
Or was the void cold? She’d always assumed it was, but if it was vacuum, how could it be cold? Vacuum was just nothing, or at least, that’s what Ndlela had told her. And not all of the outer shell was filled with insulation, anyway. According to Diesel, there were gaps, spaces and access ways inside the shell. As well as hatches to get inside it.

  Excitement mounting, Isabeau walked rapidly along, scanning the panelling as she went. Yes, there it was. A hatch with several signs plastered over it, all in strangeside script. Isabeau touched the handle, folded flat into a recess.

  Hope it’s not locked—

  She hesitated.

  This was the outer wall of the Eye. This hatch opened into the space inside that wall. She was sure of that.

  But what if it opened into the actual outside, into the void?

  The void was vacuum, that much she knew. If she opened such a hatch, air would rush out, sucking her out into—what exactly? Outer space?

  A distant bang echoed down the corridor. She froze for a few heartbeats, but when nothing happened, she relaxed again.

  Isabeau traced the strangeside lettering engraved over the handle. She pressed an ear against the hatch, screwing up her nose at the stinging scent of disinfectant.

  Nothing.

  No—a faint reverberation, a bone-deep pulse. The throbbing of some distant pump.

  And what was that?

  A series of soft scuffings, exactly like footsteps. As if somebody was in there, on the other side of the hatch. Moving inside the wall.

  A sharp, metallic tap and squeak, right up against her ear.

  Isabeau sprang back and flattened herself against the opposite wall, breath stopped, heart bumping. The handle had moved. It had twitched under her fingers, she was sure of it.

  Something was out there in the void, and it was coming in.

  Her body responded before her mind could catch up. Back down the corridor she went, a fast walk, then a trot, then a headlong run in the dark, until she knocked against a water tank so hard she nearly fell.