The Strange

by Masha du Toit

  Wiped

  “Well.” Kiran stared up at the gateway as the train passed into its maw. “This looks familiar.”

  “So that’s where old Maxwell got his inspiration,” said Elke.

  The gate was several times the size of the Ishtar Gate but the similarity was unmistakable. It was covered in mosaic tiles depicting rows of strutting bulls in shades of ivory, umber, and lapis lazuli, their horns picked out with gold leaf. Where the Ishtar gate had the portrait of Maxwell Jali, this arch held the mosaic figure of a bare-breasted woman.

  Her head was crowned with snaking braids, her coal-black arms were held wide in a gesture of welcome, and red tears flowed from her golden eyes. Flocks of crow-like birds drifted in the updrafts around the gate, their sweet, percussive calls like the clicking of pebbles.

  “Wow,” said Noor, who’d crowded up next to Elke at the window, stretching her wrist-chain to its limit. “That’s beautiful.” She looked at Kiran. “You think Maxwell Jali came here?”

  Kiran shrugged. “Who knows?”

  They’d been watching the landscape change as the train made its way along the elevated track. As they drew closer, the mountains had revealed a symmetry that suggested they’d been shaped by forces other than time, wind, and geology. The cliffs were unnaturally regular, falling in sharp folds like stylised curtains, the facets pierced by a honeycomb of windows. Vast buttresses, carved into the shape of trees, supported the walls, and were encircled in turn by balconies and spiralling stairs.

  It reminded Elke somehow of termite mounds in the Vaal, although in gleaming stone instead of crumbling red earth. She brought up her internal display, and relaxed as the mapping function reappeared, the single line of their track now hatched about by shaded areas indicating the mountains and all the other features she had seen.

  She might not have any idea how to get back to the Babylon Eye, but the gradually growing map made the journey seem not quite so impossible.

  Here and there, next to the track, were ashy patches, some still smoking. One of the distant train tracks seemed to have been interrupted, its rails drooping and broken.

  “What the hell is that?” Elke had asked Kiran as they passed over one of these blackened areas. “Some kind of fire?” She’d tried to make a joke of it. “Or do they have dragons here?”

  This had drawn a weary smile from Kiran, and a sniff from Jinan Meer.

  Now they passed under the arched gateway. “Hey. Look at that.” Noor shaded her eyes. Elke saw what she’d spotted—a gang of workers up above, hoisting a disk onto the arch, with ropes and pulleys

  “It’s a— I think it’s a face,” said Noor.

  She was right. The disk depicted a man’s face. He had staring eyes and a bristling moustache. Before they could see more, the train, joining with the other tracks, passed through the gate and into a tunnel.

  Lights flicked past. The guards came clomping along the carriage, yawning and stretching and grabbing at the backs of the benches for balance as the train decelerated and came to a stop.

  Working swiftly now, the guards freed the prisoners from the chains that bound them to the benches. They cuffed their wrists behind their backs and linked them to one another with the same tough, flexible cords that bound their ankles.

  The carriage doors juddered open, and a waft of pungent air invaded the carriage, bringing with it a babble and clatter of noise.

  The platform outside was heaving with people. The guards had to shout and push to clear the way for the prisoners. People crowded right up to the train, intent on getting into the carriage and reluctant to make way for anyone getting off.

  As soon as the prisoners had disembarked, the train doors closed behind them, to the voluble disgust of the crowd, some of whom tried to force them open again.

  A uniformed official marched up and down the platform, shouting the same phrase over and over again. Elke looked questioningly at Kiran, who was next in line behind her.

  “He’s saying This train is not leaving the city,” Kiran translated, shouting to be heard above the noise. “I don’t like the look of this!” She jerked her head to indicate the carriages further down the train, where more passengers were disembarking, orderly groups of men and women dressed in shades of olive and khaki. “Soldiers,” hissed Kiran.

  Elke was so distracted by her surroundings she hardly heard what Kiran was saying. The unfamiliarity of the place, the chaotic noise and the tension of the crowd, put her in a state of high alert, constantly expecting danger.

  She found herself reaching out to mindlink with Meisje, but of course, Meisje was not there, and she felt half blind without access to the gardag’s acute senses.

  Kiran said something else, but Elke could not hear a word through the shouting of the crowd, the rattling clatter of drums, and the calls of vendors selling their wares. The soldiers were chanting too, something that sounded like “Shiv, shank, trench! Shiv, shank, trench!” as they marched in place on the platform.

  Elke had a last glimpse of the locomotive-beast who, eyes half closed, was sucking at a corrugated hose. The steam that lifted off its mossy hide added the scent of freshly cut grass to the smoky air.

  The guards forged their way through the crowd, herding the prisoners along. Elke, who was first in the line, had to pull up short to avoid a rhino-like creature with thick, pockmarked skin, striding along, a suitcase in each knobbly hand. Staring after him she nearly tripped over somebody crouching at her feet, a small, furry person with a scrubbing brush clasped to its chest.

  “I’m sorry.” Elke looked with dismay at the bucket of soapy water she’d upended, but the cleaner just blinked sadly up at her, and picked up its bucket.

  Everybody seemed to have tusks, scales or antlers, and they were all heavily tattooed. Many people were loaded down with bags and boxes or pulled handcarts piled high with their possessions. Small children perched on their parents’ shoulders, or were tugged along, wailing, by their wrists.

  At one point the crowd flowed around some children huddled on a pile of spilled luggage. Elke looked back, seeing their hopeless, tear-streaked faces, and then they, too were out of sight.

  A familiar strand of sound caught her ear. She spotted the source, a singer, perched on a signboard above the station entrance, chanting what Elke now recognised as a string of names set to the same poignant, eerie melody as she’d heard in the Gremium.

  Once they were through the entrance, the crowd thinned. A salty breeze whipped at the prisoners as they descended the stone steps outside the station. The breeze smelled of the sea, and white birds mewed high above, but the prisoners had no opportunity to admire the view. The guards drove them as fast as their hobbled ankles allowed. The prisoners shuffled and stumbled, trying not to fall or tread on the heels of the person in front.

  So far, the guards had only used their hands, shoving at anyone who faltered, but the iron batons in their belts had a polished, well-used look that sent a chill down Elke’s spine.

  The city seemed to have an unholy number of stairs, some as steep as ladders, some spiralling tightly, or diving into tunnels. Most of these stairs had at least a trickle of water running along the middle or down a gutter on one side, so that the prisoners were soon wet up to the knees, and struggling not to slip as they climbed down, and down, and further down.

  The houses—if they could be called houses—were crowded right up to the steeply sloping streets. They had a rooted, gnarled, bark-encrusted look, and in places they leaned together, sprouting a canopy of branches that met and entangled overhead.

  Bridges stretched overhead, and walkways too, many of them crowded with people. Some were built of wood and stone, but many were no more than two ropes, one to walk on, one a guide at elbow height.

  Elke, hurrying along as fast as she dared on the slippery stone, caught glimpses of hammocks and balconies, and what could only be clothes-lines.

  Socks! Even here, people have socks. It brought back a memory of her first days in the Babylon Ey
e, finding comfort in the sight of clothes drying in what had then been an unfamiliar place. Even strangeside laundry had to be dried, and it looked much the same as laundry in the Real—at least, from a distance.

  Elke’s knees trembled from the relentless effort of the descent. They reached the bottom and began to climb the opposite side of the ravine that held the city.

  It was slower going now. At last they turned up broad steps and onto a paved area.

  Elke narrowed her eyes against the sun’s glare. It took her a moment to realise that the facade that loomed over them had not been built so much as carved out of the surrounding mountains. The grain of the rock flowed unbroken up the walls in coppery striations. The lowest windows were several metres off the ground, narrow slots, barred with iron.

  This place was built for wartime. Elke tipped her head back to get a better look. There seemed to be trees up there, right at the roofline, black against the bright clouds. Black specks drifted in and out of the many windows. A flock of the same dark birds she’d seen from the train came flying past with a whittering flutter, swerving low to enter a tunnel mouth. More birds perched on narrow ledges all the way up the cliff-like walls which were streaked with lines of white and grey that must be their droppings.

  The guards shoved the prisoners through a large gate into a tunnel that bored right into the rock. The gate shut behind them and they were hustled along to the far side of the tunnel, which was barred by another gate.

  One of the guards hammered on the gate, while the rest went around undoing the prisoners, untethering them from one another and removing the bonds from their wrists and ankles.

  A harassed-looking man came to peer through the gate. He was short, middle-aged, with silver hair, and was neatly dressed in creamy cloth. After a short altercation with the guards, he reluctantly took the roll of papers one of the guards was brandishing at him and opened the gate. He’d been speaking to the guard in some strangeside dialect, but now he greeted the prisoners with a peremptory “Move along, now. Let’s not waste time.”

  Noor, who was rubbing her wrists where the bonds had chafed her, stumbled as she moved to obey. Her weakened ankle gave and she pitched into one of the guards, grabbing at his arm for support. The guard, a pale-faced glim with a face as blank as a boulder, hoisted Noor by her shirt and swung her off her feet. Elke saw the intent look on his face as he raised his other hand.

  Automatically, Elke stepped forward, grabbing his arm to break his hold on Noor.

  With a grunt of annoyance, the guard discarded Noor and grabbed hold of Elke instead. She ducked instinctively to engage her horns, but another guard was already at her back, pinning her arms, hooking a leg around her knee.

  The pale guard sniffed as he readied his blow, and Elke saw it coming, open-handed and surprisingly slow. She had time to see the grid of tiny buds covering his hand from palm to fingertips before he grasped the bare skin of her neck.

  Pain kicked through her, a droning buzz that drove into her core, shutting off her breath and brain as her body convulsed.

  Then it was gone, and Elke hung in the guard’s grip, gasping, the after-shock reverberating through her body.

  She was on the ground, and somebody pushed at her impatiently. “Come along, come along, get a move on. Really now.”

  She rose shakily to her feet, fighting down the urge to be sick. The silver-haired man’s gaze flicked over her. “None of that. Or you’ll have it on your record.”

  Somebody—Kiran—had her by the arm and guided her through the gate. Elke leaned on Kiran, gasping for breath, her heart rattling in her chest.

  “You hurt?” breathed Kiran, but Elke was too shaken to respond.

  The silver-haired man shut the gate with a last, disgusted look at the departing guards. “No warning,” he said to no one in particular. “Typical. And of course, none of this lot have even been sorted yet.”

  A younger man came striding up. His clothes were rougher, but the same pale cream. Like the older man, he had a slave-mark tattooed on his chin.

  “Hey,” the newcomer said. “What’s this?” He looked the prisoners over and glanced at the roll of papers.

  “Unsorted!” said the older man. “What do they think—”

  “It’s okay, Tiset. I’ll deal with them.”

  “That’s all very well,” Tiset grumbled, handing over the papers to his colleague. “But if things continue like this…” He left, still shaking his head.

  “Well,” said the younger man, facing the prisoners. “You probably don’t know where you are, or what’s going on. We’ll soon fix that. This”—he gestured at his surroundings with a swing of his hand—“ is the Carsera. I’m Esseret Sadh. You will call me Esseret, it’s my title. Sort of the equivalent of ‘sergeant’.”

  He bounced on his heels as he glanced around, as if he’d just made a joke and expected a laugh. When nobody responded, he continued. “Any of you need urgent medical attention? No? Good. Let’s get you cleaned up and fed.”

  Elke touched her throat where the guard had shocked her. It felt bruised and tender, but there didn’t seem to be any permanent damage. The shock had receded enough that she could take in her surroundings.

  They were in a courtyard overlooked on all sides by window-pierced walls. The walls towered up, floor after floor, each level set back a little from the one below like enormous stairs. The top level, far above them, was overgrown with trees, and the overall impression was that the place had been dug out like a quarry, rather than constructed.

  Noor was watching Elke, eyes large with concern, and Elke managed to dig up a shaky smile to reassure her.

  “You okay?” said Kiran.

  “I think so.” Elke gave a last, involuntary shudder. “Guy’s got some kind of electric eel built into his hand. Got a kick like a mule.”

  Esseret Sadh led them towards a jumble of huts, tents, and converted container-cans that crowded the far side of the courtyard. These structures, rusted and faded, had clearly been there for many years, but they seemed impermanent and fragile in contrast to the massive walls that surrounded them.

  “That water’s clean.” Esseret Sadh indicated a stone trough that filled from a spring trickling from one of the walls. “It’s safe to drink. You can wash there while we get your paperwork straightened up. Then we’ll get the sorting done.”

  Javiero took the lead. He strode to the trough, taking off his shirt as he went, and dunked his head into the water. He came up gasping.

  “I bet that’s cold,” said Kiran.

  “What is this place?” Elke looked around the courtyard, and back at the gate by which they’d entered. The guards who had escorted them were gone, but somehow, she didn’t feel relieved. She could feel watching eyes on them still.

  “That man called it the Carsera,” said Kiran.

  Elke did a mental scan of the few strangeside words she knew. “Carsera—that’s something to do with prison?”

  “That’s right,” said Kiran. “But this place—” She looked up at the buildings overlooking the courtyard. Here, too, a constant stream of birds was flitting in and out of the rows of windows. “I don’t know. Those are messenger birds, I bet you anything.”

  “Not many guards about.” Elke dipped her hands in the water and wet her face. It was as chilly as a mountain stream and tasted sweet and fresh.

  “Have a look up there.” Kiran jerked her chin. “Lowest level.”

  Below the first row of windows stretched a walkway with a low parapet. Guards stood at regular intervals, relaxed and chatting, each with a narrow, stick-like object, slung across their shoulders, or leaning casually at their side.

  Rifles? If so, it was of a kind Elke had never seen.

  “Most of them look like they’re dozing.” Elke turned away, not wanting to be caught staring.

  “I wouldn’t bet on that.” Kiran rinsed her hands and scooped water in her palms, wetting her face. She moved like a cat, elegant and self-contained, and the sight made Elke smi
le despite her exhaustion.

  Elke leaned on the edge of the trough, still feeling a little shaken from the shock the guard had given her. She brought up her internal map, curious to see how much of the city’s layout had been recorded. She wanted to see exactly where they were, and what route they’d travelled.

  No response. No grid of silvery lines, nothing to show where she’d been, and where she was. She frowned, and tried again, but once again, nothing happened. Whatever the guard had done to her, it had wiped her map function. Nothing else appeared either, not even the zeroed numerals she’d called up before.

  Elke closed her eyes and gripped the edge of the trough. She felt as if she’d been cored, as if some uncaring hand had ripped out some essential part of her. Her secret advantage had been destroyed before she’d had a chance to use it.

  It took all of her self-control not to curse or cry. Leaning forward, she dunked her entire head under water, welcoming the numbing ache of cold. She straightened, letting the water sluice down her body, soaking her clothes.

  What about her ability to mind-link to Meisje? It was a separate system that didn’t depend on anything electrical. Maybe it wouldn’t be affected.

  Elke concentrated on the warmth of the sun on her back, forcing herself to notice the tiny fish that darted about in the water, silver flecks hugging the bottom and the sides of the trough.

  “I tell you.” Kiran had stripped off her long-sleeved top so that she stood there, dressed only in a vest. “I didn’t like all that talk about sorting.” She dipped her shirt in the water, balling it up to mop at her face and neck, then rinsed it out.

  With an effort, Elke made herself pay attention. Kiran was favouring her left arm. Had she hurt herself somehow? “Do you know what that means—sorting?” Elke asked.

  Kiran shook her head, wringing out her shirt. “They’ll probably separate us. At worst”—she shook out the shirt and drew it on again, wet as it was—“ at worst it means a cull.”

  She ran wet fingers through her hair, neatening it. “Things are different, here. Here on the strangeside, a slave has no family, pretty much by definition. All those connections have been cut. How you fit in a family is what defines you as a human, in the Strange. Obligation, debt, inheritance, favours owed, tradition—all that. Without those connections, you don’t count. You don’t really exist. You can be chopped away like pruning dead wood from a tree.”