The Strange

by Masha du Toit

  “That’s my spot. Get lost!”

  Betina and Mell both rose to their feet. All around, interested faces turned to watch the impending fight.

  The man shouted again, pushing right up to them, chin jutting belligerently. Close too, he reeked of alcohol. All three men had iron cudgels stuck in their belts, heavy things that were made to crack bones and smash heads.

  “Bugger off, clam-face.” Mell said calmly.

  “It’s okay.” Elke nodded acknowledgement at the bald man and his friends, holding up her empty hands to signal her peaceful intentions. “Maybe we should go.” She took a step away, careful not to take her eyes off the men, aware that they were fast becoming the centre of attention in this part of the courtyard.

  “We can take them,” objected Betina. She gave the man a measuring look.

  “Let’s not do that,” said Kiran. “They probably have a lot of friends in here.”

  “She’s right, Bee.” Mell smiled blandly at the three men. “It’s going to be dark soon. We don’t need this fight.”

  Kiran switched languages, speaking rapidly to the men. Several of the onlookers laughed. The tension eased, and the man’s companions both nodded in agreement to whatever it was Kiran had said.

  Kiran took Betina’s arm, and they moved to join Elke.

  As soon as they’d vacated the sunny spot, the bald man settled against the wall with a great show of satisfaction.

  “I’d like to wipe that smug look off his face, anyway,” said Betina, glancing back, but by now, Mell had hold of her other arm.

  “Where do we go now?” said Mell.

  “What did you say to them?” asked Elke, but Kiran just shook her head. Her cheeks were red, and her she rubbed a shaking hand over her face. Elke supposed that the encounter had worried her more than she wanted to admit. “You feeling okay?” she asked.

  “Sure. I could really use a drink, though.” Kiran laughed a little breathlessly. “Guess it will have to be water.”

  Before Elke could stop her, she headed for the nearest water trough, apparently not noticing the leather-clad thugs who were spread all along its edge.

  The man they’d seen earlier, who’d been sharpening his knife, looked up as Kiran approached. His eyes were a startling pale blue, set deep in bruise-dark sockets. A starburst of small, shiny scars mottled his face and arms. But it was his companion who rose to meet them—the woman with the skullcap. She was small, shorter even than Kiran, but wiry, and she stood with her weight on her toes as if ready to spring. Her nose had clearly been broken more than once, and her arms and hands were tracked with scars.

  “Hey.” Elke got hold of Kiran’s arm and pulled her to a stop. “Watch it. These people are bad news.”

  The skullcap woman’s eyes flicked to Elke, and her lip curled unpleasantly. “What did you say?”

  Elke, who’d grown used to being surrounded by people who didn’t understand her language, stared at her in surprise.

  “I said—” A knife appeared in the skullcap woman’s hand. “What did you say?” Her eyes were fixed on Elke now, and she took a step forward.

  Sand gritted under Elke’s feet as she readied her stance. Between one heartbeat and the next, she had the leisure to notice the woman’s lashes, pale as straw, the fine lines around her eyes, and the gleam of light along the edge of her dagger.

  Somebody grasped Elke and shouldered her aside. Kiran stepped up to the woman. She bared her teeth and flared her gills, exposing the blood-rich skin beneath. Mouth wide, she thrust herself forward, hissing, eyes slitted and malevolent.

  The woman hesitated, disconcerted. She blinked, and in that instant, Kiran struck the knife from her hand and surged another step forward. Hands out, fingers clawed, she screamed in the woman’s face, an unearthly hissing wail like that of a fighting cat.

  The woman snatched up her knife, but her companion, the knife-man with the starburst scars, rumbled out a word and put a large hand on her arm. She subsided reluctantly.

  “Remind me not to piss you off,” Mell muttered to Kiran, who was still wild-eyed and breathing hard.

  “You okay?” said Elke.

  “Yeah. Sure.” Kiran smoothed down her gills with trembling fingers. “I just can’t stand fuckers who fight with knives.” Her face was flushed and Elke noticed that she was shaking all over.

  “Hey. Watch your mouth,” said the skullcap woman, but her companion still had his hand on her arm.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Mell grabbed Elke’s arm, and Elke turned to see what had caught her attention.

  A young man stood nearby, clutching his stomach and moaning. His breath hissed through his clenched teeth, spit flecking the corners of his mouth. His eyes had a thoughtful, inward look, and a haze drifted from his sweat-beaded skin.

  Somebody screamed, and the space around the man suddenly widened as people backed away from him.

  “What the fuck—?” Elke stepped back herself as the haze thickened until the man seemed to be streaming with vapour. He opened his mouth, but instead of a scream, a billow of steam gushed forth.

  Not steam. Gas.

  The scent of rotten onions invaded Elke’s throat and stung her eyes.

  Training took hold. Without thought, she rushed him. One arm around his torso—hot. Too hot—and a hand over his jaw, clamping his mouth shut.

  He moaned, and his eyes rolled back in his head as she hauled him to the water trough. People scattered from her path. With a grunt she heaved him onto the stone edge and plunged him into the water. He sank without protest, but his hands grabbed her wrists as she pushed him down. Beads of gas silvered his skin, bubbling off in mirrored globes, turning white and dissipating in the water. Within seconds the water was as white as milk and Elke could no longer see the body she was holding under the surface.

  She became aware of shouting voices, a ring of staring faces, and realised that the man had gone limp, his grasp slackening as his hands fell from her wrists.

  The scent of onions steamed from the milky water.

  Somebody reached past her and shoved the body down. It was the knife-man, his face so close she could see each individual spattered scar that pitted his deeply tanned skin.

  Elke released her hold and stood back, wiping water from her arms. She was soaked through. The knife-man nodded approvingly at her.

  Elke looked at her hands, which were throbbing as if she’d stuck them in a fire.

  “Shit, Elke, shit, shit, shit,” Kiran cradled Elke’s hands, and turned to the knife-man. “Can somebody get a medic? Look at this shit! Her hands—”

  The crowd in the courtyard were settling down, although still staring and talking loudly.

  Elke swallowed, fighting down a strong urge to vomit. She could still feel the way the man had spasmed in her grip as she’d pressed him into the water, still hear his breath moaning in his throat.

  The knife-man stepped back as one of his leather-clad companions lowered a heavy wooden beam into the trough, weighing the body down and pinning it under the surface of the water.

  The skullcap woman came running, undoing the top of a bottle as she came, but the knife-man pulled away from her, rattling off a command and jerking his head at Elke. The woman protested, holding up the bottle, but he nodded at Elke again.

  She turned abruptly to Elke. “Okay, then. Let me get some of this on your hands.”

  Elke obeyed. Her hands felt like they were on fire, the pain so bad she had trouble breathing.

  The woman peered at Elke’s chin. “So, you’re from the Babylon Eye?” Her accent heavy but understandable. “Open them out, come on.” She frowned as Elke’s hands jerked involuntarily. “Can’t you hold still?” She shoved the bottle at Kiran. “You pour. I’ll hold her steady.” Before Elke could draw back, the woman had hold of her wrists.

  “Open your fingers. Quickly now.” She eased Elke’s fists open, her gentle touch belying her impatient tone. “Now, you, fish-girl.” She nodded at Kiran. “You pour. Steady now! Stea
dy.”

  The relief was almost too much to bear. The fluid smoothed over Elke’s hands, easing away all sensation.

  “Don’t use it all,” the woman scolded Kiran. “Got to use some on Nehi as well. Go on. That’s enough.”

  “Go ahead,” Elke told Kiran as she gingerly flexed her hands. “I think that’s done it.”

  The woman snatched the bottle from Kiran and went to tend the knife-man’s hands.

  “Did that help?” With a glance for permission, Kiran touched Elke’s palm with a tentative finger. “It does look better, hey?”

  “Much better.” Elke closed her eyes and sank down into a crouch at Kiran’s feet.

  “Shit.” Kiran was next to her in a moment. “You put your head between your knees, now. Don’t you pass out on me.”

  Elke obeyed. After a long moment she sat back and looked at her hands. They were red and raw, but no worse than lightly scalded. The skin felt abraded, but the bone-deep pain was gone.

  She got up, waving off Kiran’s concerned attempt to support her.

  The knife-man was rubbing healing fluid into his hands and arms. He spoke as he did so, his eyes on Elke, but in a dialect she could not understand.

  “He says,” the skullcap woman translated, “Well done for dealing with the gasper. He thanks you for your quick thinking.”

  “Oh,” said Elke. “I didn’t really think at all.”

  When the woman had translated her words, the man rocked with silent laugher, and gave a rumbling response.

  “Your body did the thinking,” the woman translated. “You saved our lives and our lungs, since we don’t have gas masks.”

  The man touched his forehead, and said, “Pugio Nehi.”

  “He’s telling you his name,” said the woman. “I’m Pugio Barb.”

  “I’m Elke,” said Elke. “And this is Kiran.” And seeing Mell and Betina had joined them, she gestured at them. “These are my friends Mell, and Betina.”

  Nehi nodded at all of them, then directed a question at Elke.

  “He wants to know,” said Barb, “How you knew how to handle a gasper.”

  “I didn’t,” said Elke. “But I know about cut-gas. I know that smell. I used to work as a bodyguard, and we were trained what to do with a cut-gas grenade.” She took a deep, unsteady breath. “I just never met a human one before.” She glanced aside at the milky water that concealed the body in the trough.

  Barb nodded and translated Elke’s words for Nehi.

  “The poor bastard must have caught a bug when he was outside,” she translated Nehi’s response. “There’s a lot of that out there. You breathe in a spore, or a factory virus, and it turns you into time-bomb. All it takes is the right trigger—” Barb shrugged eloquently.

  Pugio Nehi squeezed Elke’s shoulder, and gestured for her to follow him.

  “You better come with us,” Barb said when she saw Elke’s hesitation. “The guards will be wanting to blame somebody for this.” She gestured at the water trough, that was still filled with milky water.

  “No hard feelings, then?” said Kiran.

  Barb looked at her, and then gave a rather feral grin. “You mean about earlier? Well, as long as you can stand fuckers who fights with knives, you’re welcome to come and join us in our camp.”

  Kiran grinned in return. “You don’t mind that I smacked that knife out of your hand, then?”

  Barb shrugged, already turning away. “Friends will stand up for one another. It’s cool.”

  Barb and Nehi led Elke and her companions to the far side of the courtyard, towards the stack of cargo-cans Elke had noticed earlier. A door was cut into the side of one of the cans, guarded by a man in the same leather armour as Nehi and Barb.

  Nehi spoke to him as he passed, jerking his chin to indicate Elke and her friends.

  “Looks like we’re being invited in,” said Betina. “Well. I suppose it’s better than spending the night out here waiting for another human gas-bomb to explode.”

  Darted

  Meisje watched the train.

  Her fur was damp with its steam, her ears numb from the bangs and clangs of the enormous cargo-cans.

  After her escape from Argent, she’d found a hiding place near the club and waited there. When she was sure he had left the area, she’d scanned the surrounding corridors for scent of the men she’d smelled in the store room.

  One trail disappeared into the miasma of scent in Zero level, but traces of the other four turned up on a small maintenance stair near a back door of the club.

  She’d picked up only the faintest hints of Elke or her companions, but knew that if she followed the intruders’ scent, they would lead her to her mistress.

  The trail had taken her all the way to the train track at the strangeside portal. There, on the platform next to the rail, the scent-trails had dispersed, each man taking a different route back into other levels of the Eye. There’d been no train at the platform, so she’d relied on shadows for concealment as she waited for its return. Now that the train was back, she was trapped in indecision.

  She knew how these trains were guarded. A human might find a way to get on board undetected, but an eye-catching white gardag would be challenged as soon as she approached within sniffing distance of the nearest carriage.

  Meisje’s ears flicked uneasily, and she sniffed the steamy air. All her senses told her that she should move on, that it wasn’t safe to stay here.

  Somebody could be watching her from any number of places, without her knowledge. There were too many confusing scents, and the deafening racket would mask the sound of approaching feet even from her enhanced ears.

  The urge to run prickled down her spine, and Meisje half rose, then hesitated. If she ran, she would lose her chance to pick up Elke’s trail again. She sank down into a crouch, panting uneasily.

  A flicker of movement caught her eye, but before she could even turn her head, something punched her in the shoulder. She leaped, yelping with surprise and pain, snapping at the bright red dart that hung from her shoulder as the drug took hold and dragged her down into the dark.

  Isabeau Decides

  Isabeau woke out of a confusing dream about a fire and trying to persuade Noor to get down a ladder which, for some reason, kept sprouting new rungs at odd and unhelpful angles.

  Her face was smooshed up against something hard and furry.

  “Gah.” She sat up, fishing in her mouth to get rid of a dog hair. Danger grunted and sniffed wetly across her face.

  “Ugh!” Isabeau pushed his muzzle away. “Do you mind?”

  She struggled to sit up. The two of them were on Long Storage, in a narrow access behind a stack of cans. It had seemed safer than going back to the dryers. Isabeau’s every instinct had rebelled against sleeping in a place she’d already stayed in so long.

  “Meisje not back yet?”

  Danger’s ears folded apologetically, and he looked at her rather anxiously, as if he expected her to burst into tears, or shout.

  Isabeau took a deep breath and suppressed the urge to do both those things. “It’s okay.” She scratched him in the gap below his neck armour, the caress soothing herself as much as it did the gardag.

  Okay. Plan B. Can’t keep waiting for Meisje. What do we do instead? “Find a place where we can eat,” Isabeau answered herself out loud, and then dodged as Danger’s tail began to wag.

  “Hey. Quit that. It’s too small in here for wagging.” She began to push herself along the access way. “Let’s get out of here.”

  She made the hand signal for anyone nearby? And relaxed as Danger signalled all clear, all safe.

  “Eat first,” she asked the gardag, “or pee first?”

  Danger trotted a few steps out into the corridor and turned to give her an expressive look.

  “Pee first, huh? Okay. Me too, actually.”

  They slipped along the deserted corridor to a public toilet she’d spotted the previous day. “You sure you can get to the compost heaps and back without be
ing seen?” she asked Danger.

  Yes.

  “I’ll wait here for you.”

  Isabeau watched as the big gardag disappeared from sight around a corner, suppressing the impulse to call him back. She felt horribly exposed without him. Anyone could sneak up on her without the gardag’s enhanced senses to warn her of danger.

  “Enough of that,” she told herself in her best imitation of Noor at her bossiest.

  She used the toilet, and washed her face at the basin, looking with disfavour at her dishevelled reflection in the mirror. She was still trying to comb the worst tangles from her hair with her fingers when a nudge on her backside made her yelp.

  “Ah!”

  Danger laughed silently up at her, tongue lolling.

  Isabeau pressed her hand to her chest. “What’d you do that for!”

  He just wagged his tail and nudged her with his nose again.

  “Okay, okay. You want food.”

  A few minutes later they were back behind the cans. Isabeau brushed the last crumbs of her breakfast from her lap, while Danger nosed about to catch them all. Voices called, and cans clanked against one another as workers moved them about, but nobody came anywhere near their hiding place.

  “So,” she said to Danger. “What do we do now? Just go on hiding?” She fished an elastic band from her pocket. “I hate not knowing what’s going on out there.”

  Her hair felt greasy and unpleasant, but she smoothed it back as well as she could, and pulled her ponytail through the elastic, tugging it firm. “We could go look for Meisje...”

  That was what she wanted to do. Just a few months ago she wouldn’t even have stopped to think before she acted, but she’d learnt some hard lessons since then.

  “...but Meisje might be anywhere. Actually, I don’t think she’d even want us to look for her. She wouldn’t want us to risk it.”

  Danger grunted, and Isabeau chose to interpret that as agreement.