The Strange

by Masha du Toit

  Her face was streaked with black. Her eyes, fever-bright, were sunken into dark hollows.

  “I know you’re not really there,” she told them. “It’s just more of these damned hallucinations.”

  She patted the side-pockets of her bag, unzipped one, and pulled out a small bottle. Never taking her eyes off the children she dry-swallowed several pills. She stepped forward, hands outstretched. Isabeau and Ndlela drew back, but Missy was only reaching for the ladder. In a moment she’d hauled herself and her burden halfway up the ladder.

  “Wait!” Before Ndlela could stop her, Isabeau reached up and grabbed Missy’s ankle.

  Missy froze. She was halfway through the hatch already, so she had to climb a step down to see what had happened to her ankle. She looked at Isabeau, who, speechless, was still hanging on.

  Missy turned her gaze on Ndlela. “You’re really are here, aren’t you.”

  Ndlela nodded, and Isabeau gave a sort of breathless squeak.

  “What are you doing?” Missy looked at Isabeau’s hand around her ankle.

  “You can’t do it!” said Isabeau. “You can’t! You mustn’t!”

  Missy frowned. “I can’t do what?”

  Isabeau gulped in a breath. “Go away in the ship. You can’t! You’ll crash through the filaments. I know, you can’t see them, and that will break the gates, and we’ll all be stuck here, but if you wait a bit until they glow you’ll be able to see them, the filaments, I mean, and you’ll see!”

  Missy jerked her ankle loose from Isabeau’s grip and climbed all the way up the ladder.

  Ndlela found that he’d followed her. He pulled himself through the hatch just as Missy settled herself into the pilot seat.

  “You can’t launch.” His voice sounded strangely calm in his own ears. It contrasted oddly with his hammering heart, and the difficulty he had in drawing breath to speak. “We broke the hatch.”

  Missy, who’d been flipping switches, turned to look at him. “You what?”

  “We jammed the hatch open. The fail-safes will stop you from launching.”

  Missy stared at him for a moment. Black tears were tracking down her face again, and she seemed to be having trouble focusing her eyes.

  “You know,” she said at last. “I’m starting to get annoyed. Are you sure you’re not a hallucination? If you’re not, I’m going to have to do something about that.”

  Ndlela swallowed. “No. I mean, I’m really here. And I really did jam the hatch open.”

  Missy heaved a sigh and wiped her face again. “Okay. What the hell.”

  She pulled herself out of the seat, pausing for a moment to lean there, her eyes screwed shut. Ndlela backed away down the ladder.

  Isabeau and Ndlela watched, wide-eyed, as Missy grasped the hatch and pulled at it. It slid only part of the way, and then jammed solidly.

  “Fuck.” Missy gave the hatch a bang that made both children wince and tried closing it again.

  After another attempt, she gave up. “Well. Fuck. Now what?”

  Neither Isabeau or Ndlela spoke.

  “Fuck,” Missy said. “Will this stop the ship from launching?”

  “Well—” Ndlela’s voice was trembling now. “It might launch, but it will decompress.”

  “I’ve got a space suit on. If I put on the helmet, it won’t matter if the ship decompresses.”

  “Um— But then we’ll die.”

  Missy frowned down at him. “You have suits, don’t you? For that matter, why are you hanging around up here? You can just leave.”

  “But that’s just the thing,” Isabeau said. “We can’t leave. Or at least, I can’t leave. I’m out of oxygen for my suit. I can’t get back.”

  “You’re joking.” Missy sniffed and wiped her face again.

  “No,” said Ndlela. “Not joking. If this place decompresses when the ship launches, we’ll die.”

  The only sound was Missy’s harsh breathing. Then with a muffled curse, she climbed down the ladder.

  Isabeau and Ndlela backed away from her. The control room was quite crowded now—they couldn’t retreat more than a step or two.

  After one last attempt to close the hatch from below, Missy sighed. “Why the hell did you do it? You did it, didn’t you? Broke this thing?” She stared up at the hatch.

  They pressed themselves against the wall of the control room, but all Missy did was sit on the lowest rung of the ladder. “Was it you?” she asked again. “You broke that thing?”

  “Yes,” said Ndlela.

  “But why the hell?”

  “We had to stop you,” said Isabeau. “You can’t see it now, but there’s this web of filaments stretched all over the Eye. Up there, above the ship. They’re part of what makes the gates work. You know—the gates to the Real, and the Strange?”

  Missy nodded.

  “Well,” Isabeau’s voice steadied as she gained confidence. “That ship is meant just for maintenance work. To fly close to the surface of the Eye. If you did that, there’d be no problem. But if you tried to fly up—or, I mean, away from the Eye, you’ll break through this web, and that will break the gates. We’ll all be stuck here in the void. Everyone on the Eye.”

  For a long moment, Missy just looked at Isabeau. Then she sniffed again. “That sounds like a load of class-A bullshit.”

  Isabeau seemed about to argue, but Ndlela nudged her, and she closed her mouth.

  “But anyway, it doesn’t matter, really, does it.” Missy glanced up at the open hatch. “We’re stuck here now. I should try to fix it, but my head’s about to explode, and I can hardly see—” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve again.

  “Would you like some water?” said Isabeau.

  Missy nodded, and Ndlela got one of the bottles. He opened it and handed it to Missy. She drank it down in just a few gulps, then crushed the empty bottle and leaned her head back against the ladder, eyes closed.

  When she opened her eyes again, she was frowning. “I know you,” she said to Isabeau. “And you.” Her gaze moved to Ndlela. “I’ve seen you before. You’re the kids from the Muara. Elke’s friends.”

  They just stared back at her.

  “Sit down,” she said. “I won’t bite you. Sit down.”

  Reluctantly, first Isabeau, and then Ndlela eased themselves down onto the floor.

  “How did you get here?” asked Missy.

  “It’s sort of complicated.” Isabeau paused to gather her thoughts for an explanation, but Missy seemed to have accepted that as an answer.

  “Do you have any more water?” Missy asked.

  “Sure.” Isabeau found another bottle and handed it over. This time, Missy dug out her box of pills and drank down a handful of them.

  “You know,” Isabeau said. “It wasn’t Elke’s fault, that time the cops caught you all. When you were with the Rent, I mean.”

  Ndlela tensed, expecting an explosion of temper from Missy, but she just looked at Isabeau.

  “How would you know?”

  “Well—” Isabeau faltered before Missy’s bland stare. “Um— because she told us?”

  “She would say that, wouldn’t she? Elke Veraart.” Missy let her head drop back. When she spoke again, her voice was a little stronger. “You kids got people know you’re here? Looking for you?”

  “Yes,” said Ndlela, before Isabeau could respond. “We do. We’ve got a friend who knows where we are. And I think what I did to the hatch might have set off an alarm down there. In fact, I’m sure it did. They should be here soon.”

  It was a lie about the alarm, but Ndlela thought it might make Missy think twice about trying anything, if she thought that a rescue was imminent.

  “An alarm, hey?” Missy blew out her cheeks. “Well, bugger.”

  “Do the pills help?” said Isabeau. “Would you like something to eat?”

  “They do help.” Missy tucked the pill box back into her pocket. “Wouldn’t have lasted as long as I did without them.”

  “Oh!” said Isabeau. “So tha
t’s what you were doing in the lazaretto. Getting pills.”

  An increasingly awkward silence stretched out between them.

  At last, Isabeau spoke again. “Were you really on the plastic reefs?”

  Ndlela frowned fiercely at his sister, but she didn’t seem to see the warning in his expression.

  “What was it like, out there?” Isabeau insisted. “Was it horrible?”

  “The reefs?” Missy closed her eyes. “Yes. I was on the reefs. For years.” She paused for so long that Isabeau assumed that was all she’d say. But before she could frame another question, Missy continued speaking.

  “It was hell. Or as close to hell as you can get and still be alive. But it’s funny, you know. Some of it was—“ She shook her head. “The guards knew we couldn’t escape, so they let us wander about quite a bit. I used to go out on the sections that hadn’t been cleaned yet, far enough away from the others to be alone.

  “You should see it. The sea stretching out all around, and the sky—it was beautiful. Especially at the end of the day, when the sun was almost all the way down. The sea would get all black, except where the light caught it. Beautiful.

  “Sometimes, you’d see things. Like sometimes a whale would swim to the surface. They knew we were there, on the rafts. The whales. They knew. You’d hear this huge sigh, and there she’d be. Just looking at you, like she was wondering who you were. I mean, you know whales aren’t fish, but you don’t really know it until you hear them breathe so big and soft, and look into that eye...”

  Missy sighed and took another swallow from the bottle.

  “Well, I guess if you’re expecting company, I better be off.”

  Isabeau and Ndlela watched, large-eyed, as she pulled herself to her feet again.

  “Where are you going?” said Isabeau, but Missy didn’t answer.

  She picked up her helmet and clipped it into place. For a moment stood with her helmeted head leaning against the hatch, as if gathering herself for one last effort.

  She stepped into the airlock and closed the hatch behind her.

  “Shouldn’t we stop her?” said Isabeau as the airlock cycled.

  “How?” said Ndlela.

  They felt the slight vibration as the external hatch opened and closed again.

  Isabeau was already up on the counter, peering through the view-port. “I can see her!” she said after a moment. “But she’s just standing there.”

  Ndlela went to join her.

  Missy Cloete was a few metres away, her back to them. She crouched, holding onto one of the rings, head tilted back as if she was looking into the void.

  “What’s she doing?” said Isabeau.

  “I think she’s— Oh! No!”

  Missy’s hands rose to her helmet. She unclipped it and tucked it under her arm, her hair fanning out around her head.

  Isabeau buried her face in Ndlela’s chest as he wrapped one arm around her, unable to look away.

  Missy lost her grip on the helmet, which went tumbling away to one side. For a moment she crouched, unmoving. Then she kicked herself away from the surface of the Eye.

  Isabeau turned to look. “Where is she?”

  Ndlela pointed silently. Missy’s body was floating away from the Eye, and for a vertiginous moment everything reoriented, and they seemed to be hanging upside down from the bottom of the Eye, with Missy falling down into the void below them.

  After a long, silent time, Isabeau gulped a sob. “Why did she do that?” Her face was wet with tears. “She did that on purpose! Why would she do that?”

  Ndlela shook his head dumbly. He felt numb, and dizzy with shock.

  They stood, looking out into the void for long after Missy’s body was out of sight.

  “Now what?” said Isabeau at last.

  “Now,” said Ndlela, trying to sound calmer than he felt, “we wait for somebody to come and fetch us. Why don’t you look through that bag of food we got earlier? I’m pretty sure I saw some chocolate in there.”

  Hugin and Munin

  The next morning Hugin came to check on Elke.

  He made her sit on the bunk in the med-bay while he examined her again, taking her temperature and blood pressure, listening to her lungs, and running his fingers over her head and neck.

  “You’ll do,” he said at last. “Just remember to wear your mask. Maxwell’s trying to convince himself he’s getting sick, so any excuse will set him off.”

  Elke watched the old man tidy his workspace, coiling the blood pressure equipment and wiping down the counter top. She’d not had much sleep after leaving Kiran curled up on a chair on the balcony and had tried to distract herself by piecing together the events of the past few days.

  For some reason, her thoughts had kept returning to Hugin. It was something Isabeau had told her, back on the Muara, going on about the book on Norse myths she’d been reading.

  “Tell me,” Elke said suddenly. “Do you have a brother?”

  Hugin squeezed the last few drops from the cloth he’d been washing and hung it out to dry. Only then he turned to look at Elke. “What makes you think that I do?”

  “It’s your name. Hugin. You said Maxwell gave it to you.”

  Hugin gave a stiff nod, still watching her warily.

  “Hugin and Munin were Odin’s ravens, in Norse mythology.” Elke had been unsure of her guess, but the old man’s reaction made her more certain with every word. “Hugin means thought. And Munin means memory. Which made me think, because I met a man who could be called ‘memory’, out in the Real, not so long ago. And something about you reminds me very much of him.”

  She paused. When Hugin didn’t respond she continued.

  “I knew him as Crosshatch, but his name used to be Mare Lapis. He used to be Maxwell Jali’s shade.”

  Hugin put out a hand for the chair, dragged it closer, and sat in it, never taking his eyes off Elke. “How long ago was this? And where, exactly?”

  “About eight months ago. More or less. Out in the Real world. A place called the Muara, very close to the Ishtar gate which ports to the Babylon Eye.”

  “I know the Muara,” said Hugin.

  “But you didn’t know your brother was there?”

  “I didn’t know he was still alive.” Hugin’s tone was conversational, but Elke got the feeling that only great self-control prevented him from striding about the room and shouting.

  “He is alive,” she said quietly. “He stayed at the Muara to guard a cache of biologicals that got left behind there.”

  Hugin was nodding now. “That fits. That fits. But Maxwell told me—” He blew out an angry breath. “I’ll deal with that later. Is he well, my brother?” He looked searchingly at Elke. “When you saw him, was he well?”

  “He was fine,” Elke said. “He had a terrible scar, here,” she touched the centre of her forehead, “He’d removed the tattoo that marked him as a shade. But he was well.”

  “I remember the day he got that tattoo,” said Hugin. “And you guessed right, about the name. Calling him Munin was Maxwell’s little joke. Employ a shade to record his every word and deed, and then name him Memory.”

  He got to his feet. “I thank you for telling me,” he said with a stiff little bow. “It is not a small thing. I am in your debt.”

  Before Elke could respond, he left the room.

  ¤¤¤

  When Elke went out into the main room, she found the others all there ahead of her, gathered on the balcony that overlooked the slave-court.

  Kiran waved at her from one of the sofas and beckoned her over.

  Thandeka, perched on a carved wooden stool, asked if Elke was feeling better. Noor seemed distracted, wandering about the room and looking at the sculptures.

  All of them wore the same translucent masks and gloves as Elke, except for Kiran, who was still in the full biosuit.

  Now that she was no longer dizzy, Elke could see that Maxwell Jali’s rooms were, in fact, on the upper level, out on top of the mountains that held the Ca
rsera. The view from the balcony showed trees waving in the wind all around the rim of the pit that was the slave-court. Creepers and plastic sheeting screened the view, so that it was easy to forget the hundreds of imprisoned slaves below.

  “Where’s Maxwell?” Elke asked Kiran as she sank down on the sofa next to her, but her question was almost instantly answered as their host’s querulous voice came from the rooms beyond.

  “Awake, but grumpy,” said Kiran.

  They all looked up as a couple of glims came backing into the room, pulling trolleys.

  “Breakfast,” said Thandeka.

  The glims, small and quick, manoeuvred their trolleys between the sculptures and onto the balcony. They smiled and nodded at Thandeka and Elke’s attempts to clear one of the low tables. With fluttering gestures, they waved them back and took over, and within moments an assortment of bowls, platters and covered dishes were in place.

  One of the glims bowed and then, with much throat-clearing and hesitation, spat out the word “Wait!” He pointed anxiously at the entrance to the room, beyond which Maxwell could still be heard, grumbling.

  “We’ll wait,” Elke assured them. The glims, satisfied, bowed again and left.

  “Hope he hurries up,” Kiran sat forward to study the food. “I’m ravenous.”

  Noor took her seat at the far side of the table from Thandeka. She smiled at Elke and Kiran but avoided her mother’s eyes. “Hey,” she said, and then, looking at the food, “How are we going to eat with these masks on?”

  “You’ll take them off, of course, while you eat.”

  They all started around. Hugin was wheeling Maxwell Jali, swathed in blankets, onto the balcony.

  “Good morning,” Maxwell said, lifting a beringed hand. “Good morning. I trust you have all slept well?” And then, without waiting for a response, he said, “I hope you will enjoy this meal, although I myself will not be joining you. I’m not feeling altogether well.”

  He waved away their concern. “Please.” He gestured at the food. “Enjoy.”

  For the next few minutes they were all occupied with their meal. It was good, and varied too, although Elke couldn’t help thinking of all the slaves out in the courtyard not so far below, going without any breakfast at all.