The Babylon Eye: Linked Worlds, #1

Lost Dog

The dog lay, listening. The hunters were close now, so close she could hear them breathing. Smell them too. Scent of coffee and the sweet stuff they chewed.

Two, as always. Male and female. Male moved angrily, spoke angrily. That thing can’t still be alive—

Look. The female was angry too but her voice was softer. " If you can’t keep your trap shut, go away and leave this to me. That dog can hear your whining a mile away."

Their footsteps went past but the dog didn’t move. She knew all the tricks. They could pretend to go and circle back when she came out of hiding… The voices were distant now. Going up the stairs.

Her belly ached with hunger. Soon she’d have to emerge from her hiding place to look for food.

She could smell something interesting close by. Old food. Rubbish. Ben wouldn’t like her eating that. He would say No, girl! and look at her, stern and disappointed, make her want to tuck her tail between her legs and crouch down low.

Not that Ben ever hurt her.

The only good food was food from Ben. But Ben was gone. Forever gone. And if she didn’t eat she’d die. Her body was growing weak. Cold and hunger slowed her wits. She would make a mistake, the hunters would trap her and that would be the end.

If Ben were here he would tell her, Guard them, girl! and Packen! She’d be the hunter, they the prey.

After a long, silent time, the dog crawled out of hiding and stood listening, ears swivelling, nose up, testing the air.

The hunters were far away. She was safe.

Until they came again.

The Bargain

Elke Veraart leaned against the bars of her cell and watched the guards approach. It was Uys, a big, slow woman who didn’t usually make trouble and Sandy, who was fine as long as you didn’t get her on a bad day.

Veraart! said Uys, a little out of breath from the stairs. You got a visitor. We’re taking you down there. She unclipped the keys from her belt. Stand back, now.

Elke moved to the back of the cell as Uys unlocked the gate. Hands in sight, eyes lowered. She’d learnt her manners by now.

Come along.

They took her down to the visitor centre and into one of the interview rooms. Then, to her surprise, both guards left, closing the door behind them.

What’s going on here?

Her visitor, a man in a crumpled suit, was leaning against the table. A cop—there was no mistaking it—he looked at her in that cop way. Taking it all in, slotting her into the available categories. What would he make of her? Female. Mid to late forties. One point six metres. Visible body modifications—

Morning, Miss E.

His voice brought recognition. Inspecteur Ncita. He looked different out of uniform and it was three, four years since she’d met anyone from the gardag unit. That was all gone. Another life. But here he was, her old boss, large as life and she could not think of a single reason to explain his presence.

Have a seat. Ncita took out a box of cigarettes. You still not smoking?

She shook her head.

He sighed and put the box away. I should stop. I did for a while.

Elke pulled out a chair and sat, uncomfortably aware of her unwashed hair and the baggy prison uniform. He must have bribed the guards to leave us alone in here. So, she said, leaning back in her chair. I hear you got involved with that gardag flick.

That’s right! Ncita seemed relieved at the safe topic. The movie. Consulting. They said I might get a part, but I don’t know. Mostly it was helping them get the facts right.

If the movie’s anything like the book, they won’t worry too much about the facts.

Oh well. Ncita seemed pleased as well as a bit embarrassed. It’s entertainment, you know. Give people what they like. But I tell you it’s causing a headache at the unit. Some woman writes a book about gardags, that’s bad enough. Here comes the movie and everyone now wants to be a gardag handler. Recruits signing up in droves. Drives old Platsak nuts.

Elke had to smile at that. Platsak still there?

Oh yes. Don’t think he’ll ever retire. Puts the new recruits through hell and back. But listen. Here for a reason. Ncita opened his shoulder bag. Show you something. He pulled out a pocket screen, flipped it open and held it first at arm’s length, then close to his face. Where’s the damn— Oh yes. Okay, which one was it now? That’s it.

He handed her the screen. No sound, sorry. Something went wrong with it.

A vid was playing on the screen, the kind she’d seen countless times before. It showed one of the gardag unit’s training rooms. Somebody was working an advanced obstacle course.

But that’s no gardag.

The dog making its way over, through and under the obstacles was a normal dog. No armour. No visible modifications. Like a German shepherd, but white. Female and on the small side—a pretty enough creature. Elke glanced questioningly at Ncita.

Keep watching, he said and took out the cigarettes again.

The dog was good, Elke had to admit that much. It had grace and power, clearing each obstacle with ease. It also had the total focus on its handler that she loved to see. Ears pricked, eyes bright. The sight of that look from dog to handler was unexpectedly painful. The easy communication, the perfect, wordless understanding.

Griffin. Griffin had been like that. But Griffin had been a gardag—a hulking armoured beast with who knows what mix of street breeds. Nothing like this pretty white pedigree lady-dog.

But she was good, this dog. No denying it.

The vid changed to a head-mounted view. Somebody working their way through a fieldwork setup inside a burnt-out building, smoke obscuring the camera. Small, confined spaces and Elke did not need the sound to know the level of noise there’d be. Rattles and bangs, people shouting, gunshots, all to test the dog’s nerve.

Elke watched, fascinated, as the dog took down a padded suspect, indicated the correct container, clawed her way up a slope that no dog should be able to scale and paused at the top. A glance back at her handler, proud, all confidence, never once losing focus. The screen went black and then to the Eckzahn logo.

Elke handed the screen back to Ncita, eyebrows raised. What was that?

Interesting, hey? Ncita drew on his cigarette, looked around for an ashtray. That is our new-model gardag. No external armour. Still a tech-enhanced mech-dog. Mind-link capacity. Enhanced vision. Audio and video recording. Stops recording if her power source fails like any other gardag, but won’t wipe her data like the older models did, unless, you know, she’s dead. Also, not so dependent on electronics. Most of it's edited in from the genes up. Retractable claws, subdermal flexible armour.

Useful. Elke pointed to a tin on the table and he tapped ash into it.

Very useful, he said, taking another pull on the cigarette. Also, lighter bone density, stronger muscle fibre. You saw her climb? She’s lighter than a normal dog but far stronger, more agile.

Need weight in a fight, though.

Ncita shrugged. She can fight if she needs to. Not like your old boy, though. There’ll never be another one like Griffin.

Elke shifted uncomfortably in her chair, wanting to change the subject. So why are you showing me?

You saw the handler there? said Ncita. I don’t think you know him. Hoofdagent Duram. He and the dog—Meisje, she’s called—were assigned on a job in the Babylon Eye.

Elke looked at Ncita in surprise. Isn’t that—like—illegal?

Ncita gave a grim chuckle. Or something. We’ve never been allowed in there before, that’s for certain. Anyway, the higher-ups at Torka needed something looked into and pulled some strings. Somebody liked the idea of getting a gardag in there, especially one that can operate with no power.

I can see that.

The Babylon Eye was well known for messing with anything electronic. Or so she’d heard. So, an undercover job?

Ncita nodded. What I know is this. Some strange things turned up in the Eye. Torka wanted to know more. Ben Duram and his dog were assigned customs duty there. Nobody needed to know the dog’s a gardag. Seemed fool proof.

And then?

They disappeared. Handler and dog, both.

They disappeared in the Eye?

That’s what it looks like.

But don’t you have a feed from the dog? Tracking? Elke leaned forward, interested despite herself.

Ncita blew out a stream of smoke. That buggering Eye numbs all our tech. The tracking gear works some of the time. But then it fails. We sent a team in there, they pinged her, but then the signal fails again. No good.

You think they’re still alive?

We don’t know and that’s why I’m here. We need somebody with gardag experience who can go in there and get that dog back.

Get the dog. What about the handler?

After a week, no contact, I doubt that Duram is still alive.

Elke sat quietly for a moment, thinking about it. Pieces were missing, that was clear. Big pieces. And what about— She gestured at her prison uniform.

Ncita nodded. We’ve got some high-ups in Torka very keen to get that dog back. We can spring you out of here for as long as the job takes. They’ve got an offer for you. He tapped more ash off his cigarette. Boils down to this. You get that dog, dead or alive. They’ll commute your sentence to time already served. Also, wipe your record. Clean slate.

That silenced her. Clean slate. No criminal record. Ncita was offering her a future that was impossible to imagine. Too good to be true. What’s the catch? "How will they manage that? She frowned. Does Torka have that much pull?"

Ncita coughed into his fist. They don’t need much pull for that. Pay for a good lawyer, that’s all it will take. In fact, I don’t understand why you didn’t fight the charges harder yourself. Trashing a restaurant hardly seems like enough to justify years in jail.

That wasn’t why—

I know. You broke somebody’s arm—

—and the terms of a suspended sentence.

A suspended sentence from when you were, what? Seventeen? Ncita snorted. And even then, all they had on you is that you ran with the Rent.

His words gave her a jolt of surprise. In all the years she’d worked for him in the gardag unit, Ncita had never mentioned her past. He must guess why she hadn’t fought the sentence. Same reason I quit the unit. The truth is, that after Griffin died, I just didn’t give a damn.

Elke drew up her shoulders. It was a bit more than that. But whatever, anyway, for this job, why pick me?

That’s easy, said Ncita. You’re the best.

Respectfully, sir, bullshit. Why me?

Ncita smiled, eyes narrowed against the cigarette smoke. Part of it is we need somebody who doesn’t look like a cop.

That twisted a smile out of her. That fits. She touched the teardrop tattoo on her cheek, the all-too-visible legacy of her time with the Rent. That had turned out to be a distinct advantage in prison. Even the most hardened inmates respected the notorious eco gang. Then there were her horns, straight and sharp. She’d kept those filed down to nubs during the years she’d worked as a gardag handler with the Egoli police, but her horns had grown out all the way now.

And if I fail?

Ncita blew out a stream of smoke and watched it curl. He didn’t need to say anything. If she failed, she’d be back here serving out the rest of her sentence at the Jacaranda Female Correctional Facility.

So how’s it going to work? she asked.

You’ll have to wear an ankle bracelet. Keep track of you in case you do a runner. They’ll assign a believable job for you to do in the Eye. You’ll report to some local Torka agent on your progress in tracking the dog.

Elke swallowed. She was getting out. And what then? The thought frightened her. Maybe it was no accident she’d ended up in prison. It had felt so inevitable. No more decisions, just survival, day after day, safely numb.

Inspecteur Ncita stood up from the table. And it’s not bullshit, by the way. You are the best gardag handler. I put your name forward for a reason.

Not the first time you save my ass, Inspecteur.

Not the first.

¤¤¤

The dog squeezed through a gap in the wall. First just her head and shoulders. Ears swivelling, sniffing. Kitchen-garden-garbage smells. Nobody dangerous.

People had been near earlier. Not the two that hunted her. Others.

Movement nearby.

The dog froze, heart accelerating, ears and eyes focused. Hearing and sight sharpened till she could hear the tiny heartbeat, see the heat signal. Small body. Glint of eye. Scuttle and gone.

Mouse.

She slid through the gap and nosed about, still alert for any sound. Many smells here. Old, musty, sharp sour. She wolfed down vegetable peelings and a lump of ancient bread.

Mouse would taste better.

¤¤¤

Elke leaned into the curve, careful to keep her distance from the bikes in front and behind. She glanced over her shoulder. Agent Modise again, giving her a thumbs up. He was probably grinning but she couldn’t see his face through the visor. A friendly guy, but he’d not hesitate to gun her down if she tried to make a getaway.

Or maybe they’d let her go and hunt her down at leisure, tracking her by the bracelet that fitted so snugly around her ankle. In any case, she wouldn’t get far in the Karoo with no food or water.

The bikes had to dodge and weave to avoid potholes and every so often they were forced off the road when a donga gaped across its whole width. The cops took it in their stride. Apparently this trip between Egoli and Kaapstadt was a regular thing for them—guarding the intercity solar trucks and tourist buses.

Elke looked up at the towering clouds in the blue desert sky. Just last night she’d been in her cell, listening to her neighbour mumbling in her sleep. Now she was speeding down the N1 on some cop’s bike, wearing the clothes she’d checked in with more than eighteen months ago. That was something to luxuriate in, the fact of wearing her own clothes, creased and smelling of prison laundry as they were.

She had her boots back too. Elke grinned. Ridiculous how that cheered her, getting her boots back. They were her one extravagance. Real leather, upholstery liberated from some rich man’s car. Made by a friend back in the days she still had friends.

This very road must once have been full of cars like that. She’d seen the pictures. Insane. Herds of metal-and-plastic beasts, rows and rows of them all the way to the horizon, clouding everything with their exhaust. Never again. That time was past, although traces remained. Every now and then the convoy of bikes passed the burnt-out husks of petrol stations. Some had been upgraded to charging stations with wind turbines and solar panels, but most were abandoned reminders of the days before the change.

It felt good to be moving again after the long months of enforced inaction in Jacaranda. The bike roared beneath her. Wisps of her hair had come loose and whipped behind her. The cops had been unable to find a helmet that would fit over her horns. All she wore was a pair of goggles. She was glad enough of those after hours on the dusty road.

It would be another day, at least, before they arrived in Kaapstadt. Then, she hoped, she’d be properly briefed about Hoofdagent Ben Duram and his dog, and about the Babylon Eye.

The Babylon Eye. Portal between the worlds. A conduit for trade, a sort of harbour that existed—she had no idea how—in the abyss between the real world and the strange. The entrance to the Eye was somewhere off the southern coast of Nieu Batavia, not far from the place she’d been born and spent her childhood.

She’d seen strangers, if only from a distance. Stranger tech was a part of everyday life these days. The gardag project was an example, a perfect blend of real-world expertise with mechanical things and the strangers’ skill with genetic engineering and surgery. Editing and pruning, they called it. Stranger tech made possible the armoured mech-dogs to which she’d devoted so much of her life.

Her horns were stranger tech as well, although when she’d had the buds implanted, she’d been a teenager more concerned with earning her place in the Rent gang than in the origin of the body mods.

Some people blamed everything that was wrong these days on the arrival of the strangers, but Elke always thought that things would have changed whether or not contact had been made. Humanity was quite capable of driving their world to the brink of destruction without any stranger help. The strangers hadn’t caused the energy crisis or broken the weather. All that had happened long before they showed up.

One advantage of her years with the eco gang: a thorough education in the harm rapacious humanity had done to their world. The Rent had extreme ideas of how that damage should be repaired, but there was no denying they were right about the cause of it all.

She steered to avoid another pothole then saw that their leader was signalling to pull into one of the charging stations. As they slowed to a halt, agent Modise pulled up next to her and took off his helmet.

Phew. He wiped a sleeve over his sweating face, widening his eyes at her. Then he turned to get a water bottle from his saddlebag and handed it to her.

Not a bad guy, Modise.

¤¤¤

The road surface improved as they approached Kaapstadt and by the time they were within sight of Table Mountain, they no longer had the road to themselves. On the outskirts of the city where the N1 cut through smallholdings and farms, they had to slow to accommodate local traffic. Bicycles, dogs, straying cattle and the farm carts taking produce to their customers in the grid.

Elke was glad to slow down, bone tired from the journey and reluctant to reach its destination. She had left Kaapstadt when she was barely thirteen and had not planned to return. But, as they drew nearer to the grid, the areas she’d known as a child, she couldn’t help looking around with interest. Some things had not changed.

Elke smiled up at the overpass bearing graffiti she herself had painted so many years ago, before she’d had the right to do it. Metre-high black lettering frowned down at the traffic passing underneath: The Rent Is Due. Below that in a more recent addition, somebody had scrawled: And who will pay the debts of the dead?

The wrecked cars that had lined the roads were almost all gone. Looted out, she supposed, recycled down to the bare metal of their chassis, then chopped up and carted away. The traffic was as crazy as she remembered. There seemed to be a fashion for immensely long skateboards—that was new. She even spotted a rickshaw or two among the normal mix of bicycles and motorbikes.

The air was tainted with the stench of burnt plastic. Despite the forest of wind turbines and the solar panels on every roof, there were still people who cooked their food by burning garbage gathered from the local dump. The hammering roar of a petrol-driven generator cut through the traffic noise. A local gang boss showing off his conspicuous consumption of the precious fuel.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

At a signal from the biker in the lead, the convoy slowed and turned into a gate with the Eckzahn logo. They had arrived, at last.

¤¤¤

The hunters came again, making her go into the cold, narrow place up under the pipes. One of them opened a hatch. Close. The dog could see the shadow, cast by the light outside. Not moving. Listening.

It was the female. Coffee smell, toothpaste, sweat. She was the dangerous one. The one who wouldn’t give up. The male was angry, impatient, but this one kept coming back.

The shadow moved. The door closed. The listening continued, the dog could feel it. She lay, eyes closed, waiting, perfectly still except for the shivers she was unable to suppress. Cold here. Cold, cold.

They had guns. She knew they did. The male had shot at her, twice, after Ben—

After Ben went away.

Two shots. That had shocked her sane, driven her back into the tunnels, started this endless game of predator and prey. Hunger had drained her strength away. She couldn’t take them on now, even if she’d wanted to.

The shadow moved, the hatch closed, softly. It was a long time before she heard their footsteps receding.

¤¤¤

This is as far as I go. Modise stood at the head of the stairway that led down into the Ishtar gate’s loading zone. The weather had turned cold and only a little pale sunlight filtered through the low clouds. The sea was a sulky grey and the shore was hardly visible through the mist. A bell clanged and the boat that had brought them to the gate made ready to cast off.

"I can’t go any further with