Paw-Prints Of The Gods

by Steph Bennion

  “Forgive me,” Ravana whispered. The voice in her head was forgotten as she pulled Artorius close. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  She fell to the floor beside him, each convulsing breath more shallow than the last. Finally, there was nothing more to do than close her tear-soaked eyes.

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  No news is bad news

  [Chapter Four] [Contents] [Chapter Six]

  FELICITY FORNAX, the latest young and fiercely-ambitious recruit to the Weird Universe team of roving reporters, sat on the edge of her hotel room bed and scowled at the flickering images on the holovid unit in the corner of the room. The British Broadcasting Corporation’s Five Systems News was reporting on the archaeological dig from its studios on Aram, which despite being on the other side of the star system from Falsafah was still a lot closer to the action than most other news crews had managed to get. Weird Universe, the quirky arts and entertainment news programme, was a show with big ideas but an embarrassingly-small budget. Hence Fornax was here, in a tatty suite on the third floor of the laughingly-named Paradise Hotel in Newbrum, tasked with putting together a piece on the Bradbury Heights University archaeology department, instead of at some well-appointed campsite in the Arallu Wastes reporting on the excavation itself.

  The University however was being strangely tight-lipped. Meanwhile, the Dhusarian Church had released a baffling statement protesting heavily against the sacrilegious looting of holy relics, with a warning that activists would do their best to sabotage the expedition. Yet there was another story, one of secret flights from Falsafah to Ascension and of alien artefacts on the local black market. Fornax would much rather be in the Tau Ceti system, reporting on possibly the biggest story of all time, but if she could not be there then she would take whatever scoop came her way. The discovery that her enhanced-reality network visor did not work in Newbrum just meant that her research would have to be done the old-fashioned way.

  Feeling hungry, Fornax pulled her dressing gown tighter and pushed a length of black hair out of her eyes. She had a bottle of wine cooling in the sink and was just contemplating ordering room service when there was a quiet knock at her door.

  “Who is it?” she called. She was not expecting guests.

  “My name is Philyra,” came the muffled voice of a teenage girl. “Can I talk to you?”

  “Apparently so,” Fornax murmured, getting up from the bed.

  The room was so small it was only two steps to the door. A peep through the spy hole revealed the skinny and pallid features of a dark-haired girl, dressed in a cheap summer frock of metallic blue. Her visitor looked harmless enough and Fornax opened the door.

  “Hi!” said Philyra. The girl gave a bright smile. “Miss Fornax? Could I interview you for our school magazine? We don’t often get holovid stars in town.”

  “A holovid star?” Fornax smiled. Newbrum was more of a backwater than she thought if they bestowed celebrity status upon someone like her, an ex-presenter of Cosmic Cooking and reporter for the equally obscure Weird Universe. Now she saw her visitor properly she was struck by how much the girl reminded her of a younger version of herself. With a sweep of her hand she invited Philyra inside. “Fine by me, kid. Make yourself at home.”

  Philyra entered the room and hesitantly looked for somewhere to sit. Fornax reached for a panel by the door and pressed the control to convert the bed into seating. The bed began to retract upon itself, gave an almighty groan and shuddered to a halt. Philyra looked at her, shrugged and gave the bed a good solid kick with her boot. The bed lurched into motion again and collapsed into the reassuring shape of a sofa.

  “Newbrum’s like that,” Philyra said, sitting down. “Nothing works properly.”

  “So I see,” murmured Fornax. “Care for a drink?”

  She felt Philyra’s eyes follow her as she retrieved the bottle from the sink, cracked it open and poured two generous measures. Fornax had brought a few bottles of Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir with her from Los Angeles, having been warned off Ascension local brew.

  “I am only fifteen,” Philyra pointed out, but took the offered glass.

  “In this business, being young is an asset, not a crime,” replied Fornax. She sat down beside her. “So you’re a reporter? And you want to interview me for your school paper. That’s very sweet.”

  Philyra blushed. “Actually, no. I want your help.”

  “My help?”

  “I want to be a holovid presenter, just like you,” Philyra confessed. Fornax smiled and waited for the pre-prepared speech, for the girl was trying her best to stop the words coming out in a mad rush. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do! I’m here because I’d like you to take me on as your assistant while you’re in Newbrum. I’m quick to learn, really keen and don’t expect you to pay me. Unless you really want to,” she added hopefully.

  Fornax smiled and let the moment drift into silence with a lingering sip of wine.

  “That’s quite a pitch,” she said, as Philyra began to fidget. “The answer’s no.”

  “I could get inside information,” offered Philyra. “I know students at the dig.”

  “The answer’s still no, kid.”

  “I’m not totally clueless. I have broadcast experience!”

  “Really?” Fornax raised a surprised eyebrow. “That’s cool. What exactly?”

  “I was at the Epsilon Eridani peace conference on Daode late last year,” Philyra told her. “I did an undercover report on the plot to brainwash Raja Surya.”

  “That was you?” Fornax remembered a political journalist friend of hers getting quite excited at the time. “Maybe you do have what it takes. You say you know people on site?”

  Philyra nodded. “A girl named Ravana,” she said, then blushed. “And a boy called Xuthus. He’s from Bradbury Heights.”

  “A boy, eh?” Fornax smiled, seeing the girl’s sudden coy expression. “Not that I’ve been directed anywhere near the dig itself. I’m down to interview some professor at Bradbury Heights and maybe do a bit of digging of my own into these black-market artefacts. I don’t think you can help me with that. Do you know anyone at the university?”

  Philyra pulled a face. “That bunch of fat heads? They’re all rich, stuck-up Americans who think they’re the centre of the Universe,” she retorted, speaking with venom that took Fornax by surprise. “Xuthus is the only one who speaks to me as if I’m human.”

  “And he’s on Falsafah,” reflected Fornax. “So you don’t have any useful contacts?”

  “I have a friend at the spaceport,” Philyra suggested cautiously. “One of the ground crew. If there’s any strange deliveries coming into Newbrum, he would know.”

  “Is that so?”

  Philyra shrugged. Fornax was pleased with the information, albeit unaware Philyra was thinking of Endymion, who would probably be the last person to notice anything odd happening around him and so laid-back he could fall asleep pushing a broom.

  “A spy in the spaceport,” Fornax mused and smiled. A spot of investigative journalism was just what she needed to restart her stalled career. “If there’s one thing I could teach you, it’s that this business is not about what you know, but who you know.”

  “Is that a yes?” asked Philyra excitedly. “Can I be your assistant?”

  “Hell, why not.” Fornax took another sip of wine. “If nothing else, you can help me make sense of life in this crazy dome.”

  * * *

  The Dandridge Cole was the second of two asteroid colony ships launched towards the Barnard’s Star system a century ago and the only one to arrive. The oblong lump of detritus from the birth of the Solar System was ten kilometres long and half as much wide, inside which had been hewn a vast cylindrical chamber five kilometres long and a kilometre in diameter. At the centre of this cavern sat the artificial sun, suspended upon three five-hundred-metre radial pylons, which had the freighter Platypus not crashed into it several months before would now be shining upon
a concave country landscape of farms and villages. The affectionately-known hollow moon had been Quirinus’ and Ravana’s home for over nine years. Now the pilot was back, he found it a cold, grim place in more ways than one.

  Quirinus stared at the holovid screen, his heart thumping harder with each passing second. Ravana had never let him down like this before. Behind him, Professor Wak nervously pretended to be busy with various pieces of workshop equipment, with the air of someone dreading the cue to say something reassuring. Wak had spent the last few months virtually alone on the Dandridge Cole and social conventions were easily forgotten when the only regular company kept was with maintenance robots.

  “Are you quite sure?” asked Quirinus. On the screen before him was the pilot of the Sir Bedivere, a rather surly man who did not seem at all pleased that Quirinus had called during a complicated orbital insertion. “She wasn’t at Arallu Depot?”

  “Not as far as I’m aware,” the pilot said wearily.

  “Did anyone from the excavation come to meet you?”

  “Doctor Jones and three of his students,” he replied. “Professor Cadmus stayed behind at the dig for some reason. Probably because he owes me a drink, the tight little...”

  “Hey, that kid was asking after the Indian girl,” interrupted a voice off screen, the owner of which Quirinus assumed was the ship’s co-pilot. “They thought she’d come back with us last time. The boy was down with some seriously bad vibes.”

  “She didn’t,” reiterated the pilot before Quirinus could ask the question again. “I’m sure your daughter is fine, but if you’re worried I suggest you contact the authorities on Aram. They can put a message through to Que Qiao police on Falsafah.”

  “Yes, but...” began Quirinus.

  “I can’t help you,” said the pilot. “Please don’t call me again.”

  “Charming,” muttered Quirinus. The screen went blank.

  With a heavy sigh, he rose from his seat and walked to the window. There was little to see, for the cavern in the heart of the spinning asteroid was in darkness, as it had been ever since the evacuation of the hollow moon some months before. The light streaming from the windows of Dockside was enough to show the heavy frost upon the barren ground outside, but the streets of the deserted hamlets beyond were unlit; with fuel supplies low, Wak was running the remaining fusion plant at minimum power and doing all he could to conserve power. The only lights visible outside were the faint electric flares of welding torches high within the frame of the artificial sun, where robots were busy fitting new energy coils and reflectors to replace those damaged by the crash of the Platypus.

  “Perhaps she’s busy,” Wak suggested, breaking the silence.

  “Busy?” exclaimed Quirinus. “Too busy to bother with the once-a-fortnight chance to call her father? No, something’s wrong.”

  He whirled away from the window. With a determined grimace, he strode across the workshop towards the door, a bemused Wak not far behind.

  Dockside completely encircled the inner front end of the hollow moon, in a curious strip of ramshackle buildings wedged together in a loop over three kilometres long. As it was currently the only part of the Dandridge Cole with heat and light, many of the abandoned family cabins now housed pigs, chickens and other asylum seekers from the hollow moon’s frozen farms. The smell of hay and animal sweat mingled with that of hot oil and ozone in an uneasy alliance between nature and machine.

  Quirinus stormed through the party of ducks outside the Dockside canteen, through a labyrinth of narrow corridors and into one of the two shuttle maintenance bays built into the rock of the asteroid. It was here his ship the Platypus had been docked ever since being pulled from the wreckage of the sun many months before. From its broken nose to the dented rear fins, the freighter had seen better days. The ship’s cylindrical purple and white hull was deep in dust, its undercarriage tyres were badly in need of air and maintenance hatches hung open all along the lower half of the fuselage. The beak-like sonic shield generator at the bow of the craft was encased in scaffolding, upon which a multi-limbed robot brandished its screwdriver and soldering-iron fingers, busy with repairs.

  Quirinus crossed the graffiti-strewn concrete hangar to the spacecraft’s open port-side airlock, strode up the cargo bay ramp and entered the ship’s hold. The Platypus began life as a standard Mars-class interplanetary freighter, but its carrying capacity had long since been drastically reduced by the addition of an extra-dimensional drive, a centrifugal passenger carousel and additional fuel tanks, leaving the cargo bay somewhat cramped even when empty. Yet something was present, for the strange tendril-like growths that had taken over the ship were growing thick and fast inside the hold. Quirinus was not sure it was right that the cargo bay felt more like a cave made by the roots of a huge tree.

  He warily dodged a swaying tendril and crossed to the ladder running up the front wall of the hold. Halfway up was the metre-wide crawl tunnel that led to the flight deck through the centre of the carousel, the latter being a narrow barrel-like passenger cabin that spun like a miniature version of the hollow moon to generate the illusion of gravity against its inner wall. The voices drifting through from the flight deck were not, as Quirinus expected, the customary heated argument between Momus and the ship’s onboard computer.

  “Zotz?” he called. “Is that you up there?”

  “We both are!” Zotz’s voice replied.

  Quirinus scrambled up the ladder and deftly passed through the tunnel to the flight deck, taking care to not fall through the open hatch to the stationary carousel on the way. He emerged to find Momus and Zotz idly standing and staring into an open ceiling maintenance hatch, not looking at all busy. Ravana’s electric cat lay curled upon the co-pilot’s seat, idly playing with a long piece of tendril emerging from a nearby control panel. Quirinus dropped into the pilot’s seat and heard the muffled clangs of Wak’s mangled prosthetic left hand upon the cargo bay ladder, interspersed by various muttered curses.

  “It’s easier in zero gravity,” Zotz remarked. He cringed at the thud of a head upon the crawl tunnel roof. “Dad hates spaceships.”

  “It’s hard to love this frigging heap,” muttered Momus.

  Quirinus gave him a steely glare. Wak emerged from the tunnel wearing a scowl and sullenly took a seat. With a sigh, Quirinus turned his attention to the console.

  “Ship!” he called. “Report status. Just the headlines, mind.”

  “System breakdown as follows.” The measured female tones of the Platypus’ artificial intelligence unit sounded far too calm, given the state of the ship. “Life-support systems are on standby and functioning normally. Port and starboard main drive turbines, fuel pumps and intercoolers show signs of wear beyond safe tolerances, as do the shattered nerves of the abused AI unit. Upper and lower plasma drive injector assemblies require manual inspection and possibly complete overhaul. Main fuel tanks are empty, devoid of purpose and symbolic of the universe at large. Radiation shield plasma pump requires recharging; sonic shield generator is currently under repair. Faults remain on carousel drive unit, forward radar detector module, forward visual scanners, flight-deck air-conditioning unit and maintenance pod door. Gaps remain in my memory banks and I am continuing to run checks on my sanity. Sensors detect a bird’s nest in the rear port undercarriage housing, damage to the starboard tailfin that requires immediate attention, a faulty light unit in the washroom, a...”

  “That’s enough,” said Quirinus, with another sigh. “More than enough.”

  “Why do AIs always speak with a frigging woman’s voice?” asked Momus, frowning. “Sexist, that is. And how come it refers to itself like that?”

  “What’s wrong with the way the Platypus talks?” asked Zotz.

  “A spacecraft should talk like a man!” said Momus. “And not sound insane!”

  Wak peered cautiously into the blackened space behind an open maintenance hatch. “The bomb maybe did more damage than we thought,” he suggested.

  Quirinus he
ard a squeak of fear over the cabin speakers. The ship would not normally depart from standard scripts, or enter a conversation uninvited except to issue a warning, but it sounded almost as if the AI was tempted to ask a question.

  “Ship, you were sabotaged,” Quirinus said. He felt slightly foolish to be explaining the facts to a spacecraft. “Some double-crossing fiend hid a bomb aboard. The console was badly damaged, I lost an eye and then we crashed. It was not a good day all round.”

  “My mind was free,” the AI said wistfully. “Ravana and I, joined as one.”

  “Told you so,” said Momus. “Totally crapping mad.”

  “Ship, ignore Momus,” Quirinus retorted. “He’s an idiot. Can you estimate how long it will take to restore all systems to full working order?”

  “Repairs as scheduled will be complete in approximately eighty-four hours time,” the AI replied. “This is subject to replacement parts being available. This does not include removal of the bird’s nest or stress counselling for the AI core processor.”

  Quirinus turned in his seat and gave Wak a questioning look.

  “The autofabs can reproduce most spares,” Wak told him. Programmable fabricators, three-dimensional liquid-alloy printers, were standard fixtures in engineering workshops. “However, a template for the carousel motor is proving tricky to locate. The scanner units are also of an old design. This ship is built of bits no one makes any more!”

  “Sounds a right frigging bucket of bolts,” snorted Momus.

  Quirinus glared at him. “At least the airlock door hasn’t fallen off.”

  “Actually,” began Wak. “Last week...”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” snapped Quirinus. “Ship, can you estimate the time needed to do the minimum repairs needed for interstellar flight? Assume there will be four crew members available to help the maintenance robots.”

  “Three,” the professor pointed out. Quirinus saw at a glance that Wak knew what he was planning. “Someone has to take the Indra to Thunor.”