Paw-Prints Of The Gods

by Steph Bennion

  “Fwack fwack,” agreed Stripy.

  “How could you possibly tell?” retorted Ravana. She cast a puzzled stare across the readings on the console, but the transport’s basic seismic sensors were not up to pinpointing the origin of the tremor. “Arallu is on the other side of the mountains!”

  “All hail the wisdom of the greys,” Kedesh intoned solemnly.

  “That’s not funny,” muttered Ravana.

  She countered Kedesh’s grin with a scowl and scratched the scar upon her arm, feeling tense and irritable. They had driven almost non-stop since they left Missi in the ruins of Falsafah Alpha over two Terran days ago, which as far as Ravana was concerned was way too long for five sweaty bodies to be cooped up in a vehicle of this size.

  They had made good progress and by following the ancient coastal plain to the mountains had covered almost three thousand kilometres in just over fifty hours. They reached the foothills of the peaks during another long Falsafah night, whereupon the path became increasingly hazardous, leading Kedesh to call a rest until daylight returned. Ravana’s temper was starting to fray by this point and she had vehemently argued to keep going. Now it was dawn she was more grouchy than ever, for not withstanding their rude awakening, her restless sleep had been plagued by some very disturbing dreams.

  “Breakfast?” asked Kedesh. She held up a carton of rice pudding liberated from the Falsafah Alpha storeroom. “There’s a tricky wicket to play today and it won’t do to step up to the crease on an empty stomach.”

  Ravana frowned and returned her gaze to the view outside. During yesterday’s drive, the landscape had become noticeably darker, the red dunes pushed aside by outcrops of black volcanic rock. The breaking dawn revealed the full scale of the treacherous terrain before them. The mountains between them and Arallu were the remnants of an ancient outpouring of magma that had left behind a line of jagged peaks, running from north-east to south-west for thousands of kilometres. The stiff equatorial wind, laden with desert sand, carved crater rims and lava flows into a myriad of fantastic shapes that bore a bleak twisted beauty. Kedesh had identified a possible route through the mountains but the satellite image showed a summit peppered with huge calderas masked in dark shadows.

  “Why all the cricket stuff?” Ravana asked, breaking her moody silence.

  “What?” Kedesh looked surprised at her question. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m half Indian, half Australian. Do you really think I’ve never come across anyone using cricketing terms before?”

  “Fair point.” Kedesh waved the pot of rice again and beckoned to Ravana to join her at the table. “Do you play?”

  “My father tried to teach me a couple of summers ago. I wasn’t very good.”

  “I played a little for Kent back in the seventies. It’s hard to get a game these days with me always on the move, but I keep the old bat around just in case.”

  “The shin pads came in handy,” mused Ravana, thinking back to Kedesh’s fracas against the spiders. “You are a very unusual person.”

  “Thraak,” agreed Nana.

  Ravana took the offered rice and settled down to eat. The smell of food managed what the tremor failed to achieve and a hungry, bleary-eyed Artorius was soon awake and demanding to be fed. The raid on the Falsafah Alpha storeroom had given them a much better selection of meals, but that did not stop Artorius turning his nose up at everything an increasingly-annoyed Ravana presented to him.

  After breakfast and customary tea and slice of cake, Kedesh gathered them together in the cockpit and brought up the latest map on the navigation console. Ravana made for the driver’s seat and settled behind the controls with a weary sigh. The transport’s systems had been hard at work interrogating the satellite and she saw the geographic chart held much more detail than before. The broad-topped peak ahead now had a name.

  “Hursag Asag,” read Artorius, squinting at the screen. “What does what mean?”

  “Demon Mountain?” suggested Kedesh.

  “Fwack!”

  “My thoughts exactly,” muttered Ravana.

  “Well, it won’t be easy,” Kedesh admitted. She ran a finger along a contour that skirted the edge of a mottled dark patch to the north of the mountain’s caldera. “This side of the peak has a gentler slope so I suggest we head that way. I wish we knew what that dark area is. It seems unusually flat for a volcanic feature.”

  “Then let’s get going,” said Ravana. She turned from the screen and switched on the drive systems. “I see no reason to hang around here a minute longer.”

  “Don’t you want to have a shower and get changed?” asked Kedesh, perturbed.

  Artorius pulled a face. “Smelly Ravana.”

  Ravana stared at her ghost-like reflection in the windscreen. Her face was sallow and haggard, her hair looked like a rat’s nest, her bones were starting to ache again and she felt itchy after a hot and uncomfortable night, but she was too tired to care. All she could think about was Doctor Jones, Xuthus and the frail outpost of civilisation in the Arallu Wastes, two days away on the other side of the mountains. Everything else that had happened did not matter. She just wanted to go home.

  “You do what you like,” she said and shoved the gear lever into ‘drive’.

  * * *

  Over the next few hours the terrain became progressively steeper. The route identified by Kedesh led them up the shallow valley of an ancient lava channel that over millennia had filled with wind-blown sand, creating a scarlet desiccated glacier. Ravana still felt low and was glad to be on the move, but her lack of sleep eventually began to take its toll and when the time came to hand over driving duties to Kedesh she did so with relief. During Ravana’s spell at the wheel, Nana sat quietly in the co-pilot’s seat, solemnly studying the navigation console. Ravana had not seen either of the greys try to operate onboard equipment before and had been surprised to see Nana flicking through the various applications with remarkable fluency.

  Leaving Kedesh with Nana in the cockpit, Ravana took her growing melancholy into the passenger compartment and slunk into a corner to watch Artorius and Stripy entertain themselves with yet another variation of the slapping game. After a while, the young grey broke away, came to where she sat huddled upon the bunk and gently placed a six-fingered hand upon her knee. It was such a touching gesture that Ravana managed a smile.

  “Fwack?” asked Stripy.

  “A little bit,” she admitted. “But I’m fine, really.”

  “Why are you sad?” asked Artorius, with a distinct lack of sympathy.

  Ravana sighed. “I can’t stop thinking about what we did to Taranis,” she said. “It must have been a horrible way to die. I hated him and Fenris for what they did to my father. I made Zotz force the ejection of the engine room. I am a dreadful person.”

  “I hate the nurses,” Artorius said solemnly. “They were horrible to me.”

  “Fwack,” added Stripy. “Fwack fwack!”

  “I killed a man. That was wrong.”

  “Are you quite sure he’s dead?” asked Kedesh, glancing over her shoulder. “Two of his creations survived. You saw them yourself.”

  “Nurse Lilith said he was dead,” Ravana pointed out. “She accused me of murder.”

  “People lie,” said Kedesh.

  The transport jolted over a rock and she returned her attention to the path ahead. Ravana frowned and wondered if there was wisdom in the woman’s words, yet the thought Taranis could still be alive was no more reassuring. She decided to change the subject.

  “It’s strange we’re not being followed,” she mused, addressing Kedesh. “A transport chased us from the dome, but since you rescued us we haven’t seen anyone apart from those Que Qiao agents.”

  “I’m sure we’re being tracked,” replied Kedesh. “The satellite, remember?”

  “The Dhusarians went to a lot of trouble to keep us hidden away,” Ravana reminded her. “I thought they’d try harder than this to get us back.”

  “It
’s their innings. You’re stuck on Falsafah until they pull the stumps.”

  “We’re lucky this planet hasn’t killed us by now,” said Ravana, unconvinced. “Perhaps they don’t care if we live or die.”

  “Fwack!”

  “I agree,” remarked Kedesh. “That is a gloomy thought.”

  “I don’t want to die,” Artorius mumbled.

  “I’m sorry.” Ravana reached forward and gave him a hug. “Everything is going to be fine. The nurses at the dome were horrible but they obviously thought you were a very special little boy. Do you recall anything else of the rhyme you were taught? Something about a great game, paw-prints of the gods?”

  The boy solemnly scratched his cheek and shook his head.

  “I’ll try hard to remember,” he said sullenly. “Is it important?”

  “I think you’ve been dragged into another of Taranis’ stupid prophecies. That could be why the Dhusarians brought you to Falsafah just as we’re digging up whatever it is we found,” said Ravana. A new thought occurred to her. “You never said how long you were in that dreadful place. Can you remember?”

  “It was a long time,” Artorius said in a small voice.

  “Are we talking days?” asked Kedesh, who was listening. “Months, years?”

  “I don’t know,” the boy moaned. He looked close to tears.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Ravana gave him another hug. “How did you get there?”

  Artorius rubbed his nose and frowned. “There was a black spaceship,” he said. “Me and the nurses got on at Camelot. It went into space and then did an ED jump and flew to a big red planet. We landed in the desert and we got in the transport where there were two men in cloaks and then drove to the dome where Nana and Stripy lived.”

  “Thraak thraak,” Nana interjected, looking up from the console.

  “Those men were cyberclones,” Ravana told Artorius. “Brother Simha and Dhanus, who I told you about. So you knew we were on Falsafah all that time?”

  Artorius nodded and started to pick his nose.

  “Taranis is set on creating a new mythology for his Church,” said Kedesh, keeping her eyes on the windscreen. “He uses people like pawns in chess, only he makes up the rules as he goes along. His own disappearances just add to the mystique. What does the Isa-Sastra say? Do you really think this prophecy, Artorius and the dig are linked?”

  “Artorius’ forgotten rhyme is carved into a wall we uncovered,” said Ravana. She gave Kedesh an odd look and wondered why the woman was questioning this now. “The Isa-Sastra has a star chart that pinpoints Tau Ceti using pulsar coordinates and there’s a line in the so-called prophecy itself that identifies Falsafah. If we ever get to the excavation I’ll be able to retrieve my slate and check Taranis’ notes.”

  “Pulsars as triangulation points.” Kedesh gave a wry grin. “The Americans used to fit plaques to space probes that used the same trick to show Earth, until people got nervous about who or what might actually get to read them. That would have been around the time the Isa-Sastra allegedly first appeared. Coincidence?”

  “Allegedly?” Ravana caught the light-hearted tone of her comment and frowned. “I thought you believed it was genuine.”

  “You don’t know what I believe,” the woman replied. “You never asked.”

  “Thraak,” said Nana. “Thraak thraak.”

  “Fwack fwack!”

  Artorius scratched his head. “I didn’t understand that at all.”

  The bright, swirling implant image created in response to the greys’ interruptions was confusing. Ravana was left with the impression that Nana and Stripy both had an idea of what was buried at Arallu but had each tried to describe it in different ways. Kedesh too seemed intrigued by the implant translation. Ravana found the woman’s reaction irritating.

  “I’m so sorry Artorius and I have been wrapped up in our own concerns,” she said crossly, addressing Kedesh. “Go on then. Tell us what you believe.”

  Artorius’ eyes went wide. “Alien monsters!”

  “Silly boy. I meant you never asked me what I thought about the dig,” Kedesh remarked, with another glance over her shoulder. “I know something you don’t.”

  Ravana was too tired for games. “Which is?”

  “Arallu has been excavated before. About ten years ago, in fact,” said Kedesh. Ravana stared at her in surprise and caught the reflection of the woman’s smug smile in the windscreen. “It’s amazing what you can learn with the right contacts. Before you ask, what the previous dig found is something I don’t know.”

  “Professor Cadmus said we got there first,” Ravana said doubtfully.

  “Officially, that’s true,” the woman replied. “There are more mysteries on Falsafah than any of us can possibly imagine.”

  * * *

  The lava channel became increasingly steep and narrow as they ascended into the mountains. They aimed to pass north of the mighty peak of Hursag Asag, towards where a colossal flat caldera ran across their forward horizon, stretching for hundreds of kilometres to the rocky crags of the north-east. Kedesh’s plan was to find a route into this crater and cross to the far side, from where she hoped there was a way down through the rolling foothills that fringed the distant Arallu Wastes.

  Kedesh had been at the wheel almost six hours by the time Ravana took over driving duties once again. The terrain was difficult and the transport, pushed to its limit, had begun to make very odd clunking noises as it climbed through the rock-strewn landscape.

  A couple of hours into Ravana’s drive, the lava channel widened and then fell away to become a vast rift in the crater wall. By now, everyone else had joined her in the cockpit and the collected sense of relief was palpable as their vehicle passed through into the interior of the ancient caldera. The rocks beneath the wheels gave way to soft drifts of sand. It was something else entirely that made Ravana reach for the brake and bring the transport to a halt.

  “Oh my,” she murmured.

  Kedesh frowned. “I didn’t expect this.”

  The crater was home to a shimmering lake that stretched as far as the eye could see. Tau Ceti was directly overhead and sparkling motes of sunlight flickered upon tiny rippling waves that danced before the stiff prevailing winds. A thin mist hung in the air and far away to their left, the faint silver streak of a waterfall could be seen cascading down the distant southern rim of the caldera, beyond which Hursag Asag itself rose through a layer of diaphanous cloud. The bright sunshine was deceptive, for the console’s environmental monitor revealed the temperature outside was just a few degrees above freezing.

  “Why is there a lake in our way?” Artorius asked grumpily. “That’s stupid.”

  “It’s amazing,” murmured Ravana. “The warm air from the plains must be condensing on the mountains. The volcanic rock is sucking the sky dry. I bet there’s another lake beyond the top of that waterfall, maybe in the crater of Hursag Asag itself.”

  “Well deduced.” Kedesh looked thoughtful. “That would explain the dark patch on the map. It would appear I’ve directed you to Falsafah’s one-and-only beach resort.”

  “Very funny.” Ravana sighed. “What now?”

  Kedesh squinted through the windscreen and slowly scanned the entire crater from left to right. Ravana followed her gaze and her heart sank at the thought of the lengthy detour needed to reach the other side. Kedesh soon confirmed the girl’s fears.

  “I can’t see an easy way round,” she said. “Let’s take a walk and assess the state of play. We can handle a bit of water if it’s not too deep.”

  “Outside?” Ravana gulped.

  “Can I come?” asked Artorius.

  “No,” Kedesh said firmly. She looked at Ravana. “Are you up for this?”

  Ravana paused and then nodded. “I could do with stretching my legs.”

  “Thraak thraak!”

  “Not literally! It’s just a turn of phrase.”

  Kedesh found a spare survival suit and helmet for Ravana and before long
they were huddled in the airlock ready to face the world outside. Kedesh armed them both with a cricket stump, plus gyroscopic binoculars for herself. Ravana was not sure why Kedesh had given her the stump but found a heavy stick in her hand somewhat reassuring.

  Once outside, Kedesh went ahead of the vehicle and cautiously approached the water’s edge, pausing now and again to prod the ground with the stump along the way. Ravana caught on fast and followed, checking the ground ahead with her own stump. The sand beneath their feet remained firm and by the time Ravana caught up, Kedesh had taken a few steps into the lake itself, which even a few metres from the shore barely reached to her shins. The water was crystal clear and through the glass bowl visor of her helmet Ravana was surprised to see patches of brown fungus-like growths sprouting from the lake bed. Missi’s spiders aside, Falsafah was proving to be not so dead as she thought.

  “Have you seen those?” she remarked, pointing. “There’s life on this planet.”

  Kedesh gave a cursory glance but did not reply. The woman waded back to shore, handed Ravana the binoculars and gestured towards the transport. The faces of Artorius, Nana and Stripy pressed excitedly against the windscreen.

  “Go onto the roof and see if you can spot dry land beyond this,” she said, her voice faintly distorted by the speaker in Ravana’s helmet. “It seems to be getting shallower to the north but it’s hard to tell.”

  Ravana nodded and jogged back to the parked vehicle. The ladder to the roof was next to the airlock hatch and soon she was on top, her feet gingerly placed amongst bits of blasted spider the maintenance robots had missed, with the binoculars to her eyes. As Kedesh surmised, barely half a kilometre from shore on her right, a ridge of sand rose from the lake which offered a route west. Ravana was about to turn away when she noticed a dark shadow upon the lake. It looked like an oil slick, but with a start she realised it was moving against the wind, straight towards where the woman waded a few metres from shore.

  “Kedesh!” she cried. “There’s something in the water, coming your way!”