Paw-Prints Of The Gods

by Steph Bennion

  “Are we out of the mountains?” asked Ravana, keeping her voice low.

  “Almost,” Kedesh whispered back. She shifted upon her bandaged feet and winced. “It’s a lot less rocky this side, so if you’re up to driving we can probably keep going through the night. I was too tired to carry on.”

  Ravana dropped lightly off the bunk and shuffled to the table. Kedesh relaxed her defensive gesture but still wore a guilty look.

  “There’s no need to hide that,” Ravana said, indicating the medical equipment. “I saw you with the vial at Missi’s dome. So what did you find? Is there some magical element in Artorius’ blood to explain why the Dhusarians think he’s so special? Are you on a mystical mission from Saint John to find the saviour of the universe?”

  Kedesh caught the smirk on the girl’s face and smiled.

  “No ingenious little nano-probes buzzing through his veins?” suggested Ravana. Her voice betrayed a tone of solemn mockery. “Athene said he was a star man.”

  “Very funny. You’ve been watching too many fantasy holovids.”

  Ravana ignored her quip. “Not that I care. I haven’t forgiven you, by the way.”

  “Fair enough. At least you’ve come out of that mood you’ve been in these last few days. Anyone would think you didn’t like battling acid snot whilst stinking to high heaven.”

  Ravana experimentally sniffed an armpit and screwed up her face in disgust. Despite her unpleasant body odour, she did feel more optimistic, though all things considered she was not sure why. Her lost trust in Kedesh had let feelings of isolation return.

  “I will take a shower,” she promised. “Then I’ll be ready to drive on.”

  “Before you do, I have something that may interest you.”

  Kedesh reached across the table and handed her a small touch-screen slate Ravana had not seen before. The notepad function was live and showing twelve lines of text. As Ravana began to read, the words of the Isa-Sastra flooded back to her:

  frozen traveller created anew

  watchers to history stir

  hidden by slaves and masters

  Tau Ceti’s wandering tomb

  reborn beneath twin suns

  orphaned child of Sol

  pawn to watchers and weavers

  king by the great game

  father of the twelve

  believers unite as one

  Sol’s children shall not fear

  paw-prints of the gods

  “The so-called prophecy of Falsafah,” she murmured. “Is this from Artorius?”

  Kedesh nodded. “It took him hours to remember it all. What do you think?”

  “I see watchers get a mention,” mused Ravana. After what Kedesh had said about Athene, she found the phrase ‘paw-prints of the gods’ intriguing. “And I can see how ‘Tau Ceti’s wandering tomb’ identifies Falsafah. The lines about ‘twin suns’ and ‘orphaned child’ could even describe Artorius. But why ‘reborn’? Was there anything odd in his blood?”

  “I got distracted by the green slime mould,” Kedesh said. “I analysed a sample and it is fascinating stuff. It’s a clump of single-cell organisms that work together to...”

  “Stop changing the subject,” Ravana said irritably. “If you really are from some secret society sent to spy on the Dhusarians, you must have an idea what this is about. Is Taranis the ‘father of the twelve’? What about ‘frozen traveller’ and ‘slaves and masters’?”

  “The Order of Saint John is not a secret society!” retorted Kedesh. “It is an old Commonwealth institution set up to protect the health and wellbeing of humankind. The Grand Priory tries to guard against future threats and so employs field agents like me.”

  Ravana frowned. “Is this a Christian thing? Do you see other religions as a threat?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, people can believe whatever they like if it helps them cope with the chaos that is humanity,” Kedesh retorted testily. “What they should not do is try to impose their beliefs on others. The Dhusarian Church in particular is bowling wide from Raëlism and becoming a dangerous cult. The one is an off-shoot of the other,” she explained, after Ravana gave her a blank look. “The Raëlian Church is an old UFO religion that still has followers today. Taranis was a Raëlian priest at Lanka, who mixed his beliefs with Hindu mythology to create Dhusarism. Did you not know any of this?”

  “UFO religion?” remarked Ravana, baffled.

  “Unidentified Flying Objects,” said Kedesh. “Don’t ask. Even in the midst of the communications revolution, the twentieth century was not a period of enlightenment.”

  “My brain hurts. I think it’s time for my shower.”

  “Good girl. All will be revealed when we reach Arallu.”

  Ravana was not so sure. She made her way to the shower cubicle with an uneasy mind. Her thoughts continued to whirl as the hot jets of water washed away the accumulated sweat and grime of her ongoing Falsafah odyssey.

  * * *

  The last rays of Tau Ceti were fading fast by the time Ravana slipped back behind the wheel. Billions of tonnes of wind-borne sand, dumped over millennia in the lee of Hursag Asag, softened the western slopes into a lofty cascade of dunes and she soon lost herself in their relentless journey, the headlamps falling upon one dry valley after another. Kedesh retired to her bunk once they were underway, leaving Ravana alone with her thoughts and some soothing Shanghai jazz from the transport’s music player. On the console before her, next to a cup of tea and inevitable slice of cake, the slate mocked her with its twelve lines of text. The more she stared at the words, the less sense they made.

  The long Falsafah night drew on. A few hours into her drive, the smell of her hastily-grabbed carton of noodles awakened Artorius, who in turn disturbed Nana and Stripy from their slumber. Driving in the dark was a gloomy affair and Ravana was glad of the company.

  “Have a good sleep?” she asked.

  “Thraak,” replied Nana. “Thraak thraak.”

  “I’m hungry,” grumbled Artorius.

  “Help yourself to food,” she said. “Try not to wake Kedesh while you’re at it.”

  Artorius instead came and sat glumly in the co-pilot’s seat. In the end it was Nana who went to fetch something to eat, leading the short-limbed grey to climb onto the table to reach the overhead lockers. Much to Ravana’s irritation, all three decided to join her in the cockpit, where she was soon bombarded by strong smells and some very noisy slurping.

  “Hey Nana, Stripy,” said Ravana, after a pause. “Kedesh told me it was you who saved me and Artorius after we crashed into that crater. Thank you.”

  “Thraak thraak,” Nana said solemnly.

  “It was not nothing! You saved our lives!”

  “Fwack,” said Stripy. “Fwack fwack.”

  “Well, I am really grateful,” Ravana replied. “And I’m sure Artorius is too.”

  She looked expectantly at Artorius. When he did not speak, she gave him a prod.

  “Thank you for saving me,” he said in mock sincerity. “I didn’t want to be dead.”

  Ravana sighed. The transport rolled on to further sounds of munching.

  “Kedesh showed me your rhyme,” she said to Artorius and pointed to the slate.

  Artorius presented her with a beef-and-noodles grin. “It doesn’t rhyme, stupid!”

  “I’ve done that joke. What does it all mean?”

  “Fwack,” Stripy said solemnly. “Fwack fwack fwack.”

  “Thraak thraak,” interjected Nana.

  “That’s wrong!” Artorius protested. “I’m king of the great game! I was in Gods of Avalon and pulled the sword out of the anvil when no one else could. They said it was not fair as I was not supposed to be playing but the nurses said it meant I was special.”

  Ravana frowned. She did not watch the holovid show herself, but knew it was based upon challenges inspired by Arthurian mythology. Artorius was too young to be a contestant, yet the coincidence of his name being the Latin version of Arthur was puzzling.
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  “So you think the great game is Gods of Avalon?” she asked him. “But the greys just said the passage is about something else entirely and is to do with watchers.”

  “Lots of people watch Gods of Avalon,” Artorius said stubbornly.

  “I didn’t mean that kind of watcher.”

  “Thraak?”

  “Nurse Jizo said I was a star man and a traveller,” the boy said. There was a defiant look in his eye. “I was to meet masters and slaves and they would tell me what it meant. She said all those who believe would come together and not be afraid.”

  Ravana gave him an odd look. “Believe in what?”

  “In the greys.”

  “Fwack fwack!”

  “Exactly. They’re right here, dropping food all over the floor. What’s not to believe?”

  Artorius looked sullen. “I don’t know.”

  Ravana saw confusion on the boy’s face and did not press him further. Beside her, Nana picked up the slate and carefully scrutinised the twelve lines of text. Ravana was amused to see that the elderly grey looked as puzzled as she herself felt.

  * * *

  Kedesh awoke a few hours later to take over driving duties. Their descent through the dark dunes seemed never-ending. Ravana’s revived spirits faded and she spent the rest of the long Falsafah night curled upon a bunk, leaving Nana to keep a watchful eye on Artorius’ and Stripy’s latest round of the increasingly-noisy slapping game. The gentle wallowing of the transport was soothing, though the loud clunking from beneath had returned and Ravana saw Kedesh give a worried downwards glance on more than one occasion.

  It was not until Kedesh stood over her and gently shook her shoulder that Ravana realised she had dropped off to sleep. The sky was no longer dark and in the dim light of dawn she saw they had left the foothills of Hursag Asag behind. The view ahead was of a rolling sea of sand, peppered with black rocks, stretching as far as the eye could see.

  “The Arallu Wastes,” Ravana murmured. “We made it.”

  “We’re on the final innings,” Kedesh confirmed. “A mere thousand kilometres to go. With any luck we’ll be within sight of the excavation by dusk.”

  Ravana stretched wearily and managed a weak smile. “Is it my turn to drive?”

  “I’m afraid so. I tried the automatics again now we’re out of the mountains, but the navigation computer is still not impressed with what it’s getting from the satellite.”

  “Fine by me. After Missi I’m not sure I’d trust an AI to do anything.”

  Kedesh grinned and limped away to the washroom. Ravana reached above where Artorius and the greys dozed upon the other bunk, grabbed a carton of orange juice from a locker and then shuffled forward to take her place at the controls.

  The hours passed without incident. Kedesh retired to a bunk to rest and left it to Ravana to scrutinise the satellite image of the terrain ahead and plot a suitable course. The map revealed Arallu to be a vast waterless river delta that in wetter climes would have drowned that of the Ganges on Earth. Ravana drove through a landscape of red dunes that gradually softened into the remnants of a meandering shoreline, until the transport finally bounced down a short slope onto the vast flat expanse of the ancient river bed. The clattering vehicle picked up speed and she felt a rush of adrenaline at the sight of the wind-blown desert sweeping by. A strange sense of melancholy drew her gaze to the rear-view camera display and as the ancient shoreline and mighty Hursag Asag slipped from view, the endless flat sands that remained left her feeling more isolated than ever.

  Her spirits were given a boost by the appearance on the scanner of Arallu Depot, which at long last showed at maximum range. It was not long before the detectors picked up a further trace from the excavation to the north, plus at least one other signal she thought could be a beacon from a ship at the depot. She was keen to make contact, but when she tried to use the transceiver to see if anyone was in messaging range, she was surprised to find that the communication console needed a password before it would unlock.

  Ravana managed almost seven hours behind the wheel before Kedesh awoke to take over. Tau Ceti rose higher above the parched delta and the hard-pushed transport began to struggle and show signs of overheating. Once Artorius and the greys were awake, they stopped for tea and a bite to eat in the shadow of an ancient river island. The towering rocky outcrop next to the cooling vehicle was a mass of crumbling sedimentary layers, pockmarked by metre-wide dark spirals that to Ravana looked like the fossilised remains of giant snails.

  Kedesh caught her eagerness to finish the journey and soon they were speeding westwards once more. Ravana remained at her side, increasingly obsessed by the cluster of dots on the scanner marking Arallu Depot and the excavation. Now they were closer, the console had unexpectedly identified five separate beacons, three of which were spacecraft. Ravana still wanted to try and make contact, but when she questioned Kedesh about the password-protected transceiver, the woman merely shrugged.

  “It’s just a precaution,” she said. Ravana saw her glance in Artorius’ direction. “I’d rather keep radio silence until we know who’s out there waiting for us.”

  “Couldn’t we at least try to identify the ships?” asked Ravana. The presence of a ship at the depot made her wonder if the Sir Bedivere had returned early.

  “Let’s play a straight bat on this, okay?”

  Ravana frowned. After a while she went to sit in the back with the greys, leaving Artorius with Kedesh in the cockpit. Nana picked up the slate and idly experimented with a drawing application. Ravana had earlier tried to ask the greys about how they came to be held by the Dhusarians but the resulting translator images left her baffled. She was beginning to wonder if it was Nana and Stripy, not Artorius, who were the key to whatever it was the Church had planned for Falsafah. Kedesh’s own revelations made no more sense.

  “People are strange,” she muttered.

  “Thraak?”

  “Except you,” Ravana reassured Nana. “You’re probably the only sane one here.”

  * * *

  The ragged line of the ancient delta’s far shore appeared on the horizon a few hours into Ravana’s second driving shift of the day. Before long she was slowing to guide the vehicle out of the river bed and into the red dunes beyond, to the sound of more ominous clunks that seemed worse than ever. Her annoyance at their drop in speed was tempered by the scanner’s insistence that they had barely two hundred kilometres to go.

  The final hours crawled by. Kedesh, Artorius and the greys joined her in the cockpit, all eagerly awaiting the end of their long journey. The blobs on the scanner screen crept ever closer. Finally, as they crested the top of a rise, Artorius gave an excited screech. Nestling within the distant undulating sands ahead lay the pale silhouettes of three squat domes.

  “The excavation!” cried Ravana. “We made it!”

  “And there’s a spaceship in the sky,” added Artorius.

  “What?” Kedesh looked perturbed. “Where?”

  As one they all looked to where the boy pointed to a tiny slash of colour in the sky. The ship, turning in a wide arc high above, was long and narrow with barely-visible stubby wings. Ravana thought she spied a flash of purple and white.

  “Oh my word,” she murmured. “That looks like my father’s ship.”

  “Your father?” asked Kedesh sharply. Her eyes narrowed. “Here on Falsafah?”

  Ravana paused, then shook her head. “No, it can’t be. The Platypus was badly damaged when we had all that trouble with Taranis and I doubt father’s had time to finish repairs. Besides, it’s not built to cope with Falsafah gravity.” Nevertheless, she could not keep a tremor of hope from her voice. “Whoever it is must be in communication range.”

  “Just keep driving. There’s too many players on the pitch for my liking.”

  “Can’t we even try to contact Doctor Jones at the dig?” asked Ravana.

  Kedesh ran her fingers across the communication console. “Your archaeologists may not be there to respo
nd,” she said eventually. “The Que Qiao agents’ ship made it to the dig ahead of us. The spacecraft at Arallu Depot belongs to the Dhusarians.”

  “What about the third?” asked Ravana. She frowned when she saw Kedesh enter the password to lock the console once again. “The one we just saw?”

  Kedesh ignored her question. “The point is that Ininna and Yima weren’t too pleased to see me last time. They’re even less keen on the Dhusarians. Do you really want to march in there whilst they’re fighting over whatever it is your archaeologist friends have found?”

  “Treasure!” exclaimed Artorius.

  “Fwack fwack!”

  “Thraak,” added Nana sadly. “Thraak thraak.”

  “Exactly!” Ravana declared. She grimaced as the transport heaved itself over a rough outcrop of rock with a mournful series of clangs. “If we have found an ancient site of the greys, Nana and Stripy have more right than anyone to be there. And what about the rights of archaeologists to claim the ruins in the name of science?”

  “The past is dead,” said Kedesh. “How do you decide who owns what’s left behind?”

  “Why should the Dhusarians have it just because of their beliefs?” Ravana retorted.

  “Maybe they see themselves as custodians of neand culture.”

  “There’s that word again! Why do you call them neands?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kedesh said hurriedly. “Besides, Que Qiao has the upper hand. They pretty much run Falsafah and treat everything as if it’s their own.”

  “Fwack fwack!”

  “Most things in life are unfair,” agreed Kedesh.

  “Que Qiao?” Ravana looked doubtful. “But why would they be interested?”

  “I have it on good authority they financed your expedition.”

  Ravana stared at her in surprise. The transport hit a patch of soft sand and her desire to quiz Kedesh further was forgotten as she concentrated on the way ahead. The excavation’s domes now lay a mere few kilometres ahead, within the shallow depression of another dried river bed. Ravana’s relief at being so near turned to concern when she saw the changes. On the far side of the domes, a strip of desert had become a runway, upon which an unidentifiable vehicle could be seen crawling back and forth. There was a stationary transport linked via a flexible walkway to dome two, while away from the new runway, parked in the desert near dome one, was the Que Qiao police spacecraft they had spotted at the abandoned airstrip some days before. It was far more activity than she had anticipated.