Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

The screen went dead. Kedesh leaned back in her seat and glanced at the scanner display. From her hiding place, Ravana saw the red square that had appeared behind them to the east. She recalled the navigation satellite was a Que Qiao device and wondered if it had been tracking their progress ever since the stolen transport left the dome.

Kedesh clambered from her chair, made her way to the rear of the cabin and lifted a survival suit off the hanger next to the airlock door. As an afterthought, she opened a nearby locker and retrieved one of her prized stock of wrapped fruit cakes. The sudden creak from the washroom door made her jump.

“Is everything okay?” asked Ravana, peering through the gap.

“I’m going to step outside for a while,” Kedesh told her. “I may be some time.”

Lilith stared through the windscreen of the transport and silently scrutinised the scene in the desert before them. An identical vehicle lay nose down in a crater, metres from where they were parked. The open airlock door and extra set of wheel tracks were evidence enough that their quarry was long gone. She returned her attention to the communication console and tried not to look too smug as she regarded the hooded features of Brother Simha on the holovid screen. Her panic at the thought that Ravana had gone and killed both herself and Artorius mercifully had proved short-lived.

“It seems our friend found them just in time,” remarked Lilith.

“zz-thee-daayy-oof-thee-staar-maan-iis-neeaar-zz!” Simha rasped vehemently. “zz-theeyy-muust-noot-sliip-throouugh-yyoouur-fiingeers-zz!”

“They slipped through yours,” muttered Lilith. “And you have twelve.”

“Do we follow the tracks?” Dagan asked, who sat at the controls.

Lilith ignored him. “They may head for the excavation,” she declared, addressing the face on the screen. “It is unfortunate your chemical interrogations failed to extract the whereabouts of Taranis’ papers when the girl’s memory was yours to reap, but her new-found friend may win her confidence. We will recover the boy and the greys soon enough.”

“zz-yyoouu-muust-doo-whaat-neeeeds-too-bee-doonee-zz!”

“Of course,” Lilith replied coolly.

The holovid went blank. Lilith let her gaze drift to the bleak desert before them. The two cyberclones scared her; just that morning she spied them eating what smelt like raw pork, but which she knew was not. Jizo remained unfazed by the monks, but Dagan’s startled stare told Lilith her own apprehension was not unwarranted. It had taken a considerable sum of credits to bribe Sir Bedivere ’s crew into bringing Dagan and his bubble-cockpit microlight to the airstrip near the Dhusarians’ dome, but Lilith needed someone she could trust.

“Greys?” Dagan asked in awe. “Have our interstellar guides come at last?”

“Not quite. They’re a couple of funny ape-like aliens from Epsilon Eridani,” she told him. “The problem is that these greys are smart, very smart; and the boy has the translator in his head. Whether he really is the ‘reborn traveller’ of this stupid prophecy is irrelevant; my worry is that if we don’t contain the situation, our alien runaways could raise too many questions about our beloved Dhusarian Church. People do not like it when their gods turn out to be just another version of themselves.”

“Arallu is six thousand kilometres away,” Dagan remarked, gripping the steering wheel. “They can’t possibly hope to get there before us.”

“That drunk psycho Jizo knows something about the girl she’s not telling,” Lilith added absent-mindedly. “She was Taranis’ nurse for a while and thinks that makes her an authority on everything. Did you know the Isa-Sastra has been revised at least twice?”

Dagan shook his head.

“Early versions contained a prophecy regarding Maharaja Ravana, who would one day liberate Yuanshi and Daode. The missing girl is called Ravana. Coincidence?”

“I thought the prophecy was about the boy,” Dagan said weakly.

“There are many prophecies. All nonsense, of course.”

“About the excavation?”

“No, in this case, just the one,” Lilith said testily. Dagan’s approach to church was that of an activist, not a theologian and she could almost see his head starting to hurt. “I hear you’ve been doing sterling work sabotaging the rape and pillage of our scared inheritance. Everything is playing out as expected and we will be at Arallu soon enough.”

“It’s a long way by transport,” he reminded her. “The microlight can’t take us both.”

“The Atterberg Epiphany returns in three days. We shall fly there in style.”

Que Qiao officer Ininna was not happy, a state of mind Kedesh could testify often resulted in those nearby breaking out in bruises. Ininna and her colleague Yima, a big burly Arab who had his own ideas when it came to applying the full force of the law, had been talking to Kedesh for over an hour but as yet the red-haired woman had not told them anything they did not know already.

“You disgust me,” muttered Ininna. She raised a hand to make Kedesh flinch, then lowered it again. “Your life is one big act and all you can give me are lies. Did you help the occupants of that crashed transport?”

“You’ve asked me that already,” Kedesh murmured. The cut on her lip opened up again and she winced. The wire from the lie-detector probe on her forehead rubbed against her nose and Ininna saw the woman was desperately ignoring the urge to scratch the itch, especially after what happened last time she tried. “The same question, six times. Do you really think my answer is going to change anytime soon? And where is this tea you promised me an hour ago? I brought you cake! You should always have tea with cake.”

“Dessert in the desert,” mused Ininna. “You English are so quaint.”

“It’s called being civilised,” Kedesh retorted. “You should try it some time.”

“Someone must have rescued whoever was in there,” Yima said softly, who knew his place when it came to the ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine. Ininna did not like competition in badness stakes. “Your vehicle was the only one in the area at the time.”

“I have no idea how they got out of that transport!”

Ininna glanced at the read-out of the lie detector and sighed. The devices were illegal and results could not be cited in a court of law, but in this case the point was moot. Kedesh was telling the truth. She plucked free the electrode and tossed it unceremoniously aside.

“I’m bored with this game,” she said. “Get out of my sight.”

“Fine,” muttered Kedesh, looking pained. “Next time, don’t lure me here under false pretences. A promise of tea is not one broken lightly.”

Kedesh retrieved her suit’s helmet and quickly made her way to the airlock before Ininna could change her mind. Before long she was outside and limping back to the green transport ahead, parked forward of the police vehicle on the long gravel road.

“Did you have to hit her that hard?” asked Yima. “She seemed to be telling the truth.”

“Kedesh doesn’t know the meaning of the word!” retorted Ininna. “The charlatan could hardly deny being there given satellite evidence, but do you really believe her story that she found that transport empty? If so, why is she now in such a hurry to head west? It’s all tied up with whatever’s going on at Arallu, mark my words.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Something has rattled the Dhusarians,” she pointed out. “Someone steals a transport from their dome, abandons it in a crater in the middle of nowhere, yet no one falls over themselves to get the authorities involved? We know that idiot activist Dagan has been out causing trouble at Arallu. I’m convinced there’s a connection.”