Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

Agent Yima was bored. He wanted to fly straight to the Arallu Wastes to see what the archaeologists were up to, but his colleague Ininna was determined to keep an eye on Kedesh for a little while longer. Hence they were here, sat in their ship at an abandoned airstrip, watching the red blob on the scanner that was Kedesh’s transport as it sat unmoving on the road a few kilometres away. The cabin of the Alf-Sana Booma , the angular flying wing they used to flit around Falsafah, was cramped and in need of a good airing if they ever got back to Aram. Their own transport was secure in the cargo bay behind them.

“Is she still there?” asked Ininna, with barely a glance at the scanner.

Yima looked at the console. “No, she’s moving again,” he informed her. “North, into the hills. I would have gone south and followed the old coastal plain to the pass.”

“You’re assuming she’s alone. If she has taken on passengers as we suspect, she may be looking to top-up supplies.”

“Yes, but the only depot around here is… that place,” murmured Yima and shivered. “You wouldn’t get me near there, no matter how desperate.”

“That’s if she manages to avoid running into those things in the valley,” said Ininna and smiled. “Don’t look at me like that! You’ve heard the stories.”

Yima looked glum. “Do we stick around in case we’re wanted?”

Ininna shook her head. “We’ve warned her off enough times. We’ll come back in a day or so and see if there’s anything left to interrogate. If she does make it through the dunes in one piece, there’s more surprises waiting for her at the dome.”

Following Kedesh’s directions, Ravana drove north. The dunes became hills and soon the transport rolled through what may have once been a river valley, but which was now no more than a barren, dusty rift in the bleak landscape. The encroaching uplands soon blocked the dwindling light of dusk and by the time Ravana came to swap places with Kedesh they were using the transport’s headlamps to light the way. Artorius and Stripy were in the passenger compartment, keeping themselves amused with the slapping game, while Nana caught forty winks on a nearby bunk. After settling into the co-pilot’s chair, Ravana waited until the transport was under way once more before presenting Kedesh with a question that had been troubling her for a while.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Who are you working for?”

“Didn’t I say?” Kedesh’s look of innocence was not entirely convincing.

“No, you didn’t. You gave us some rubbish about being an eccentric adventurer with an odd interest in Taranis,” Ravana reminded her. “You have a transport but no ship, so how did you get here? Falsafah is not the sort of place where anyone can just drop by.”

“Who do you think I am?”

“A secret agent,” Ravana declared. “Working for Que Qiao. That’s why the police officer said something about it not being your jurisdiction.”

“You heard that from inside the washroom? Ininna does have a big mouth.”

“The corporation is doing horrible things on Yuanshi,” Ravana said bitterly. “It’s not just the war; myself and some friends broke into a secret plantation and saw the cruel things its scientists are doing to the greys. Every time I look at Nana and Stripy I’m reminded of that. It’s worse now I know how clever they are. And to cover it up people are made to believe greys are a myth, invented by the Dhusarians, or that they’re just the alien equivalent of monkeys or apes. Looking after these two has really opened my eyes.”

“You’re looking after them?” Kedesh raised a surprised eyebrow, as if to say she thought it was the other way around. “So if the corporation experimented on dumb animals, rather than clever aliens, that would be alright?”

“I’m saying that if you are with Que Qiao then I don’t want to know you.”

“Even after I gave you a lift? That’s a tad harsh.”

“Well?” asked Ravana. “Are you?”

“A spy?” Kedesh laughed. “No more than you, by the sound of it.”

“I am not a spy!” retorted Ravana, increasingly maddened that the woman seemed incapable of answering a straight question. “What brought you to Falsafah?”

“I could ask you the same question. You say you’re a student archaeologist, but doing digs on faraway planets is very much a hobby for the rich. Universities expect students to pay their way. You don’t strike me as being particularly wealthy.”

“A teacher helped me apply for a bursary,” explained Ravana, annoyed that Kedesh had changed the subject yet again. “Well, ex-teacher. The trauma of the flight back from the peace conference was too much for her and she’s taken extended leave to catch up on her Saint John Ambulance training, or something.”

“Fine body of people,” Kedesh said approvingly.

Ravana watched as the woman returned her attention to the way ahead, then sighed in exasperation when it became clear Kedesh was not about to say anything more.

“You’ve ducked my question yet again!” she complained.

Kedesh frowned. Frustrated, Ravana gave her a pleading look.

“As you say, I am on the trail of Taranis,” the woman said carefully. “Coincidentally, I too was recently out in the field on Yuanshi, trying to catch a bit of intelligence. I went undercover as a technical support officer at the royalist headquarters in Lanka. It was easy to eavesdrop on holovid conversations and it didn’t take me long to work out that Taranis was somewhere in the Barnard’s Star system. Shortly afterwards, the story broke of his and your own involvement in the peace conference plot and the trail went dead.”

“Just like Taranis himself,” said Ravana, though she did not sound sure.

“I’ll be happier when I’ve confirmed that for myself,” Kedesh remarked. “Last time he disappeared, he turned up at the Dhusarians’ secret hideaway here on Falsafah, so I was sent to keep an eye on the ball. The arrival of those so-called monks knocked me for six.”

“So you are a spy,” remarked Ravana, but her thoughts were elsewhere. “Cyberclones can’t think very well for themselves and have to be told what to do. The two I saw have been given names from the Hindu zodiac, which sounds like something Taranis might do. But if he was alive and at their dome controlling them I think I’d know. This may sound silly, but the last time we met I could feel his anger through my implant. That of the clones, too.”

Kedesh looked intrigued. “You mean like telepathy?”

“Like in science-fiction stories?” Ravana managed a weak smile. “No, nothing like that. It was far more vague, as if I was sensing emotions rather than thoughts.”

“Cyberclones are part machine,” mused Kedesh. “They may give off signals or weird alien pheromones your implant can somehow detect. Speaking of implants, I’m stumped as to why Artorius has one. Didn’t he say he’s from Avalon? I though it was only the Que Qiao administration in Epsilon Eridani that allows childhood implantation.”

“Allows? Insists, more like,” Ravana retorted. “I did wonder whether Artorius is another victim of a fake destiny, in that Taranis planned to use him to make the Falsafah prophecy in the Isa-Sastra come true in a way he could control.”

“Although Artorius doesn’t have a special-forces implant like you do,” Kedesh pointed out. She smiled at Ravana’s startled expression. “Yes, I checked. Weirdly enough, he seems to sport an implant of the type the American government developed for their space exploration programme, not a Que Qiao one. Very odd.”

Ravana pursed her lip and fell silent. Back in Newbrum, a morbid fascination had led her to study implant technology. The discovery that the devices quickly became embedded, using nanotechnology to exude tiny filaments across a host’s brain, made her feel sick for weeks. She wondered if Kedesh’s own implant was anything out of the ordinary.