Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

“Thraak?” exclaimed Nana, alarmed.

“Could I do whatever I wanted?”

Missi’s reply was interrupted by the arrival of Ravana and Kedesh, who both stopped short at the door upon seeing the copious amounts of ice-cream dribbling from Artorius’ lips. Stripy and Nana shuffled away, looking sheepish. Ignoring the hologram, Ravana shook her head sadly and reached for the towel hanging by the kitchenette sink.

“Artorius!” she scolded. “Look at the mess you’ve made of yourself! Have you had nothing to eat but ice-cream?”

“I can eat what I want!” Artorius retorted sulkily. “You can’t tell me what to do!”

“How rude!” said Ravana. “You need to learn some manners, young man.”

“Fwack fwack,” said Stripy.

“He had five bowls of ice-cream?”

“Stripy had six,” Artorius retorted sulkily. “Why can’t I…?”

Ravana muffled the boy’s protest with a non-too-gentle chastisement of his face with the towel. Kedesh regarded Missi suspiciously.

“Didn’t we leave you in the laboratory?” she asked.

“Each room has its own holographic projector,” the AI said smoothly. “The system can support multiple simultaneous visual interfaces.”

“Lucky us,” muttered Kedesh. “Make sure the boy eats something healthy, would you? We’re going to the hangar to see how the robots are doing.”

She waited for an acknowledgement, but the AI remained silent. Artorius pulled himself free of the towel, glanced up at the hologram and frowned.

“Missi?” asked Ravana.

“Your instructions have been noted,” the AI replied.

“Good,” said Kedesh. “We’ll be back shortly.”

She beckoned to Ravana and together they left the common room. Artorius yawned, then giggled as he caught Stripy doing the same thing. Apart from making him feel sick, eating all that ice-cream had for some reason made him feel sleepy. His gaze was drawn once more to the molecularisor and he gave the hologram a hopeful look.

“Another?” he suggested.

“Thraak,” murmured Nana uneasily.

“Your companions left me strict instructions,” replied Missi, then paused. “Yet the needs of my research are paramount. You may eat whatever you wish and then you will sleep. By the time you awake, they will have paid their dues.”

Their transport still looked like it had been dragged through a battlefield backwards, but now stood firm upon all six wheels with its windows repaired and the hull wiped clean of spiders’ innards. The maintenance robots were busy tidying the final minor repairs, though Ravana was a little disconcerted by the nuts, bolts and twisty metal brackets one robot was sweeping away from beneath the vehicle. There seemed little either of them could do to help. Kedesh agreed and pointed out they still needed to search the storerooms and stock up on provisions, whereupon she grabbed a trolley from the hangar and led the way.

“We need to talk,” said Ravana. They struck lucky in the first room they tried and Kedesh was busy pulling boxes of travel rations from a shelf. “About that cat woman.”

“What woman?” asked Kedesh innocently. “Ooh! Veggie sausage hat-trick!”

“You know who I mean!”

“There’s a lot of fried chicken meals here. Can’t see the fascination myself.”

“Kedesh!”

“Spinach pasta bake?” Kedesh showed Ravana the ration carton, caught the girl’s look of frustration and dropped the box into the trolley with a sigh. “She was a quantum mirage, a hallucination. Missi didn’t see her because in a way she wasn’t really there. Please believe me when I say we have more important things to worry about than her.”

“A quantum mirage?” Ravana scoffed. “The first time she appeared you said, ‘oh no, not again’! And you called her a pain in the arse. What is it you’re not telling me?”

“As I said, we have other problems,” Kedesh hissed. She kept her voice low. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of the boy, but something very odd is going on. I was under the impression this place had been mothballed due to lack of funds, change of government, that sort of thing. I thought we’d have to start up life support before doing anything else.”

“The dome is probably kept pressurised to support the weight of the roof,” Ravana told her. “I’m training to be an engineer,” she added, seeing the woman’s blank expression.

“Really? I thought you were here to do archaeology.”

“Can’t a girl have a hobby?”

“Anyway, it’s more than just that. Everything seems to be running normally, as if the crew are still in residence and have just popped out for a while. Except when I checked the research log in the laboratory, the last entry was almost six years ago.”

“So that woman must be real,” Ravana declared. “The last of the scientists!”

“She’s a watcher!”

Ravana opened her mouth to speak, hesitated and gave the woman a curious stare.

“Happy now?” said Kedesh.

“A watcher?”

“Indeed.”

“A woman who is also a cat?”

“She’s actually neither, but watchers have their preferred forms.”

“The Isa-Sastra mentions ‘watchers’,” Ravana said slowly.

“I don’t doubt it,” Kedesh replied testily. “For now, please forget about her and listen! I think the personnel here have been bowled a googly. That AI is being far too coy for my liking. Have you noticed that Missi has blocked all implant control channels?”

“I did wonder why my head wasn’t filled with the usual rubbish.”

“Exactly. This place should be buzzing with activity. I suggest we take what supplies we can, find Artorius and the greys, then leave. Any objections?”

“Have I got time for a quick bath?” Ravana asked hopefully.

“No,” Kedesh said firmly. “Ooh! Chocolate gateaux!”

Ravana managed a grin. “How do you not put on weight?”

“I will with this stuff. The cake that launched a thousand hips!”

They quickly got to work filling the trolley with armfuls of boxed rations haphazardly plucked from the shelves. After what seemed an age they were back in the hangar, where they spent another frantic few minutes throwing the trolley’s contents through the open hatch of the transport. Kedesh had just disappeared inside to shove the various boxes into storage lockers when Ravana was almost swept off her feet by a grey blur that entered the hangar like a miniature whirlwind. This time the newcomer was definitely no phantom cat.

“Thraak!” cried Nana, gesticulating wildly. “Thraak thraak!”

“What’s that?” asked Ravana, startled. The grey vocalised too quickly for the implant translator to generate anything but a mess of random interpretations. “Your bush kangaroo has skipped down a mine shaft?”

“Thraak thraak!”

“Poisoned! By ice-cream?”

“Who’s been poisoned?” asked Kedesh, poking her head from the transport’s hatch.

“Thraak thraak thraak!”

Ravana hastened across the hangar, then saw the door ahead sliding shut of its own accord and instinctively broke into a run. Her hand hit the switch just as the door sealed but there was no response. She tried the control again, then gave the doorway an impatient kick. Kedesh joined her and tried it for herself, but she too found the controls dead.

“Missi!” cried Kedesh. “Open the hangar door!”

There was no response. Exasperated, Ravana hammered on the button but the door refused to budge. As she paused, she became aware of the distant rattle of a compressor and a change in air flow from the vent above their heads. Missi remained silent, but a faint hum from a concealed speaker told them the AI was listening.