Paw-Prints Of The Gods (21 page)

“It sounds like you’ve
been studying it a while.”

Ravana hesitated.
“Administrator Verdandi at Newbrum wanted an inquest into the
Dhusarian Church,” she said. “Her office confiscated the book as
evidence. It was rather naughty of me, but before I handed it over
a friend of mine helped me scan the entire thing, including
Taranis’ notes, so there’s now a holovid file of it on my slate. So
yes, I have had quite a bit of time to look at it since.”

“That was sly,” Kedesh
murmured approvingly.

“Taranis had been
studying it for years,” Ravana told her. “He’d deciphered the basic
script, but really had barely scratched the surface. I got hold of
the official interpretation from the net, the one used in the books
given to members of the Dhusarian Church. It’s obvious he wildly
embellished what decoded fragments he had to create the
translation.”

“Fwack fwack!” chided
Stripy.

“Thraak,” agreed
Nana.

“That’s religion for
you,” Kedesh remarked. “If it is the real thing, I’m amazed it can
be read at all. The programme Artorius kindly dropped into our
heads is also quite incredible. I assume Taranis’ research on one
led to the development of the other.”

“It’s all very
clever,” Ravana admitted. “The book starts with a series of
diagrams that anyone with a bit of chemistry knowledge would
recognise as elements from the periodic table. Each has numbers in
both binary and their own script, which Taranis worked out uses a
system in base twelve. This then goes on into mathematics and
physics, so that numbers and words in the book’s script can be
defined through basic concepts in distance, movement and time. What
Taranis struggled with but I spotted straight away is that the
equations use Planck units, which are universal constants.”

“Sounds a thrilling
read.”

“Then there’s short
sections on biology and geography with yet more diagrams. Finally,
there’s a tricky section that I think tries to bring it all
together to explain verbs and the finer points of the grey’s
language. Taranis didn’t get far with that; having tried to go
through it myself, I’m not surprised. However, he must have made
quite a bit of progress for someone to develop the implant
translation programme.”

Kedesh gave Nana a
thoughtful look. “What do you know of this?”

“Thraak thraak!”

“Fwack fwack,” added
Stripy.

“So the book sounds
genuine, but you have no idea who created it?”

“It never occurred to
me to ask the greys,” mused Ravana.

“Maybe it was an
attempt at first contact,” Kedesh remarked. “That would bowl anyone
over. So is that all it is? A teach-yourself-alien phrasebook?”

“Fwack!” retorted
Stripy.

“I wasn’t being
patronising!”

“The rest is what
Taranis called the sacred texts,” replied Ravana. “The fabled Book
of the Greys! From the bits he had translated, it seems to be a
history of their civilisation. This is where the so-called prophecy
about Falsafah is written.”

“I take it you’re not
a believer. Can you remember what it said?”

Ravana frowned.
“That’s the weird thing. Artorius recited a few lines of it earlier
and said the nurses had taught it to him, though I’m not sure why.
But there was also this other phrase that was so odd it stuck in my
mind.”

Kedesh gave her a
questioning look. “Which is?”

“Paw-prints of the
gods,” she said. “Or at least, that was Taranis’ translation.”

* * *

The hours slipped by.
At one point, Ravana thought she saw a flash of silver and a pair
of yellow eyes lurking in the shadow of a nearby dune, but with
innumerable doubts still clouding her mind was reluctant to mention
it to anyone else. Eventually, the thin black line of the gravel
track appeared on the horizon, unnaturally stark and straight
amidst the endless rolling sands. Artorius became ever more sullen
and punctuated his complaints about the constant rocking of the
transport with noisy grumbles about the lack of food in his
stomach. Kedesh reluctantly agreed to stop for a rest once they
reached the road.

They parked on the
edge of the road’s low embankment, facing west ready for the next
leg of the journey. Artorius waited at the table, his expression
that of someone unwilling to fetch food for himself when there were
others quite capable of getting it for him. Ravana, having been
handed a box of rations from Kedesh, barely had time to examine the
contents before Artorius snatched it from her to rummage for what
he wanted.

“What a rude little
boy,” commented Kedesh. “Anyone else want tea?”

Ravana nodded assent,
extracted the box from Artorius’ grubby hands and retrieved a
selection of packs for Kedesh, the greys and herself. Everything in
the box was a vegetarian dish, which no doubt accounted for
Artorius’ disappointed scowl. She was handing the box back to the
boy when a loud beeping noise was heard from the cockpit. The
communication console had come to life and a screen showed a code
number and a graphic of a silver shield. Ravana looked closer and
scowled. Upon the shield was the word: ‘POLICE’.

“It seems Artorius’
rudeness is contagious,” murmured Kedesh, coming to her side. “Why
do people always call when we’re just about to eat?”

“You could ignore
them,” Ravana suggested warily. “Pretend we’re asleep?”

“And turn down a
chance to chat with Que Qiao agents? The local police are the big
fish in a lonely pond and do not take kindly to being ignored.”

“What’s happening?”
asked Artorius, his mouth full of food.

“Shut up and eat your
dinner,” Kedesh told him. “No, wait! Ravana, take him and the
neands into the back and find somewhere to hide. If they catch
sight of you on holovid it will lead to all sorts of awkward
questions.”

Ravana caught the look
in the woman’s eye. She quickly rounded up a protesting Artorius
and herded him and the greys into the transport’s small washroom,
then squeezed in after them. She pulled the door closed behind her,
careful to leave a small gap. Ravana watched as Kedesh lowered
herself into the driver’s seat, clearly perturbed.

Kedesh reached for the
console and pressed the switch to accept the call. The image on the
holovid screen promptly changed to show the fierce Arabic features
of a woman wearing a distinctive blue headscarf. From the way the
view occasionally juddered, Ravana guessed the Que Qiao agent was
calling from a moving vehicle.

“My dear Ininna,”
greeted Kedesh, her voice steady. “We meet again.”

“Kedesh!” snapped the
caller. “By the mighty Allah, why are you still on Falsafah? We
have made it clear you have no jurisdiction here!”

“I missed my flight.
Thought I’d take in the sights while I wait for another.”

The woman pushed back
a stray length of dark hair and scowled. “There’s been a lot of odd
activity in the area these last few days. It’s too much of a
coincidence to find that you’re still around,” she said irritably.
“Our transport will be with you in ten minutes and I expect you to
be ready to receive visitors. Understand?”

“I’ll come to you,”
Kedesh told her. “Do you have any tea?”

“You’ll get what’s
coming to you. Don’t try running out on us again!”

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.