Paw-Prints Of The Gods (34 page)

“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.

“Missi,” growled
Kedesh. “Open this door now!”

“I regret that is not
possible,” the disembodied voice of the AI replied.

“Let us out of here!”
demanded Ravana. “What have done with Artorius?”

“The boy is quite
safe,” Missi intoned. “He is a most fortunate find, for once
analysed he will complete important gaps in my research.”

“What?” cried Ravana,
confused. “Don’t you dare lay a finger on him!”

“Your own fate is more
prosaic,” the AI continued. “The robots carry food to my subjects
but the synthetic proteins produced by the molecularisor are a poor
substitute for the living flesh they need to thrive. I have
therefore taken the liberty of extracting the air from the hangar,
which will be restored before you reach the point of death, though
not before you suffer irreversible brain damage. You destroyed many
research specimens, but rest assured that your contribution to the
welfare of the remainder will be largely pain-free.”

“Thraak thraak!”

“We are not going to
be spider food!” retorted Kedesh. “Open this blasted door!”

“This is crazy!”
shrieked Ravana. “Let us out!”

To her alarm, she was
already finding it harder to draw breath. Kedesh succumbed quickly
and fell to her knees, though Nana seemed singularly unaffected.
Ravana grabbed the woman’s arm and in desperation dragged her
towards the transport to take refuge inside. A large robot,
aggressively brandishing its six multi-tooled limbs, blocked their
way. Feeling faint, Ravana left Kedesh and returned to claw at the
door but to no avail. It was then that her gaze fell upon the
plasma cannon, still lying upon the nearby bench.

“Having problems?”
purred a voice from behind.

Ravana, Kedesh and
Nana turned to stare at the dark-haired woman lounging coolly
against the front of the derelict transport parked next to their
own. The woman gave the prone Kedesh a sympathetic smile, greeted
Ravana and Nana with an apologetic shrug, then went back to idly
contemplating her manicured fingernails.

“You!” gasped Kedesh.
“This is not how it is supposed to be!”

“The boy is in no
danger,” the woman retorted. “There is no paradox.”

“The AI is pumping out
the air!” Ravana cried weakly. “Help us!”

“Mad Missi killed them
all,” the woman said casually. “Military personnel, support staff,
the lot. They were still breathing when the robots dragged them
into the valley, but only just. The AI’s creators did not see the
need for moral reasoning in a system intended solely for science.
This is what happens when you remove ethics from the pursuit of
knowledge. I’ve never seen a machine so dedicated to research!”

“You evil moggy,”
murmured Kedesh. “Do something!”

“Does ‘science’
include rearing giant spiders?” the woman asked
conversationally.

Ravana stared at the
woman in disbelief. Her lungs felt ready to burst, her mind was in
turmoil, yet the watcher sat chatting politely as if she had just
dropped by for a cup of tea. Kedesh lay unmoving upon the floor.
Ravana frantically looked around the hangar and in desperation
staggered to the workbench and picked up the plasma cannon.

“What are you doing,
Ravana?” asked Missi. “This is no time for violence.”

“I disagree,” she
muttered. “It is the perfect time.”

The weapon was heavier
than expected but felt good in her hands. Ravana pressed her thumb
against the power switch and blinked in surprise. Targeting
cross-hairs had appeared in space before her and she realised the
cannon’s guidance systems had linked with the mind’s-eye display of
her implant. As she hesitantly prepared to blast the door, she
heard a clatter of steel limbs and saw a maintenance robot coming
in for the attack.

“You have very little
air left,” said the AI. “Why make this difficult?”

In a panic, Ravana
turned the cannon towards the robot and pulled the trigger. A spear
of white lightning leapt from the barrel and hit the mechanical
dervish, which spun away in a flurry of disintegrating components
and crashed against the airlock in a shower of sparks. Fighting for
breath, Ravana fell dizzily to her knees and defiantly swung the
cannon towards the door to the corridor. Mustering all her
remaining strength, she fired again.

The blast tore the
door from its frame, sending it flying down the passage at the head
of a searing tide of plasma. Ravana was promptly knocked to the
ground as a gust of air blew through the shattered doorway, filling
the hangar with life-giving oxygen. Her chest ached, she had spots
before her eyes and it felt as if her throbbing brain had turned to
candyfloss, but she was alive. She climbed to her feet with the
plasma cannon still in her hands. Nana scuttled towards Kedesh, who
during all the excitement had fainted.

“Your actions are
jeopardising my research,” the AI said calmly. “I can no longer
tolerate your presence. I have no option but to remove life support
in all areas.”

“I have all the
support I need,” retorted Ravana. Having recovered her breath, she
patted the barrel of the cannon. “If I find you’ve done anything to
harm Artorius, I will ram this thing into your databanks and blow
very big holes in your research.”

“Bravo,” said the
woman, still sat on her perch. “Your heroic quips need work, but
the gratuitous use of a big gun shows real promise. Well done,
girl.”

Ravana looked at her
with contempt. In the corridor beyond the ragged remains of the
doorway, red lights flashed and warning sirens wailed. She realised
Nana was no longer at Kedesh’s side, then saw the grey clambering
out of the transport’s hatch with a bundle of emergency oxygen
masks clutched tight in its spindly fingers.

“Thraak thraak!”

“Brilliant!” said
Ravana. The grey handed her a couple of masks. “Get Kedesh into the
transport. I’ll go and fetch Artorius and Stripy.”

She caught a brief
blur of silver out of the corner of her eye and saw that Kedesh’s
watcher had disappeared once more. It was a mystery that could
wait. Ravana slipped a mask over her face and hurried into the
shrapnel-strewn corridor.

The door to the common
room slid shut at her approach. Her headache had cleared a little
and after examining the implant readings of the plasma cannon, she
reduced its power to minimum, called out a suitable warning to
Artorius, then stood back and blasted away the door. As the
detritus settled, she was not in the least bit surprised to find
the monochrome hologram of Missi waiting for her on the other side,
looking more ethereal than ever at the end of its dust-streaked
projector beams.

“I cannot let you take
the young human,” the hologram said. “It is vital that I have time
to conduct important analysis, otherwise my records will remain
incomplete.”

“He’s just a little
boy,” protested Ravana, her voice muffled by her mask. “He is not a
scientific specimen for you to play with!”

“You are wrong,” the
AI replied. “Artorius is unique and must be studied. The logical
explanation for his presence is so the different experiments can be
compared.”

“Artorius is not an
experiment!”

The hologram hovered
menacingly at the shattered door. Ravana muttered something obscene
under her breath, stepped through the projection and entered the
common room. Artorius and Stripy were slumped at the table, but
Ravana’s immediate panic was tempered when she heard them both
snoring loudly. She ran over and quickly shook the boy’s shoulder,
then when that had no effect she dumped the cannon onto the table,
filled a glass with water from the sink and tipped it over his
head. Artorius spluttered, lifted his head and glared at her with a
look of annoyed bewilderment.

“What was that for?”
he complained, putting a hand to his dripping hair.

“We have to go!” urged
Ravana. She handed him the spare mask. “Come on!”

Artorius gave Stripy a
shove, who promptly slipped off the seat, fell to the floor and
awoke with a loud shriek. Ravana assumed the air would be getting
thin by now but Stripy, like Nana, seemed oblivious of Missi’s
attempts to asphyxiate them all.

“Fwack,” grumbled
Stripy. “Fwack fwack!”

“My research will not
be compromised,” declared Missi. “I cannot let you leave.”

“Oh, shut up!”
retorted Ravana and picked up the plasma cannon. A quick glance was
enough to follow the dust-laden beams to the projector unit in the
ceiling and she dispatched the hologram with a single well-aimed
blast.

“You killed Missi!”
exclaimed Artorius.

“I shot the ghost, not
the demon within,” she retorted. “Put your mask on.”

“Why?”

“Because Missi is
trying to kill us!”

Ravana urged Artorius
and Stripy through the remains of the door and on towards the
corridor to the hangar. The boy stared wide-eyed at the various
scenes of destruction and gave the gun in her hands a wary look.
Upon reaching the hangar, Ravana was relieved to see Kedesh was
conscious and back on her feet, albeit wavering unsteadily at the
open hatch of the transport. Her news however was not good.

“The airlock is jammed
shut,” she said. “That robot you hit for six made a bad show of
exploding all over the controls.”

“I’ll try harder next
time there’s a mad AI out to get us,” retorted Ravana. She swung
the cannon towards the airlock. “Do I blast the doors?”

“We’ll try and ram our
way out. You’d better get aboard.”

“Thraak thraak,”
agreed Nana, standing behind Kedesh.

Ravana passed the
woman the plasma cannon, then helped Artorius and Stripy up the
steps into the transport’s own tiny airlock. She was about to
follow when she heard the voice of the AI once again, as
emotionless as before.

“It is imperative that
you stay,” said Missi. “My research is all that matters.”

Ravana jumped as a
steel roof joist dropped with a clang to the floor. A loud metallic
creak echoed around the hangar. From where she stood, she could see
down the corridor into the heart of the dome. The walls were
buckling under the weight of the roof.

“Oh my,” she murmured.
“Missi, what have you done?”

She leapt into the
transport and slammed the hatch shut behind her. Kedesh was at the
controls and had started the engine, but sat staring through the
windscreen, transfixed by the hangar falling apart around them.
Artorius and the greys stood behind, looking alarmed.

“Get us out of here!”
yelled Ravana. She tore off her oxygen mask and flung it to the
floor. “The air pressure’s fallen too low to support the dome!”