Paw-Prints Of The Gods (43 page)

It was not until
Kedesh stood over her and gently shook her shoulder that Ravana
realised she had dropped off to sleep. The sky was no longer dark
and in the dim light of dawn she saw they had left the foothills of
Hursag Asag behind. The view ahead was of a rolling sea of sand,
peppered with black rocks, stretching as far as the eye could
see.

“The Arallu Wastes,”
Ravana murmured. “We made it.”

“We’re on the final
innings,” Kedesh confirmed. “A mere thousand kilometres to go. With
any luck we’ll be within sight of the excavation by dusk.”

Ravana stretched
wearily and managed a weak smile. “Is it my turn to drive?”

“I’m afraid so. I
tried the automatics again now we’re out of the mountains, but the
navigation computer is still not impressed with what it’s getting
from the satellite.”

“Fine by me. After
Missi I’m not sure I’d trust an AI to do anything.”

Kedesh grinned and
limped away to the washroom. Ravana reached above where Artorius
and the greys dozed upon the other bunk, grabbed a carton of orange
juice from a locker and then shuffled forward to take her place at
the controls.

The hours passed
without incident. Kedesh retired to a bunk to rest and left it to
Ravana to scrutinise the satellite image of the terrain ahead and
plot a suitable course. The map revealed Arallu to be a vast
waterless river delta that in wetter climes would have drowned that
of the Ganges on Earth. Ravana drove through a landscape of red
dunes that gradually softened into the remnants of a meandering
shoreline, until the transport finally bounced down a short slope
onto the vast flat expanse of the ancient river bed. The clattering
vehicle picked up speed and she felt a rush of adrenaline at the
sight of the wind-blown desert sweeping by. A strange sense of
melancholy drew her gaze to the rear-view camera display and as the
ancient shoreline and mighty Hursag Asag slipped from view, the
endless flat sands that remained left her feeling more isolated
than ever.

Her spirits were given
a boost by the appearance on the scanner of Arallu Depot, which at
long last showed at maximum range. It was not long before the
detectors picked up a further trace from the excavation to the
north, plus at least one other signal she thought could be a beacon
from a ship at the depot. She was keen to make contact, but when
she tried to use the transceiver to see if anyone was in messaging
range, she was surprised to find that the communication console
needed a password before it would unlock.

Ravana managed almost
seven hours behind the wheel before Kedesh awoke to take over. Tau
Ceti rose higher above the parched delta and the hard-pushed
transport began to struggle and show signs of overheating. Once
Artorius and the greys were awake, they stopped for tea and a bite
to eat in the shadow of an ancient river island. The towering rocky
outcrop next to the cooling vehicle was a mass of crumbling
sedimentary layers, pockmarked by metre-wide dark spirals that to
Ravana looked like the fossilised remains of giant snails.

Kedesh caught her
eagerness to finish the journey and soon they were speeding
westwards once more. Ravana remained at her side, increasingly
obsessed by the cluster of dots on the scanner marking Arallu Depot
and the excavation. Now they were closer, the console had
unexpectedly identified five separate beacons, three of which were
spacecraft. Ravana still wanted to try and make contact, but when
she questioned Kedesh about the password-protected transceiver, the
woman merely shrugged.

“It’s just a
precaution,” she said. Ravana saw her glance in Artorius’
direction. “I’d rather keep radio silence until we know who’s out
there waiting for us.”

“Couldn’t we at least
try to identify the ships?” asked Ravana. The presence of a ship at
the depot made her wonder if the
Sir Bedivere
had returned
early.

“Let’s play a straight
bat on this, okay?”

Ravana frowned. After
a while she went to sit in the back with the greys, leaving
Artorius with Kedesh in the cockpit. Nana picked up the slate and
idly experimented with a drawing application. Ravana had earlier
tried to ask the greys about how they came to be held by the
Dhusarians but the resulting translator images left her baffled.
She was beginning to wonder if it was Nana and Stripy, not
Artorius, who were the key to whatever it was the Church had
planned for Falsafah. Kedesh’s own revelations made no more
sense.

“People are strange,”
she muttered.

“Thraak?”

“Except you,” Ravana
reassured Nana. “You’re probably the only sane one here.”

* * *

The ragged line of the
ancient delta’s far shore appeared on the horizon a few hours into
Ravana’s second driving shift of the day. Before long she was
slowing to guide the vehicle out of the river bed and into the red
dunes beyond, to the sound of more ominous clunks that seemed worse
than ever. Her annoyance at their drop in speed was tempered by the
scanner’s insistence that they had barely two hundred kilometres to
go.

The final hours
crawled by. Kedesh, Artorius and the greys joined her in the
cockpit, all eagerly awaiting the end of their long journey. The
blobs on the scanner screen crept ever closer. Finally, as they
crested the top of a rise, Artorius gave an excited screech.
Nestling within the distant undulating sands ahead lay the pale
silhouettes of three squat domes.

“The excavation!”
cried Ravana. “We made it!”

“And there’s a
spaceship in the sky,” added Artorius.

“What?” Kedesh looked
perturbed. “Where?”

As one they all looked
to where the boy pointed to a tiny slash of colour in the sky. The
ship, turning in a wide arc high above, was long and narrow with
barely-visible stubby wings. Ravana thought she spied a flash of
purple and white.

“Oh my word,” she
murmured. “That looks like my father’s ship.”

“Your father?” asked
Kedesh sharply. Her eyes narrowed. “Here on Falsafah?”

Ravana paused, then
shook her head. “No, it can’t be. The
Platypus
was badly
damaged when we had all that trouble with Taranis and I doubt
father’s had time to finish repairs. Besides, it’s not built to
cope with Falsafah gravity.” Nevertheless, she could not keep a
tremor of hope from her voice. “Whoever it is must be in
communication range.”

“Just keep driving.
There’s too many players on the pitch for my liking.”

“Can’t we even try to
contact Doctor Jones at the dig?” asked Ravana.

Kedesh ran her fingers
across the communication console. “Your archaeologists may not be
there to respond,” she said eventually. “The Que Qiao agents’ ship
made it to the dig ahead of us. The spacecraft at Arallu Depot
belongs to the Dhusarians.”

“What about the
third?” asked Ravana. She frowned when she saw Kedesh enter the
password to lock the console once again. “The one we just saw?”

Kedesh ignored her
question. “The point is that Ininna and Yima weren’t too pleased to
see me last time. They’re even less keen on the Dhusarians. Do you
really want to march in there whilst they’re fighting over whatever
it is your archaeologist friends have found?”

“Treasure!” exclaimed
Artorius.

“Fwack fwack!”

“Thraak,” added Nana
sadly. “Thraak thraak.”

“Exactly!” Ravana
declared. She grimaced as the transport heaved itself over a rough
outcrop of rock with a mournful series of clangs. “If we have found
an ancient site of the greys, Nana and Stripy have more right than
anyone to be there. And what about the rights of archaeologists to
claim the ruins in the name of science?”

“The past is dead,”
said Kedesh. “How do you decide who owns what’s left behind?”

“Why should the
Dhusarians have it just because of their beliefs?” Ravana
retorted.

“Maybe they see
themselves as custodians of neand culture.”

“There’s that word
again! Why do you call them neands?”

“It doesn’t matter,”
Kedesh said hurriedly. “Besides, Que Qiao has the upper hand. They
pretty much run Falsafah and treat everything as if it’s their
own.”

“Fwack fwack!”

“Most things in life
are unfair,” agreed Kedesh.

“Que Qiao?” Ravana
looked doubtful. “But why would they be interested?”

“I have it on good
authority they financed your expedition.”

Ravana stared at her
in surprise. The transport hit a patch of soft sand and her desire
to quiz Kedesh further was forgotten as she concentrated on the way
ahead. The excavation’s domes now lay a mere few kilometres ahead,
within the shallow depression of another dried river bed. Ravana’s
relief at being so near turned to concern when she saw the changes.
On the far side of the domes, a strip of desert had become a
runway, upon which an unidentifiable vehicle could be seen crawling
back and forth. There was a stationary transport linked via a
flexible walkway to dome two, while away from the new runway,
parked in the desert near dome one, was the Que Qiao police
spacecraft they had spotted at the abandoned airstrip some days
before. It was far more activity than she had anticipated.

“Someone’s been busy,”
remarked Kedesh. “Stop the transport.”

“Here?” retorted
Ravana. “In full sight?”

She caught Kedesh’s
glare and brought the vehicle to a halt. They were perched on a
rise and had a good view of the domes ahead. Ravana watched warily
as the transport at the site disconnected from dome three and
rolled away into the dunes.

“Why have we stopped?”
complained Artorius. “I’m hungry.”

“Fwack fwack,”
remarked Stripy.

“How can someone do
this?” Ravana asked bitterly, her eyes upon the site. “This whole
area is rich in archaeology and they’ve ploughed it up to make a
runway!”

“Everyone’s bowling a
googly,” muttered Kedesh.

She moved to the
passenger cabin and started rummaging through the lockers. Ravana
frowned and wondered why the woman wanted to stop now when they
were so close to their goal. Kedesh returned to the cockpit and
waved the object in her hand.

“You must be thirsty,”
she said to Ravana. “Would you like a drink?”

Ravana turned and
almost knocked the open carton from the woman’s hand. Keeping her
eyes on the domes, she took the juice drink and sipped it
thoughtfully. Although eager to rejoin the archaeologists, the
prospect of unwelcome visitors at the site troubled her.

“Where’s mine?” asked
Artorius.

“You wait your turn,”
Kedesh said harshly.

Ravana took another
sip. She felt tired and a little dizzy, but it was perhaps to be
expected given everything they had been through.

Her eyelids became
heavy and a sudden weariness swept upon her, like a blanket thrown
across a flame. The juice tasted odd and had a bitter aftertaste,
one that reawakened a forgotten memory of the drink given to her by
Dagan at Arallu Depot, so many weeks before. Ravana turned to
Kedesh and saw her look of guilt. A shiver ran down her spine.

“Thraak!” cried Nana
in alarm. “Thraak thraak!”

“The juice,” murmured
Ravana. “What did you put in this?”

The carton dropped to
the floor with a splatter. The urge to lie down came suddenly, but
the bunk seemed so far away. Ravana tried to stand and slipped
drunkenly to the floor, sending Stripy scuttling away in alarm. She
cringed in fear as Kedesh’s face loomed close.

A cloud swept across
her thoughts and all was dark.

* * *

Ravana awoke with a
thumping headache, scared and confused beneath a pile of smelly
towels. It was pitch black, her body ached and she lay curled in a
most uncomfortable manner, but she quickly discovered this was
because she was somewhere with not enough room to do otherwise. The
loud roaring sound that had awoken her faded to leave behind a
quiet intermittent whimper that if anything was even more
disturbing.

She pushed away her
coverings, wriggled into a sitting position and winced as something
small and square jabbed her in the ribs. Ravana tried to stand,
lost her balance and fell against a wall, which promptly swung open
to reveal it was actually the door to the shower cubicle, leaving
her to crash through onto the floor of the transport’s main cabin.
The interior lights were no more than a feeble glow, but it was
enough for her to see that Kedesh, Artorius and the greys had gone.
Outside, night had fallen and the windscreen looked out upon a
single white dome, above which arced the fiery trail of a
spacecraft rocketing into the heavens. Between the transport and
the dome, a collapsed wind pump lay amidst a pool of gushing water,
which itself formed the head of a sizeable stream. It took Ravana a
few moments to register that the dome before her was not the
excavation site, but Arallu Depot.

“Kedesh!” she growled.
“What have you done?”

She climbed to her
feet and turned up the cabin lights. The square object that had
bruised her ribs was Kedesh’s slate, which had fallen out of the
shower cubicle with her. She picked it up and scowled at the
message left on the notepad screen:

My behaviour was just
not cricket, but unavoidable I’m afraid. Final day’s play is too
risky for you to be involved. You should be safe here. Help
yourself to cake. Kedesh.

“Bitch,” muttered
Ravana. “You tricked me.”

The irritating whining
had not gone away. It was now joined by a scratching noise, both of
which came from the airlock. Ravana threw down the slate and
stomped across to open the hatch, wondering what else Kedesh had
left to surprise her. She was only mildly surprised to find a cat
sitting in the shadows of the chamber, mewing pitifully.

“Oh, it’s you,” she
snapped, thinking of the watcher. “Athene, is it? Come inside!”