Paw-Prints Of The Gods (53 page)

“It’s incredible,”
murmured Quirinus.

“So this has nothing
to do with Que Qiao?” asked Ravana.

“They financed your
dig,” Kedesh pointed out. “Though I’m puzzled as to why the
corporation was happy to let the Dhusarians take first innings. Que
Qiao is no doubt watching events with interest. Technology like
that portal is way ahead of anything we can do.”

“The Americans must
have put the capsule there themselves,” Govannon protested. “The
dating samples show the chamber last saw sunlight twelve thousand
years ago. If it was the same light we saw today, your so-called
portal last opened back when humans were stuck on Mesolithic Earth.
The capsule could not have arrived that way, see?”

“Time travel,” Hestia
said solemnly. “I was right all along.”

Urania snorted. “Don’t
be stupid!”

“Watchers don’t play
cricket when it comes to regular space-time,” Kedesh told her.

“Paw-prints of the
gods?” Ravana suggested accusingly. “Nana and Stripy said the
chamber was built by the greys. The hieroglyphs at the entrance
were from the
Isa-Sastra
. Is all this what that damn cat
woman referred to as some kind of game?”

“Perhaps the script
was added later,” mused Govannon. “As a warning, see?”

Ravana frowned. Yima
reappeared at the ceiling hatch looking solemn, holding the vial of
blood Kedesh gave him earlier. As the agent climbed through into
the
Platypus
, the boy’s head appeared at the hatch behind
him.

“This ship is much
better!” Artorius said with glee. “It’s got guns and
everything.”

“Take no notice of the
silly little boy,” Ravana murmured, patting the console.

Ininna regarded Yima
impatiently. “Well?”

“This is from the
boy?” asked Yima. He showed Kedesh the vial, who nodded. “What I
got from the cartridge is badly degraded, but the DNA matches that
of the blood.”

“See?” said Kedesh,
smiling smugly at Ininna.

“There’s more.” Yima
looked puzzled. “I ran a carbon-fourteen count on the cartridge
sample. Whoever it came from took their last breath over ten
thousand years ago.”

“What?” cried Ininna.
“That must be wrong.”

“It’s pretty close to
when you said the portal last opened,” Kedesh told Govannon.

“Nonsense!” retorted
the archaeologist, but the way he scratched his stubbly chin
suggested doubt. “Carbon dating can’t be used away from Earth. No
calibration data, see?”

“Time travel!”
protested Hestia. “It must be.”

“There is more going
on here than I can take right now,” Ininna told Kedesh irritably.
“I would dearly love to arrest you all, but there’s not enough room
on our ship and I don’t trust you to follow in this heap of junk.
You, the boy and the Dhusarians come with us. Your friends have one
hour to leave this system and if I ever see any of them again, or
if anyone ever speaks of what we saw, I will personally hunt them
down, rip out their tongue and poke a sharp pointy stick in their
eyes. Do I make myself understood?”

“Perfectly,” Kedesh
murmured.

“Both our eyes?” asked
Quirinus and waggled his eye patch.

“Don’t get smart with
me,” Ininna growled. “I also want everyone’s wristpads. I saw some
of the students recording what was going on down there.”

Xuthus gasped in
protest. “Our wristpads?”

“You heard me,”
snapped Ininna. She turned to Ravana. “As far as I’m concerned,
you’re wanted on Yuanshi, not here. Not my jurisdiction,” she
added, with a sideways glance at Kedesh. “But one of your little
grey friends gave you something. Give it to me.”

Ravana had forgotten
about the globe. Ininna’s fierce glare was enough to persuade her
to comply and she pulled it from the pocket of the borrowed
jumpsuit. The soft green sphere had lost its sparkle and looked
quite mundane under the cabin lights.

“Funny little Nana,”
Ravana said and sighed. The grey’s gift was an odd souvenir of
their Falsafah adventure. “She’s been through such a lot. I hope
they get home okay.”

“You said ‘she’,”
Kedesh noted, smiling. “That’s a lot better than saying ‘it’.”

“What’s that?” asked
Artorius, watching from above. “Alien poo?”

“Aliens do not exist,”
Ininna said coolly. “And that’s official.”

She snatched the globe
from Ravana’s hand and dropped it into her own pocket. Pistol in
hand, Yima went round the flight deck and took the wristpads from
those who had one, then ordered Urania to collect the rest from
everyone in the crawl tunnel and beyond. He counted what she
returned and gave a satisfied nod.

“The reporter said
you’re lucky that place was underground,” said Urania. “Otherwise
everything her cambot saw would have gone out live.”

“There will be no news
from Falsafah,” snapped Ininna. “Bring the Dhusarians.”

Ravana glanced to the
crawl tunnel. Zotz, Xuthus, Hestia and Urania, looking glum
following the confiscation of their wristpads, realised they were
blocking the entrance and one by one retreated into the carousel.
Momus, Lilith and Dagan had been listening on the ship’s intercom
and the Dhusarians looked sullen and apprehensive upon entering the
flight deck, where Ravana greeted them with a hostile stare. At the
hatch above, Artorius took one look at Lilith and disappeared
inside the agents’ ship without even so much as a goodbye. Ravana
had to admit he seemed okay to be going with Ininna and Yima.

“Poor Artorius.”
Ravana sighed. “Does he know he’s a clone?”

“It matters not what
he is, only that he is here,” said Lilith, sounding far more smug
than Ravana expected given the situation. “What happened at Arallu
was unexpected, but he has done Taranis’ bidding and this must be
how it is supposed to be.”

“Giant spiders?” Dagan
retorted nervously. “I didn’t sign up to church for that.”

“It was the greys who
opened the portal,” Ravana pointed out. “Not Artorius.”

With a weary sigh of
resignation, Ininna gestured to Yima to lead Lilith and Dagan into
the
Alf-Sana Booma
. Dagan reached for a grab handle and
pulled himself up after the agent. Lilith moved to follow but was
stopped short by a touch of Ravana’s hand.

“Taranis,” Ravana
said, sounding hesitant. “You said he was dead. Is it true?”

Lilith smiled. “I did
say that, didn’t I?”

“Answer her question!”
growled Kedesh.

“I lied,” Lilith said
coldly. “I’m pleased to say that the father of our Church is alive
and well. Rest assured he has not forgotten you, my so-called demon
king.”

She pushed Ravana’s
hand away, reached for the handrail and hauled herself through the
hatch, away from the girl’s dumbstruck gaze. Ininna motioned to
Kedesh to follow, then rolled her eyes in exasperation when she saw
the woman was more interested in retrieving her cricket bat from
where it had been wedged.

“This is the longest
arrest ever,” the agent complained.

Kedesh shoved the bat
under an arm, gave Ravana a smile and held out her hand.

“It’s been a
pleasure,” she remarked. “A veritable test match of sticky wickets,
but final scores were pretty much as expected. The Grand Priory can
use people like you.”

Ravana hesitantly
shook Kedesh’s hand. “Will you and Artorius be okay?”

“We’ll be fine,” she
reassured her. “I won’t bore you with stuff about timelines and
paradoxical quantum shifts. Let me know if you’re ever up for some
more fun.”

“Get in the ship!”
snapped Ininna.

Kedesh grinned and
reached for the hatch. Ininna gave one last glare and followed her
into the
Alf-Sana Booma
. The hatch swung closed behind them,
then with a muffled thud and puff of jets the agents’ ship broke
free of the
Platypus
. By the time Zotz, Xuthus, Hestia and
Urania joined Ravana, Quirinus and Govannon on the flight deck, the
Que Qiao ship was firing its main engines to break orbit. Ravana
watched it go with a sadness in her heart, for despite Kedesh’s
erratic loyalty and Artorius moody selfishness, they had been
through a lot together. Zotz came to her side, behind whom she saw
Momus, Fornax and Philyra slipping from the crawl tunnel into the
crowded cabin. Kedesh’s mention of timelines puzzled her.

“Hey,” Ravana said and
ruffled Zotz’s hair. “We didn’t kill Taranis, after all.”

“I heard,” he said.
“What happened to your cat?”

She thought about her
electric pet clasped tight in Stripy’s grasp. “Jones is in safe
hands,” she reassured him. “But I don’t think we’ll see it
again.”

“Never mind that,”
Philyra complained. “They took my wristpad! I had a really cool
picture of me with Artorius, the real-life boy king from
Gods of
Avalon
!”

Quirinus regained his
seat and began to plot a course away from Falsafah so they could
make the jump to Barnard’s Star. Ravana settled back into her own
seat, directed the long-range visual scanner to the archaeology
site at Arallu and silently watched the dark scuttling shapes
pouring from the ruptured domes. The spiders at the edge of the
seething black tide were still, asphyxiated by the unforgiving
atmosphere. Ravana shuddered at the thought of what may have
happened had the portal been on a planet like Earth.

“That mad Chinese
woman called while you were at the dig,” Momus said suddenly,
interrupting her thoughts. “There’s frigging lizard men all across
the five systems.”

“Ostara?” Ravana asked
Momus, who nodded. “So all twelve survived?”

“Endymion also said
the copy he had of Taranis’ book was hacked,” added Zotz.

“Jizo had his notes on
her slate,” mused Ravana. She wondered where her own slate had
gone. “I can’t help thinking they wanted it for more than just
this.”

Zotz looked at the
console display. “Where are all those spiders coming from?”

He looked more than a
little perturbed. The same question troubled Ravana, for the
thought that the portal led to a land of giant spiders was not a
nice one.

“They rose from the
plug hole to hell,” she murmured, watching the screen. “Athene
warned that we had no idea of what’s on the other side. Well, we do
now.”

“Athene?” asked
Hestia, puzzled.

“Our friend, the
mysterious watcher,” Ravana said and gave a hollow laugh. “The mad
ghost who rode the greys’ chariot into the void.”

“The Dhusarians wanted
a place of pilgrimage,” remarked Fornax, who too had her eyes on
the console. “The new runway was just the start. That young man
Dagan was full of ideas of how Arallu would become their Mecca,
their Jerusalem.”

“Looks more like
crappy Gomorrah,” muttered Momus.

“Professor Cadmus, a
Dhusarian!” remarked Govannon. “What about his Que Qiao Alien
Encounters Board? First contact with genuine aliens and they start
a cover up!”

“It isn’t the first,”
mused Ravana. “Que Qiao know about greys but deny they exist.”

“Hey, Aberystwyth,”
said Urania. “Do we include giant spiders in our site reports?”

“You heard the agents.
We keep quiet, see. No essay writing when we get back.”

Xuthus moved forward
to where Zotz had pulled himself into the port-side chair, both
transfixed by the images on the holovid screen. Ravana smiled,
recalling how Xuthus had intervened when Ininna threatened to
arrest her. With a sudden rush of emotion she reached out, hugged
Xuthus tight and gave him a kiss.

“Thanks for sticking
up for me,” she said. “You’re not so bad, after all.”

Xuthus gave a
strangled yelp and struggled free of her grasp. Ravana caught
Urania’s giggle and frowned. Hestia gave her a perturbed look.

“Get off me, scar
face!” cried Xuthus. “What did you do that for?”

Ravana turned away,
insulted and embarrassed. The console signalled an incoming message
and she spun away to activate the transceiver holovid, eager to
take advantage of the distraction. To her surprise, the call sign
was that of the
Dandridge Cole
. The signal was a little
erratic, but she instantly recognised the beaming face of Professor
Wak. He was using a holovid booth near a window in Dockside and a
warm yellow glow poured through the frosty glass. Sunlight once
again shone brightly within the hollow moon.

“Hello Professor,” she
said gaily. “I see you’ve finally fixed the sun.”

“Ravana! You’re safe!”
cried Wak. “Never doubted it for a moment, of course.”

“All present and
correct,” confirmed Quirinus. “We’re on our way home.”

“No more adventures,”
added Ravana. She saw her father’s sideways look and grinned. “We
have a lot of work to do when we get back,” she said solemnly.
“Don’t we, professor? Crops to plant, animals to defrost, that sort
of thing.”

Quirinus frowned. “You
went on a simple field trip and ended up rubbing shoulders with a
secret agent, aliens and cyberclone monks,” he pointed out.
“Farmers spray crops for greenfly, not blast giant spiders with a
cannon. Are you sure you won’t be bored?”

“After the last few
weeks, boredom suits me fine,” Ravana replied defiantly.

Philyra laughed. “Sure
it does.”

Ravana’s gaze fell to
the plasma cannon, wedged beneath a rogue tendril at the rear of
the cabin. She had a horrible feeling her father and Philyra were
right.

THE END

* * *

[Chapter
Fourteen
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Contents
] [
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]

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