Paw-Prints Of The Gods

by Steph Bennion

  A pale, ginger-haired youth in a scruffy flight suit bustled from the Academy, jerking to a halt halfway through the door when his bag became entangled around a broken handrail. After freeing himself, the boy leapt down the steps two at a time before dropping to sit upon the wall outside the main entrance. Upon seeing Quirinus emerge from the park, he leapt up again and waved. A plump dark-skinned girl, wearing the same pale blue flight suit that passed for school uniform, emerged from the Academy behind him and ran down the steps, brandishing what looked like a piece of paper in her hand.

  “Zotz!” she called. “You forgot to take a leaflet!”

  The boy turned and took the offered handout, whereupon the girl disappeared back inside before he had a chance to say anything. Quirinus crossed the street to join him, gave the boy a friendly pat on the back and together they walked on along Circle Park Road.

  “Hi, Zotz,” said Quirinus. “Good day at school?”

  “Rubbish,” Zotz replied. “Did you get your licence back?”

  Quirinus shook his head. “The Administrator said she doesn’t like one-eyed pilots.”

  “I think the eye patch is cool,” Zotz told him. “It makes you look like a pirate. Is there such thing as space pirates?”

  “There’s nothing worth stealing around here. Was that Bellona?” asked Quirinus. Bellona, along with her brother Endymion and friend Philyra, had played a part in the series of events that led them to Epsilon Eridani some months before.

  “She and Philyra are at my school,” said Zotz. He glanced at the thin printed sheet the girl had given him. “Bellona’s been acting very strange. Her mum and dad argue a lot and she’s started going to church by herself. Look at this!”

  Zotz passed the leaflet to Quirinus. It was an advertisement for a church group aimed at young adults, with an imprinted holovid showing scenes of happy people doing all sorts of wonderful charitable activities on a world that bore no resemblance to the bleak environs of Ascension. Quirinus and Zotz had seen at first hand what Dhusarian Church terrorists did on Yuanshi and the look they gave one another as they examined the leaflet perfectly encapsulated their contempt for the twee images. In the top left corner was a six-pointed star with a centre swirl, which reminded Quirinus of the insignia once used by the Maharaja on Yuanshi. The headline read: ‘DHUSARIAN CHURCH OF ASCENSION – JOIN WITH US TODAY AND PRAY THE GREY WAY!’

  “That’s scary,” Quirinus said at last, handing the leaflet back to Zotz. “I didn’t know there was a Dhusarian Church in Newbrum.”

  “It’s been here for years,” Zotz replied. He stuffed the handout into his bag. “They meet in an old bingo hall at the end of Broad Street. Bellona said the Church is becoming really popular on Ascension and they’re looking for somewhere bigger.”

  “I’m sure there’s some gas giant we can tip them into, no problem.”

  Zotz grinned. Just then, Quirinus’ wristpad beeped, indicating an incoming message. Wristpads were hugely popular in space-faring colonies like Newbrum and much preferred to the hand-held net-access devices ubiquitous back on Earth, which easily got lost on zero-gravity flights. Quirinus had owned this particular wristpad for years, a basic model that lacked the latest touches like a holographic enhanced-reality projector, but which had survived exposure to solar flares, fuel spillages and a fair few crash landings.

  “That was Momus,” Quirinus told Zotz, after reading the short message. “He’s waiting for us at the spaceport. Do you need to go back to our cabin? I put everything you wanted into the bag, assuming of course Momus remembered to collect it.”

  Zotz grinned. “I think I have everything.”

  They reached the point where Circle Park Road joined Corporation Street and paused to let a laden hovertruck wheeze past on its way to the spaceport. On the other side of the road a huge crowd had gathered outside Setco, for rumours that the food store had taken delivery of a shipment of chocolate travelled fast. It was said that whoever worked out how to produce such luxuries on Ascension would probably get elected Governor for life.

  * * *

  Administrator Verdandi regarded Ostara carefully, wondering whether she had heard correctly. The young Chinese woman perched on the edge of the seat opposite seemed earnest enough, but her request was an odd one.

  “You want to go into business,” Verdandi said slowly, “as a private detective?”

  Ostara nodded. “I’ve already taken a lease on an office in Sherlock Street.”

  “How appropriate.”

  “That’s what I thought!”

  “Newbrum already has a fine police force,” Verdandi pointed out, though ‘fine’ was not necessarily the word she would have chosen in private. “Do you think there is any call for a private investigation service in the city?”

  “I wanted to join the police force and become a proper detective,” admitted Ostara. “It is what I was born to do. It’s not my fault I’m too small for the uniform.”

  “Is that what they told you?”

  “When I suggested setting up my own agency, the police officer who interviewed me said I may need some sort of licence,” Ostara added. Verdandi could imagine the laugh of derision that may have accompanied that particular piece of advice. “So here I am!”

  “Yes,” mused Verdandi. “Here you are.”

  “I’ve read all sorts of books on detecting.”

  “I’ll be honest with you,” said Verdandi, quite bemused by the woman’s obvious enthusiasm. “We’ve never had a private detective in Newbrum before now. At least, not to my knowledge,” she added, deciding it was possible a few may have drifted through on some clandestine business she cared not to think about. “It is difficult for me to grant you a private investigator’s licence when there is no such thing to give.”

  “Does that mean I don’t need one?” Ostara asked excitedly.

  “That’s not quite what I meant.”

  Ostara looked crestfallen. Verdandi frowned, for there was something in the woman’s face that reminded her of when she herself had been a bright young thing, keen to make her mark on a world. With a sigh, she pulled open the bottom drawer of her desk and extracted the first blank licence sheet she came across, then smiled when she saw what it was for. Picking up a stylus, she crossed out one of the lines of text, wrote something else above it and signed it at the bottom.

  “Here you are,” Verdandi said, handing it to Ostara. “Your licence.”

  Ostara gingerly took the plastic sheet and examined the changes the Administrator had made to the document. The stylus had activated the impregnated ink, making the changes permanent and immune from further tampering.

  “This is a sewage system inspection permit,” she mused, looking unconvinced. “Only you’ve crossed that bit out and written ‘Private Investigator Licence’.”

  “And signed it,” Verdandi pointed out. “That makes it official. As a detective you are bound to deal with the dregs of society, so I think it is appropriate.”

  She had the uncharitable thought that it perfectly encapsulated the ex-residents of the hollow moon, whom Newbrum authorities had regarded for years as no more than a bunch of smugglers, black-market traders and drop-outs. It occurred to Verdandi that having a grateful insider willing to keep an investigative eye upon things could prove useful.

  “Gosh,” murmured Ostara, staring at the certificate with shining eyes. Verdandi smiled wryly, picturing it taking pride of place on her office wall. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Ostara rose from her seat and shuffled to the door, still transfixed by the document in her hand. The Administrator’s charitable gesture had clearly left a lasting impression.

  “Good luck,” said Verdandi. She had a horrible feeling she would live to regret this.

  * * *

  Captain Momus was a small, wiry man with thinning dark hair, a ragged moustache and a nasal Black Country accent peppered with minor curses that often had others reaching to switch on their wristpad translators. He was one of the many settlers fr
om Great Britain’s self-governing region of Mercia, attracted to Newbrum back when it was known as New Birmingham, who mostly worked in the engineering workshops of the spaceport. Momus was an astro-mechanic who had decided to train as a pilot, which made it all the more mystifying as to why his ship had failed safety tests due to lack of maintenance.

  Newbrum Spaceport was in a linked concrete dome, north of the main city enclosure. Quirinus and Zotz found Momus in the departures lounge, moping by the window that looked out into the section of dome that served as a hangar. He wore a blue Commonwealth Space Agency flight suit that was far too clean for someone who professed to be a mechanic. At his feet was a large canvas bag, upon which lay a black cat, curled up and apparently asleep. On the far side of the lounge Zotz noticed a holovid reporter talking to a hovering camera robot and wondered what was going on at the spaceport that was news-worthy.

  “Hullo Quirinus,” mumbled Momus, looking downcast.

  “What happened to your ship?” asked Quirinus. Momus’ gaze flickered to the small delta-winged freighter in the hangar, roped off from the rest of the concourse.

  “The crappy airlock door fell off,” Momus said sullenly. “A few loose screws, it was.”

  “You don’t say. What now?”

  “I got us some tickets for the shuttle. Free of charge, before you ask.”

  “Free tickets?” Quirinus gave him a hard stare. “I don’t believe it.”

  “One-way only,” admitted Momus. “The folks up on Stellarbridge seem frigging keen for you to come and take away that crappy heap of a tanker.”

  Zotz looked up from where he knelt next to the cat, which had awoken and was idly chewing upon a battery-powered torch its claws had extracted from the bag’s side pocket. He had been entrusted to look after Ravana’s electric pet while she was away but as yet had not worked out how to stop it eating random electrical items.

  “The shuttle?” he asked, pricking up his ears. Momus’ freighter was cramped and incredibly uncomfortable. “We’re going in a proper spaceplane?”

  “Looks like it,” replied Quirinus. “Is there a reason why Ravana’s cat is here?”

  Momus shrugged. “The crappy mangy thing ran from your room when I collected your things. I tried to put it back but those claws are frigging sharp.”

  “Jones is not mangy!” protested Zotz. To prove his point he picked the cat up and cradled it to his chest, only to discover the electric pet’s fur was covered in grease. Their lodgings at Aston Pier were next to the spaceport’s flying boat terminal and Zotz had heard Quirinus say that Newbrum attracted dirt from across the five systems, though he may have been referring to the shifty pilots and down-trodden crews who also resided there. Zotz saw both men regarded the cat with some disapproval.

  “I want Jones to come with us,” he said meekly. He lowered the pet to the floor and wiped his hands on his flight suit. “I sent it a message to meet us here.”

  “A message?” Quirinus’ one visible eye narrowed. “It can read now?”

  “Can we buy it a book on hygiene and frigging manners?” remarked Momus.

  “I wired a wristpad circuit to its AI unit,” Zotz explained sheepishly, referring to the organic artificial intelligence chip inside the electric cat’s head. “Me and Endymion have been experimenting with its programming. I hope Ravana doesn’t get cross.”

  Quirinus sighed. Bellona’s elder brother Endymion, who worked at the spaceport, had recently taken up lodgings at Aston Pier. He and Zotz had become as thick as thieves.

  “Let’s get on this shuttle,” he said at last, trying to ignore the cat gently clawing at his ankles. “We have a long trip ahead of us.”

  * * *

  Ostara staggered into her office and dropped the box she carried next to the others, perched precariously on the battered desk that was the only piece of furniture in the dingy grey-walled room. Endymion gallantly held the door open for her, looking exhausted and ready to drop. At the sound of an alarming creak Ostara reached to steady the desk, the legs of which looked close to collapse. Endymion did not look any better.

  “You look worn out,” she observed. “And you only carried two boxes of the six!”

  Endymion gave her a hurt look. Living all his eighteen Terran years in the low-gravity environment of Ascension had made him tall, lithe and largely incapable of what Ostara heard his Nigerian-born parents call ‘proper hard work’, for what the low-gravity did for height was not good for maintaining muscle. Looking dizzy, he leaned against the desk and promptly fell over as the whole lot crashed down, shedding the contents of the boxes across the bare floor.

  “Whoops,” he murmured, climbing to his feet. “Sorry about that.”

  Ostara sighed. “The last tenants left the desk behind, so I assumed it was already on its last legs. They don’t make cheap chipboard furniture like they used to.”

  She knelt to retrieve the contents of the fallen boxes. Endymion, looking guilty, bent down to help and uttered a note of surprise when he saw what he had helped to carry.

  “Books!” he exclaimed. “Made of real paper! Where did you get them from?”

  “There was an auction at the market hall last week,” Ostara told him, picking up the nearest volume. “Some old woman had passed away and her next of kin did not want to come to Ascension to collect her things. She’d brought loads of antique books with her when she emigrated from Earth and was a big fan of detective novels. Aren’t they fantastic?”

  “A Study in Scarlet,” read Endymion, looking at the titles of the uniform green volumes. “The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Sign of Four. What are these?”

  “A complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories,” said Ostara. “Published in the early twenty-first century, back before everything went digital. Have you never heard of Sherlock Holmes?” she added, seeing his blank expression. “Arthur Conan Doyle?”

  Endymion shook his head. After placing the books in a neat pile upon the floor, he reached for the picture frame that lay face-down beneath. Turning it over, he read the title of the framed certificate and grinned.

  “A permit to inspect the sewage system,” he said, trying to suppress a laugh. “With bits crossed out and ‘Private Investigator Licence’ written across it.”

  “Signed by Administrator Verdandi!” snapped Ostara, snatching it from his grasp.

  “Is that going on the wall?”

  “Of course!”

  Endymion smiled and got back to stacking the fallen books. Ostara stood up in a huff and moved to the far wall, upon which hung another relic of the previous occupier; a faded picture of kittens playing with a ball of wool. Swapping this for her framed certificate, she tossed the cute cat picture into the recycling chute and stepped back to admire her handiwork. The certificate was if anything slightly less impressive than the tacky artwork it replaced, but in her mind’s eye she could see the dream, one where a broken desk and pile of books furnished the bustling headquarters of Newbrum’s premier detective agency.

  The loud hiss of a hovertruck drew her attention to the open window. Lifting the blind, she gazed upon Sherlock Street below. The dome roof, barely two hundred metres high above Circle Park, was much lower here and the low-rise buildings intruded a little too far into the false sky. Her office was above a row of fast-food restaurants in downtown Newbrum, not far from the city’s southern wall. The smell of Asian cuisine and chatter of voices wafted past the cracked glass of her window in a soothing harmony of humanity. Two boys kicked a football in the street, while further along an elderly man was staggering out of the Ye Olde King’s Head public house and yelling obscenities at a young couple hurrying past. It was a scene so timeless it was easy to forget this slice of life existed on a barely-habitable planet orbiting a star six light years from Earth. It never ceased to amaze her how people seemed to be able to make their home in the unlikeliest of places.

  “Would you like me to do anything else?” asked Endymion, interrupting her thoughts.

  “I think th
at’s it for now. You’ve been most kind, helping me like this,” said Ostara, turning away from the window. She saw Endymion glance at his wristpad, as if to check the time. “Are your folks expecting you back? I know you’ve probably got people to do, things to see. Or even the other way around.”

  “I’m in no rush,” he replied and sighed. “I don’t live at home now, anyway.”

  “You don’t?” Ostara was surprised. “How come?”

  “I managed to get me a place at Aston Pier. My folks argue all the time since dad lost his job and Bellona is acting all weird with this Dhusarian Church stuff, so I moved out,” he told her. “The room is tiny but it’s a cool place to live, with all the space pilots and so on. The Brits call it Aston-super-Mare. It’s supposed to be a joke but I don’t get it.”

  “Isn’t Quirinus staying down that way?”

  Endymion nodded. “I see him and Zotz quite a lot. Ravana is away at the moment.”

  “Digging up dead aliens in Tau Ceti, I know. Would you like some tea?”

  He shrugged, then nodded. “I’ll see if I can fix the desk,” he offered, as she headed for the small kitchenette next door.

  By the time she emerged a few minutes later, Ostara saw he had not only managed to slot the dislodged desk leg back into position and arrange the boxes into makeshift seats, but had also found a broom from somewhere to give the floor a quick sweep. The air sparkled as the dim red light from the window caught floating motes of dust.

  “So,” said Ostara, handing him a steaming mug of tea. “Do you like my new office?”

  “It’s got potential,” he admitted. “A detective agency sounds really cool. Does that mean you’re in Newbrum for good?”