Paw-Prints Of The Gods

by Steph Bennion

  “That might have changed,” said Ostara. “One of the Dhusarians interviewed for the report was a police officer called Captain Nyx. He’s the arrogant swine who gave me such a hard time at my interview. The law enforcement contract in the Barnard’s Star system is held by IATL, which was taken over by the Que Qiao Corporation three years ago.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “The public network portal for Newbrum police makes no secret of it. What scares me is Nyx has political ambitions; there’s a rumour he’s to run for the new Administrator post at Lan-Tlanto at the next elections,” she said, referring to the independent spaceport on the far side of Ascension. “The authorities want to bring a bit of law and order to the place.”

  She idly shuffled the pieces of paper on her desk, awaiting Endymion’s response. Her eyes remained upon him as he moved to stare out of the window.

  “What’s your next move, detective?” he asked eventually.

  “I know you’re worried about Bellona,” she said. “To be honest, the church looks pretty harmless to me. I’d really like to see one of their services, but if Nyx or your sister catches sight of me they’re bound to get suspicious. Do you know that building at all?” she asked, after some hesitation. “I was wondering if there was a way I could sneak in.”

  Endymion turned back and went to shake his head, then paused. His gaze had fallen upon her framed Private Investigator Licence hanging on the wall.

  “There is a way,” he said and smiled. “With overalls, hard hats and a tent.”

  * * *

  Fornax strode across the hangar towards the berthed spacecraft and tried her best to look confident. Her luggage, trundling patiently in her wake, carried a few changes of clothes and the last of her Pinot Noir. Hidden in a secret compartment was her prized cambot, a rotor-driven miniature flying camera.

  After their initial reconnaissance she had sent Philyra home, for what she was about to attempt was foolish in the extreme. Nevertheless, Fornax missed her company, for the young girl had local knowledge of which automatic doors were faulty, which escalators did not work and which of the annoying advertising holograms were the most persistent. Fornax was all too aware that her clumsy progress around the spaceport dome had been noticed.

  The spacecraft before her was the Atterberg Epiphany, the name of which she had seen printed upon the box lid that served as a sample tray at the Outer Limits Emporium. The ship was a Taotie-class angular flying-wing, with a large rear-loading cargo bay designed to hold a six-wheeled ground transport. Fornax recognised the type of spacecraft as that used by Que Qiao as a multi-purpose personnel carrier on airless worlds, but the markings upon this particular ship’s dull black fuselage identified it as a privately-owned vessel.

  Compared to somewhere like Los Angeles Galactic, security at Newbrum spaceport was laughable. Fornax used her charms upon an unsuspecting male spaceport worker, who revealed the Atterberg Epiphany was a recent acquisition of the Dhusarian Church of Yuanshi. Her enquiries also brought the intriguing news that the ship, having flown in from Lanka on Yuanshi, was due to depart for Falsafah within the next few hours.

  The mysterious hooded figures who flew in on the ship had unnerved a great many people at the spaceport, though no one could satisfactorily explain why. The young Indian woman guarding the spacecraft’s open hatch was no more welcoming. She wore a black flight suit, a pair of mirror sunglasses and a scowl that deepened as Fornax approached.

  “Can I help you?” she snapped.

  “I do hope so,” Fornax said gaily. “The church asked me to accompany you so that I can join our comrades on Falsafah. We have important work to do, kid.”

  “Comrades?”

  “Brothers,” Fornax hastily corrected. “Sisters?” she suggested, seeing the woman’s suspicious stare. Her bluff was not going well.

  “Sorry I’m late!” came a voice from behind.

  Fornax turned and to her dismay saw Philyra trotting across the hangar, though for a moment struggled to recognise her, for the girl’s dark locks were now dyed a vivid purple. A bag hung from the shoulder of her tightly-belted flight suit. Philyra had gone overboard on make-up in an attempt to look older than fifteen, albeit with limited success.

  “What are you doing here?” hissed Fornax. “And what’s with the hair?”

  “Who are you?” asked the woman. “This is a restricted area!”

  “I’m Sister Selene from Newbrum Church,” said Philyra and held out her hand. “I see you’ve already met Sister Gabriel, who’s visiting us from the United States.”

  Fornax caught on quickly. She gave the Indian woman a suitably haughty expression and was most annoyed when it was ignored. The woman looked at Philyra’s offered hand as if debating whether the girl’s wristpad was worth stealing.

  “That’s right!” Fornax declared defiantly. “I am Sister, err... Gabriel, sent from the Dhusarian Church of California with special instructions to report back on our operations on Falsafah. These are interesting times, do you not agree?”

  The woman was not convinced. “Stay there while I check,” she said coldly.

  She took a few steps back, tapped the screen of her own wristpad and entered into an urgent hushed conversation. Fornax pulled Philyra aside and shook her head in irritation.

  “I told you to go home,” she murmured. “This is too risky for you to be involved!”

  “My mum said it’s okay for me to come with you,” Philyra whispered in return. Fornax frowned and wondered whether the girl had mentioned to her parents that being the reporter’s assistant might involve a trip to Tau Ceti. “You need me! My friend Bellona told me all about her weird Dhusarian friends and I can help us get on that ship.”

  “You’re mad,” Fornax told her.

  The woman finished her wristpad conversation and noisily cleared her throat to attract their attention. She wore the disappointed look of an arsonist who had applied for a job in the fire brigade without checking to see what it actually involved.

  “We have never heard of a Sister Gabriel,” the woman said slowly, eyeing Fornax carefully, then shifted her stare to Philyra. “But they described Selene to me and it seems to be you. We’ve received the holovid file of some book you asked us to take to Falsafah. They didn’t say you were to deliver it personally.”

  “Change of plan,” Philyra said swiftly. Fornax saw her expression and guessed the girl had struck lucky with her chosen disguise. She wondered whether to panic at the thought of being asked about a book of which she had no knowledge. “I met Forn... err, Sister Gabriel at the spaceport and so decided to accompany her to Tau Ceti. She’s just arrived and hasn’t had time to report to the Church, you see. I thought I’d brief her during the flight.”

  “That’s very good,” murmured Fornax, impressed.

  The woman gave them one last stare, then with a shrug of her shoulders stepped aside and waved towards the door of the waiting spacecraft.

  “Welcome aboard,” she said. “We depart for Falsafah in one hour.”

  * * *

  Ostara peered from the tent at the street outside. Behind her, Endymion had managed to lift the heavy concrete lid in the road and stared cautiously into the chamber below. Ostara felt foolish enough to be wearing tatty overalls and a bright yellow hard hat, hiding in a square orange tent in the middle of Broad Street whilst she and Endymion pretended to be engineers, but now they had a new worry to contend with. She darted back inside.

  “Nyx!” she hissed. “He’s coming over!”

  “I don’t think he knows me,” said Endymion. “You hide in the tunnel.”

  Ostara gave the newly-exposed hole a wary look. “Down there?”

  “Yes! And be quiet!”

  She dropped to the floor, swung her legs into the opening and shimmied down the ladder into the shadows. Moments later, the tent flap was pulled aside by a policeman’s half-clenched hand and a shaft of red daylight dispelled the gloom. Ostara caught a glimpse of the newcomer’s face and shiv
ered. Nyx was not in uniform but nevertheless still carried the look of a law-enforcement officer not easily impressed.

  “What’s all this?” he asked gruffly. “I didn’t know we had works scheduled.”

  “Emergency repairs,” Endymion told him. “A minor leak, that’s all.”

  Nyx’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have a permit?”

  “Of course,” Endymion retorted.

  They had expected this question. Ostara heard a rustling as Endymion went to his bag and withdrew a certificate that an hour ago had taken pride of place upon her office wall. She watched him hand it to Nyx, who studied it carefully.

  “This says ‘Private Investigator Licence’,” the officer observed.

  “It’s a sewage system inspection permit,” Endymion pointed out. “Ignore the ‘private investigator’ bit; some joker in Verdandi’s office did that. It is signed by the Administrator.”

  “Investigating the dregs of society, eh?”

  Endymion grinned. “Something like that.”

  Ostara could tell Nyx smelt a rat. The odour wafting up from her hiding place was a lot more real and hopefully enough to persuade him to go away. After an overly-long pause, Nyx handed back the certificate, gave a curt nod to Endymion and eased his tall frame from the tent. Endymion stared after him for a few moments and then gave a sigh of relief.

  “That was close,” he murmured.

  “Has he gone?” Ostara called. Her voice echoed eerily in the tunnel.

  Endymion fastened the flap closed and came to the edge of the hole. Ostara stood at the bottom of the ladder some three metres below, with a boot either side of the sluggish stream of effluent running along the floor. She was not happy to have discovered that there was a genuine leak after all. Newbrum’s water and power systems were supposed to be sealed and the service tunnels kept dry.

  “All clear,” Endymion confirmed.

  “This place smells terrible,” she complained. “Can we get a move on?”

  Endymion collected his bag and joined her at the bottom of the ladder. The unlit tunnel ran east to west along the length of Broad Street, with smaller passageways splitting off to the north and south at regular intervals. There was barely enough room even for the diminutive Ostara to stand upright, while the pipes and cable conduits attached to the walls on either side made the walkway narrow. The hard hats procured by Endymion had tiny lamps upon the brim, but once away from the opening to the street the light they emitted did little to make the tunnel feel less claustrophobic.

  They had gone just a few metres when Endymion directed Ostara to a smaller tunnel to the south. The smell was worse than ever; a large pipe had cracked where it curved around the corner, leaking raw sewage. Hands over their noses, Endymion and Ostara stepped over the pool of fetid brown sludge and slipped into the side passage. The beams of their hard-hat lamps revealed the low tunnel was mercifully short. Ahead they saw a circular hatch, next to which various pipes and cables disappeared through the surrounding wall.

  “With any luck, this door is our way into the building,” said Endymion.

  “I’d settle for anywhere with fresh air,” muttered Ostara.

  Endymion produced a crank handle from inside his flight suit, slotted it into a hole in the hatch and turned it until they both heard the clunk as locking bolts withdrew. When he caught Ostara’s quizzical expression, he adopted such a guilty look she did not have the heart to ask him how he came to possess such a useful tool.

  He pulled open the hatch and they scrambled through the opening into the cramped basement beyond. The lights were on, revealing water treatment units, electrical distribution boxes and other apparatus for the building above. A door on the far side led them to a room filled with sacks of rubbish, the delicate odour of rat faeces and a blood-smeared freezer cabinet that smelt of raw meat. A faint murmur of voices came from the corridor beyond.

  “The church hall is in the basement,” Endymion whispered, as he switched off their hard-hat lamps. “So it must be somewhere on this level.”

  “We need to find somewhere to hide,” murmured Ostara. “What if we bump into Nyx or your sister, or anyone else for that matter? Do I look like a maintenance worker?”

  Endymion smiled and beckoned for her to follow him down the corridor. They were forced into the shadows a few hurried steps later, alarmed by the sight of a group of people at the far end of the passage, who immediately turned and disappeared again through a door on the right. Another doorway along the same wall was just a few paces away. Scuttling forward, Ostara paused and squinted through the glass panel into the gloomy space beyond.

  “Bingo!” she murmured.

  “What is it?”

  “I can see an old bingo machine,” she whispered. “I wasn’t expecting it to be this easy, but your little plan has led us straight to the back door of the hall. Clever boy!”

  Endymion shrugged. “I do my best. Shall we go in?”

  The door was of a type that was supposed to slide open as someone approached, but like many things in Newbrum it wore a large ‘OUT OF ORDER’ sign. Ostara’s nimble fingers managed to prise it open enough for them to slip silently through into the hall beyond. They found themselves behind a convenient stack of spare chairs, in a dusty corner near the left-hand side of the stage. The murmur of voices was now much louder and when Ostara and Endymion peered from their hiding place, the weak orange glow emanating from the ceiling telepathy transmitters revealed the hall was nearly full. Ostara gave Endymion a nudge as she caught a glimpse of his sister, standing at the far end of the hall next to a girl with purple hair. They seemed to be deep in discussion, with Bellona showing the girl the open pages of a paper-leafed book, but were too far away to be heard.

  “What does that sign mean?” Endymion whispered.

  Ostara looked to where he pointed and gave an involuntarily shiver at the sight of a large banner that read: ‘ALL THAT IS PART DOES BELONG’. She was just about to reply when Endymion pulled her down behind the stacked chairs.

  The lean muscular figure of Nyx appeared on stage before the giant swirly-star backdrop, dressed in a long black cape that to Ostara looked decidedly creepy. Behind him came two figures clad in hooded grey cloaks, worn with blue sashes patterned with what looked like astrological symbols. A hush fell upon the hall as Nyx took his place at the makeshift lectern. Ostara remembered they were there to collect evidence and barely had time to twist her wristpad camera lens towards the stage when he began to speak.

  “Welcome, brothers and sisters!” Nyx cried. “This is an auspicious night. The fate of the twelve was cruelly twisted by the evil one but righteousness has prevailed! The disciples have emerged from the void to lead us the way. The time of deliverance is near!”

  “Evil one?” whispered Ostara.

  “Shush!” hissed Endymion.

  “Priest Taranis, our guide of guides, faced the demon king Ravana in his incarnation as a treacherous she-devil. She turned against her guiding star and stole what was not hers!” Nyx paused. “The holy Isa-Sastra was lost. We endured further despair when Brother Cadmus, our loyal servant on Falsafah, fell also to her evil curse. Yet a member of this very church valiantly went amongst unbelievers and delivered the texts unto us. The prophecy of Falsafah has been revealed. Soon the reborn traveller will take his place at the door between worlds and the first true meeting of minds will commence!”

  “Did he just mention Ravana?” whispered Ostara. “I mean, our Ravana?”

  Endymion looked as confused as she was. “Prophecies are stupid,” he muttered.

  “Praise the greys!” cried the congregation.

  Ostara stifled a shriek. The two figures behind Nyx stepped forward, then with a dramatic flourish extended six-fingered hands and lowered their hoods. Their lizard-like features glistened in the dim orange light of the hall. Ostara’s thoughts immediately leapt back to the dreadful encounter in the engine room of the Dandridge Cole. She had been there with Ravana and Zotz at the birth of Taranis’ disci
ples. She had hoped never to see them again, yet here were two of the twelve, alive in Newbrum.

  She heard a gasp of pain from Endymion and realised she had grabbed his hand in panic and squeezed his fingers tight. Something made her look towards the seated audience and every expression she saw was stricken with shock. As she turned her wristpad to the congregation to record their reaction, the glow of the telepathy transmitters intensified and she was disquieted to see the transfixed faces relax and become strangely blissful.

  “Tonight, our planetary guides reveal their true forms for the first time!” cried Nyx. There were no transmitters above the stage and Ostara realised Nyx’s sly smile was the expression of one relishing the act of control. “Mina and Vrscika; two of twelve to lead five systems to one glorious future! They are the water that will cleanse humankind of its folly; they are alpha and omega, strength and wisdom, man and grey!”

  “zz-iin-yyoouur-heeaad-bee-iit-zz!” rasped the monks in unison.

  “And be it in yours!” cried the congregation.

  “Who are these freaks?” whispered Endymion, shocked.

  “Taranis’ cyberclones!” Ostara hissed. “Nyx has them under his control!”

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  Missi and the watcher

  [Chapter Nine] [Contents] [Chapter Eleven]

  TAU CETI HAD SET by the time the rattling transport clambered unsteadily up the receding slopes of the valley. Their journey past the charred horrors of the canyon was tense but in the end uneventful, though Kedesh, Ravana, Artorius and the greys remained on edge until the headlamps once again fell upon the road. They emerged just a few kilometres north of the airstrip, but the scanner revealed some good news in that the Que Qiao police cruiser had gone. When the navigation console finally managed to link with Falsafah’s satellite, it revealed the blip of a small spacecraft, high above the mountains, halfway between themselves and the Arallu Wastes.