Paw-Prints Of The Gods (48 page)

Ravana frowned,
confused by both Philyra’s recognition of Artorius and the talk of
time machines and capsules. The android guard moved again with
another clank.

“What are they doing
in there?” whispered Yima, peering into the chamber.

“Some weird
space-alien ritual, no doubt,” muttered Ininna.

“What do you know
about Artorius?” Ravana asked Philyra.

“The boy who came from
nowhere to be king! Don’t you watch
Gods of Avalon
?”

“Keep out of sight!”
Quirinus urged. “Do you want to give us away?”

“They can’t see us,”
Philyra retorted. A shadow fell upon her. “Whoops.”

Ravana lunged for the
plasma cannon but it was too late. Philyra stepped from their
hiding place, her hands held high as the android loomed closer, its
rifle aimed at her chest. Lilith and Dagan, brandishing the agents’
confiscated pistols and looking very unimpressed by the intrusion,
stood nearby. With a sigh of resignation, Ravana put down the
cannon.

Philyra gave an
apologetic grin. “I think we’ve been spotted.”

* * *

Ravana watched
fearfully as Dagan directed the robot to the far side of the arch
to stop anyone leaving. A scowling Lilith led herself, her father
and the greys into the chamber.

The heart of the
labyrinth, cast into sharp relief by the powerful floodlights, was
an awe-inspiring sight. The star-shaped floor and angular alcoves
made Ravana picture the alien construction as a giant machine,
where she was but a grain of dust drifting past silent cogs poised
to whirr into action in the blink of an eye. The pale blue
luminescence of the walls revealed the labyrinth’s true scale;
looking up, the soaring alcoves and rods made her dizzy and not a
little fearful at how far below ground they were. More unnerving
was the way the ground trembled with every step she took. The floor
was pockmarked by tiny craters in the manner of a volcanic mud pool
froze solid, one nevertheless ready to erupt once more.

The tableau at the
centre of the chamber was harder to define. Doctor Jones called it
a cocoon, but the brown decaying ruin looked like the remains of a
hollow tree after a storm. Beyond the inky pool Ravana spied a
glint of white, then shivered as her gaze fell upon the tangled
giant spider, embedded in the ground. Her headache was getting
worse.

“Weird,” muttered
Quirinus.

Jizo made as if to hit
him with the bottle in her hand, then instead threw it towards the
arch. There was a shriek of pain as the last of the Pinot Noir hit
Yima’s bandaged arm.

“Silence!” she
snapped. Her other hand wielded a slate.

Ravana shot Kedesh a
fierce glare, but the woman refused to meet her gaze. Artorius
managed a weak smile, despite cheeks streaked with silent tears.
Ravana glanced around the chamber and saw for the first time the
sad mound of rubble near the wall. The realisation that Professor
Cadmus had died at this very spot brought forth an involuntary
shudder.

“You said the girl was
dead,” Lilith remarked coolly.

“I lied,” said Kedesh.
“But I don’t take kindly to people stealing my clothes.”

Ravana gave the woman
her best withering look. “Do your feet still hurt?”

“A little bit.”

“Good!”

“zz-siileencee-zz!”
screeched one of the monks. Ravana winced as her implant sent a
bolt of pain through her skull. The speaker wore the sash patterned
with silver lions that belonged to Brother Simha.
“zz-wee-haavee-muuch-woork-too-doo-zz.”

“You won’t get away
with this,” Ininna called fiercely from the arch. “Threatening
officers of the law is a serious offence! We have a team on the way
and by the mighty Allah all hell will break loose when they get
here and find out what you’ve done!”

“No one is coming for
you,” retorted Dagan, waggling the gun in his hand. He had stayed
at the arch to guard those huddled in the short length of passage
beyond.

“It’s still all on
holovid,” said Quirinus, glancing up at Fornax’s buzzing
cambot.

“What do you want with
Artorius?” asked Ravana. “He’s just a little boy.”

“And you’re just a
girl,” sneered Jizo. “We don’t answer to you.”

“zz-thee-booyy-iis-aall-thaat-maatteers-zz,” buzzed the second
cyberclone, who wore the archers motif of Brother Dhanus.
“zz-hee-muust-doo-oouur-biiddiing-zz.”

“zz-oorphaaneed-chiild-oof-Sool-zz,” rasped Simha. The clone
grabbed Artorius by the shoulder and turned him towards the
towering circle of rods, causing the boy to release a trembling
cry. “zz-iin-yyoouur-heeaad-bee-iit-zz!”

The creatures’ shrieks
clawed at Ravana’s thoughts. Jizo sidled to the dead spider, broke
off a chunk of dried flesh and popped a piece in her mouth, all
whilst idly scrutinising the slate in her hands. Simha released
Artorius’ manacles and led him onto the narrow circle of ground
between the rods and the dark pool. With a sniff, the boy nervously
looked around the chamber, ran a hand across a snotty nose and
started to cry.

“Help me,” he wailed
quietly. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Brother Cadmus was
meant to help,” muttered Lilith. “The boy knows nothing.”

“Professor Cadmus?”
exclaimed Ravana. A chorus of surprised gasps echoed from Govannon
and his student archaeologists in the archway. “He was a
Dhusarian?”

The clones stood
unmoving behind Artorius. A hush fell upon the scene, broken only
by an uneasy cough and shuffle of feet from Dagan and the buzzing
of the cambot high above their heads. Ravana felt Nana take her
hand. A cat-shaped blur loped from the shadows and she guessed her
electric pet had escaped Stripy’s clutches. It was then she heard a
plaintive meow and saw her cat still clutched firmly in the grey’s
embrace.

“What...?” she
murmured.

“A fascinating
situation, don’t you think?” purred a voice in her ear.

Ravana slowly turned
her head. Standing there was Athene, resplendent as ever in her
floor-length silver and black fur coat. The watcher smiled, stepped
up to Lilith and playfully waved a hand before the woman’s scowl to
demonstrate that the nurse and everyone else were oblivious to her
presence. Ravana thought about their meeting on Hursag Asag and how
the mysterious stranger had apparently frozen time, but on this
occasion she could hear nervous murmurs from the captives awaiting
the Dhusarians’ next move. Then she saw Kedesh’s wide-eyed stare
across the room and realised Athene was visible to at least one
other.

“zz-thee-booyy-muust-fuulfiil-hiis-deestiinyy-zz!” demanded
Dhanus.

“zz-maasteers-aand-slaavees-uuniitee-aas-oonee-zz!” screeched
Simha.

“I am the ghost in the
machine,” Athene said gaily. “Invisible to all but my two star
players. Have you done your homework?”

“The Dhusarians
trained Artorius to communicate with the greys,” Ravana whispered
cautiously, hoping her reply would not raise suspicions. Kedesh’s
unsubtle attempt to attract her attention by waving was not
helping. “They think the prophecy brought him here to unite all
believers. Plus something about slaves and masters.”

“Prophecies!” scoffed
Quirinus. “Sounds like that stupid
Gods of Avalon
show.”

“But who are the
slaves?” Athene teased. “Who are the masters?”

Ravana shook her head
irritably. Her headache was worse than ever. Her implant startled
her with an alert in her mind’s eye, which turned out to be Kedesh
trying to reach her via a headcom call. She came close to refusing
it, but there was such a look of anguish in the woman’s woeful
expression that she relented and with a mental jab opened the
channel.

“Ravana, I’m so
sorry,” whispered Kedesh. She barely moved her lips, but in the
girl’s head the words came loud and clear. She shot a frosty glance
at Athene. “I caught you on the back foot and bowled a googly, but
I’m not the rogue player here.”

“You handed Artorius
to Jizo and put me to sleep!” Ravana hissed angrily. She had yet to
fathom how to use the headcom in a voiceless fashion. Both her
father and Lilith were giving her some very odd looks. “You told
them I was dead!”

“That was to stop them
coming after you,” Kedesh countered.

The cyberclones turned
to one another and released a barrage of muted high-pitched
shrieks. Athene sprang lightly across the pool to the broken
cocoon, picked up a limb and comically waved it in Jizo’s face.
Unaware of the watcher’s performance, the nurse growled, threw away
her half-eaten spider cutlet and grabbed Artorius by the
shoulders.

“Taranis said you are
the one,” she slurred, shaking him angrily. She shoved the screen
of her slate into his face. “What does this mean? You have to
know!”

“Hey!” Kedesh pulled
Jizo away. “Leave him alone, you drunk!”

“Better drunk than
ugly,” Jizo retorted and pushed Kedesh aside. “In the morning I’ll
be sober, but you’ll still have the face of a bearded goat.”

Ravana gave Kedesh a
disdainful look. “It’s a bit late to show concern.”

“I’m sorry I had to
field Artorius,” she replied, her voice once again a
headcom-amplified murmur. “You were supposed to stay away! I
knocked you for six for your own good. I had an escape all planned
until you blundered in with a gift of hostages.”

“You had a plan?”
asked Ravana, frowning.

“Actually, no. I’m
making it up as I go along.”

Ravana scowled and
silenced her headcom. Lilith sighed, stepped into the circle,
wrestled the slate from Jizo’s grip and studied the screen. After a
pause, she led Artorius to the nearest rod and placed his hands
upon a series of faint indentations just visible at shoulder
height. The arc of six ovals, delineated in blue against grey, was
a pattern Ravana recognised from a sketch made by Taranis in his
notes. Athene’s playful grin became a perturbed frown.

Artorius looked
distraught. “I don’t know what you want me to do!”

“These marks are
important,” said Lilith. “Perhaps the greys can guide you.”

“Those pitiful
creatures?” sneered Jizo. “Don’t make me laugh!”

“Fwack fwack,”
muttered Stripy, sounding deeply offended.

“Thraak.” Nana tugged
Ravana’s arm. “Thraak thraak.”

Quirinus gave his
daughter a quizzical look. “What did they say?”

“The rods open
something,” she said. The translator images were far from clear.
Athene’s baleful yellow stare narrowed, seemingly in disapproval of
the greys’ contribution. “Something big and swirly that could be a
door. Or not,” she added hastily.

“Rubbish!” retorted
Athene. “You haven’t a clue.”

“Think hard!” Lilith
urged Artorius. “We haven’t got Cadmus to help us now.”

Jizo stomped up,
snatched the agent’s gun from Lilith and fired a shot into the air.
Startled shrieks echoed from the archway, followed by a sudden hush
and then a crunch as Fornax’s camera fell from the air and smashed
to the ground. With an angry snarl, Jizo tossed the gun back to
Lilith, wrapped her sausage-like digits around Artorius’ own left
hand and twisted hard. There was a muffled snap and he
screamed.

“I have run out of
patience, Mister Arty-Farty!” Jizo screamed. “Do your duty!”

“My finger!” Artorius
wailed. “You broke my finger!”

“You shot my cambot!”
Fornax shouted angrily from the archway.

A cloud of dust
drifted from the ceiling. Quirinus lunged at Jizo as if to grab
her, but was brought up short by the gun in Lilith’s hand, now
pointing his way.

“You twisted evil
freak!” Ravana shrieked to Jizo. “How could you?”

“That’s just not
cricket,” Kedesh murmured, looking perturbed.

Ravana dashed across
to comfort the weeping and wounded Artorius, who clung to the rod
like a stormed-wracked sailor at the mast of his boat. Nurse Jizo,
the macabre joker from the fake clinic had gone; the version of
Jizo now before them was clearly insane. Alarmed by the commotion,
Dagan left his prisoners and came closer. Ravana glanced towards
the arch and wondered if anyone was ready to grab the cannon. She
caught a glint of reflected light, then groaned in despair at the
sight of Xuthus and Urania calmly recording the scene on their
wristpads. Her cat, having wriggled free from Stripy’s grip, was
busily chewing the pieces of Fornax’s fallen cambot.

Jizo looked at
Artorius in disgust. “Be thankful it was just a finger.”

“Don’t you dare touch
him again!” yelled Ravana.

“Then cooperate!”
growled Jizo. “Or I’ll break the rest, one by one.”

Ravana’s gaze flew
desperately about the chamber. Her mind whirled with what she had
seen in Taranis’ notes and all that the greys had tried to tell
her. When she first entered the chamber she had imagined it as a
machine; what struck her now was the resemblance between the
soaring triangular alcoves and the grooves of a rifle barrel. The
similarity made her think of how it was aligned, perpendicular to
the solid rock of Falsafah below.

“Shooting into a
gravity well,” she murmured, suddenly inspired. “And beyond.”

“What was that?”
snapped Jizo.

“Right angles to
reality,” Ravana said slowly, still holding Artorius. The equations
that had puzzled the priest now made sense. “A door through
space-time, like that created by an ED drive, but on land. You
think your gods are waiting on the other side.”

Dhanus turned to face
her. “zz-iin-yyoouur-heeaad-bee-iit-zz.”

“zz-aand-bee-it-iin-yyoouurs-zz!” Simha screeched to Artorius.

“A lucky guess,”
mumbled Athene, scowling. Ravana gave a wry smile.

Lilith looked
thoughtful. Jizo scowled and swayed unsteadily before them, her
mouth open ready to speak. Lilith raised her hand to stop her and
beckoned to Ravana.

“Come and see this,”
she said. “Tell me what you think.”