Paw-Prints Of The Gods Read Online Free

things to them and hurt them.”
    Ravana did not like
the sound of that. “Do the nurses hurt you?” she asked.
    “No,” Artorius
replied, after an endless pause. Ravana smiled at the thought of
him shaking his head at her from the other side of the wall. “They
get angry and shout a lot.”
    “That’s good,” she
replied. “I mean, it’s good they don’t hurt you. Shouting and being
angry isn’t good at all. Are you sure you’re okay?”
    “My head hurts
sometimes when they make me use my implant.”
    “Implant?”
    Ravana muttered a
curse. On cue, a twinge of pain shot through her skull. Incredibly,
she had somehow managed to forget that she herself had a cranium
implant, a tiny chip in her brain. She’d had it from an early age,
but her father in his infinite wisdom decided not to tell her until
it caused her virtual-reality nightmare at the Pampa Palace hotel.
This was the revelation hidden at the edge of the black hole in her
mind, the dreadful secret her father had confessed whilst she lay
traumatised in her hotel room. Yet there was more, for in her mind
it led to another memory, one of a dreadful encounter in a hidden
corner of the Dandridge Cole . With a shudder, she decided
that was something she was not yet ready to face.
    “My implant,” she
murmured grimly. “They must have really screwed with my mind to
make me to forget a thing like that.”
    There was silence from
beyond the wall. Listening closely, Ravana heard the faint rustling
of sheets as a tired young boy climbed back into bed. He had the
right idea.
    “Good night Artorius,”
she whispered.
    The sound of footsteps
in the corridor outside sent her scurrying back to her own bed. Her
mind was in no mood for sleep and there she lay, frantically
contemplating the myriad of thoughts buzzing around her head in the
darkness of her room.
     
    * * *
     
    Ravana was out of bed
and standing by the mirror when the nurses came to wake her. She
still felt very tired, but this time it was a weariness through
being awake all night, her head full of unquiet thoughts, rather
than the dull drowsiness of what she now accepted were tranquiliser
tablets. In a way she was more alert than ever and this morning had
noticed for the first time just how grubby her white room actually
was, with peeling paint and mouldy cracks wherever she looked. Her
headache remained, but the brief conversation with Artorius last
night left her strangely elated, for now she knew she was not
alone.
    The nurses were both
visibly disconcerted by their patient’s apparent cheerfulness.
Ravana’s first words that morning threw them completely.
    “Who was the little
boy I saw a couple of days ago?”
    Her question
distracted the nurses long enough for her to slip the latest dose
of pills out of harm’s way and bury them in the plant pot with all
the others. The tablets had reacted badly with the soil and the
potted blooms were shedding petals fast.
    “What boy?” the portly
Jizo said automatically. “There’s no boy here.”
    “He is no concern of
yours!” Lilith snapped. “Why do you ask?”
    “Just curious,”
replied Ravana, noting their wary reaction.
    Her own suspicions
were aroused when in a break from the usual routine, both nurses
decided to accompany her to the bathroom and on to the waiting grey
monks in the interview room. More unusual still, today they were
greeted by the distant sound of singing relayed through crackling
loudspeakers. A small choir were putting their heart and soul into
what sounded like a church hymn, though the words were strange:
     
    “ Show me the way,
lord alien grey,
    To the skies I look
for a sign!
    And wait to be taught,
the one last true thought,
    Your wisdom like
starlight shall shine!
    Show me the way, lord
alien grey,
    Light-years of rapture
divine!
    To you we all bind, to
wipe clear the mind,
    In your head be it and
mine!”
     
    “In your head be it,”
murmured Ravana. She had heard the hymn before.
    “We are a