Sagramanda

by Alan Dean Foster

  “Definitely sounds like it would go good with duck,” Mai-ling commented, but this time without laughing. She was beginning to loosen up as the lightly warmed oils penetrated and soothed her skin.

  “Ayurveda is one of the oldest systems of medicine in the world,” the comforting voice assured her. “It is designed to work on both the physical and mental levels.”

  “I do not know yet about the physical,” the executive sighed, “but mentally I am definitely starting to unwind.”

  “Just let go,” the voice urged her, “while I work on your marmas.” A soft thrumming filled the room, not loud enough to drown out the soothing music.

  “My what?” Through her rising torpor, the naked businesswoman managed to sound slightly alarmed.

  “Marmas,” Jena explained as the humming grew nearer and more personal, “are energy points within the body. They respond to physical manipulation. Massage.” She allowed herself to relax, too. It would be foolish to waste the opportunity.

  The humming sound originated with the motors that lowered long rectangular shapes from the ceiling. Only slightly smaller than the bed-platforms directly below, each was densely covered with hundreds of synthetic rubberoid fingers, each of which could be individually programmed. Mai-ling let out a small “Oh” of surprise as the prewarmed, rounded tips of the full-body massager above her made contact with her bare, oil-slick skin. With a precision no human masseuse could match, the fingers contracted until the upper platform was perfectly molded to her body from the back of her head to her upthrust heels, as if she were a priceless porcelain doll being measured for form-fitting shipping foam.

  The synthetic fingers began to move; rubbing, pressing, manipulating, working the oil into her muscles and joints, relieving stress, gently but firmly pushing and stretching, relying on the intimate details that had been recorded by the scanning laser.

  “Heavenly!” the executive sighed.

  “Much more effective than its human counterparts,” Jena agreed. “It's like having a dozen specialists work on you simultaneously instead of just one tired and maybe bored masseur. In addition to freeing you from stress and tension, Ayurvedic massage is supposed to be able to cure rheumatism, sciatica, bursitis, and many other ailments of the joints and muscles.”

  Arching her body, she pushed firmly upward with her back and buttocks. As she did so, the platform containing the massaging synthetic fingers automatically retreated, allowing her to swing her legs off the platform and sit up. Head turned the other way, by now completely at ease and half asleep, the drowsy visitor from Guangdong took no notice of the other woman's silent and deliberate movements.

  Prowling restlessly northward, the big cat cut through the forest in a wide arc, not approaching the edge of the jungle again until it was several kilometers from the place where it had encountered the TC device. Once more it found itself confronting a professionally maintained greensward fronting a jumble of multistory dwellings. These expensive townhomes were only two and three stories high, with open space separating every cross-shaped quad of housing. Their inhabitants paid a premium for considerable interior space and a location on the border of the world-renowned reserve.

  In this wealthier, more developed neighborhood, a barrier of charged cables the height of several men separated landscaping from jungle. Other special wires had been laid below the surface, carrying current underground to repel anything smart or active enough to try digging beneath the fence. A meter off the ground, the steady, subdued beam of a blue sensor laser was flanked by two of the softly buzzing cables. Anything living that made contact with them would receive a jolt powerful enough to discourage even a determined elephant or rhino, of which there were many living in the preserve. Anything that also broke the beam of the sensor would trigger an alert plus a swift response from the privately maintained ranger stations that were situated at intervals along the border with the reserve. A sloping, dry moat designed to keep children away from the fence paralleled the barrier on its north-south run. Evenly spaced warning signs provided the same function for adults.

  Neither Ritu, in her stone-washed green jeans and sun-repellent matching blouse, or Vinod in his trendy one-piece pseudo-chamois relaxer, gave any thought to their surroundings as they ran, hand in hand, toward the fence line. Both from comparatively well-off families, each with a year left at university, she attractive and he handsome, they cavorted with the air of those in their early twenties who were convinced they were immortal and destined for Great Things.

  “We shouldn't be doing this,” she giggled nervously but expectantly as she looked back toward the receding shape of her parent's quad.

  “I know.” Vinod squeezed her hand a little tighter as he led her on. “Isn't that why we are doing it?”

  They shared the delicious, knowing smile of those tempting the forbidden as he guided her toward the place he had found. Here and there, large natural conglomerations of gray granite had been left standing among the lawns, flowers, and decorative bushes by the quad's builders. The natural rock piles provided places for children to play, older juveniles to scramble and fight, and adults to sit quietly. The two university students intended to use the outcropping Vinod had chosen to sit, but not quietly. And truth be told, to do something other than sit.

  They were alone, which was the idea. Vinod's flashlight illuminated the way. They were hurrying across grass, well away from the nearest winding, paved walking path.

  A little out of breath, he slowed as they neared the stone outcrop. The beam of his flashlight played across the rocks. Though the waxing slim sliver of moon was hidden behind clouds and not visible tonight, the whitened, ghostly aspect of the raw granite was suitably lunar.

  “Come on,” he urged her. In the dim light, his teeth were whiter than the rocks.

  “What?” Uncertain, she gestured with a nod of her head. “Up there?”

  “Why not?” He grinned challengingly. “Afraid of heights?”

  “Hardly,” she shot back. “It just does not look very…comforting.”

  “You can lay your head on my lap,” he told her.

  “Yes, you would like that, wouldn't you?” After a moment to let the tease sink in, she matched his grin with one of her own. “All right. But mind your hands on the way up.”

  He started toward the nearest slope. “On the way up, I promise. After that…” A multitude of possible interpretations were left dangling in the air. Significantly, she did not bother to swat them away.

  It was an easy climb. Children made it. But at this hour of the night there were no children about, nor any others their own age. It was midweek, after all, and people had to get up in the morning to go to work, or to class. Not even the warning lights of a nocturnal jogger utilizing the nearest paved path materialized to interrupt the solitude they sought. Somewhere deep in the woods on the other side of the security fence, a brilliantly blued lilac-breasted roller warbled in confusion. A diurnal bird, it was not normally active this late at night.

  “I can't thank you enough for this suggestion.” Gently cupped between upper and lower platforms, body massaged by hundreds of tenderly, precisely programmed synthetic fingertips, the visiting businesswoman's voice had dropped to a completely contented whisper. “How long should we stay like this? Is the treatment timed, or can we stay as long as we wish?”

  “I believe such automated systems charge by the half hour. It should be charged automatically to your room.” Slipping, literally, off the platform, Jena made her way to the open closet where she had placed her clothes. The room's subdued light glistened off the oil on her skin.

  “Have to stay for an hour, then,” Mai-ling murmured. “Remember, it's all on expense account.”

  Jena did not reply. Instead, she took out and unsealed the long carrying bag she had brought with her and reached inside. The steel of the sword that she extracted had been polished to a mirror-bright shine. Its presence did not alarm the room's programming. Nor would a hotel of this class think of installing
security cameras in so exclusive a venue, lest a single outraged guest sue for invasion of privacy.

  The tip of the sword hanging from her clenched right fist nearly scraped the floor as the naked Jena quietly approached the occupied bed-platform. Through the perfumed mist that filled the massage chamber, the gleaming, oiled, nude body of the visiting female executive was visible as a pale streak between the upper massage platform and the lower basin. Chinese egg roll, the expatriate Frenchwoman thought, without a flicker of a smile.

  “You have a beautiful body,” she murmured, barely audible above the tinkling, seductive strains of sitar and shehnai.

  “Umm.” Mai-ling started to turn her head to face her newfound friend. “How do I get this to let me turn over?”

  “Just turn,” Jena told her softly. “The unit's sensors will detect your movement and respond accordingly.”

  “Okay.” The other woman started to roll onto her back. “You know, this setup is wonderful, but sometimes there's no substitute for the human touch.”

  “Believe me, I know,” a somber-voiced Jena admitted without hesitation.

  The look of expectation and anticipation on the businesswoman's face hardly had time to turn to horror as the sword descended.

  Vinod helped Ritu to the crest. The rock outcropping fell off more sharply on the other side. From this vantage point they were able to look directly over the reserve's underbrush and into its trees. He amused himself by switching the flashlight off and then suddenly shining it into the branches. Once, the beam picked out a family of macaques moving through the canopy. Other than that, the forest was asleep.

  “When we get married…,” he began as they sat down and in one single, smooth motion slipped his right arm around her waist.

  “Just a moment, Vinod.” Her voice slowed him, but she made no move to push his arm away. “We are not even engaged yet. I want a modern marriage, yes. Nothing arranged. But I am not sure I am ready for it yet. There is the matter of finishing my degree, and—”

  Leaning close, he tenderly kissed her shoulder. She resolutely continued not to pull away. “There are such things as married students, Ritu. We would not be the first such couple in history.” Continuing to touch her lightly, his lips slowly ascended, climbing toward her neck. Sitting atop the outcropping enveloped in tropical night, she shivered slightly.

  “Vinod, this isn't right.”

  “Odd,” he murmured as his lips reached her cheek. “It feels so very right.”

  She had no more words for when he began to kiss her. Besides, it was difficult to speak with two tongues in your mouth. A sound, however, made her draw back sharply.

  “What?” Vinod was simultaneously alarmed and surprised. “What did I do?”

  She was not looking at him. She was staring intently over the fence, into the forest. Her words were whispered. “I heard something.”

  He relaxed. Whatever it was that had startled her, the important thing was that he was not responsible. He moved to resume where they had left off. “Macaques. Monkeys. The wind.”

  “Maybe—no, there it is again.” Leaning away from him, she squinted as she tried to see deeper into the trees. “Let me have your flashlight.”

  Grumbling to himself, he removed the thumb-sized device from his breast pocket. “Monkeys,” he repeated, but without much enthusiasm. Usually it was his younger brother who ruined such moments. Frustrated, he followed the beam of light as she moved it around. He tried to sound understanding. “I don't see what—”

  He never did see. In a demonstration of incredible power and unrivaled agility, the tiger exploded out of the tree it had climbed opposite the outcropping. It cleared the top of the fence and landed, roaring, as much on top of the wide-eyed Vinod as it did on bare rock. Ritu screamed and fell to one side. Her boyfriend had time to do neither. As she rolled and scrambled down the rocks, she heard above the blood-chilling snarling a momentary quick, sharp sound like the snapping of a broomstick. Far behind her, the first lights were coming on in the nearest townhouse quad.

  Lying on the grass at the bottom of the outcropping, she found herself staring upward, openmouthed. Even in the dim light she was able to make out the massive shape of the tiger. It held something limp in its jaws. If she had not known it was Vinod, she would not have been able to tell, because the face was completely obscured by blood. His head hung downward at a perfect right angle from his neck. The sound she had heard had been the tiger's jaws snapping his spine. She was too terrified to scream. Only once, when she thought the tiger looked down at her, did she come close.

  Then it turned and, with the dead student clamped tightly in its mouth, leaped almost disdainfully back over the fence, landing this time not in a treetop but on the ground. As she stared half paralyzed and dead silent, it trotted off into the bush calmly carrying its kill in its jaws. She sat like that, unmoving, wide-open eyes locked on the silent jungle, until the residential complex's first concerned residents reached her and one put a tentative hand on her shoulder. The same shoulder that Vinod had so recently kissed. The human touch helped greatly.

  It allowed her to start screaming again.

  “Riot in progress.” Her tone apologetic, Keshu's driver glanced over at the chief inspector. “It may take some time to get to the address you specified, sir.”

  He nodded absently. His mind was not on the traffic, or on the river of humanity off to his right that flowed east to west, paralleling the direction the unmarked patrol vehicle was trying to take. In another attempt to assist traffic flow in a city the likes of which humankind had never known, decades earlier the city authorities had somehow managed to get together long enough to agree to make all the main streets not only one way to vehicular traffic, but to pedestrian as well. To walk west to east through Beypore District, pedestrians had to go one block north to Pudumandapa, or one block south to Kerala Place. Such radical changes had not been written into law to make walking easy. They had been done to make it possible. Vehicular gridlock was frustrating. Pedestrian gridlock was often fatal.

  Attesting to the efficiency with which the Department of Pedestrian Affairs enforced the laws, Keshu could see a pair of foot patrol officers administering punishment to someone who had committed the crime of attempting to walk against the one-way flow of traffic. It had been before the inspector's time when vociferous argument had greeted the radical proposal to reinstate physical chastisement as punishment for such minor crimes. Considering himself a modern, enlightened citizen, he could not understand the reason behind the objections. Laws were only respected when they were perceived to be effective.

  What, after all, were the alternatives to beating such lawbreakers? It had been shown that lectures on civic responsibility did nothing to dissuade habitual offenders. Fining them was useless, since most had no money. With its promise of a roof over one's head and two meals a day, to a substantial portion of Sagramanda's swollen population the promise of jail time was an inducement rather than a deterrent. What remained to deter the repeat reprobate except the threat of physical punishment?

  From what he could see from inside the cocoon that was the patrol car, the two officers appeared to be administering a level four thrashing: use of open palms only with not less than two and not more than four swift kicks. A minor infraction, then. Perhaps the man had come out of an alley or a shop and had inadvertently turned the wrong way, only to be unlucky enough to have been spotted by the pair of police. That would likely have been his claim, anyway: the illegal walker's equivalent of a driver's insistence that he had not been drunk. Among the river of pedestrians, all intent on their own business, hardly a one bothered to turn to observe the swift meting out of justice.

  One of the officers was male, the other female. The pairing was necessary in a city with a Muslim population in the millions, since by law no male officer could manhandle a female of that religious persuasion. Justice was not impaired, however, since the city's female officers were just as well trained and equally as adept at meting
out punishment as their male counterparts. Besides ensuring that foot traffic flowed on the city's sidewalks and rampways, such officers were responsible for keeping people and animals off those main thoroughfares that had been designated for vehicular traffic only, as well as the sad, sorry task of keeping them clear of the kind of makeshift housing and temporary shelters that so sorely afflicted the older, more traditional parts of the metropolis.

  As the car moved forward in fits and starts, he lost sight of the small drama. Occasionally, a pedestrian attempting to pass part of the flow would step off onto the street. This happened less often than might be expected since most vehicles, both public and private, were equipped with dispersers. Via conduits embedded in the carbon-metal car frames, an electric charge flowed from the vehicle's motor through the vehicle's exterior. Anyone coming in contact with this would receive a low-voltage jolt that was strong enough to make them want to avoid such contact, much less lean on a vehicle so equipped.

  City vehicles were allowed to generate much more powerful charges. Unlike private cars and taxis whose repelling nuisance voltage was limited by law, those of fire engines and police cars responding to emergency calls could be cranked up to truly uncomfortable levels. Nobody in their right mind would attempt to get in the way of or hitch a ride on an ambulance with siren wailing. Touch a bumper or a door and the current flowing through it could knock a man off his feet and leave him quivering helplessly on the street for several minutes or more.

  Trying to contain his irritation, he checked his wrist chronometer instead of asking the car's AI for the time. “How much longer until we can get through this?”