Cliffs of Utpala (scifi story): Chapter Seven

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Kyra sipped her ersatz coffee and stared at her friend over the rim of her cup. She watched him and considered what he said carefully. She was trying to fight down some excitement. Excitement that she knew if she let go of would have carried her off without thinking. She knew herself. Better than most twenty year olds did, at least. She also knew herself well enough she knew she was going to give into the feeling on some level. Or perhaps on all levels. She just wanted to try to be level headed about it. She wanted to be mature. She also was very, very bored with her life.

And here was Arjun. And here he was giving her something. It would have been seen as provincial at best back on Earth. However, excitement, other than the OH-GODS-I-AM-GOING-TO-DIE sort was hard to come by on Utpala. And here he was. Here he came. Here he explained.

He had needed to run back out to the forest last night - not overly intelligently, she noted, in the subfreezing temperatures and pigs and native animals, but classically Arjun, all the same - because he needed to grab another cache of meat he'd left. It was cold and Earthlife, so not really appealing for the local predators and scavengers. He had zipped along on his robosled using it like a snowmobile until he reached the forest. Then he commanded the sled to convert the skis to legs and follow him in. Those legs were more than strong enough for what he was coming to get and the terrain didn't allow for even medium sized vehicle to pass.

Except for the careful crunching of snow, he and his robosled, then walker, were very, very quiet. Arjun was a good 100 meters into the forest when he heard noise. He mentally commanded the robosled to stop moving and did the same himself. He heard noise again. Rustling through brush. Crunching of snow. He couldn't tell if it was close. or far, but loud. He couldn't be sure because the snow muffled everything, but at the same time, the lack of sound because it was night made everything seem so much louder.

He pulled out his rifle and told his goggles to switch to infrared. That was pretty useless with the trees and bushes and rocks. They were long since cold and he needed to be able to navigate through them. Light intensification was far, far better, or as popularly called, 'night vision.' However, there was enough blocking his view, small branches and undergrowth, for night vision to not be as useful except if something was immediate in front of him. All animals, Earthlife, Utpalife or otherwise, active at this time would have been warm blooded, for large values of 'blood,' or more properly endothermic. The IR vision should have given them away.

And it did.

There they were.

There was a heard of tantu. These giant, slow herbivores were the size of elephants from Earth. They looked closer to rhinoceroses but that was not accurate either. They had huge shovel heads and were covered in thick, matted coats of filaments. Ones far, far better adapted to keeping animals warm on Uptala than anything Earth had. There was little Arjun could have done then, his robosled could only carry so much and he had a cache to bring back already of mega goat meat. However, a herd of tantu migrating so close to the edge of the cliffs was extremely rare and he wanted to bag one. The hide was worth a lot. The meat and samples, less so. All hunters were limited to taking one animal per herd per season and that made tantu hides very rare and worthwhile.

Arjun sighted a target and prepared to fire a tracker into the nearest tantu. He would have marked his claim and come back the next day to pick the sickest animal. Killing one then, that night, last night would have amounted to a waste because tantu meat was edible by the local critters and by the time he'd return, the hide would be worthless.

And then.

He saw it.

He was completely surprised.

It was a mythic beast if such a thing could exist on a world settled from so short a time. It was a shuturamurg!

No, not an ostrich, but an honest to goodness Utpalan shuturamurg, an armless, long necked, tailless bipedal animal that had been reported with the same accuracy as the yeti back on Earth. Many had come to believe it was nothing more than a hunter's tall tale. Get some good beer and stronger stuff in a hunter and the shuturamurg stories would start flowing.

Arjun had never done that. Nor did he drink heavily at all. It was something Kyra actually really liked about him. He could drink. He did drink. He just knew it was best to do so in extreme moderation. Part of what had killed old man Ganesh was from a bottle, not just a bunch of pigs.

Arjun had reacted and fired at the shuturamurg instead. As soon as he pulled the trigger, he felt he made a mistake. Not because he didn't want to claim the shuturamurg and bring it in, but because he was worried someone else would have found the beacon. And then he wouldn't get anything. Not even a trifle. And if the shuturamurg were rare, the other hunter might have killed what amounted to an endangered species. Arjun wanted to bring the animal in alive.

In a way, he was lucky. In a way, he was as lucky as he had been when he attempted to surprise his friend, Kyra, in the dark. He missed and hit a branch. The animals scattered, as much as rhino sized animals can, at his shot. Loud things at night, even sounds animals are unfamiliar with, were generally a bad sign.

He had sighed and commanded the radio dart to not transmit and wait for an direct transmission from his crystal before beginning its transmissions again. He knew he couldn't see enough in the dark, even with lights he had, to find where the shuturamurg went, so he left the scene of the escape alone. He had planned to return the next day in the light when he would be less likely to obliterate tracks and evidence inadvertently.

He then went to his cache and loaded the robosled, come back to town, unloaded at the communal meat plant and then started to head home. His home was near the goat barn. He saw Kyra in the dark and thought, he'd sneak up on her. He had been really tired and that was why he'd done it, less than smart, but funny when tired, and then Kyra had been able to flip him up and over because he was exhausted. She'd never have been able to take him when he wasn't exhausted.

Kyra's look both hardened and became bemused. She didn't know whether to smile, laugh, mock, roll her eyes or clap in delight. That last bit allowed her to calm her growing excitement. Arjun was be Arjun. Even at the ancient age of thirty years old. His claim of exhaustion might have been true, but she'd still take him any day of the week and twice first thing in the morning. Excuses.

That made her calm down from the tale of the shuturamurg. Capturing that would have been exciting, but Arjun reminding her he was Arjun also reminded her of when she was ten and had a bit of a crush on him then, that he'd played a prank on her. He had taken her snipe hunting. Snipe didn't exist. Certainly not on Utpala and from what Arjun later confessed, it was a prank people did to young kids. He had treated her as a young kid then for a prank. It had obliterated her crush on him, but cemented their friendship. Sometimes she wondered if that was his plan all along.

Right then, as she narrowed her eyes over her ersatz coffee and gave him a suspicious look. Could he have been plotting the same thing now? A shuturamurg, a hunter's tale, to replace the snipe? To get revenge against Kyra for what I just did to him? hmmm.

He was my friend, but he was not above a prank to get even. Arjun was Arjun. And Kyra was and would be Kyra. She put down her cup and planned to call his bluff on the prank.

"Arjun..." she started, her tone serious and skeptical, but he raised his hand, a twinkle in his eye.

He set aside his cup and looked at her with bemusement.

"You always never wait for me to finish, do you, Kyra, my friend and skeptic. Not since that first hunt. Well, take a look and satisfy yourself."

His crystal requested to share data and she hesitated.

Was that the prank? Something he'd slip into her crystal?

Then she accepted and the video and sensations of what he felt and saw when the shuturamurg was there showed up. From just before the tantu heard was found until the dart missed. She got to see and feel it all. Not as well as if she had an American booster, not the exact feelings as she would have, but rather a slightly distorted one, but good enough she could see and feel what he had in a somewhat murky way.

The shuturamurg was real.

Or Arjun had the most epic prank planned ever. Which case she was really glad she thumped him good if this was the epic prank: she'd made a small downpayment on the extraordinary butt kicking he'd get after it played out. However, if it was the epic prank, she had to see this. It would have taken a long, long time to fabricate the data she'd just experienced and that meant the prank was going to be ... interesting.

And if it was not a prank, the shuturamurg was real and Arjun was asking for her help to capture it.

Either way. This was going to be fun.

And exciting.

Her attempt to contain herself failed and she lit up.

Arjun twinkled back.

Prank or discovery...they were Kyra and Arjun.