The Cliffs of Utpala (scifi story): Chapter Five

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Kyra sipped her coffee and munched on some kulcha. She decided she was going to use the last of the wat she had and trying eating it with the kulcha. It was...semi successful. The wat didn't quite go with the kulcha. It was far from bad though. She quickly set the food printer to make another ersatz coffee for her to take with her. She asked the house AI to deliver it to the front door just as she finished getting dressed with her outside clothing. Hot, sweetened, spiced and with milk, she took the coffee from the delivering bot. It was in a thermos, so as to keep it warm. A paper cup like on Earth would have guaranteed the coffee cold in minutes and frozen solid within ten.

She closed the inner door and stomped in her boots to settle them. The boots, like almost all articles of clothing, were smart and it was an unneeded gesture. The boots would have moved and settled her feet into place all by themselves within a few steps. Kyra didn't care for the sensation and the act of stomping, an act of defiance, made her feel a bit more prepared to face Utpala, her world.

After going out the outer door, she paused and looked around. The sky was still dark. There were few stars. Not because there was a lot of a light pollution - there was some, her village was not an ancient backwater! just a modern one! - but rather because the mists from the air currents that flowed up the cliffs brought very humid air and the moisture therein became clouds. Her village was quite foggy. Right now, in the dark stillness, the LEPs on the streets cast bright puddles of light. Ones that seemed so defined in the darkness and fog and roiling mists. One could almost believe in spirits and monsters and nameless things no woman was meant to know. She shuddered and sighed and felt a touch silly for feeling the scene a touch creepy.

Kyra had decided rather than to go back to bed, for an hour or so, she would get up and try to get to her job. It was only a part time job. But everyone had a part time job from the age of 12 until they finished Institute, 22 to 24. They were considered able bodied enough to help around the colony and, thus, needed to chip in. Life on Utpala was not frightening, but was still precarious. Everyone who could help, must help. The community needed that help.

Fortunately, every three years, the community moved the students around. They might work in the fields for one three year period. Then as junior coders for bots in the next. Then as plumber assistants in another. The final one was closer to what they were studying though in Institute.

The students finished their secondary school and then attended the virtual institute set up by the Department of Higher Education in New Delhi. It had two real administrators/instructors in her village, but most of the instruction was done virtually with AI providing taking the best lectures, exercises and labs of Earth and modifying them for the student 'taking' the course. This was standard on the "smaller" colonial worlds like Utpala, Agni and Rudra. Well, the institutes were. Whether the locals there had their kids do labor, Kyra didn't know. Neither Agni nor Rudra were like Utpala.

Few worlds were like each other except in general terms.

Her job was to actually code and take care of the the milking system for the some of the lesser goats. No, not the mega goats. That had been tried though. It had ended ... badly. They were simply too big. What did someone expect when they made a Jamnapari billy goat the size of brahman bull? All the goat wiliness. All the bull mass. It. Ended. Badly. The government had created the Utpalan goat for people to have in herds. And in herds they moved. And those herds needed milking. Fortunately, there's a bot for that! However, even in this day and age, to err is human, but to foul things up requires a computer. And if the milking system went bad, then all would suffer. Badly.

Kyra had actually inherited the system from... old man Ganesh. Yes, the man who had been eaten by pigs. There had been no adult able to take Ganesh's place - there were too few of them and the next shipload of colonists was months or more away. Not everything ran on time moving through the empty blackness of space! Delays were more than known. Kyra had done her rotation a year before with Ganesh and did a very good job. So, it was decided she would be assigned to the job, an adult job, and still had to work her way through school and Institute. She had only been 16.

That was part of the reason for wanting something bigger. Unless there was a master herdsman coming, it was highly likely Kyra had found her place in her village on Utpala when she was 16. Sixteen and she might have the same job for sixty years. She dreamt of so much more.

She could rebel and become a hunter. But then she would have to move to another village and even then...Utpala was not a big place. Well, at least the villages were not large, that was for sure. She'd be known as the one who shirked her place and her duty.

She kicked at a snow drift. Her frustration alone warmed her. Her fate would not be her own unless something drastic happened. She stomped her foot. Fate. She didn't want to merely accept her place in this turn of the cycle. She wanted more than fate seemed to want to give her. She returned to trudging to the goat barns.

The she was nearing her goal when the Light Emitting Panels flickered out. And the next one. And the one after that. She turned and the panels flickered off. behind her. Two further away from her went out. She was left in misty, foggy blackness. For a moment, the fog thickened and she couldn't see far at all. A meter or two.

Then she heard it.

A crunch. scrunch. pause. crunchcrunch. Like a predator sneaking up on her.

Her breathing became heavy. She turned towards the noise and took a stance. Running away seemed to be a universally bad idea on any world. Predators would chase if they could. Whatever it was she was going to give it the drubbing of a life time.

Then the noise seemed to be behind her and close. She spun around. A pack animal? How had it gotten so close through the snow without her hearing it. She commanded her coat to stiffen as hard as it could as when she connected her first punch so the act of stiffening would give the punch that much more ... well...punch.

She was as tense as a cable in a bridge and then she was grabbed by the shoulders from behind. She screamed and spun around. She gave a flying kick to whatever had grabbed her and her pants stiffened to make her leg like a beam of wood.

She landed and recovered and prepared to follow through.

But there was little need.

There, in the snow, face down, lay Arjun.

Her reflexes had been too fast and she'd missed the 'boo' he'd done.

Well, it served him right for scaring her.

Jerk.

She sighed and realized he wasn't getting up.

She was going to have to help him.