'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, how ever, 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 snap ping 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.
*10*
'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?'
The driver pursed her lips. 'Hard to say from here, sir.' She indicated the heads-up schematic that hovered in the air between them and above the dash. 'You can see the problem for yourself. There is not one riot, but two.'
Keshu nodded and sighed. 'What is it this morning? People still protesting the proposed infill for the new
