Hunter's Run(12)

He saw with horror that the opposite end of the cable had somehow linked itself to the alien that had held him, blending into its right wrist. Maneck. He was on a leash. A hunting dog for demons.

"The sahael will not injure you, but it will help to resolve your contradictions," the thing in the pit said, as if sensing his distress but failing to understand it. "You should welcome it. It will help to protect you from aubre. Should you manifest aubre, you will be corrected. Like this."

Ramón found himself on the floor, though he did not remember falling. Only now that the pain had passed could he look back at it and realize that it had been the worst pain he had ever experienced, as a swimmer turns to look back at a wave that has passed over his head. He didn't remember screaming, but his throat was raw, and it almost seemed as if the echo of his shriek was still reverberating from the chamber walls. He caught his breath, and then retched. He knew that he would do whatever was required to prevent that from happening again, anything at all, and for the first time since he woke in darkness, Ramón Espejo felt truly ashamed.

I will kill you all, Ramón thought. Somehow, I will cut this thing out of my throat, and then I will come and kill you all.

"School yourself," the pale alien said. "Correct aubre, and even such a flawed thing as yourself may achieve cohesion or even coordinate level."

It took Ramón some time to realize that this gibberish had been a dismissal: a stern but kindly admonition, hellfire threatened, the prospect of redemption dangled, and go forth and sin no more. The sonofabitch was a missionary!

Maneck lifted Ramón back to his feet and nudged him toward a tunnel. The fleshy leash-the sahael-shrank to match whatever distance was between them. Maneck made a sound that he couldn't interpret and apparently gave up gentle coaxing. The alien moved briskly forward, the sahael tugging now at Ramón's throat. He had no choice but to follow, like a dog trotting at its master's heel.

And you, mi amigo, Ramón thought, staring at Maneck's indifferent back, will be the very first to die.

                       
       
           



       Chapter 7

Back through the tunnels they went, through cavern after cavern, through rhythmic noise, billowing shadow, and glaring blue light. Ramón walked leadenly, like an automaton, pulled along by Maneck, the tether in his neck feeling heavy and awkward. The chill air leached the heat from his body, and even the work of walking wasn't enough to keep him warm.

As he stumbled along, in the privacy of his mind, Ramón searched for hope.

How long would it be before Elena noticed his absence? Months, at least. Or she might think he'd gone off again, down to Nuevo Janeiro without her, to file his reports and collect his fees and keep his money for himself. Or run off on a drunken spree with some other woman. Rather than start a search for him, she was more likely to work herself into a blind rage and go fuck some hairy prospector from a bush bar or rum shack in revenge. Likewise, Manuel Griego would expect him to be in the field for three or four weeks at the least. Ramón silently berated himself for talking about hunting and his fantasy of disappearing into the Sierra Hueso to live off the land. Manuel might assume he wasn't coming back at all, especially if he suspected (as he probably did) that Ramón knew that the cops were after him.

The only ones who would look for him were the law, and the law would have followed him with public execution in mind.

There was no one. That was the truth. He had lived his life on his own terms-always on his own terms-and here was the price of it. He was on his own, hundreds of miles from the nearest human settlement, captured and enslaved.

If he was going to get out of this, he would have to find his own way out.

Maneck tugged at the sahael and Ramón looked up, aware for the first time that they had stopped. The alien thing pushed a bundle into his arms. Clothes.

The clothes were a sleeveless one-piece garment, something like pajamas, a large cloak, and hard-soled slipper-boots, all made from a curious, lusterless material. He pulled them on with fingers stiff from cold. The aliens were obviously not used to tailoring for humans; the clothes were clumsily made and ill-fitting, but at least they afforded him some protection against the numbing cold. It wasn't until his nakedness was covered and warmth began to return to his limbs that his teeth began to chatter.

Maneck led him down a bright white passageway to another great, high-vaulted chamber. Things the color and size of aphids swarmed across the floor, bumping into each other and into his legs, singing incomprehensible gibberish in high, sweet voices. In the center of the room squatted a bone-colored box like the one that had destroyed his van. As they drew near, Ramón saw that the thing was not solid. Instead, a million tiny strands of dripping white and cream made a webwork of slats that shifted to create an opening and then close it behind them.

The interior of the box was likewise only half-solid-a wide, low bench that appeared intended for Maneck's barrel-like form and also a smaller area set into the wall where Ramón himself might sit, legs pulled up to his chest.

Ramón waited leadenly while Maneck examined the box, leaning in to run its long, slender fingers carefully over the controls. He could feel himself becoming dazed and passive, numbed by weariness and shock-he'd been through too much, too fast. And he was tired, more tired than he could remember being before; perhaps the shot they'd given him, glucose or adrenaline or whatever it had been, was wearing off. He was almost asleep on his feet when Maneck seized him, lifted him into the air as if he was a little child, and stuffed him into the box. He struggled to sit up, but Maneck seized his arms, drew them behind his back, and bound them with a thin length of wirelike substance, then hobbled his legs, before turning and sitting down in front of the controls. Maneck touched a pushplate, and the box rose smoothly into the air.

Acceleration shoved Ramón's head sideways, pinning it at an uncomfortable angle. In spite of the terror of his situation, he realized that he was unable to stay awake any longer. Even as they rose toward the high-domed cavern roof, his eyes were squeezing shut, as though the mild g-forces that pulled with mossy inevitability on his bones were also drawing him inexorably into sleep.

Above them, the rock opened.

As Ramón's consciousness faded, drowning him in hissing white snow, he saw, beyond the hole in the stone, a single pale and isolate star.

A freezing wind lashed him awake. He struggled to sit up. The box lurched to the left, and he found himself looking through the spaces between the woven slats straight down through an ocean of air at the tiny tops of the trees. The box canted over the other way, violently, and the darkening evening sky swirled around his head, momentarily turning the faint, newly emerged stars into tight little squiggles of light.

They leveled off. Maneck sat behind the box's control panel unshakably, firm and cold as a statue, quills rippling in the bitter wind. Banking again, they fell at a slant through the air. He couldn't have been insensible for more than a minute or two, Ramón realized; that was the aliens' mountain just behind them, the exit hole now irised shut again, and that was the mountain slope where he'd been captured, just below. Even as they coasted down toward the slope, the sky was growing significantly darker. The sun had sunk beneath the horizon some moments before, leaving only the thinnest sliver of glazed red along the junction line of land and air. The rest of the sky was the color of plum and eggplant and ash, dying rapidly to an inky blackness overhead and to the west. Armed and bristling with trees, the mountain slope rushed up to meet them. Too fast! Surely they would crash  …

They touched down lightly in the middle of an alpine valley, settling out of the sky as silently as a feather. Maneck killed the box's engine. Darkness swallowed them, and they were surrounded by the sly and predatory noises of evening. Maneck seized Ramón, and, lifting him like a rag doll, dragged him from the box, carried him a few feet away, and dropped him to the ground.

Ramón groaned involuntarily, startled and ashamed by the loudness of his voice. His arms were still bound behind him, and to lie upon them was excruciatingly painful. He rolled over onto his stomach. The ground under him was so cold that it was comfortable, and even in his sick and confused condition, Ramón realized that meant death. He thrashed and squirmed, and managed to roll himself up in the long cloak he'd been given; it was surprisingly warm. He would have fallen asleep then, in spite of his pain and discomfort, but light beat against his eyelids where there had been no light, and he opened his eyes.

The light seemed blinding at first, but it dimmed as his eyes adjusted. Maneck had brought something from the box, a small globe attached to a long metal rod, and jammed the sharp end of the rod into the soil; now the globe was alight, burning from within with a dim bluish light, emitting rhythmic waves of heat. As Ramón watched, Maneck walked around the globe-the sahael shortening visibly with each step-and came slowly toward him with seeming deliberation. Only then, watching Maneck prowl toward him, seeing the wet gleam in the corner of its orange eyes as it looked from side to side, seeing the way its nose crinkled and twitched, the way its head swiveled and swayed restlessly on the stubby neck, the shrugging of its shoulders at each step, hearing the iron rasp of its breath, smelling its thick, musky odor-only then did some last part of Ramón's mind fully accept the fact that he was its captive, alone and at its mercy in the wilderness.