Hunter's Run(16)
"And this is possible?" it asked.
Thoughts and memories flickered through Ramón's mind. Elena. The times he'd had to scrape by without liquor in order to make the payment on his van. The police. The European.
"No," Ramón said. "It's not. But you aren't a real man if you don't try. Come on. You're holding me back. If you're going to keep this fucking thing in me, the least you can do is keep up when I walk."
At the camp, Ramón lapsed into silence, and the alien allowed him that. It seemed thoughtful and introspective itself, as far as one could judge that in a creature that looked the way it did. As the day shifted toward night, Ramón did indeed feel the call to relieve himself, and was humiliated as the alien looked on.
"How about dinner, eh?" Ramón said briskly afterward, trying to shake off his shame. "More food? It's too late to go on today anyway."
"You've just emptied your bowels," Maneck said. "Now you will fill them up again?"
"That's what it is to be alive," Ramón said. "Eating and shitting, they never stop until you're dead. Dead men don't shit, or eat, but living men have to, or they soon stop living." A thought struck him, and he glanced slyly at the alien. "The man will have to eat too. The man you're chasing. You may as well learn how he'll do it. I'll show you how to fish."
"He will not set snares? As you did earlier?"
"He will," Ramón said. "But he'll set them in the water. Here. I'll show you."
Once the alien understood what Ramón needed, it cooperated. They rigged a crude fishing pole from a thin, dry limb snapped off a nearby iceroot and-after a tedious consultation with Maneck, who took a long time to understand what Ramón wanted-a length of pale, soft, malleable wire supplied by the alien. A stiffer sort of wire was shaped into a hook, and Ramón stamped along the shore, turning over rocks until he found a fat orange gret beetle to use for bait. Maneck's snout twitched with sudden interest as Ramón impaled the insect.
Ramón led the alien to a likely-looking spot on the side of the stream and dropped the line. As he fished, Ramón stole glances at Maneck from time to time. The alien stood and watched the water. For all the impatience it sometimes showed about getting on with their task, it seemed perfectly content to stand there, immobile and untiring, for as long as it might take. Halfway across the stream, Ramón glimpsed a flash of blue as a fish leaped from the water, but nothing took his bait. Never the most patient of men, he began to grow restive. To occupy the time, he began to whistle a silly little tune that Elena had taught him early in their time together, before the fighting had grown so bad. He could not remember the words that went with it, but that didn't matter. The song made him think of Elena, her long, dark hair and her quick hands, callused by endless hours in her little vegetable garden. She was a small, dark woman, very pretty, though her face was dotted with the craters left by some childhood disease. Sometimes Ramón would trace the marks with his fingertips, unconsciously, and then Elena would look away. "Stop," she would say, "stop, you remind me of how ugly I am." And then, if he hadn't had too much to drink, he would say, "No, no, they're not so bad, you are very beautiful." But Elena would never believe him.
"What is that sound you are making?" Maneck demanded, shattering Ramón's reverie.
He frowned. "I was whistling, monster. A little song."
"‘Whistling,'" the alien repeated. "Is this another language? I do not understand, although I hear a structure, an ordering. Explain the meaning of what you were saying."
"I wasn't saying anything," Ramón said. "It was music. Your people, they don't have music?"
"Music," Maneck said. "Ah. Ordered sound. I comprehend. You derive pleasure from the sequencing of certain patterns. We don't have music, but it is an interesting mathematical function. To order that which is random enhances the flow. You may resume whistling music, man."
Ramón did not accept the alien's invitation. He pulled in his line and threw it in again. The first cast brought up something Ramón had never seen. That wasn't odd-there were new creatures caught in the nets at Diegotown and Swan's Neck every week, so little yet was known about S?o Paulo. This was a bloated, gray bottom dweller whose scales were dotted by white, vaguely pustulant nodules. It hissed at him as he pulled the hook free, and, with a sense of disgust, he threw it back into the water. It vanished with a plop.
"Why did you throw the food away?" Maneck asked.
"It was monstrous," Ramón said. "Like you."
He found another beetle, and they resumed their watch on the river as night slowly gathered around them. The sky above the forest canopy shifted toward the startling violet of the S?o Paulo sunset. Auroras danced green and blue and gold. Watching them, Ramón felt for an instant the profound peace that the open wilderness always gave him. Even captive and enslaved, even with his flesh pierced by the sahael, the immense, dancing sky was beautiful and a thing of comfort.
A few minutes later, Ramón finally caught a fat, white bladefish with vivid scarlet fins. As he hauled it out of the water, he caught sight of Maneck's curiously watching face, and shook his head. "You don't have music and you don't eat real food," he mused. "I think you are a very sad sort of creature. What about sex? Do you have that much, at least? Do you fuck, what about that? Are you a boy or a girl?"
"Boy," the alien said, "girl. These concepts do not apply to us. Sexual reproduction is primitive and inefficient. We have transcended this."
"Too bad," Ramón said. "That's taking transcendence too far! Still, at least I suppose that means I don't have to worry about you sneaking into the lean-to with me tonight, eh?" He grinned at the look of incomprehension on the alien's face, and walked back to camp, Maneck pacing silently at his side. There, he quickly rebuilt the cook fire, and roasted the fish gently, briefly wishing he had some garlic or habanero powder to rub on it. Still, the flesh was warm and succulent, and when he had eaten his fill, and smoked some strips of the fish and wrapped them in hierba leaves for the next day, he sat back on his heels and yawned. He felt very full and oddly contented despite his perilous situation and inhuman companion.
There were no more questions, no more obscure demands. When at last his body began to feel heavy, he pulled himself into the rough lean-to that the policeman had made, cradled his head on his arms, and let himself drift, always half aware that the thing was nearby and watching.
Let it watch him. Every hour it spent here with him was another chance for the stranger who had been Ramón's pursuer and was now his prey. The man who the aliens hadn't made into a puppet. Who hadn't killed the European.
The one who was still free.
Chapter 8
The next day dawned cold and clear. Ramón woke slowly, drifting into consciousness so gradually that he was never quite sure when he passed the dividing line between sleep and wakefulness. Even when he had come fully awake, he remained very still, wrapped in his cloak, savoring the sounds and smells of morning. It was snug and warm within the folds of his alien garment, but the outside air was crisp and chilly on his face, and fragrant with the distinctive cinnamon-tang scent of the iceroot forest. Ramón could hear the rush and gurgle of the nearby stream, the whistling calls of small "birds" up with the sun, and, off in the distance, the odd, booming cry of a descamisado returning to its lair in the trees after a long night of hunting.
Although his body ached from sleeping on the hard, stony ground and his bladder was full enough to be painful, Ramón was reluctant to stir. It was peaceful lying there; peaceful and familiar. The discomforts were old friends. How many times had he woken alone in the forest like this, after a hard day of prospecting? Many, he thought. Too many to count, too many to recall.
It was almost possible to pretend that this was just another morning like all those others, that nothing had changed, that it had all been a bad dream. He held that thought closely for a while, reluctant to release it. It was a lie, but it was a comforting lie, so he took his time in waking. He opened his eyes carefully, and found himself staring off through the opening of the lean-to toward the west. The tall iceroots seemed to have an azure glow playing about their tops, where dawn had broached them. Beyond them, to the far southwest, he saw a handful of bright stars, fading now as the sun came up: Fiddler's Bow, the distinctive northern constellation from which Fiddler's Jump took its name, since that was the southernmost point from which the Bow could be seen. He watched until the last bright star had been swallowed by the sky, then he stirred, and the illusion of safety and normality died as he felt the sahael pull against the soft flesh of his throat. Ramón pushed himself reluctantly to a sitting position. Maneck still stood outside the lean-to, beads of dew on its swirling, oil-sheen skin. Its quills were stirring in the morning wind; seemingly, it hadn't moved since he had gone to sleep, standing still as a stone, watching him throughout the night. Ramón suppressed a shiver at the thought.