Hunter's Run(3)

Afterward, Ramón lay spent in the bed. Another shuttle was lifting off. Usually there was hardly more than one a month. But the Enye were coming soon, earlier than expected, and the platform above Diegotown needed to be fitted out to receive the great ships with their alien cargoes.

It was generations ago that mankind had raised itself up from the gravity wells of Earth and Mars and Europa and taken to the stars with dreams of conquest. Humanity had planned to spread its seed through the universe like a high councilor's son at a porttown brothel, but it had been disappointed. The universe was already taken. Other star-faring races had been there before them.

Dreams of empire faded into dreams of wealth. Dreams of wealth decayed into shamed wonder. More than the great and enigmatic technologies of the Silver Enye and Turu, it was the nature of space itself that defeated them, as it had defeated every other star-faring race. The vast dark was too great. Too big. Communication at the speed of light was so slow as to barely be communication at all. Governance was impossible. Law beyond what could be imposed locally was farcical. The outposts of the Commercial Alliance that humanity had been "persuaded" to join by the Silver Enye (much as Admiral Perry's gunships had "persuaded" Japan to open itself up for trade in a much earlier generation) were wide-flung, some outposts falling out of contact for generations, some lost and forgotten or else put on a bureaucrat's schedule of concerns to be addressed another generation hence by another bureaucrat as yet unborn.

Establishing dominance-or even much continuity-across that gaping infinity of Night was something that seemed possible only from the provincially narrow viewpoint imposed by looking up from the bottom of a gravity well. Once you got out among the stars, you learned better.

No race had been able to overcome such vast distance, and so they had striven to overcome time. And it was in this that humanity at last found some small niche in the crowded, chaotic darkness of the universe. Enye and Turu saw the damage done by humanity to its own environment, the deeply human propensity for change and control and the profoundly limited ability to see ahead to consequences, and they had found it more virtue than vice. The vast institutional minds, human and alien both, entered into a glacially slow generational agreement. Where empty planets were, intractable and inconvenient and dangerous, with wild flora and unknown fauna, there humans would be put. For the slow decades or centuries that it required to tame, to break, to pave over whatever marvels and threats evolution had put there, the Silver Enye and Cian and Turu and whatever other great races happened by would act as trade ships once had in the ancient days when mankind had displaced itself from the small islands and insignificant hills of Earth.

The S?o Paulo colony was barely in its second generation. There were women still alive who could recall the initial descent onto an untouched world. Diegotown, Nuevo Janeiro, San Esteban. Amadora. Little Dog. Fiddler's Jump. All the cities of the south had bloomed since then, like mold on a Petri dish. Men had died from the subtle toxins of the native foods. Men had discovered the great cat-lizards- soon nicknamed chupacabras, after the mythical goat-suckers of Old Earth-that had stood proud and dumb at the peak of the planet's food chain, and men had died for their discovery. The oyster-eyed Silver Enye had not. The insect-and-glass Turu had not. The enigmatic Cian with their penchant for weightlessness had not.

And now the great ships were coming ahead of schedule; each half-living ship heavy, they all assumed, with new equipment and people from other colonies hoping to make a place for themselves here on S?o Paulo. And also rich with the chance of escape for those to whom the colony had become a prison. More than one person had asked Ramón if he'd thought of going up, out, into the darkness, but they had misunderstood him. He had been in space; he had come here. The only attraction that leaving could hold was the chance to be someplace with even fewer people, which was unlikely. However ill he fit in S?o Paulo, he could imagine no situation less odious.

He didn't recall falling asleep, but woke when the late morning sun streaming through Elena's window shone in his face. He could hear her humming in the next room, going about the business of her morning. Shut up, you evil bitch, he thought, wincing at the flash of a lingering hangover. She had no talent for song-every note she made was flat and grating. Ramón lay silent, willing himself back to sleep, away from this city, this irritating noise, this woman, this moment in time. Then the humming was drowned by an angry sizzling sound, and, a moment later, the scent of garlic and chili sausage and frying onions wafted into the room. Ramón was suddenly aware of the emptiness in his belly. With a sigh, he raised himself to his elbow, swung his sleep-sodden legs around, and, stumbling awkwardly, made his way to the doorway.

"You look like shit," Elena said. "I don't know why I even let you in my house. Don't touch that! That's my breakfast. You can go earn your own!"

Ramón tossed the sausage from hand to hand, grinning, until it cooled enough to take a bite.

"I work fifty hours a week to make the credit. And what do you do?" Elena demanded. "Loaf around in the terreno cimarrón, come into town to drink whatever you earn. You don't even have a bed of your own!"

"Is there coffee?" Ramón asked. Elena gestured with her chin toward the worn plastic-and-chitin thermos on the kitchen counter. Ramón rinsed a tin cup and filled it with yesterday's coffee. "I'll make my big find," he said. "Uranium or tantalum. I'll make enough money that I won't have to work again for the rest of my life."

"And then you'll throw me out and get some young puta from the docks to follow you around. I know what men are like."

Ramón filched another sausage from her plate. She slapped the back of his hand hard enough to sting.

"There's a parade today," Elena said. "After the Blessing of the Fleet. The governor's making a big show to beam out to the Enye. Make them think we're all so happy that they came early. There's going to be dancing and free rum."

George R. R. Martin Gardner Dozois Daniel Abraham

"The Enye think we're trained dogs," Ramón said around a mouthful of sausage.

Hard lines appeared at the corners of Elena's mouth, her eyes went cold.

"I think it would be fun," she said, thin venom in her tone. Ramón shrugged. It was her bed he was sleeping in. He'd always known there was a price for its use.

"I'll get dressed," he said and swilled down the last of the coffee. "I've got a little money. It can be my treat."

They skipped the Blessing of the Fleet-Ramón had no interest in hearing priests droning mumbo-jumbo bullshit while pouring dippers of holy water on beaten-up fishing boats-but they'd arrived in time for the parade that followed. The main street that ran past the Palace of the Governors was wide enough for five hauling trucks to drive abreast, if they stopped traffic coming the other way. Great floats moved slowly, often stopping for minutes at a time, with secular subjects-a "Turu spacecraft" studded with lights, being pulled by a team of horses; a plastic chupacabra with red-glowing eyes and a jaw that opened and closed to show the great teeth made from old pipes-mixing with oversized displays of Jesus, Bob Marley, and the Virgin of Despegando Station. Here came a twice-life-sized satirical (recognizable but very unflattering) caricature of the governor, huge lips pursed as if ready to kiss the Silver Enyes' asses, and a ripple of laughter went down the street. The first wave of colonists, the ones who had named the planet S?o Paulo, had been from Brazil, and although few if any of them had ever been to Portugal, they were universally referred to as "the Portuguese" by the Spanish-speaking colonists, mostly Mexicans, who had arrived with the second and third waves. "The Portuguese" still dominated the upper-level positions in local government and administration, and the highest-paying jobs, and were widely resented and disliked by the Spanish-speaking majority, who felt they'd been made into second-class citizens in their own new home. A chorus of boos and jeers followed the huge float of the governor down the street.

Musicians followed the great lumbering floats: steel bands, string bands, mariachi bands, tuk bands, marching units of Zouaves, strolling guitarists playing fado music. Stilt-walkers and tumbling acrobats. Young women in half-finished carnival costumes danced along like birds. With Elena at his side, Ramón was careful not to look at their half-exposed breasts (or to get caught doing so).

The maze of side streets was packed full. Coffee stands and rum sellers; bakers offering frosted pastry redjackets and chupacabras; food carts selling fried fish and tacos, satay and jug-jug; sideshow buskers; street artists; fire-eaters; three-card monte dealers-all were making the most of the improvised festival. For the first hour, it was almost enjoyable. After that, the constant noise and press and scent of humanity all around him made Ramón edgy. Elena was her infant-girl self, squealing in delight like a child and dragging him from one place to another, spending his money on candy rope and sugar skulls. He managed to slow her slightly by buying real food-a waxed paper cone of saffron rice, hot peppers, and strips of roasted butterfin flesh, and a tall, thin glass of flavored rum-and by picking a hill in the park nearest the palace where they could sit on the grass and watch the great, slow river of people slide past them.