"You cauterized it," he said. His mind went back to the camp where he'd found his cigarette case, where Maneck had revealed to him the story of his doubling. This was why the man had spent so long there. He'd been recovering from the self-treatment of his wound.
"Yeah," the man said, and his voice was casual and drawling in a way that Ramón knew meant that he was proud of having done it. "I heated up the knife until it glowed and then used that. Had to. I was bleeding all over the place. There was some bone I had to cut out too."
Ramón suppressed a smile. They were tough sons of bitches, him and his twin. He couldn't help feeling a little proud of himself too, for what the other man had done.
"Fever?" he asked.
"On and off," the man admitted. "No streaks up my arm, though. So it looks like no blood poisoning. Or else I'd be dead by now anyway, eh? So tell me about how you got caught by those devils."
Ramón launched into his tale. A little over a month ago, he'd been out camping by himself in the far north. His lover, Carmina, had left him, and he'd wanted to spend some time alone where she couldn't find him and his friends couldn't offer sympathy. He'd seen a flying box, gone to investigate, and the aliens had done something- knocked him out, drugged him. He didn't remember much about that part. Then he'd been imprisoned in a tank until they pulled him out and told him to go hunting. It was a simple enough story to remember, and not so far from the truth that he'd be likely to get caught flatfooted. And the other Ramón would likely sympathize. He talked about the explosion that had ruined the yunea, the forced march, the attack by the chupacabra, and his own escape. He pretended to be amazed when the man explained the strategy behind the flatfur corpses. The delight the other took in his own cleverness started to become annoying. If Ramón didn't nod or make appreciative noises at the right moment, his twin glared at him.
The whole thing was a manipulation from start to finish. And it seemed to work. When Ramón explained how he needed to be away from civilization, that the comfort offered by friends was as painful and humiliating as being mocked, the man nodded to himself. And when the tale was finished, he didn't comment on it. He wouldn't. It wasn't the sort of thing men did.
"Sleep in shifts?" the man asked.
"Sure," Ramón said. "Probably better that way. I'll take first. I'm not tired."
It was a lie. He was deeply weary, but he'd had the period of unconsciousness that was almost like sleep after he'd pulled himself from the river. The other Ramón hadn't even had that. And anyway, it was best to do the sorts of things that a banker from Amadora would do to ingratiate himself to his rescuer.
The man shrugged and held out his field knife. Ramón hesitated for a moment, then took it. The slightly sticky feel of the leather grip, the balanced weight. It was familiar, and yet different than he remembered it. A moment's consideration told him that it was his body that had changed; he'd never held it without calluses on his hands. The other man misread his expression.
"It's not much," the man said. "It's all that we've got. Won't fight off a chupacabra or redjackets, but … "
"No trouble," Ramón said. "Thanks."
The man grunted, lay down, and turned his back to the fire. Ramón tested the heft of the knife again, growing used to it in his new hands. These unlikely companions he traveled with-men and aliens-seemed to be pretty comfortable handing him knives. Maneck had done it because it knew it was safe. The man had done it because he assumed Ramón was an ally. It was a mistake he would have made himself. Obviously.
Ramón peered into the darkness, careful not to let the light of their modest cook fire blind him to the shadows, and considered his options. The man had accepted him, for the time being. But it was a long way to Fiddler's Jump, and if what Maneck had said was true, Ramón would grow to more closely resemble his old self before they got there. Sooner or later, the man would figure out that something was wrong. And even if he didn't, Ramón didn't know what he'd do when they got back to the colony. A judge would be hard-pressed to accept that he was the real, legal Ramón Espejo. And the Enye might well decide that he should die along with Maneck's people. Nothing good would come from two Ramóns walking out of the bush together.
The smart thing to do would be to kill the man. He had a knife, his twin was snoring and wounded. One quick slice to the neck, and the problem would be gone. He'd make his way south, resume his life, and the other man's bones would never be found. It was what needed to happen.
And yet, he couldn't do it.
Under what circumstances do you kill? Maneck's question echoed in his memory. Ramón settled down for the long, slow hours of his watch and found himself less and less able to answer the question.
At first light, they went back to the work of building the raft. Ramón retied the cane floats, his two hands cinching them tighter than his twin could manage. They considered how many branches they'd need to finish the structure. It was a quick, easy negotiation. Ramón and the other man approached the problem the same way, came to the same conclusions. The only real difference was in his twin's refusal to give over a larger share of the work. It made sense that the uninjured man should bear the heavier load, but his twin was bent on putting the soft-handed Amadora banker in his place, and Ramón recognized the impulse clearly enough to know there was no point arguing.
By noon, they had enough raw materials to put the raft together. Ramón fashioned a rough harness from two cut branches and a length of bright blue panama ivy and used it to haul the cane and the branches down the short path to the water. The man allowed him that much, bringing the armful of stripped bark and iceroot leaves instead. Ramón figured it meant his twin was feeling tired.
The sandbar was smaller than Ramón remembered it, but just as cluttered with debris. Without consulting the man walking behind him, he pulled the load to the bank just downstream. The bar created a still place in the waters. The eddy was a good place to test their raft before they launched themselves out into the unforgiving flow.
Ramón shrugged off the harness and squatted on the bank. In the still water, he could see himself reflected, and his twin standing behind him. Two men, similar, but not yet identical. Ramón's growing beard was softer and lighter. His hair hung closer to his head than it had before, changing the shape of his face a little. Still, they might have been brothers. Since he knew to look for it, he could see where the moles on his twin's cheek and neck were echoed by minute discolorations on his own. The scar on his belly twinged.
"Not bad," the man said, and spat thoughtfully into the water, the ripples disturbing its soft mirror. The raft was going to be big. The lower gravity of S?o Paulo lent itself to fast-growing trees, and rather than take the time to cut the long saplings twice, they'd used them all at their full height. It wasn't luxury, but there would be easy room for them both. "We should put some shelter on it, though."
"Like a cabin?" Ramón asked, looking at the collection of sticks before him.
"A lean-to. Something to sleep in, get out of the weather. And if we got enough wood, we can add a fire grate, too. Line the bottom with iceroot leaves, fill it a couple hands high with good sand, and we can keep warm on the river."
Ramón squinted at the man, then upriver, back toward where Maneck and the chupacabra had done battle. He tried to guess how long he'd been in the water, how far he'd swum. He couldn't be sure. It had felt like a long time, a huge distance. But he'd been on the verge of death, so his impressions probably weren't all that good.
"Let's put those on farther down the river," he said. "I want to get away from here first."
"You scared?" the man jeered. His tone was taunting, and Ramón felt anger and embarrassment surge through him. Ramón could see the frustration in the other man, the anger always simmering under the skin, ready to be fanned awake, the desire to strike out and make himself feel better by hurting someone, and felt its twin in his own breast. He'd have to tread carefully here, or they'd end up in a fight neither could afford.
"Scared to face down a pissed-off chupacabra with a field knife and a stick?" he said. "Anyone isn't scared of that's stupid or crazy."
The man's expression hardened at the insult, but he shrugged casually.
"There's two of us," he said, turning half away from Ramón. "We could take him."
"Maybe," Ramón said, letting the obvious lie stand. They could no more take down a chupacabra than flap their arms and fly to Fiddler's Jump. If he pressed it, though, they'd end up fighting about it. "Thing is, what if the alien won?"
"Against a chupacabra?" the man asked, incredulous. It was easy to summon up the bravado to say they could kill the beast, but hard to stretch the imagination far enough to think that Maneck might win against the same odds. Ramón kept his expression somber.
"It was looking pretty even when I got out of there," he said. "The alien had a gun of some kind, and it shot the chupacabra at least twice; maybe that weakened it. I wasn't going to hang around to find out how it ended, you know? Besides, if the fucking alien is still alive and still has that gun, we don't want it catching up with us."