Hunter's Run(37)

"I'm not a snitch."

"Not saying you are," Ramón said. "What I'm saying is this: S?o Paulo? It doesn't have laws. It has cops. I'm one of them, and you helped me. Whatever happened at the El Rey, it was someone else. That way we're square."

"How do you know I'm not innocent? What if I really didn't do it?"

"If you didn't do it, then I'm gypping you big-time," Ramón said, and grinned. His twin wavered for a moment, then a smile plucked at his mouth too. The knife blade lowered. The man stepped back.

"It's my knife. I'm keeping it. It's mine."

"You want to hold on to it, that's cool," Ramón said, trying to sound reassuring, the way cops did when they were talking you down. He'd heard the tone a few times, and it wasn't hard to fake. "I understand you'd want to keep the weapon. That's not a problem. After all, we're just two guys on the run from a bunch of goddamn aliens, right? Doesn't matter which one of us has the knife, because we're on the same side."

"If you fuck me over  … " the man said, and left the threat hanging. Because, Ramón thought, really, a cop decides to break his word to you, exactly what could you do? Take him to a judge and see who got believed?

"If I start fucking people over, Johnny Joe and all the other pendejos like him will lose their shit," Ramón said. Grave. Authoritative. Like a cop. "It ain't worth it. I tell you you're clean, man. That makes you clean. But any reward we get for turning in those alien fucks, we split it. You and me. Right down the middle."

"Fuck that," the man said. "I saved your ass. You were walking bait. I get three quarters."

Ramón felt his belly loosen. He was clear. The crisis was gone, and nothing left but a little posing and haggling. "Sixty-forty," he said. "And you didn't kill anyone. Ever."

"I'm getting gypped," the man said.

"So's everyone. We're the cops, remember?" Ramón said, then smiled. The other man coughed out an incredulous laugh, then smiled himself. "You want to start getting these leaves in place, so we can get out of here and back to someplace they've got plumbing?"

"Fucking cops," the man said, but now it was a joke. The man was half-drunk with relief. And why shouldn't he be? Ramón had just forgiven him his sins.

They worked until the light failed. The little lean-to was half-ready; a bed of leaves made and the covering laid down with the leaves arranged in overlapping rows so that any rain would run down the top and into the water instead of dripping through. Ramón called the halt; his twin would have kept going all night, he guessed, just to prove something. And yet, as they walked the short path back to their little camp, he could tell that the relationship had changed. Clueless banker lost in the wild was one thing. Policeman and granter of pardons was another beast entirely. Ramón built a small fire and the other man unloaded a double handful of sug beetles, suicide nuts, and the bright green berries that Ramón had never found named in the planet's taxonomies and that tasted like cheap white wine and pears. It wasn't a feast, but it tasted good. Afterward, Ramón drank water until his belly felt full. He'd have to piss in the middle of the night, but for the moment, it fooled his body into feeling sated.

His twin lay back beside the fire. Ramón saw the man's fingers twitching, and knew he was wishing he had a cigarette. The thought immediately made him want one too. How long, he wondered, before the nicotine stains grew back, yellowing his fingers and teeth? How long before the teasing fan dance of identities he was doing for the other man stopped working and the truth came out? Maybe the right thing was to leave now, go into the wild and avoid his twin, the governor, the police, and the Enye entirely.

He'd thought about living off the land many times before. The idea of fading away into the forest had seemed more plausible when it was a fantasy, or else something he could do with a good, solid van that he could lock up at night. Or if he at least had his pinche knife back.

There had been stories from the first wave of colonists of men who had gone feral; moved out into the forests and steppes, deserts and tide pools of the planet and never came back to civilization. Some of them might even be true. Colonies didn't tend to pull people who loved their old lives on Earth. There would be a percentage who hated life here too; men and women who'd hauled their sorry personal failings all the way from Earth. Ramón wondered if he was one of those. Except that he wanted to get back now. So he wasn't feral yet. And as long as his fingers kept twitching toward a cigarette case that was days behind him and across a river, he would never wholly abandon the cities.

"Why'd you become a cop?" the man asked, his voice already slurred by exhaustion and impending sleep.

"I don't know," Ramón said. "It seemed like the right thing at the time. Why'd you become a prospector?"

"It was better than being on a work gang," the man said. "I'm pretty good at it. And there was a time I needed to get out of town, you know? Get kind of lost for a while."

"Yeah?" Ramón said. He was tired as well. It had been a long day in a series of very long days. His body felt heavy and comfortable.

"There was this guy," the other man said. "Martín Casaus. We were friends for a while, you know. When I first got here. He was one of those guys hangs out by the orientation centers and tries to make friends with new people since no one who knows him here likes him." The other man spat. "He called himself a trapper. I guess he even killed things sometimes. Anyway, he got this idea I was after his woman. I wasn't either. She was a fucking dog. But he got it in his head that I was trying to cut him out."

Lianna. Ramón remembered her, the night at the bar. The deep red wallpaper, like drying blood. He'd gone to her, sat at her side. She'd still smelled of the kitchen-frying oil and herbs, hot metal and chili. He had offered to buy her a drink. She'd accepted. She'd taken his hand. She'd been gentle about it. Tentative. He'd had enough to drink that he was a little fuzzy in the head. Martín's fantasies of her-of opening her blouse, of whispering filthy, exciting things into her ears, of waking in her bed-had intoxicated him as much as the drink.

"I didn't give a shit about her," the man said, chuckling. "She was a cook. Kind of dumpy, you know. Ate too much of her own stuff. Martín, though. Fuck. He was crazy about her."

Lianna's room had been in the back-a separate building grown from cheap chitin out behind the cantina with a little bathroom, a shower, but no place to cook. The LEDs spelling out los rancheros had filled the room with dim, harsh light. He'd undressed her to the sound of Portuguese fado music on the music feed, the singer crooning about love and loss and death, a song whose words he heard again now. It had been a beautiful song. In spite of the mild night air, Lianna had had goose bumps. He remembered the gooseflesh on her arms. Her thighs. Her breasts. She'd been shy at first. Feeling guilty about having him there. And then less so. And then not shy at all.

"So Martín gets it into his head that I fucked this girl. Now, he wasn't seeing her. Hadn't spoken more than maybe a dozen words to her his whole life. But he thinks he's in love. So he gets crazy. Jumps me with a sheet metal hook. Almost kills me."

Afterward, he'd run his fingers through her hair as she slept. He'd wanted to cry, but hadn't been able to. Even now, the memory growing in like a vine in his brain, he couldn't say why he'd wanted to do that, what mixture of lust and sorrow, loneliness and guilt had moved him so much. Part of it was that he'd betrayed Martín. Only part of it, though. Lianna.

"So I figure, you know, as soon as I'm healed up, maybe I should get scarce. I put a down payment on a van from this place I'd been working that was about to go tits-up. I got some old surveying software from the widow of a guy I knew that died. Took off. It just went on from there. You know how that goes."

"I do," Ramón agreed. "You ever see her again?"

"The dumpy cook girl? No, man. Why bother, you know?"

She'd snored a little, just a wheeze in and then out. She had a cheap poster of the Virgin of Despegando Station over her bed, the bright blue eyes and robes glowing in the near dark. Ramón had thought he was in love with her. He'd written her letters but deleted them before he hit send. He couldn't conjure up what he had put in them. He wondered if the other man remembered what they said. If not, the words were gone forever.

He hadn't told that story in years. If he had, he would have talked about her exactly the way his twin had, just now. Some things you just don't say to people.

"You got quiet," the man said. "You thinking about that Carmina? She had you whipped, mi amigo. I could hear it when you talked about her."

A sneering tone had crept into the other's voice, and Ramón knew he was on dangerous ground, but he couldn't keep himself from asking, "How about you? You got a girl now?"

"I got someone I fuck," the other said. "She's got a mouth on her sometimes, but she's okay. I don't mind fucking her. She's pretty good in bed."

Time to take a chance, push it a little. "You love her?"