Hunter's Run(38)
The other man froze. "That's none of your business, cabrón," he said in a hard voice.
Ramón allowed himself to lock eyes with the other man for a heartbeat, then said gruffly, "You're right. Sorry." Not rising to the insult. Backing down, but in a way consistent with his tough-cop persona. Not craven enough to arouse the other's ire.
After a moment of silence, Ramón said, "Let's get some sleep, eh? Long day tomorrow."
"Yeah," the man said, his tone sour. "Sure."
But, as Ramón had hoped, the subject of who he loved didn't come up again.
Chapter 20
They launched the raft around noon the next day, the morning spent in final preparations and unsuccessful hunting. It was more cramped. The fire pit sat at the back, where one of them could both tend it and steer with the oar. The lean-to ran lengthwise along one side. It unbalanced the raft a little, but if Ramón had put it in the midline, he wouldn't have been able to see ahead and steer. Of course it blocked part of his view no matter where it sat. And as a counterbalance, he'd put a pile of wood for the fire on the other side, not so near the edge that it was likely to get soaked.
Ramón steered them out into the river where the flow was swiftest, then spent the afternoon holding steady. The man sat at the side, a fishing line in his hand. And here it was, the grand escape plan brought to its perfect end. Two unwashed and unshaven guys on a grungy raft, fishing to eat and taking turns steering down the middle of the river. Ramón scratched his belly. The scar was growing, and the one on his arm. His hair was slightly coarser too; he could feel it. No doubt he was starting to get the creases in his face back as well.
He wished he'd kept the cigarette case. Or anything he could use for a mirror. How long would it be before the other man realized what was happening? Every time his twin glanced back at him, Ramón felt his belly growing tighter.
As they moved south, the forests changed. Needle-leaved iceroot gave way to lacy sponge oak. Twice, Ramón caught sight of the great pyramids of dorado colonies, their sides swarming with the crawling black spiders. The sounds also changed. The chirr and squawk of the thousand varieties of half lizard, half bird, as they threatened one another and fought for food and mates. Deeper calls, like the voices of women singing in some beautiful African tongue, from kyi-kyi preparing to shed their summer skins. And once, the soft, whistling sound of a redjacket cutting through the underbrush. Ramón didn't see the animal, though, and since it didn't attack, apparently it hadn't seen them either.
Above them, the sky-lilies were being blown south and east by some high-atmosphere wind. Their distant bodies looked like points of deep green against the blue arcing sky, strewn like dark stars against the daylight. One precocious colony had bloomed, sending out streamers of yellow and red that were likely miles long, though from so far away, Ramón could cover them with his thumb. When the others joined it, it would look like a flower garden swimming up into space.
But it was the hovering black Enye ships that kept drawing his attention. Six of them hung in the air. It struck him for the first time how much the ships were shaped like ticks, and once the image was in his head, he couldn't get rid of it. He had ridden from his home, his world, his past in the belly of a great tick, and been puked out onto this beautiful planet. None of them belonged here-not the Enye, not Maneck and its people, not humanity. And yet S?o Paulo suffered them.
Maybe he could ship out again. Get back on the Enye ship, move to some other colony. Or cast his fate to the sky and come down wherever God put him. S?o Paulo wasn't so big he could be assured of never running into his twin again. The universe, on the other hand, was that big. Bigger. For a moment-as strong as a memory reawakening-Ramón felt again the gaping abyss from his dream. He shuddered and looked back at the river's edge.
Shipping out would mean getting a false identity, but anything meant that now. The real problem was going on the ship. Smelling the skins of the Enye, hearing their voices. Knowing what they had done, and what they were doing, and the real purpose of these colonies. Before, he might have been able to do it. His twin, sitting on the edge of the raft with his head resting on his good hand, he might be able to do it. But Ramón had felt the flow, had become the abyss, and heard the cries of dying kii. Of dying babies. He couldn't do it. Not anymore.
The easiest thing would still be to kill the man. If his twin were dead, all this would go away. He could step back into his own life, call in the little insurance policy he had on the van, and try to start over. It had been hit in a rockslide. Why not? The policy was cheap enough that no one would bother with more than a cursory investigation, and they wouldn't find any pieces chopped and sold secondhand. He could have his life back instead of ceding it to this cabrón. And if the cops were looking for someone to pin the European's death on, they'd have found someone else by the time he got back.
It wouldn't even be that hard to do. He cooked. He kept watch while the man slept. Even if he didn't have the knife, there were other ways. Shit, he could just push the bastard off the side of the raft. Ramón had damn near died in the river before, and he'd been nearer shore then. Trapped out in the middle of the river, where the current was strongest, the other man would almost certainly drown. And if by some miracle he did reach land, there were redjackets out there. And hundreds of miles to Fiddler's Jump. It was the safest thing. It was the sane thing.
He let himself imagine it. Standing up, pulling in the oar. Two steps, three. Then bringing the oar down fast and hard. He could almost hear the man's cry, the splash, the gurgling scream. It would fix everything. And would it really be killing? Would it really be murder? After all, one Ramón went into the wild, and one Ramón came out. Where was murder in that?
Under what circumstances do you kill?
Ramón blew out his breath and looked away. Shut up, Maneck! You're dead! The man jerked his head back toward Ramón, distrust in the dark eyes.
"Nothing," Ramón said, raising a hand. "Just caught myself dozing off."
"Yeah, well. Don't," the man said. "We don't have another oar, and I don't want to have to push this sonofabitch to shore so we can look for one."
"Yeah. Thanks," Ramón said. And then, "Hey. Ese. You mind if I ask you something?"
"You gonna tape it? Tell it to the judge?"
"No," Ramón said. "It's just something I was wondering."
The man shrugged and didn't bother to look back.
"Ask if you want. I don't like the question, I'll tell you to go fuck yourself."
"That guy you didn't kill. The European?"
"The one I never saw and don't know shit about?"
"Him," Ramón agreed. "If you had done it-you didn't, but if you had. Why? He wasn't fucking your wife. He wasn't after your job. He didn't go for you."
"Didn't he? How do you know?"
"He didn't," Ramón said. "I saw the report. It wasn't self-defense. So why?"
The man was silent. He tugged at his fishing line, let it play back out, and tugged it in again. Ramón thought that he wasn't going to answer at all. When he did, his voice was dismissive and conversational.
"We were drunk. He pissed me off. It got out of hand," the man said, dropping the pretense. "Just something that happened."
He had tried to back down, Ramón thought. The European had tried to get back to just name-calling. Ramón had been the one who set the terms of the fight. Something about the straighthaired girl's laughter. That and the moment after the European went down, when the crowd stepped back. It was in there. Why could he kill a man whose death brought him nothing, and yet not be able to kill somebody when he had everything in the world to gain from it? When his very life might depend on it?
Ramón's twin caught four fish: two silver flatfish with blunt noses and permanently surprised mouths, one black-scaled river roach, and then something Ramón had never seen before, which looked to be equal parts eyes and teeth. That one they threw back. The man roasted the three edible fish while Ramón used the oar to keep the raft near the river's center. Birds or creatures near enough like them to take the name called from the tops of the trees, flew overhead, skimmed down across the river for a drink.
"You know," his twin said, "I always thought it would be good to go out for a while. Live off the land. When I came out, I was thinking I'd stay out here three, four months. Now I just want to get back to Diegotown and sleep in a real bed. With a roof."
"Amen," Ramón said.
The man cut a hunk of pale flesh from the flatfish, tossed it in his hand for a moment to let it cool, and popped it in his mouth. Ramón watched the tiny smile on the man's lips and realized how hungry he was.
"It's good?"
"Doesn't suck," the man agreed, then paused, his head tilting a degree. And then Ramón heard it too-a distant low rumble, constant as a radio link tuned to an empty channel. They realized what they were hearing at the same moment. Water, an unthinkable volume of it, falling.