Hunter's Run(45)

There was too much to do. He had to pull himself together. He was cold. He was seriously injured and losing blood. He'd lost the oar and with it what little steering power he'd had. They'd never gotten any firewood onto the raft and he didn't have anything left to light a fire with anyway, although he'd need to dry off and warm up once the storm passed. His mind whirled back to the cataract and the queer peace that had settled over him when he'd been stuck on the rock. The thought related somehow to the dream of being Maneck and his trip from Earth with the Enye. He had a sense of something profound coming clear, like recognizing a face once known and then forgotten. When he realized he'd fallen asleep and forced his eyes to open again, the rain had stopped, and a wide goldand-green sunset was lighting the clouds from below. He heard the chiming call of a flock of flapjacks somewhere far above him.

He had to get an oar. Something to steer with in case there was another waterfall or rapids. But he'd hear the roar of it if there was one, and his twin owed him a watch anyway. Let the pendejo stay up and keep them safe. Serve the bastard right after he'd blown Ramón off back in the forest. He had wrapped himself in the ruins of the iceroot leaves, the wide fronds reflecting his own body's heat back against him, before he noticed the flaw in that plan, and by then he was too comfortable to care whether he died.

Days passed in fever. Reality and dream, past and future, knotted together. Ramón found himself possessed by the memory of things that could never have happened-flying like a sparrow over the rooftops of Mexico City with a slat of the alien yunea in his teeth, Elena weeping like a baby about his death and then fucking Martín Casaus on his grave, trekking through the bush with the raft strapped to his forehead, Maneck and the pale alien in the pit applauding and throwing a celebratory party for him-all hail Ramón Espejo, hero of monsters!-both of them wearing silly cone-shaped party hats and blowing noisemakers. His consciousness vibrated, split, and reformed like a bubble rising through turbulent water. In his rare moments of lucidity, he drank the fresh, clear water of the river and tended as best he could to his wounds. The cut on his ribs was scabbing over, but his leg had the hot, angry look of infection. He would have considered reopening the wound in case there was some foreign body-wood or cloth or Christ alone knew what-that was keeping him from healing, but sometime during his fever dreams, he'd lost the knife-maybe it had washed over the side-and he no longer had anything he could use to operate. One time, when he woke in mid-afternoon, he felt so strong and well, he imagined he might be able to catch a fish to eat. But just going to the raft's edge to drink had exhausted him.

One night Little Girl sailed overhead, but the moon had Elena's face, peering down at him disapprovingly. I told you a chupacabra would get you! the moon said.

On another night-or was it later the same night?-he saw La Llorona, the Crying Woman, walking the riverbank, luminescent in the darkness, wringing her hands and wailing over all the children who had been lost, her grief endless and inconsolable.

Another time, he had caught up on a sandbar and spent the better part of a day wondering how he might get the raft loose in his weakened state before realizing that he was wearing clothes- his shirt, his field jacket-and was therefore still asleep and dreaming. He woke to find the raft still well in the middle of the wide, now placid river.

Most unnerving, though, were the voices in the water. Maneck, his twin, the European, Lianna. Even when he was fully awake, he could hear them in the clicking and murmuring of the water, like a conversation in a nearby room, whose words he could almost make out. Once he thought his twin was screaming, Madre de Dios, help me! Help me! Please Jesus, I don't want to die!

The worst was when he heard Maneck laughing.

The small, still part of his mind that could sometimes watch the rest and evaluate it understood all of this. The hallucinations, the burning thirst strong enough to motivate even a man lost in the ruin of his own mind, the swelling and reddening leg. Ramón was in trouble, and there was nothing he could do to save himself. He was too disorganized in his thoughts to manage even the simplest of prayers.

Twice, he felt himself drifting off into a strange twilight sleep. Both times he managed to will himself back to awareness, death retreating perhaps halfway to shore. After all, Ramón Espejo was a tough sonofabitch, and he was Ramón Espejo. Still, when the third time came-as it inevitably would-he didn't think he could pull himself back again.

The Enye ships remained his only companions. No longer hawks. Carrion crows and vultures, they hung in the sky, watching him. Waiting for him to die.

When he heard unfamiliar voices gabbling-high-pitched and excited as monkeys-he thought at first that this was some new phase of his deterioration. It wasn't enough that he imagined voices he knew; now the whole S?o Paulo colony would escort him down to Hell, babbling in tongues. The fishing boat cutting through the water, moving slow to keep its wake from swamping his raft, was a new dream. The rustproof paint, white and gray but decorated with a rough image of the Virgin, was a nice touch. He wouldn't have thought his mind capable of such lovely detail. He was trying to make the Virgin wink at him when the raft tilted beneath him. A man knelt at his side, his skin as black as tar, his eyes wide with concern.

A Yaqui was too much to hope for, Ramón thought, but I always thought Jesus would at least look like a Mexican.

"He's alive!" the man shouted; Spanish had not been his first language, and whoever taught it to him had had a distinct Jamaican accent. "Call Esteban! Hurry! And get me a line!"

Ramón blinked, tried to sit up, and failed. There was a hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him down.

"It's okay, muchacho," the black man said. "It's okay. We've got you. Esteban's the best doctor on the river. We'll get you taken care of. Just don't try to move."

The raft thudded again, shifting on the breast of the water. Something else happened, time skipping like he'd dropped acid, and he was on a stretcher with his robe lying over him like a blanket, rising up the side of the boat. The painted Virgin at his right winked as he went past.

The deck stank of fish guts and hot copper. Ramón craned his head, trying to make out something, anything, that could tell him for certain that this was real and not another artifact of a dying brain. He wet his lips with a sluggish tongue. A woman-fiftyish, gray-haired, with an expression that said nothing could surprise her-sat on the deck beside him. She took him by the wrist and he tried to grasp her. She turned his wooden fingers aside, holding him firmly still as she took his pulse. Overhead, the Enye ships blinked in and out of existence. The woman made a disapproving sound and leaned forward.

It occurred to him for the first time that he'd reached Fiddler's Jump. His first reaction was relief so profound it approached religious awe. His second was an unfocused, suspicious anger that they might steal his raft.

"Hey!" the woman said again. He didn't know how often she'd said it, only that this wasn't the first. "Do you know where you are?"

He opened his mouth, frowning. He had known. Just a moment ago. But it was gone.

"Do you know who you are?"

That, at least, was worth a chuckle. She seemed pleased by his reaction.

"I am Ramón Espejo," he said. "And, hand to God, that's all I can tell you."

                       
       
           



       Chapter 25

Ramón Espejo awoke floating in a sea of darkness.

The tiny lights-green and orange, red and gold-that blinked or flickered around him illuminated nothing. Ramón tried to sit up, but his body rebelled. Slowly, he became aware of the machines around him, the pain in his flesh. For a muzzy, half-sleeping moment, he was certain that he was back in the strange caverns beneath the mountain, back in the vat where he'd been born, swimming again in that measureless midnight ocean. He must have cried out, because he heard the soft, fast sound of human footsteps, and a cheap white LED light blinked on. He tried to lift his arm against the sudden brightness, but he found himself tangled in the thin tubes that were penetrating his flesh like a half-dozen sahaels. And then there were hands on his wrists-human hands-guiding him back down to the bed.

"It's okay, Se?or Espejo. It's all right."

The man had to be near fifty, short gray hair in tight curls and a smile that looked like the aftermath of sorrow. He wore a nurse's smock. Ramón squinted, trying to see him better. Trying to see the room better.

"You know where you are, sir?"

"Fiddler's Jump," Ramón said, surprised by the gravel in his voice.

"Good guess," the nurse said. "They brought you down from there about a week ago. You want another try? You know what this building is?"

"Hospital," Ramón said.

The nurse turned to look at him more directly. It was as if he'd said something interesting.

"You know why you're here?"

"I got fucked up," Ramón said. "I was on a raft. I was prospecting up north. Things went bad on me."