Hunter's Run(53)

Standing beside the governor, the straighthaired woman looked over at him, her face empty of any expression.

The problem with aliens, Ramón realized, was that they could never truly understand all the subtle ways that humans could communicate with humans. A hundred years of talking, and Ramón would never have been able to explain to anyone else how exactly the woman raising her chin a few millimeters meant "you're welcome" and "thank you" and "we're even" all at the same time. Ramón imagined the European's soul, trapped somewhere in Hell, keening his anger as Ramón escaped.

On screen, the constable limped through a few more pointless questions and then closed the interrogation. The governor tapped at his datapad once, and the wall-screen image faded. Ramón rubbed his hand against his thigh, trying to hide his elation by feigning impatience and rage.

"So you still want to gag me, pendejo?" Ramón asked. "I don't mean to be, you know, unreasonable or anything. But now that you fuckers have locked me up, kicked the shit out of me, and tried to hand me over to that great glob of snot over there, can someone unlock these fucking shackles so I can go talk to a lawyer about how much I can sue you for?"

"His account is consistent," the Enye piped. "He is of no interest."

Never in his life had Ramón been so thoroughly pleased to be of no interest. The governor, his assistant, and the Enye all left while Ramón was being processed out. The supervisor went through the forms and procedures with a bored efficiency; only his continued presence indicated that he wanted to be sure nothing else about all this went wrong. Within an hour, Ramón stepped onto the street, worse for wear but grinning all the same. He paused to spit on the ground at the base of the station-house stairs, then strode out into the city, making it almost half a block before he realized that he had nowhere to go.

He had been on his way to find Lianna and create some kind of new life for himself. He was maybe two hours' walk from there now, still with the wristband identification they used when he was in custody, bruised and beaten from his time with Johnny Joe, and not feeling up to a long walk anyway. He kept moving until he found a public square-a sad little plot of dirt in the shadow of an administrative complex. He sat on a bench; just for a few minutes, though. He didn't want the police to hassle him, and he figured he looked like a bum.

A bum. Without a place of his own. Without a job. He had nothing, only a half-baked plan to rebuild himself and a secret he couldn't tell anyone. High above, the Enye ships flickered, their forms dimmed by the haze of smoke that squatted over the city. The sun would set soon, and the few stars that could struggle against the city lights would come out. Ramón shoved his hands in his pockets.

Lianna seemed like a dream now. An idea he'd had when he was drunk only to find it nonsense when sobriety returned. He tried to imagine what he would say to her, how he would explain that the beaten-up, penniless prospector without a van or even a place to sleep was someone who had worth. Never mind that he'd just gotten out of the station-house jail and probably smelled like it. Never mind that he'd just become the new Johnny Joe, first on the list of usual suspects to be rounded up the next time the governor needed someone to take the fall for some inconveniently unsolvable crime. He knew what Lianna would see when she looked at him.

She'd see Ramón Espejo.

It was still twilight when he reached the butcher's shop. It had been closed for hours, metal bars hugging the door and windows. He took the side stairs up. There were lights on in Elena's apartment. He stood in the gloom at the top of the stairs for a long time. There were cats in the alley-another species imported from Earth. Lizards skittered up the wall and took wing. The scent of old blood rotting in the alley mixed with the wood smoke and van exhaust; the odor of Diegotown was acrid and familiar. The tension in his shoulders and gut was also familiar. Up in the night sky, Big Girl was peeking out from behind the high clouds. The boom and blare of distant music.

He knocked.

When she opened the door, he could see the question in her eyes. There were any number of reasons he might have come. To say thank you. To get some of the shit he'd forgotten and leave again. To stay. Each one had a different greeting to match it, and she wasn't sure which to use. He wasn't either.

"Hey," he said.

"You look like shit," she said. "The cops do that?"

"Get their fucking hands dirty? No, they had a guy do it for them."

Elena crossed her arms over her breasts. She hadn't stood aside- afraid, he guessed, that he wouldn't accept the invitation.

"You give as good as you got?" she asked.

"He's dead," Ramón said. "I didn't kill him, so I'm not in trouble or any shit like that. But he was there because of me, and they killed him. I figure that means I won."

"Tough cabrón," Elena said, half mocking, but only half. "Dangerous to cross."

An orbital shuttle throbbed up into the night. Ramón smiled; it hurt a little, around his eye. Elena looked down, smiled shyly at his knees, and stepped back. He went inside, closing the door behind him. She'd made rice gumbo. It was the kind of dish she could tell herself she made so she could eat the leftovers through the week. Or it could be meant to feed two. Ramón sat at the table and let her serve him a bowl.

"You were good," he said. "With the cops, I mean. That thing about how it's a smock?"

"You liked that?" Elena asked. "That was my idea."

"It was good," Ramón said. "Only thing was, with the camera like that, I couldn't see his face."

Elena grinned, made a bowl for herself and sat down. The atmosphere surrounding them seemed as fragile as blown glass. Ramón cleared his throat, but didn't have any words to follow up with, so he took a mouthful of gumbo. It wasn't very good.

"That rich lady," Elena said. "The one who came and talked to me? She was the one at the El Rey?"

"Yeah," Ramón said. "That was her."

"She seemed okay."

"I don't know. I never talked to her."

Elena's eyes narrowed, her lips thinned. Ramón felt the distrust emanating from her like heat. He shook his head.

"No shit," he said. "She never said a fucking word to me. I only ever heard her name because one of the cops said it."

"You got in a knife fight with a guy over some woman you never even talked to?" Elena's voice was incredulous but not angry.

"Well. He didn't know it was a knife fight," Ramón said. "You're fucking crazy," she said.

Ramón laughed. Elena laughed with him. The fragile moment passed; the fight they'd had was just another fight now. One of a thousand before and a thousand still to come, too insignificant to remember. He reached out and took her hand.

"I'm glad you came back," she said.

"I fit here," he said. "I thought for a while I was someone else, but this is where I am, you know? To be Ramón and not Ramón is aubre ."

"What's that mean?"

"Damned if I know," Ramón said through a grin. "It's just something a friend of mine used to say."

                       
       
           



       Chapter 29

It was a crisp clear day in Octember. The van's lift tubes whined, and one of the rear pair lost power sometimes. If Ramón didn't keep an eye on it, he'd wind up flying in a long, slow circle, the terreno cimarrón below him going on until his fuel cells ran down. It was especially a pain in the ass because the winter night fell early this far north, and he would have liked to put the van on autopilot and get a little sleep. Instead, he stayed humped over the bullshit instrument panel running diagnostics and telling himself that his days of fifth-rate rented vans were going to end. Just four or five good trips in a row. And after this trip, four or five good runs should be easy.

The Enye had remained parked above S?o Paulo for two months, shuttles rising into the sky and dropping back down, sometimes as often as a dozen times a day. As the weeks went by, Ramón had found it harder and harder to stay in the city. Once his latest set of wounds had more or less healed, the impulse to get out of the city and into the wild returned. His patience with the people around him grew shorter and shorter. And to make things worse, he didn't dare get drunk.

The police were making it quite clear that they had their eyes on Ramón. He couldn't go to the store without seeing someone in a uniform lurking nearby. On the few occasions he did go into a bar, a constable always seemed to materialize a few minutes later. Twice, he got pulled in for questioning over some petty crime he'd had nothing to do with. Both times he'd had alibis that even the police couldn't deny. But it was clear enough. They wanted him out, and he wanted to oblige them. He would have, if he had any money.

Instead, he stayed at home and drank a little of Elena's whiskey. When he got a little buzzed, he'd get on her link and snoop through the records and boards for answers to idle questions. It was how he learned that Martín Casaus had died three years before in a wreck, that Lianna was married and had a kid. It was where he discovered that the European's name had been Dorian Andres, and that the trade agreements he'd been working to broker-agreements that wouldn't be signed in this generation or the next-were being sent back to Europa in hopes that the process wouldn't have to be postponed for another hundred or thousand years, followed up by the children of children whose parents hadn't yet been born. Space was too large for these things to mean as much as the politicians wanted them to.