Hunter's Run

by George R. R. Martin

  “Señor Espejo, don’t…you shouldn’t take that off, sir.”

  “I gotta get out of here,” Ramón said. “I can’t stay in here.”

  The man took his wrist, his grip at the friction point between reassuring and painful. His gaze locked with Ramón’s. He was beautiful, just for being a real person and not some kind of alien, he was beautiful.

  “There’s no point, Señor Espejo. The constabulary’s already been by here twice. If you try to go, I have to call security. And you can’t outrun them.”

  “You don’t know that,” Ramón said. “I’m a tough sonofabitch.”

  The man smiled, maybe a little sadly.

  “We got a catheter running up your cock, Señor Espejo. It’s what you’ve been peeing out of. I’ve seen men try to pull it out. You’d wind up with a piss tube about as wide as your little finger. You know, until it scars over.”

  Ramón looked down. The nurse nodded.

  “You’re gonna be here awhile, Ramón. Try to relax and heal up. I’ll bring you some fruit gel. You should try to eat a little. Okay?”

  Ramón rubbed a hand over his face. His beard was thick and wiry, the way it had always been.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

  The nurse patted his leg sympathetically. He’d probably known a lot of men in his care who had been visited by the constabulary. He might know what was coming better than Ramón did.

  Ramón lay back against the thin hospital pillow, prepared for a long, anxious night, and fell asleep again before he knew he was fading. He woke to the cool light of morning pressing at the windows. He tried to watch a newsfeed, but the cheerful nattering voice of the anchor annoyed him. He made do with the quiet hum of the machines, the distant chiming alarms. He cataloged the aches in his body and wondered what he was going to do.

  At the start, it had been simple—get out of town until the Enye came and went and the whole thing with the European had blown over. And then get free, get back, and raise hell over Maneck and its hive in the north. Then get back and remake himself, maybe leave his twin to figure out the whole problem with the police. And now here he was, back in Diegotown, tied down by his penis, and waiting for the constabulary to arrive. Made the sahael seem dignified.

  Outside, the city was alive with morning traffic. Vans and transport flyers filled the air, catching the light of the rising sun and reflecting it back into Ramón’s eyes like waves flashing on water. The low throb of a shuttle’s lift drive announced some traffic sliding up through the thin air to the ships hovering above. Ramón couldn’t see the spaceport from his window, but he knew the sound the way men in ages past had known the wail of trains.

  The knock on his doorframe was soft and polite. It said I don’t have to intimidate you. I don’t give a shit if you’re scared of me or not. That’s how much I own your sad ass. Ramón looked over. The man wore the dark uniform of the governor’s constabulary. Ramón lifted a hand in greeting, trailing the IV tube like seaweed.

  The man who came in was young and strong. Wide through the shoulders, strong jaw freshly shaved, with still just a shadow of stubble. He was the man Ramón had imagined chasing him up in the north before he’d known about his twin, the man Ramón had pretended to be when he was on the river. He was a convenient fiction made flesh.

  “You look a lot better, Señor Espejo,” the constable said. “Do you remember speaking with me before?”

  Ramón plucked at the plastic weave of his hospital gown. Whatever he’d said before didn’t count. He’d been out of his pinche mind. If his story didn’t match, he could say he’d been dreaming or something, so nothing before counted.

  “Sorry, ese. I’ve been a little fucked up, you know?”

  “Yes,” the constable said. “That’s why I wanted to speak with you. Do you mind?”

  Like the fucker would go away if he refused. Ramón shrugged, added another little pain to his list of injuries, and gestured toward the small plastic chair beside the hospital bed. The constable nodded his imitation of thanks and sat on the foot of the bed instead, his weight pulling the mattress toward him.

  “I was wondering what exactly happened.”

  “You mean?” Ramón gestured at his ruin of a body. The constable nodded.

  “I got fucked up,” Ramón said. “I went out surveying up north. That’s what I do.”

  “I know.”

  “Yeah. Well. Anyway, I was up there, and I landed my van at the river, right by this overhang. I figured it was like shelter, right? So, middle of the night, the fucking thing gives out. Must have been three, four tons of rock. Knocks my van right into the river.”

  Ramón slapped his palms together, the needle in his arm tugging at his flesh in a way that was disconcertingly familiar.

  “I was lucky to get out alive,” he said. The constable smiled coolly.

  “You got in a fight?”

  Ramón felt his chest tighten. The heart monitor to his left betrayed him, the blue LED numbers jumping to something just shy of a hundred. The constable almost suppressed a smile.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ramón said. “I thought you were here about the accident.”

  “The ‘accident’ left knife wounds in your side and your leg,” the constable said. “Why don’t you tell me about that.”

  “Oh, shit. That?” Ramón said and laughed. “No, man. That’s my own dumb fault. I had my knife, out of the field kit. Used to make the raft. Anyway, I was trying to cut some vines, and I slipped. Fell right on it. I thought I was dead, you know?”

  “So. No fighting?”

  “Who’s out there to fight with?” Ramón said. The blue numbers were slipping back down. The constable seemed unfazed.

  “I notice that the field pack wasn’t among the things recovered with you.”

  “Maybe it fell off the raft. I’m not so clear on those last couple days out there.”

  “Can you tell me where your van was when this landslide took it?”

  “Nah. It was all logged on the computer. It wasn’t the main river though. It was one of the tributaries.” There might be a hundred places that would match the description. Proving Ramón was full of shit just got a whole lot harder. The constable looked peeved.

  You could tell him the truth, a small voice in the back of Ramón’s mind murmured. Tell him about Maneck and the yunea, the sahael, and the other Ramón. You could even give him proof. You could lead them all right up to that pinche mountain and everything under it. They took you prisoner, tortured you, almost got you killed. You don’t owe them shit. You’ve got no reason to lie.

  Except that the man was a cop, and Ramón was a killer.

  And besides which, fuck him.

  The constable coughed, rubbed his chin. The subject was about to change. Ramón took a breath, trying not to do anything that would change the readings on his monitors. No wonder they wanted to question him here and not wait until he could get out.

  “Do you know a woman named Justina Montoya?” the constable asked.

  Ramón frowned, looking for the trap in the question. He shook his head.

  “Don’t think so,” Ramón said.

  “Calls herself Keiko. Maybe you know her by that name. She’s the governor’s secretary. She was showing the ambassador around. Tour guide.”

  Ramón thought of the woman at the El Rey, the European’s date. The laughing woman. She’d straightened her hair to look Asian. Maybe she would give herself a stupid name too.

  “Don’t think so, man,” Ramón said.

  “How about Johnny Joe Cardenas?”

  “Shit, man. Everyone knows Johnny Joe.”

  “He’s a friend of yours?”

  “He’s not anybody’s friend. I respect him. Like you respect a redjacket, you know?”

  “He doesn’t have a very good reputation, does he? I thought it was strange, then, when I heard that he’d gotten in a fight defending Justina Montoya. He’s not the sort of man to do something…chivalrous like t
hat.”

  The stink of danger made Ramón’s skin crawl.

  “Defend her from what?” Ramón asked. “Someone try to rape her?”

  “Maybe,” the cop said. “Maybe he would have defended her from that, even Johnny Joe. There were a lot of people there who said that the guy she was with was pushing it with her pretty hard. A big shot. Made some remarks. Twisted her arm when she tried to leave or something. And then Johnny Joe got into it. Maybe saved her.”

  The silence hung between them, pressing. Ramón’s neck throbbed where the sahael had bound him. The monitors chirped and hummed. He knows, Ramón thought. They grabbed Johnny Joe so they can show the Enye that they’re on top of it, and this pendejo fucking well knows it’s a frame. He’s waiting for me to fuck up so they can grab me for it instead.

  “Weird, all right.”

  “Why do you think he’d do something like that?” the constable asked. “Put himself in harm’s way to protect a woman he didn’t even know?”

  Come on. Tell me what a hero he was. Tell me how he defended the weak. Tell yourself what a good man you are, and maybe in the end, you can even let slip that the big man was really you and not Johnny Joe. Ramón grinned. There was a time he might even have fallen for it.

  “Man, you can’t figure someone like Johnny Joe! You might as well not try, you know? He’s like a whole different species.”

  The constable shifted his weight, annoyance flashing in his eyes.

  “Sorry I couldn’t help you out,” Ramón said. “I sure wish I knew old Johnny Joe better. You know, so I could help. But we just didn’t hang out together much. Maybe the guy just pissed him off, you know? Which was never hard to do. Maybe Johnny Joe just did a good thing for once in his life. Even a badass like him might not like to see some little girl getting slapped around, eh? Especially if maybe he had his eye on her himself.” He exchanged level glances with the cop, who was looking sour. “There anything else? ’Cause I’m getting kinda tired.”

  “Maybe later,” the constable said. “You were lucky, getting back to Fiddler’s Jump. All that happened out there—the van getting destroyed, hurting yourself with the knife like that. It’s really unbelievable.”

  Meaning that you don’t believe me, Ramón thought. Well, prove something, and then come see me. Asshole.

  “I’m blessed,” Ramón said, nodding like a pious idiot drunk on incense and communion wine. “Truly blessed. God ain’t done with me yet, you know?”

  “No, He’s not. You take care, Señor Espejo. I’ll be in touch if there’s anything more I need to ask you.”

  “Anything I can do to help,” Ramón said, almost sorry that the constable was rising from the bed. Ramón liked the feel of winning. There were a few more insincere pleasantries exchanged, and then the constable was gone. Ramón lay back against his pillow and thought his way through it all.

  They knew that Johnny Joe, for all his failings as a good citizen and an upright human being, hadn’t killed the European. He was just the convenient bastard to hang, the scapegoat—and if he was the wrong man, well, shit, at least he deserved it for some other time when he’d killed and gotten away with it. The constable knew it was shit. Hell, the whole colony probably knew it was shit. But what were they gonna do? Tell the Enye that they’d screwed up? That they couldn’t even catch the right man? That they’d lied? That would be suicide. The investigation was closed. If Ramón didn’t open it again for them, and he wasn’t about to do that, it would stay closed.

  Not that the eaters-of-the-young would care, one way or the other. What humans did among themselves didn’t matter, because humanity wasn’t a species that the Enye cared about, except where they were useful. Impressing them with the colony’s sense of law and justice and righteousness was like a pack of dogs trying to impress their catcher by howling in harmony. But the governor didn’t know that, and so, perversely, the way that they all failed to understand the aliens around them was going to save Ramón’s ass. He might be the next one strung up when a convenient perpetrator was needed to take the fall for something, but this time, for this murder, the government of the colony was going to give him a pass. What else could they do?

  A weight lifted from him, and he laughed with the relief. His initial plan had worked. He’d been in the wilderness long enough that the problem had solved itself. He was safe now. He could feel it.

  It was almost two weeks before Ramón found out what he’d overlooked.

  Chapter 26

  Ramón walked out of the hospital eight days later, unsteady on atrophied legs. He wore one of his white shirts and a pair of canvas pants that Elena had brought by one afternoon when he was asleep. The shirt was too big; wide across the shoulders and through the chest, a measure of how badly he had been reduced by his time in the wild and on the river. His new scars ached sometimes if he turned wrong. The Enye ships still hovered high above the planet, but here among the street vendors and the gypsy boats, the rheumy-eyed buskers with almost-tuned guitars and the truant children smoking cigarettes on the corners, the alien ships seemed less of a threat.

  He’d intended at first to make his way to Manuel Griego’s shop. Ramón was going to need a new van. He didn’t have the money to buy one outright, and there wasn’t a bank on the colony or off that would front him a loan big enough to cover the expense. That left making deals, and Manuel was the one to start with. But his shop was far from the center of the city, at the edge of neighboring Nuevo Janeiro, where most of the Portuguese lived, and Ramón found himself growing tired more quickly than he’d expected. He had no money and only a temporary emergency identification chit from the hospital. More trivia that he’d have to address in the days ahead. At the moment, it meant that when he sat on the bench at the edge of the park, he could smell the sausages, onions, and peppers cooking on the cart’s grill but couldn’t buy any.

  In a sense, this was the first time he’d seen his adopted hometown. This particular pair of eyes had never looked down these narrow brown streets or at the faded yellow grass of the park. These particular ears hadn’t heard the demanding blatting of the urban flatfurs, or the tapanos scolding from the tree branches on the edge of the canal like amphibious squirrels. Ramón tried to concentrate on how he felt about that, examining his own soul for unease or some sense of dislocation greater than usual. But what he really felt was tired, impatient, and pissed off that he was too weak to walk to where he wanted to, and too broke to take a fucking pedicab or bus.

  The obvious place to go was Elena’s. He didn’t have any place else to sleep, and she’d brought him clothes, so the fight they’d been having when he left was probably forgotten. And she’d have food and maybe sex if he was up for it.

  He was half tempted to go to the El Rey first, thank Mikel Ibrahim for keeping that knife away from the police. But then he remembered again that he had no money, and trying to hustle a free beer seemed like a piss-poor way to express gratitude. Ramón took a long, deep breath—nostrils filling with the ozone stench of city air—and heaved himself back up from his bench. Elena’s place it was. And with that, Elena.

  It wasn’t a long walk, but it felt that way. When he reached the butcher’s shop that squatted below her apartment, Ramón felt like he’d tracked a full day through the underbrush, Maneck at his side. He wondered, as he made his way up the dingy, dank-smelling stairs, what Maneck would think of this wide, flat human hive that lay open to the sky. He thought the alien would think it naive, like kyi-kyi grazing in a meadow where a chupacabra was sunning itself. The Enye ships stuttered in and out of existence high above, vanishing only for a moment before returning.

  At the top of the stairs, Ramón punched in the code, hoping that Elena hadn’t changed it in a fit of pique when he’d slipped out on her. Or if she had, that she’d changed it back. And when the last number shifted the status light to green, the bolt clicking audibly and the hinges hissing as the door swung open, Ramón knew he’d been forgiven.

  Elena wasn’t home, but the cab
inets were stocked with food. Ramón opened a can of black bean soup—one of the self-heating kind—and ate it with a beer. It tasted of the heating element, but not so much that he didn’t enjoy the meal. The couch smelled of old smoke and cheap incense. The afternoon light showed all the dirt on the windows; skitterlings scurried across the ceiling, the charnel stink of the butcher’s shop tainted the air. Ramón lay back on the couch, his limbs heavy. He let his eyes close for a moment and opened them again in panic. Something had him, strangling him, pulling him off the ground. Ramón had cocked back a fist, ready to kill the alien or his twin or the sahael or the chupacabra or the cop before his muzzy brain recognized the shrill squealing. Not an alarm. Not a battle shriek. Elena, delighted.

  “Fuck,” he breathed, but softly enough that even with her head pressed against his she didn’t seem to hear him. The threat of violence passed. Elena pulled back from him, her eyes wide, her mouth in a little knot like she was trying to make her lips look like a baby doll’s. She wasn’t bad-looking.

  “You didn’t tell me you were getting out,” she said, half accusing, half pleased and surprised.

  “They didn’t tell me for sure until today,” Ramón lied. “Besides, what were you gonna do? Miss work?”

  “I would have. Or I could have got someone to come get you. Fly you home.”

  “I can walk,” Ramón said with a shrug. “It’s not far.”

  She put her hand around his chin, jiggling his head like he was a baby. Her eyes were merry. It was an expression he knew, and his poor abused penis stirred slightly.

  “Big macho guy like you doesn’t need any help, eh? I know you, Ramón Espejo. I know you better than you do! You’re not so tough.”

  I cut off my own finger stump, he didn’t say, in part because it hadn’t exactly been him and in part because there wasn’t any point in telling her anything. It was Elena, after all. Batshit-crazy, even if she was in her good place right now. He couldn’t trust her, not any more than she could trust him. Whatever meaning she attributed to his silence, it wasn’t what he was thinking. She smiled, shifting her body from side to side.