Hunter's Run

by George R. R. Martin

  So long, and so far, and then to have everything rest on some selfish fuck more than half in trouble with the law. Ramón almost felt sorry for them.

  I will kill you all, Ramón had thought, back on that first day, the sahael newly dug into his flesh. Somehow, I will cut this thing out of my throat, and then I will come back and kill you all.

  And now here was his chance. He scratched his arm even though it didn’t itch.

  “Can I have a cigarette?” he asked.

  “Why don’t you answer my question first,” the constable said, his jaw tense.

  He wasn’t going to gain anything by lying. Maneck and the aliens had used him. Had created him as a tool, for their own selfish purposes. Turning them over to the Enye would settle his score with them and make him a hero in the governor’s eyes, all at the same time. He had every reason to tell them everything. Just the way he’d had every reason to keep to himself in the El Rey. But on the other side of the balance were the kii, the young. Killed for no reason that Ramón or Maneck could fathom.

  That and the fact he didn’t like the idea of dancing to some pinche alien’s tune, no matter if it was Maneck or the Enye.

  “Maybe you could tell me,” Ramón said, “what the fuck business it is of yours?”

  The constable’s boss glanced at the Enye and then the surveillance camera and back. Just a flicker, like a poker player’s tell.

  “We’d like to know,” the constable said.

  “The governor wants to know about my fucking bathrobe?” Ramón said. “He gonna have you sniff my panties too? Fuck off.”

  The Enye spoke. Its voice was high and piping and awkward; a being speaking a language not merely foreign to it but nearly unthinkable.

  “Why do you refuse?”

  Ramón gestured to the constable with his chin.

  “I don’t like this motherfucker,” Ramón said.

  The Enye considered this, its long tongue flickering out to cover its body in saliva. The constable flushed nearly purple with rage, but said nothing. The alien was running the show now, the power shifting visibly. Ramón tried to keep his body relaxed while his thoughts darted and spun. Part of his mind was bright with panic, another part defiant and amused. It was like being in a fight.

  He enjoyed it.

  “You,” the Enye said. “The one called Paul.”

  The constable took on an attitude of respect just short of clicking his heels. Ramón shook his head in disgust.

  “You are removed. Leave. Do not return.”

  The constable blinked, his mouth gaping for a moment, then audibly closing. He looked at his supervisor, who shrugged and nodded to the door. The constable—Paul—walked out of the interrogation room, stiff as a man with a broom up his ass. Ramón lifted a finger to the remaining human.

  “Hey, ese,” he said. “I get that cigarette now?”

  The supervisor was an older man, and his anger had room for amusement at the corners of his eyes. He took a cheap self-lighting cigarette from his pocket, struck it on the floor and rolled it, burning, across the table to Ramón. It smelled like old cardboard and tasted like somebody’s ass. Ramón sucked the smoke in deep and let it float out as he spoke.

  “It’s my bathrobe,” Ramón said, pointing with his left hand. “Had it for years. There was this accident with my van. I was sleeping. That’s all I got out in. Fucking pain not having shoes, too. I still got blisters.”

  “Where did it come from?” the Enye fluted.

  By now, Ramón had come up with his lie. For short notice, he was proud of it.

  “From you,” he said.

  In the ensuing silence, the supervisor leaned forward a centimeter. His voice was equal parts warm avuncular joking and cold steel threat.

  “Don’t push it, hijo.”

  The Enye shifted back and forth, its eyes rolling slowly. Its tongue, thankfully, had retreated inside its hidden beak. Ramón knew from his time, years before, that when an Enye stopped licking itself, it was pissed off.

  “I got it on the trip over,” Ramón said. “From Earth. On an Enye ship. There were a couple of you people wanted to learn how to play poker. We had a game going, so we let them in on it. They sucked. One time I was drunk, I let this one big pendejo put this fucking bathrobe in instead of whiskey. He said it was a battle souvenir or some such shit. I didn’t catch it all. Anyway, he loses fours and sevens to my three queens, and I got me a bathrobe. It was bigger then. I had to make him cut it down to fit me, but it held up pretty good until now.” He paused to take another drag. “So you want to tell me what’s so important about it?”

  A stench like rotting eggs and boiling turnips filled the room, intense enough to make his eyes water. “This one will be isolated,” the Enye said. Its eyes were still on Ramón, but it was clear enough that it was speaking to the supervisor. “There will be no communication.”

  “We’ll see to that, sir,” the supervisor said. The Enye turned, and Ramón could see the supervisor brace himself as the alien’s tongue emerged and licked the man in farewell. He took it pretty well, Ramón thought. Some trace of Ramón’s amusement must have shown through, though. When the Enye lumbered out of the room, the supervisor raised an eyebrow and smiled mirthlessly. Ramón shrugged and finished his cigarette. He had a feeling it would be his last for some time.

  Two uniformed cops came in to escort him to his new quarters. The cells under the station house were also not entirely new to Ramón, but this was the first time he’d walked down the gray concrete hallways sober. He caught sight of the supervisor still wiping his neck with a bandana and talking to a tall, intense man whom it took Ramón a moment to recognize as the governor. A third person glanced up as Ramón stepped out of sight—a woman with dark, straight hair. Ramón was sorry, as he descended the stairs, that he hadn’t gotten a chance to wave at her. He hadn’t seen her since the night at the El Rey.

  Down in the cells, the constable was waiting. Ramón could feel the anger coming off the man like heat. His gut went tight, his mouth dry. Ramón’s guards stopped him, and the constable stalked forward like a hunting cat.

  “I know you’re lying,” the constable said. “You think you can fool them with some bullshit story about your van going missing? I can smell the shit coming off of you.”

  “So what the fuck do you think I’m hiding?” Ramón said. “You think it’s all part of some big pinche plan? I go out, lose everything I own, almost die, and it’s all about a bathrobe? What have you been huffing, ese?”

  The constable stepped closer, gaze locked on Ramón. His breath felt unpleasantly warm on Ramón’s face. It smelled of peppers and tequila. He was five or six centimeters taller than Ramón, and drew himself up to make the fact clear. Ramón had to fight the instinct to step back, away from the big man’s anger.

  “I don’t know what you’re hiding,” the cop said. “I don’t know why those fucking rock-lickers care. But I do know Johnny Joe Cardenas wasn’t the one who killed that ambassador. So how about you tell me what’s really going on here?”

  “Don’t have a clue, man. So how about you get out of my way?”

  Something half sneer, half smile twisted the constable’s mouth, but he stepped aside. Nodding to one of the guards, he said, “Put him in twelve.”

  The guard nodded as he pushed Ramón forward. It was like going into a heavy-weather shelter; reinforced concrete and unpainted composite doors and hinges. Ramón let himself be steered to an intersection of corridors, and then down a short hallway. The air was thick and stale. In one of the cells, some poor bastard was crying loud enough for the sound to carry. Ramón tried to shrug it all off, but tension in his gut was cinching tighter and tighter. How long would they hold him here? Who would come to his defense?

  He didn’t have anyone.

  The door to cell twelve swung open silently and Ramón stepped in. It was a small room, but not tiny. Four bunks stood on each side wall, an open hole in the middle of the room serving as the toilet. The light was wh
ite LED recessed behind security glass in the ceiling. Someone had scored words into the glass, but it was too bright for Ramón to read it. The door shut, the magnetic bolt closing with a deep clank. A man in one of the lower bunks rolled over to look at him; he was huge. Broad across the shoulders, his scalp covered by cheap tattoos and a thin stubble of black hair going gray at the temples. His eyes were like a dog’s. Ramón’s balls tried to crawl up into his belly.

  “Hey, Johnny Joe,” Ramón said.

  They took him out before Johnny Joe could quite manage to kill him, half carrying him to another cell. Ramón lay on the concrete floor, feeling himself breathe. His mouth tasted of blood. His ribs ached, and his left eye wouldn’t open. He thought a couple of his teeth were loose. The LED in this cell was off, so it was a lot like being in a grave. Or the aliens’ tank. He chuckled at the idea, and then at the arcing pain that came from chuckling. There was another thing that laughter could be. Despair. Pain.

  To have come so far, to have endured so much, just to wind up rotting in a cell under the station house of the governor’s constabulary. And for who? The aliens who’d humiliated and used him? He didn’t owe them shit. Maneck and all the motherfuckers like it. Ramón owed them nothing. He didn’t remember now why he thought he did. The kii, slaughtered by the Enye: they weren’t human babies. They didn’t matter. If he just told them, he could go. He could find Lianna. Maybe send old Martín Casaus a message saying how sorry he was, and that he understood why Martín had tried to kill him. He could sit beside the river and listen to the water slap the stones of the quay. He could get a van again, and go out where there were no people or aliens or jails. All he had to do was tell them.

  He levered himself up to his elbows.

  “I’ll tell,” he croaked. “Come on, you pendejos. You want to know what’s out there, I’ll fucking tell you. I’ll fucking tell. Just let me go!”

  No one heard him. The door didn’t open.

  “Just let me go.”

  He fell into an exhausted sleep there on the floor and dreamed that his twin was in the cell with him, smoking a cigarette and bragging about sexual conquests Ramón didn’t remember. He tried to yell to the other man that they were in danger, that he had to get away, before recalling that the man was dead. His twin, who had also become Maneck and Palenki, had launched into a lascivious description of fucking the European’s companion when Ramón managed to break in, protesting in thought more than words that it had never happened.

  “How do you know?” his twin asked. “You weren’t there. Who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m Ramón Espejo,” Ramón shouted, waking himself with the words.

  In the darkness, the prison floor harder than mere stone under his back, Ramón shook his head until the last tendrils of nightmare were gone. He forced himself to sit up and take stock of his injuries. They were, he decided, more painful than dangerous. Disgust washed over him—for his weakness, for his willingness to help the police even after they’d done this to him. Maneck and the aliens had collared him like a dog, but they hadn’t locked him in with a psychopath just for fun. It took a human to do that.

  “I’ll kill you fuckers,” he said to an imagined constable, his supervisor, the governor. “Somehow, I will get free of this, and will kill each one of you sorry pendejos!”

  Even he wasn’t convinced. When the door swung open, he realized he’d fallen asleep again. The supervisor walked in, light from the hall making a halo around him. As Ramón’s eyes adjusted to the brightness, he saw resignation and amusement on the man’s face.

  “You don’t look so good, Señor Espejo.”

  “Yeah. Well, you go ten rounds with Johnny Joe Cardenas, see how you do.”

  The LED in the ceiling flickered on as the door closed, leaving the two of them alone.

  “I’d do fine,” the supervisor said. “Hung him this morning. You want a cigarette?”

  “Nah,” Ramón said. “I’m quitting.” Then, a moment later, held out his hand. The supervisor squatted beside Ramón, struck a cigarette against the floor and handed it over.

  “Got some food coming too,” the man said. “And I’m sorry about Paul. He doesn’t do so good when someone embarrasses him. The Enye taking your side with the governor watching? Well, he overreacted.”

  “That’s what you call this, eh?”

  The supervisor shrugged like a man who’d spent too many years looking at the world.

  “Got to call it something,” he said. “They’re gonna take your story apart. I’m just saying, Ramón. It’s going to happen.”

  “Why would I lie about my van getting—”

  “No one gives a shit about your van. The Enye have been going crazy about this robe. It’s some kind of alien artifact.”

  “That’s what I fucking said it was!”

  The supervisor let that pass.

  “If there’s something you’re hiding, we’re going to find out. The governor’s not going to watch out for you. He knows you killed the European ambassador, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. The cops…well, we can’t back you if the governor doesn’t. The Enye are hot about this thing, whatever the fuck it is. They’ll want us to turn you over to them.”

  Ramón sucked the smoke deep into his lungs. When he exhaled, he could see where a little draft from the hallway caught the air and spun it. The smoke made the flow visible.

  “You’re negotiating for them?”

  “I’m saying it’s gonna be better if you tell them what they want to know. They’re the ones who’ve got all the power.”

  Ramón rested his head on his knees. A memory assaulted him, the first flashback of its kind in many days—the last, it turned out, he would ever have. It began with laughter. A woman’s laughter, fighting its way past the clink and clatter of the pachinko machine. Ramón was in the El Rey. The memory was clear now. The reek of the smoke, the smooth blackness of the bar. He remembered the glass in his hand, the way it clinked when he plunked it with his fingernail. The way the back mirror looked gray from the low lights and the accumulated film of old cigarettes. Music played, but softly. No one had paid to have the speakers turned up loud enough to dance to.

  “It’s about power,” the European said. His voice was too loud. He was drunk, but not as drunk as he pretended. His accent was broad and nasal. “You know what I mean? Not like violence. Not physical violence.”

  The woman beside him glanced around the bar. There were maybe twenty people in the place, and they could all hear the conversation she and her European companion were having. She caught Ramón’s eyes reflected in the mirror for a fraction of a second, then looked away and laughed. She neither agreed with the European nor disagreed. He went on as if she had spoken; that her opinion didn’t matter proved his point.

  “I mean, take you,” he said, his hand on her arm as if he was pointing it out to her. “You came out with me because you had to. No, no. Don’t disagree, it’s okay. I’m a man of the world, right. I understand. I’m the traveling big shot, and your boss wants to make sure I’m happy. That gives me power, you see? You came out to this bar with me, didn’t you?”

  The woman said something, her voice too low to hear, her mouth in a tight smile. It didn’t work.

  “No, seriously,” the man said. “What would you do if I told you to come back to my room with me right now and fuck me? I mean, are you really in a position to say no? You could, right? You could say you didn’t want to. But then I’d have you fired. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers and grinned coldly.

  Ramón sipped his drink. The whiskey seemed watery. But he’d been listening to the European talk for a while now, and the ice in the glass had melted down to ovals like little fingernails.

  “Or not even my room,” the European said. “The alley, out back. I could take you out there and tell you to take off that little dress, and spread your legs, and, seriously, what could you do about it? Just hypothetically, you know. I’m just saying what if? That’s what I mean about power.
I have power over you. It’s not because I’m a good person and you’re a bad one. It’s not about morality at all.”

  His hand dropped from her arm. From where he sat, Ramón guessed that it had found its way to her thigh or maybe even beyond. She was sitting very still now. Still smiling, but the smile was brittle. The pachinko machine had gone quiet. No one else in the bar was talking, but the European didn’t take notice. Or maybe he did, and this was the point: that everyone should hear and know. Ramón met Mikel Ibrahim’s eyes and tapped the rim of his glass. The barkeeper didn’t speak, only poured more liquor in.

  “Power is what it’s all about.” His voice was lower now. There was a bass roll in the words. The woman laughed and pushed back her hair. A nervous gesture. “You understand what I’m saying to you?”

  “I do,” she said. Her voice was higher. “I really do. But I think it’s time that I—”

  “Don’t get up,” the European said. He wasn’t asking.

  This is shit, someone whispered. Ramón drank his whiskey. It was his fourth. Maybe his fifth. Mikel had his credit information. If he’d been out of money, Mikel would have kicked him out. Ramón placed the empty glass on the bar and deliberately put both hands palm-down and stared at them. If he was too drunk, they wouldn’t seem like his own. They seemed like his own. Mostly. He was sober enough. He looked forward and saw himself in the haze of the mirror; he watched himself smile a little. The woman laughed. There was no mirth in the sound. There was fear.

  “I want you to say that you understand,” the European said, his voice low. “And then I want you to come with me, and show me how much you agree with me.”

  “Hey, pendejo,” Ramón said. “You want power? How about you come outside, and I’ll kick your pinche ass.”

  The European looked over, surprised. There was a moment of utter silence, and then the bar was shouting, on its feet, cheering. Ramón saw the moment of fear in the European’s eyes, the rage that followed. Ramón adjusted the knife in his sleeve and grinned.

  “What have you got to smile about, hijo?” the supervisor said.