Hunters Run Page 0,14
the metals themselves.
The sad irony of his profession had not escaped Ramon. He would never willingly move off S?o Paulo. Its emptiness was the thing that made it a haven for him. In a more developed colony, the global satellites and ground-level networked particulates would have made solitude impossible. S?o Paulo still had frontiers, limits beyond which little or nothing was known. He and the others like him were the hands and eyes of the colony's industry; his love of the unknown corners and niches of the world was unimportant. His experience of them, the data and surveys and knowledge - those had value. And so he made his money by destroying the things that gave him solace. It was an evil scheme, but typical, Ramon thought, of humanity's genetic destiny of contradiction. He stubbed out his cigarette, took a hand pick from the field pack, and began the long, slow process of scouting out a good place for a coring charge.
The sun shone down benevolently, and Ramon stripped off his shirt, tucking it into the back of his pistol belt. Between the hand pick and his small field shovel, he cleared away the thin covering of plants and soil, finding hard, solid rock not more than a foot and a half below the surface. If it had been much more, he'd have gone back for the tools in the van - powered for minor excavations, but expensive, prone to breaking down, and with the whining electrical sound of civilization to argue against their use. Looking along the mountainside, he thought there would likely be other places that would require the more extensive labor. All the better, then, that he begin here.
The coring charge was designed to carve a sample out of the living rock the length of an arm. Longer, if it was a particularly soft stone. In the next week, Ramon would gather a dozen or so such cores from sites up and down the valley. After that, there would be three or four days while the equipment in the van sifted through the debris for trace elements and ores too slight to identify simply by looking. Once Ramon had that in hand, he could devise a strategy for garnering the most useful information in the cheapest possible way. Even as he set the first charge, he found himself fantasizing about those long, slow, lazy days while the tests ran. He could go hunting. Or explore the lakes. Or find a warm place in the sun and sleep while the breeze set the grasses to singing. His fingers danced across the explosives, tugging at wires and timing chips with the ease and autonomous grace of long practice. Many prospectors lost careers and hands - sometimes lives - by being too careless with their tools. Ramon was careful, but he was also practiced. Once the site was chosen and cleared, placing the charge took less than an hour.
He found himself, strangely, procrastinating about setting it off. It was so quiet here, so still, so peaceful! From up here, the forested slopes fell away in swaths of black and dead-blue and orange, the trees rippling like a carpet of moss as the wind blew across them. Except for the white egg of his bubbletent on the mountain shoulder below, it was a scene that might not have changed since the beginning of time. For a moment, he was almost tempted to forget about prospecting and just relax and unwind on this trip, as long as he was being forced to hide out in the hills anyway, but he shrugged the temptation away: once the fuss over the European had blown over, once he went back, he would still need money, the van wouldn't hold together forever, and he wasn't anxious to face Elena's scorn if he returned empty-handed again. Perhaps there will be no ore here anyway, he told himself, almost wishing it, and then wondered at the tenor of his thoughts. Surely it could not be a bad thing to be rich? His stomach was beginning to ache again.
He looked up at the mountain face. It was beautiful; rugged and untouched. Once he was done with it, it would never be the same.
"All apologies," he said to the view he was about to mar. "But a man has to make his money somehow. Hills don't have to eat."
Ramon took one last cigarette from its silver case and smoked it like a man at an execution. He walked down to