fucking racket," Ramon whispered. "It isn't as if we're getting its consent first."
"It is unknowing? This is niedutoi?"
"I don't know what that means," Ramon said.
"Interesting," Maneck said. "You understand purpose, and killing, but not niedutoi. You are a disturbing creature."
"That's what they tell me," Ramon said.
"Under what circumstances do you kill?"
"Me?"
Maneck was silent. Ramon felt a stab of annoyance at the thing for spoiling the hunt, even as he reminded himself that it was all a play for time. He sighed.
"Men kill for all sorts of reasons. If someone's going to kill you, you kill them first. Or if they're fucking your wife. Or sometimes men will be so poor they have to rob someone for money. That can go too far. Or if someone declares war, then soldiers go and kill each other. Or sometimes ... sometimes you just walk into the wrong bar and start acting like a cabron where the wrong bastard can hear you, and he kills you for it."
For a moment, he was back in the El Rey. He couldn't recall anymore what precisely it was the European had said that started things. The details were all misty and uncertain, like a half-remembered dream. There had been a pachinko machine, its tiny steel balls bouncing crazily against the network of pins. And a woman with straight, black hair. It hadn't been anything the man had said to Ramon. No one had liked the pendejo. Everyone had wanted to crack the man's ass the other way, but Ramon had been the one to do it.
Why did you kill him?
Ramon shivered. Maneck's steady gaze seemed to peer into his soul, as if every truth and lie in Ramon's long, sorry life were written on his face. A sudden rush of shame possessed him.
"You have declared war on the food-thing," Maneck intoned and Ramon's sudden guilt vanished. Maneck no more understood him than a dog could read a news feed. With an act of will, he refrained from laughing.
"No," Ramon said. "It's just an animal. I need food. It is food. It's not killing, only hunting."
"The food-thing is not killed?"
"Yes, okay. Fine. You kill animals to eat them if you need food," Ramon said. Then, a moment later: "And also if they're fucking your wife."
"I understand," the alien said and lapsed into silence.
They waited as the sun rose higher in the perfect blue sky. Maneck ate some of his oekh, which turned out to be a brown paste the consistency of molasses with a thick, vinegary scent. Ramon scratched at the place in his neck where the sahael anchored in his flesh, and tried to ignore the emptiness of his belly. The hunger grew quickly, though, and, in spite of his good intentions about stalling as long as he could, it was less than two hours later that he rose and walked out to check his catch - two grasshoppers (almost identical to the locusts of Earth, but warm-blooded and able to nurse their young from tiny, fleshy nipples at the joints of their carapace), and a gordita, one of the fuzzy round marsupials that the colonists called "the little fat ones of the Virgin." The gordita had died badly, biting itself in its frenzy. Its spiky fur was already black with thick, tarry blood. Maneck looked on with interest as Ramon removed the animals from the snares.
"It is difficult to think of this as having anything to do with food," it said. "Why do the creatures strangle themselves for you? Is it their tatecreude?"
"No," Ramon said as he strung the bodies on the length of carrying twine. "It's not their tatecreude. It's just something that happened to them." He found himself staring at his hands as he worked, and, for some reason, his hands made him uneasy. He shrugged the feeling away. "Don't your people hunt for food?"
"The hunt is not for food," Maneck said flatly. "The hunt is wasted on creatures such as these. How can they appreciate it? Their brains are much too small."
"My stomach is also too small, but it will appreciate them ." He stood up, swinging the dead animals over his shoulder.
"Do you swallow the creatures now?" Maneck asked.
"First they must be cooked."
"Cooked?"
"Burned, over a fire."
"Fire," Maneck repeated. "Uncontrolled combustion. Proper food does not require such preparation. You are a primitive creature. These steps waste time, time which might be better used to fulfill your tatecreude. Ae euth'eloi does not interfere with the flow."
Ramon shrugged. "I cannot eat your food, monster, and