agreement was voided, and when the great ships reached the S?o Paulo colony, the excess boys were sent out into the strange world as generalized laborers. He'd gone from being nothing on Earth to being nothing on a colony world. There was no way to return to Earth; everyone he'd known there was already dead. But he knew what Palenki had taught him, he found more tutorials, apprenticed himself to a prospecting outfit that went bankrupt after a few years. He'd bought one of the old vans just before the foreclosure and set himself up as an independent.
That first run out into the terreno cimarron had been like winning the lottery, like coming back to a place he'd forgotten. The great, empty sky, the forests and the ocean, the great fissures in the south, the towering mountains in the north. Empty. It was the first time in his memory that he'd been truly alone, and he'd wept. He remembered now how he'd sat in the driver's seat, letting the autopilot carry him, and wept like a man who'd seen Jesus.
"You are suffering the effects of recapitulation," Maneck said. "As the structures of your brain complete their formation, the memories will become less intrusive."
Ramon looked over at the thing, wondering if it was trying to reassure him or scold him or if its agenda in speaking was comprehensible in human terms.
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"As your neural paths conform to their proper flow, older patterns will command temporary inappropriate prominence."
"Thanks," he said. "I wasn't worried about it." And then, a moment later, "So if I try real hard, I can make a memory grow back?"
"No," Maneck said. "The process would be impeded by will. You are not to try to remember specific events. To do so will decrease your function. You will refrain."
"Kind of like picking at scabs means they won't heal," Ramon said, then shrugged and changed the subject. "Hey. How was it you got here, anyway?"
"We participate in flow. Our presence is inevitable."
"Yeah, whatever. But you monstrosities, you don't come from here, right? You can't. There aren't any cities or factories or those bug-tower things like the Turu use. You don't eat the animals or plants here the way you would if you fuckers had evolved here with them. This isn't your planet. So how was it you got here?"
"Our presence was inevitable," Maneck said again. "Given the constraints upon the flow of what your flawed language would call my people, this outcome was required."
"You hide inside a mountain," Ramon said, looking out between the thinned slats of the flying box to the green-and-orange smudge of the treetops three meters below. "You're all hot and bothered to stop this other version of me so no one finds out about you. You know what I think?"
Maneck didn't respond. A thin, transparent membrane slipped over its eyes, dulling the orange color. Ramon thought there were birds who did something like that - had eyelids they could see through. Or perhaps it was fish. Ramon grinned and leaned back.
"I think you were out there for the same reason I was. I think you're hiding from something."
"From what was the man hiding?" Maneck asked. Ramon felt a stab of unease; he hadn't meant to tell the thing about the European. But how could it matter now?
"I killed someone. He was with a woman and he didn't treat her so good. I was drunk and he was being loud and stupid. He said some shit, I said some shit. It ended up in the alley, you know? Turned out he was the ambassador from Europa. And I put a knife in him. Anyway, I wanted to get the fuck away. Get someplace they wouldn't find me and wait for the thing to blow over. And then I find you pendejos ."
"You killed one of your own kind?"
"Sort of," Ramon said. "He was from Europa."
"Had he restricted your freedom?"
"No, and he didn't fuck my wife or any of that other shit. It wasn't like that."
"Then why was it you killed him?"
"It doesn't bother me," Ramon said. "It was just one of those things. They happen sometimes. Like an accident. We were both drunk."
"Hard drink," the alien said. "It removed your constraints."
"Yes."
"You kill to be free, and freedom causes you to kill," the alien said. "This cycle is aubre ."
"It's got drawbacks," Ramon said.
What had the cabron said? Ramon tried to remember how it had happened. The European must have said something or done