Hunters Run Page 0,73

a woman, her hair straightened to make her look Asian, at the European's side. He knew that the woman hadn't been there because she knew or liked the man; being with him had been some kind of work thing. But he didn't know how he knew that. He remembered her laugh - tight, short, frightened.

How would he have explained to Maneck that laughter could be more than what was funny? The alien wouldn't have understood that the same thing that people did when something was funny could also be a way to express fear. To cry for help.

Ramon grabbed the thought, trying to follow it back to some more solid recollection, but it swam away, just out of his reach. Only his twin knew it, and Ramon had no way to ask.

They didn't speak again until shortly after dawn. Ramon and his twin agreed to move the raft across the river and hug the western shore until they saw a good stand of cane. They could make the pit out of anything thick enough to hold the dirt and sand that kept the fire from burning the raft itself, but using cane would be the easiest way to make a lean-to. And judging from the stars, the cane might start getting scarce if they went much farther south.

They found a decent spot by the middle morning, and Ramon gently paddled them to a landing. The impact of the bank caused the other man to stumble slightly, but the raft held together just fine. Ramon checked all the cane floats, to be sure, but none of his knots had come loose.

The other man cut cane for the rest of the morning while Ramon rounded up food. It would have been easier with a pistol, but there were a few sug beetles to be found and he managed to trap three fat, mud-colored things that looked like a cross between crayfish and eels. He didn't know what they were, but the rule of thumb was that the poisonous animals were brighter colored, so the eel-things were more likely to be edible than not. Still, he might let the other man try them first.

When he found his twin, the man was squatting on the ground, his head hung low. The field knife was in his hand and pinked by the cane juice; it looked less like blood than some sort of cherry sauce. The pile of cane on the shore was smaller than Ramon had expected. Ramon cleared his throat hard enough to be heard over the water, and the man's head rose. The black eyes squinted at Ramon for a moment before his twin lifted his chin in greeting.

"Hey," Ramon said. "I got some things. They're probably good to eat. You seen these before?"

His twin shifted his focus to the eel-things.

"No," the man said. "But they're dead. So let's cook them, eh?"

"Right," Ramon said. "You okay, man? You look tired."

"Didn't sleep," his twin spat. "And before that, I was running for my fucking life with nothing but what I had on for a few days. And before that, I had my hand fucking blown up."

"Maybe we should take a day," Ramon said, dropping the dead creatures and holding his hand out for the field knife. "Rest up, you know. Get our strength back."

"Fuck that," the twin said. He shifted his gaze to Ramon's outstretched hand.

"I can't gut these things with my fucking fingernails," Ramon said. His twin shrugged, tossed the knife in the air, catching it by the blade, and held it out grip-first for Ramon to take. He was fucked up, no question, but Ramon's twin still had reflexes.

The eel-things had a simple enough gut. Ramon cleaned out everything that didn't look like muscle, on the theory that any weird digestive enzymes or venom sacs weren't likely to be in that tissue. He roasted them on a spit, and, while cooking, they smelled like roast beef and hot mud. The sug beetles, he boiled in the tin drinking cup from the field kit. The other man sat at the riverside, looking out over the bright water, his gaze empty. Ramon decided he'd try the eel-things first after all. He carved off a sliver, placed it on his tongue, gagged, and threw the eel-things still on their spit out into the river.

"Sug beetles," he said. "We're having sug beetles."

The other man looked up at him, shading his eyes with his wrapped hand.

"They're here," his twin said.

"Who?" Ramon asked, but the man didn't