Hunters Run Page 0,81

with a good, solid van that he could lock up at night. Or if he at least had his pinche knife back.

There had been stories from the first wave of colonists of men who had gone feral; moved out into the forests and steppes, deserts and tide pools of the planet and never came back to civilization. Some of them might even be true. Colonies didn't tend to pull people who loved their old lives on Earth. There would be a percentage who hated life here too; men and women who'd hauled their sorry personal failings all the way from Earth. Ramon wondered if he was one of those. Except that he wanted to get back now. So he wasn't feral yet. And as long as his fingers kept twitching toward a cigarette case that was days behind him and across a river, he would never wholly abandon the cities.

"Why'd you become a cop?" the man asked, his voice already slurred by exhaustion and impending sleep.

"I don't know," Ramon said. "It seemed like the right thing at the time. Why'd you become a prospector?"

"It was better than being on a work gang," the man said. "I'm pretty good at it. And there was a time I needed to get out of town, you know? Get kind of lost for a while."

"Yeah?" Ramon said. He was tired as well. It had been a long day in a series of very long days. His body felt heavy and comfortable.

"There was this guy," the other man said. "Martin Casaus. We were friends for a while, you know. When I first got here. He was one of those guys hangs out by the orientation centers and tries to make friends with new people since no one who knows him here likes him." The other man spat. "He called himself a trapper. I guess he even killed things sometimes. Anyway, he got this idea I was after his woman. I wasn't either. She was a fucking dog. But he got it in his head that I was trying to cut him out."

Lianna. Ramon remembered her, the night at the bar. The deep red wallpaper, like drying blood. He'd gone to her, sat at her side. She'd still smelled of the kitchen - frying oil and herbs, hot metal and chili. He had offered to buy her a drink. She'd accepted. She'd taken his hand. She'd been gentle about it. Tentative. He'd had enough to drink that he was a little fuzzy in the head. Martin's fantasies of her - of opening her blouse, of whispering filthy, exciting things into her ears, of waking in her bed - had intoxicated him as much as the drink.

"I didn't give a shit about her," the man said, chuckling. "She was a cook. Kind of dumpy, you know. Ate too much of her own stuff. Martin, though. Fuck. He was crazy about her."

Lianna's room had been in the back - a separate building grown from cheap chitin out behind the cantina with a little bathroom, a shower, but no place to cook. The LEDs spelling out los rancheros had filled the room with dim, harsh light. He'd undressed her to the sound of Portuguese fado music on the music feed, the singer crooning about love and loss and death, a song whose words he heard again now. It had been a beautiful song. In spite of the mild night air, Lianna had had goose bumps. He remembered the gooseflesh on her arms. Her thighs. Her breasts. She'd been shy at first. Feeling guilty about having him there. And then less so. And then not shy at all.

"So Martin gets it into his head that I fucked this girl. Now, he wasn't seeing her. Hadn't spoken more than maybe a dozen words to her his whole life. But he thinks he's in love. So he gets crazy. Jumps me with a sheet metal hook. Almost kills me."

Afterward, he'd run his fingers through her hair as she slept. He'd wanted to cry, but hadn't been able to. Even now, the memory growing in like a vine in his brain, he couldn't say why he'd wanted to do that, what mixture of lust and sorrow, loneliness and guilt had moved him so much. Part of it was that he'd betrayed Martin. Only part of it, though. Lianna.

"So I figure, you know, as soon as I'm healed up, maybe I should get scarce. I put a down payment on a van from this