Hunters Run Page 0,88

find us some food."

Ramon chuckled, then shrugged off the yoke and rolled onto his back. The sky was darker now, closer than a cathedral's ceiling. He heard what might have been distant thunder or only a heightened awareness of the blood in his own ears. The man shook his head and turned away. Ramon smiled.

It was strange, not knowing whether or not he liked the man who was himself. He'd never seen how he was from the outside. Smart, resourceful, tough as old leather, but wound tight around his fears and ready to blame everyone but himself. All that insecurity and rage fizzing inside him, ready to explode at the slightest provocation, strutting around like a bantam cock, staring down whoever was nearby. This was what he had always been. Only it took becoming an alien monstrosity to see it.

But there was a dignity to the man, in spite of his flaws. And a surprising strength of will. He'd engineered Maneck's death. He'd sealed the stump of his missing finger when most men would have tried to live with the open wound, and the fact that he wasn't dying of fever right now was a testament to his wisdom. He was even capable of a kind of weird compassion. Keeping Ramon from pushing on now. Lying about Lianna so he wouldn't sound weak. What was he really like? All the pieces of the man's personality seemed at odds with each other, and they also seemed to fit.

The only thing that didn't make sense to him, even now, was staying with Elena. He couldn't see why his twin would do that. He understood why he would have, but this other self could surely do better. Even if they were the same man.

He didn't remember dozing off, only waking when the man shook his arm. Ramon slapped a hand over the scar at his elbow almost before he opened his eyes. The man was squatting beside him, two fat jabali cubs in his hand. Ramon sat up, his body protesting.

"Where did you get those?" he asked.

"I got lucky," the man said. "Come on, I've got a fire started. You can talk with me while I clean these poor pendejos ."

Ramon levered himself up to sitting, and then stood.

"Tomorrow, I'll cook," he said. "You did breakfast and lunch both."

"Go ahead," the man said. "You want to make some food, I'm not going to stop you."

Ramon sat close to the fire, watching the man gut and skin the little animals. The wood hissed and popped, the flame fluttered with a sound like wings when a gust of air blew through it. It would take them another couple of hours to reach the lower riverbank. He wondered if it would be raining by then, and which of them would spend the night in the lean-to. Pushing himself as hard as he had would win the man's respect, but probably not so much as that.

"You from Mexico?" the man asked.

"What?"

"Mexico. On Earth. That where you from?"

"Yeah," Ramon said. "Oaxaca. Why?"

"Just thinking. You look like a mejicano. You've got that kind of face."

Ramon stared at the fire, willing the man to talk about anything but how he looked. Either the man picked up on it, or he hadn't been that concerned with the subject to start.

"What's it like, being a cop?" he asked instead. "You like it?"

"Yeah," Ramon said. "I like it. It's a good job, you know?"

"Looks shitty to me," the man said. "No offense. But all the time, you have to take guys who are just trying to get along, and bust their balls. And why? Because the governor tells you to? So what? I mean, who's the governor? You take away his power and his money, and you think he's going to act any different than the folks he's coming down on?"

"Yeah, well," Ramon said, trying to think how a cop would answer. "The governor's a snooty Portugee prick. That's true. But it's not all like that. Yeah, part of it's colonial bullshit. Checking licenses and permits and shit. But it's not just about that."

"No?"

"No," Ramon said. "There's also the real bad pendejos. The guys who sneak into church, piss all over the altar. The ones who mess with children. I deal with those assholes too."

"Guys who stab ambassadors, you mean?" the man said, his voice cool.

"Fuck that. I mean bad ones. The kind that need killing. You know what I mean."

The man looked up. There was blood on his hands, red and darkening.