Gardner Dozois - Hunter’s Run

‘She kicked me out again,’ Ramon said, trying to sound hang-dog despite the relief washing through him. ‘We had a fight about the parade. It got a little out of hand is all.’

‘She know you’re taking off?’

‘I don’t think she cares,’ Ramon said.

‘Right now, maybe she doesn’t. But you fly out of here and three weeks later she decides that all is forgiven, she’s going to come around tearing up my place.’

Ramon chuckled, remembering the incident that Griego was talking about. He was wrong, though. That hadn’t been about making peace; Elena had convinced herself that Ramon had taken a woman with him when he went out in the field. She hadn’t stopped raging and ranting until she found the girl on whom her paranoia had fixed still in town and involved with one of the magistrates, and even then she still seemed to hold a grudge. Ramon had had to spend almost half the money he’d gotten from his survey work just buying beer and kaafa kyit for all his business contacts whom she’d alienated.

Griego didn’t laugh with him.

‘You know she’s crazy, don’t you?’ he asked instead.

‘She does get pretty wild,’ Ramon said with a half-smile, trying the expression out like it was a new shirt.

‘No, I know wild girls. Elena is fucking loca . I know you like that girl down at the exchange. What’s her name?’

‘Lianna?’ Ramon asked, disbelief in his voice.

‘Yeah that’s the one. Lives over on the north side. Used to be you had a thing with her, didn’t you?’

Ramon remembered those days, when he’d been a younger man, new to the colony. Yes, there had been a woman with coffee-and-milk skin and a laugh that made a man happy just listening to it. Maybe he had even dreamed about her a few times since. But that had carried its own slice of hell with it. Ramon scratched at the scar that striped his belly. Griego raised an eyebrow and Ramon coughed out a laugh.

‘She’s … No. No, she’s not like that. There couldn’t be anything between someone like her and someone like me. And don’t ever let Elena hear you say different.’

Griego gestured his discretion with a wave of his bottle. Ramon took another pull. The thick, earthy taste of the beer was growing on him. He wondered how much alcohol the brew carried.

‘Lianna was a good woman,’ Ramon said. ‘Elena’s like me, though. We understand each other, you know?’ His voice filled with a sudden bitterness that surprised him. ‘We deserve each other.’

‘If you say so,’ Griego said, and the van chimed, its self-test complete. Ramon levered himself up and followed Griego to where the results floated in the air. The power and variance checked at each level, just edging down below optimal on the highest range. Griego waved a crooked finger at the drop.

‘That’s a little weird,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should take another look at –’

‘It’s the cable,’ Ramon said. ‘Salt rats ate through the old one. I had to get gold for the replacement. Couldn’t afford the carbon mesh.’

‘Ah,’ Griego said and clicked his tongue in something between sympathy and disapproval. ‘Yeah, that would do it. Too bad about the rats. That’s the problem with scaring away all the predators, eh? We wind up protecting all the things they used to eat, like salt rats and flatfurs, and then they’re everywhere.’

‘I’ll take a few rats if I don’t have to worry that there’s chupacabras and redjackets in the street every time I go out for a piss,’ Ramon said. ‘Besides, if we didn’t have vermin, how would we know we’d made a real city, right?’

Griego snapped off the display and shrugged. They settled the account; half from Ramon’s available credit, half into an interest bearing tab that the salvage yard’s system kept track of automatically. The sun was setting; the sky pink and gold and blue the color of lapis. Stars glimmered shyly from behind daylight’s veil. And Diegotown spread below them, its lights like a permanent fire. Ramon finished the last of his beer, then spat out the sediment. It left grit between his teeth.

‘The last mouthful’s not the best one,’ Griego said. ‘Still. Beats water.’

‘Amen,’ Ramon said.

‘How long you going out for?’

‘A month,’ Ramon said. ‘Maybe two.’

‘Miss the whole festival.’

‘That’s the idea,’ Ramon agreed.

‘You got enough food for that?’

‘I got hunting gear,’ Ramon said. ‘I could live out there forever if I wanted.’ He was surprised at the wistful, even yearning, tone that he could hear in his own voice.

There was a moment’s silence before Griego spoke again; words that made Ramon’s nerves shrill with sudden fear.

‘You hear about the European that got killed?’

Ramon looked up, startled, but Griego was sucking at his teeth, his expression placid.

‘What about him?’ Ramon asked warily.

‘Governor’s all pissed off about it, from what I hear.’

‘Too bad for the governor, then.’

‘The police came by. Two constables looking real serious. Asked if anyone had been in, getting a van in shape to head out fast. You know, someone who was maybe trying not to be found.’

Ramon nodded, staring at the van. His throat felt tight and the thick beer in his belly seemed to have turned to stone.

‘What did you tell them?’

‘Told them no,’ Griego said with a shrug.

‘There wasn’t anyone?’

‘A couple,’ Griego said. ‘Orlando Wasserman’s kid. And that crazy gringa from Swan’s Neck. But I figured, what the hell, you know? The police don’t pay me, these other people do. So where do my loyalties lie?’

‘Man got killed,’ Ramon said.

‘Yeah,’ Griego agreed, pleasantly. ‘A gringo.’ He spit sideways, then shrugged, as if the death of a gringo or any other kind of European was of no great consequence. ‘I’m just saying it because I’m not the only one they’re asking. You taking off, they may take that the wrong way, give you a hard time about it. Just keep that in mind when you supply up.’

Ramon nodded.

‘They gonna catch him, you think?’ Ramon asked.

‘Oh yeah,’ Griego said. ‘They’ll have to. Bust a gut to do it, if they got to. Show the Enye that we’re a justice-loving people. Not that they care. Shit, fucking Enye lick each other hello. Probably lick the governor and get pissed off if he doesn’t lick them back. Anyway, he’ll make a big show out of the trial, do everything to prove how they got the right guy, then put him down like a fucking dog. You know, whoever it is they decide did it. No one else, there’s always Johnny Joe Cardenas. They’ve been looking for something to hang on him for years.’

‘Maybe it’ll be good that I get out of the city for a while, then,’ Ramon said. He tried a weak smile that felt as obvious as a confession. ‘You know. Just to avoid misunderstandings.’

‘Yeah,’ Griego said. ‘Besides, this is the big one right?’

‘Lucky strike,’ Ramon agreed.

When he started up the van, he could feel the difference. The lift tubes seemed to chime as he lifted up into the sky, all of Diegotown, with its unplanned maze of narrow streets and red-roofed buildings, below him. Elena was down there somewhere. The police too. The body of the European. Mikel Ibrahim and the gravity knife Ramon had handed to him, just handed to him. The murder weapon! And slumped in a bar or a basement opium den – or maybe breaking into someone’s house – Johnny Joe Cardenas, just waiting to hang.

And Lianna, maybe, somewhere in the good section by the port, who didn’t think of Ramon anymore and probably never would.

Ramon’s thoughts were interrupted by the pulsing hum of a shuttle rising up into the thin and distant air. Another load of metal or plastic or fuel or chitin for the welcoming platform. Ramon spun the van north, set it for proximity avoidance, and headed out alone, leaving all the hell and shit and sorrow of Diegotown behind.