Those had been terrible days, working the mines. He’d slept on a company cot in a wood shack hardly better than the squatters’ holes he’d grown up in. The food had tasted of grit. It was a grinding, endless exhaustion, and the money he made was hardly enough to get drunk with on Saturday night. And still, it was work.
Palenki had been his ticket. The old bastard had made his crew learn. In the nights, when no one wanted anything more than to sleep and try to forget the day, Palenki made them all watch tutorials on mining technology and industrial geology. Ramón had hated it, but he didn’t want to get cut from the work gang. So, half against his will, he’d learned. And though he would never have said it, he found himself enjoying it. Stone made sense to him, the way that land formed, folding ancient histories into itself until someone like him came along and cracked it open. The half-hour tutorial sessions were the best part of his day, almost worth losing the sleep for.
And perhaps Palenki had seen it in him. Because the time came when the Silver Enye ships arrived at the platforms above Mexico City. Huge beyond imagining, they hung in the sky like hawks riding an updraft. There was a contract. A colony planet. The first wave had left thirty years before, and now the Enye wanted to sling a ship after them to bring the industrial infrastructure that the planet would need. The first colonists wouldn’t reach the planet for another several centuries, according to the clocks sitting on Earth, but with the effects of relativity and the stuttering reality of the Enye drive engines, Ramón could be there in little more than a year of ship’s time. Anyone who took a contract to go out into the black carrying the questionable fruits of human industry would by definition outlive everyone who stayed behind. That alone seemed enough to convince Palenki. He accepted a contract and signed his whole work gang up with him.
Ramón remembered taking the orbital shuttle up to the platform, gliding twice around Earth and ending practically right above where he’d started. He was sixteen, and leaving his world behind. The only regret he’d felt at the prospect was when he’d looked down from the Enye ship. The blue of the ocean, the white of the clouds, the industrialized land masses glittering in the crescent nighttime like a permanent fire; Earth was prettier when you were away from it. If you backed up far enough, it was even beautiful.
Palenki had died on the trip. The tumor had been pressing on his heart for months. Ramón and the others of the work gang had scrambled to reorganize themselves, fearing that the Enye wouldn’t honor the contract without Palenki, and they were right. The agreement was voided, and when the great ships reached the São 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 cimarrón 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.”
Ramón 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,” Ramón 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,” Ramón 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. Ramón thought there were birds who did something like that—had eyelids they could see through. Or perhaps it was fish. Ramón 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. Ramón 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,” Ramón 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,” Ramón 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,” Ramón said.
What had the cabrón said? Ramón tried to remember how it had happened. The European must have said something or done something; made some joke or crack or comment that had driven them out to the alley. Had it been over the woman? It seemed like perhaps it had. He remembered the alley, the knife, the blood changing colors under the shifting light, but before that, things were missing and out of focus. He didn’t know how to tell if that was a result of being drunk or the unformed nature of his new alien-built brain.
Why did you kill him?
The question seemed better and better all the time.
In the northern sky, great clouds gathered, piling up white and gray and yellow. Green balloons—the hydrogen-bladdered plants they called sky-lilies—dotted the clouds, moving in slow, lazy whorls where the high, thin winds caught them and made them tumble like jellyfish in the sea. They were a sure sign of coming weather. Ramón saw flashes of lightning beneath the cloudbank’s belly, but it was too far to hear the thunder. It would rain, but not here. Wherever the other Ramón was now, at least he wouldn’t need to worry about getting soaked. How strange it must be for the oth
er Ramón—hurt, alone, unaware that there was someone else now who knew about the aliens and was plotting to keep him alive and free. Ramón imagined his twin out there, hiding under the leaves, possibly even watching the bone-white box make its wide arcing path through the air.
Frightened. The other Ramón would be frightened. And pissed off. Frightened not only because of what he’d found and the hunt in which he was now the prey, but also from being so alone—so isolated. There was a difference between isolation and solitude. With the van and his supplies, he’d enjoyed solitude. Thinking he was the only man north of Fiddler’s Jump with no way to call for help, sleeping in improvised shelters, and fleeing an inscrutable alien civilization—that was different. He tried to imagine himself in that place. He tried to think how he would feel.
He’d want to kill the pinche alien. And he knew that was right, because sitting here next to the thing, that was exactly what he wanted. Ramón sighed. At least the other Ramón didn’t have this thing stuck in his neck.
Maneck shuddered, the yunea coming to a sudden halt in midair. Ramón’s attention snapped to the alien. Its quills were as agitated as grass in a high wind; its arms seemed to fidget with each other and with nothing. Ramón felt a deep sense of dread bloom in his belly. Something had happened.
“You got something?” he asked.
“The man has been nearby. Recently. You were correct in your interpretation of his flow. You are an apt tool.”
“Where is he?”
Maneck didn’t answer. The yunea began to sway slowly back and forth as if hung from the sky by a rope. Ramón stood up, the slats of the floor biting into the soft, uncallused soles of his feet. His heart was racing, though he couldn’t say what it was he hoped or feared would happen. The sahael pulsed once and went quiet again.
“Where is he?” Ramón repeated, and this time, Maneck turned to him.
“He is not present,” the alien rumbled. “You will interpret this.”
The yunea shifted, sloping down through the air. Ramón stumbled and sat back down. The leafy canopy parted, and a long, wide meadow came into view. Great flat stones—granite, from the look of them—lay among the grasses and wildflowers. And at the side of one of them, something fluttered. Ramón squinted, fighting to make it out. A branch or a stick had been driven into the soil at the great stone’s edge, and a rag had been tied to the top, like a banner. The cloth was dirty and pale, with darker stains. His shirt. It was the rest of Ramón’s shirt, tied by its one remaining sleeve.
“What is the significance of this object?” Maneck asked.
“Fuck if I know,” Ramón said. “Maybe it’s a flag of surrender? Could be that he wants to talk.”
“If he wishes to converse, why would he not be present?”
“You shot his finger off!”
Maneck went silent. The yunea made a slow circuit of the strange flag. Ramón sucked at his teeth. It had to have been put there to get their attention. And yet the idea of surrender fit poorly with Ramón’s intuition. Ramón Espejo would not want to surrender. The yunea hovered over the stone, lowering itself slowly toward the ground. Ramón imagined his twin out in the forest, maybe watching them. Had he had binoculars in his pack when the aliens found him, or had they been left in the van and got incinerated? No, they wouldn’t have been. There wouldn’t have been room in his pack for the field glasses and coring charges both.
Ramón’s unease sprang to full panic. The coring charges! The branch set just at the edge of the stone where it could amplify any vibration within the granite slab. It wasn’t a flag. It was a trigger.
“Stop!” he shouted, a half second too late. The yunea touched down. Ramón thought he could see the branch shudder in the immeasurably brief moment before the explosion came.
Chapter 11
Ramón struggled to move. There was something, something urgent, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was. The earth beneath him felt unstable, like when he’d drunk until it was hard to walk. Only there was something bad, something important. And he couldn’t remember what it was.
It was the shell of the yunea that first brought a glimmer of recognition. The bone-white slats and dripping strands of the thing’s walls and floor had been broken and ripped apart. They lay on the ground, scattered on the granite stone like a child’s game of pick-up sticks. Only one wall and a corner remained standing, and it was slumped like an old man’s spine. The air smelled hot and acid—the scent, familiar to prospectors, of spent explosives. Across the stone, a great spray of fresh earth and new gravel showed where the charges had gone off, angled up toward anyone on the surface instead of down into the ground. He had an impression—likely more his own imagination than the truth—of the slats clicking closed and opaque at the moment of the blast. Shielding him. Him and the alien. Maneck.
Ramón tried to sit up and failed, slipping back down onto the ground. His arms were weak; his right leg was bleeding freely from a gash just above his knee. He forced himself to roll over. His head was beginning to clear, memories of the immediate past fitting themselves together.
The fucker had tried to kill them. The other Ramón, wherever he was, had known he was being followed, and he’d laid a trap to kill the alien. Outrage bloomed in his heart, followed almost instantly by respect and a strange pride. Let aliens everywhere know it: Ramón Espejo was a tough little fucker, and dangerous to cross. Ramón laughed, hooted, slapped ineffectually at the ground, his mouth aching with a grin. That had been a fucking ride. It occurred to him that he was laughing and not being punished for it.
The sahael was still trailing from his neck. Its pale flesh had gone dark as a bruise. Ramón swallowed. He wondered for the first time what would happen if the evil thing died while it was inside of him.
“Monster!” he called, and his voice seemed deep and far away. The high register of his hearing had been blown out by the explosion, leaving him only the low bass tones of his voice. “Monster! Are you okay?”
There was no answer. Ramón finally levered himself up to sitting, and, one hand on the dark, injured sahael, followed its line to the massive bulk of the alien. Maneck was standing, but its stance seemed lower and squat, as if it needed a wider base of support to keep its balance. One of its strangely jointed arms hung limp at its side. Its left eye had gone from hot orange to a deep ruby red and swollen to half again its previous size. The most dramatic change, though, was its skin. Where the silver had swirled on the black like oil over water, half of the alien’s body had turned ashy and gray. Its flesh looked tighter as well, like a sausage cooked almost to the point of bursting. Pale mucus dribbled from its snout, spattering to the ground at its feet. Ramón couldn’t guess what it was, but nothing about the alien spoke well of its condition.
“Monster?” Ramón said again.
“You failed to foresee this,” the alien intoned.
“No shit,” Ramón said.
“It is your purpose to mirror the man’s flow,” the alien said.
“Well, I’m only so good a tool,” Ramón said, and spat. “I forgot that the fucker had those coring charges in his pack. It was a mistake.”
“What other devices does he have?”
Ramón shrugged, trying to recall the layout of his field pack.
“Some food, but he’s probably already eaten that. There’s an emergency beacon, but it’s short-range. It’s designed to trigger a bigger beacon in the van, and you motherfuckers already took care of that. A pistol. I had a pistol.”
“That is the device that accelerated metal using magnetic fields?” Maneck asked. Its voice seemed flatter and more mechanical. Ramón didn’t know if the change was in the alien’s voice or his own ears.
“That’s the one.”
“It was removed from him,” Maneck said. “It was this that separated the man’s appendage.”
“The pistol guard ripped his finger off?” Ramón asked. “You mean that pendejo’s done all this without his trigger finger?”
Maneck blinke
d, the red eye’s lid not entirely closing.
“Is this significant?” Maneck asked.
“No. It’s just kind of impressive.”
A low wheeze came from the alien that, in another context, Ramón might have mistaken for laughter. Instead, he wondered if the thing was suffering a seizure or choking on something. The mucus flowing from its snout became a violent blue for a moment, then turned pale again.
“How many more charges of this kind does the man possess?” Maneck asked.
“I don’t know,” Ramón said. “I had four in the pack. That’s standard. I used one finding you bastards, so that’s three, but I don’t know if he just used one charge on this or all of them.”
“Can this be determined?”
“Sure, probably,” Ramón said. “I can take a look. I should probably do something about my leg first, though. And you look like shit.”
“You will determine the number of charges used,” Maneck said, its voice becoming strident and tinny. Ramón decided that his high-register hearing was starting to come back. “You will do so immediately.”
“Fine,” Ramón said. “I have to go over and look at the crater. You think this fucking leash stretches that far?”
The alien was still for a moment, and then began to haul itself across the wreckage of the flying box toward the new scar in the landscape. Its steps were pained and awkward. Ramón could hear its breath; the low wheeze again. It had clearly been seriously hurt.
The crater was wide but shallow. Ramón considered the stone where the blast had sheared away the corners of the granite. If the charge had been shaped to burrow into or even under the slab, the damage to stone would have been much more extensive. The other Ramón had angled the blast up, toward whatever set it off. The triggering branch was currently nothing more than a handful of toothpicks scattered from the meadow up toward low orbit. He had a momentary image of a flapjack somewhere high in the air, surprised at being impaled by a length of branch, but he suppressed a chuckle.
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