Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  "What are you doing?" the other demanded.

  "Fishing," Ramon answered.

  The other made a derisive grunting sound.

  "What does a banker know about fishing?"

  "Enough to catch fish."

  The other lapsed back into silence. Ramon pulled the wire slowly back to the raft, then cast it out again, letting the rhythm of the movements lull him and the sun warm his back. When he looked around, the other had fallen asleep again, his head resting on his uninjured hand. He looked ill. Part of it was the exhaustion and the fear and the fever, but there was more than that. Ramon could see the sorrow ground in at the corners of the mouth and eyes. He could see the desperation in the shoulders. And he knew them, he recognized them. This is what he was. Smart, resourceful, tough as old leather, but wound tight around his fears and ready to blame everyone but himself. This was what he had always been. Only it took becoming an alien monstrosity to see it. The other's eyes slitted open.

  "What are you looking at?"

  "I thought I heard something back there," Ramon lied. "It was probably just a bird."

  He turned back to the fishing, keeping his face turned away from the other, knowing that sooner or later the penny would have to drop, and the less time they spent facing each other, the better the chances of postponing the recognition. But the other didn't return to his sleep.

  "You're a funny kind of man," the other said. "How long did those things have you?"

  "A couple days, I guess," Ramon said. He could have easily said my whole life, or they never really had me. I was never one of them. Any more than I was one of the colonistas in Neuvo Janeiro. "It wasn't that bad."

  "That thing they put in your neck. That looked pretty bad."

  "Yeah. Maybe it was."

  "They crippled me," the other said, and there was something almost like gloating in his voice. "but they didn't catch me. Too smart for them! What do you think they are anyway? What're they up to? Did you find anything out about them?"

  "I don't know anything for sure. I got the impression that they aren't from this planet, that they came here long ago and have been hiding in that mountain for hundreds of years. Waiting—but waiting for what, I'm not sure. It's hard to figure out. They … they don't think like we do."

  "We're going to be famous, you know," the other said; he hadn't really been listening. "The first men to see aliens! We'll be rich!"

  "You think so?"

  "I know it."

  "Well. Maybe this was the big one after all," Ramon said, trying to keep the acid from his voice.

  "What?"

  "Nothing," Ramon said. "I was talking to the fish."

  For a long moment, they were silent. Ramon shifted, wondering if his repulsive twin had drifted back to sleep, but not wanting to turn and see. Instead, he drew in the fishing wire and cast it out again. Something on his arm caught his attention. A thin white line, jagged and half-formed. The machete scar slowly welling up. What had Maneck said? You will continue to develop across time. He touched the thin line of knotting flesh with his fingertips, caressing it as gently as Eleana ever had. His beard was also thickening, his hands becoming rougher. He was becoming more and more like the man who lay behind him. He closed his eyes, torn between relief at seeing his own flesh coming back again and anxiety about what would come—no one would mistake them for different men. No one would even think they were twins—they were too close for that. By the time they reached another human being, they would have the same scars, the same calluses, the same faces and bodies and hair.

  The thought was alarming in a way that went deeper than the simple fear of discovery. Some echo stirred in his mind of being the river of the vast and living sea. He had diverged. Maneck had feared it, and it had been right.

  "You got a woman?" the other asked.

  "Sorry? What?"

  "I said, you got a woman?"

  "Yeah. I guess."

  "You guess? You don't know?"

  "I guess I don't," Ramon said. "She's … she's a good woman, I think. We're a good match at least. But I make her a little crazy sometimes. And she …"

  "She's got you whipped, mi amigo," the other sneered. "I can hear it in your voice."

  "What about you?" Ramon asked, not looking back over his shoulder.

  "I got someone I sleep with," the other said. "She's got a mouth on her sometimes, but she's okay. I don't mind fucking her. She's pretty good in bed."

  "You love her?"

  "What's it to you?"

  "I don't think you do."

  "And what do you know about it?" There was an angry buzz in the other's voice now. Ramon shook his head at it. He didn't have any patience for this sorry bastard. He knew him too well.

  "Forget it," he said. "I'm tired and I don't feel like talking anymore."

  "Who gives a shit what you want?" the other demanded. It was like they were in a bar. Ramon could feel the rage in his breast, clean and hard and deep. It was why he always fought. It was why he hated people. This greasy, self-centered, puffed-up son of a whore at the other end of the raft was what he hated most in the world. Some new, observing part of his mind made a note of the fact.

  "I said I don't want to talk," Ramon said.

  "You don't get to say that kind of crap about me and then act like you're so high and mighty you can decide when I can talk and not talk! You think because you got a job in an office somewhere, you're better than me? You think that? What doyou know?"

  "I know enough," Ramon said. "I know about how Eleana makes you crazy, nagging all the time. I know about how you asked that chica at Garcia's to dance with you and whether she'd take you in if you left Eleana. Nothing ever came of that, but you did ask. Asking means you were thinking about it, and I don't think you'd have done that if you loved her. I think you need her. I think you need her because, without her, you aren't part of anything or anyone. You're just some pendejowith a third-class van and some prospecting tools."

  It wasn't how he'd thought it would come out, but it would do. It was too late now to go back, and Ramon found that he actually felt good. He'd said it. He'd said it out loud, and he saw now that he'd been thinking it for months. From before the aliens, from before the vat. From before the time when there had been two of them, he'd had this hatred within him. And now it was out. And now he knew who it was for. Whatever was going to happen, let it happen now.

  "The thing is, you don't understand flow," Ramon said. "You don't understand what it is to be part of something bigger. And, Ramon, you poor bastard, you aren't ever going to know."

  "What the fuck are you?"

  The words were strangled. Coughed out of a panic-tight throat. Ramon dropped the fishing wire, letting the river take it, and turned. The other was gray beneath his sun-browned skin. His eyes were open so far that Ramon could see the whites all the way around. He had backed to the edge of the raft, backed away until there was no place further to go. Next, Ramon knew, he would attack. And he did still have the knife.

  "Jesus Christ," the other whispered. "You're me!" He stared in horror for a frozen moment, then fumbled at his belt and pulled out the bush knife.

  The silence wasn't total. The river clinked and chuckled around them. Birds or things near enough like them to take the name called from the tops of the trees, flew overhead, skimmed down across the river for a drink. But Ramon and his twin might have been statues, carved of wood and set upon the raft like icons in some old pagan temple. The wounded, debased, frightened little man at the back, his knife shining where the sunlight caught the blade. And at the front, himself, whatever he was. A thing of human flesh created by aliens. Man and not-man, both at the same time, and if this was aubre, so be it. He was more than he had been, and he knew it now. He saw it.

  And if he was not Ramon Espejo, still there was enough of the mean old bastard in him that he wouldn't go down without a fight.

  Perhaps his resolve showed in his face, because as he thought it, the other shrieked and leaped forward. Ramon ju
mped, not away, not to the side, but forward, stepping into the blow. He brought up his balled fist, sinking his knuckles deep in the other's belly, then butted his forehead into the bridge of his older twin's nose. But the other had danced back, anticipating the attack. The blade danced.

  "You're one of them," the other spat. "You're a monster!"

  "Yes. Yes, I am. And I am still a better man than you."

  Again, the other moved forward, sweeping the air with the blade, forcing Ramon to move back, back, until the raft shifted under the weight of their struggle, and cold water touched his heels.

  "You're a thing. You're an abomination and you will die!"

  He had been an idiot, letting the other incite him like this. Even fevered, even weak, the other was a fighter, a killer, and he had the weapon. Ramon felt anger growing in his belly, anger at himself and at the other, at the world and at the blind idiot God that had brought him this far, had made this absurdity of his life, and now, it seemed, was prepared to let him die at the hand of his worse self. The other grinned like a wolf, seeing Ramon's defeat before him.

  And, for a moment, it was as if Maneck was within him, calm and stolid and phlegmatic. You are not that person, its strange grating voice said. The other shouted out again, leaping forward. The knife was ready—if Ramon did what his nature told him, if he jumped into the fight as if they were in an alley outside some midnight bar, he would be gutted like a fish. It was what the other expected him to do. Ramon crouched, but didn't move.

  The knife moved slowly as a car wreck; Ramon shifted away to the right, but still pain bloomed in his side. He brought his arm down, pinned the other's hand against him. It drove the knife deeper into his own flesh, but it also trapped his twin against him.

  "Come with me, mi hermano," Ramon said. "There's something I want to show you."

  And he stepped off the edge of the raft.

  The water was numbing cold, the glacier still in its blood. Ramon gasped despite himself and earned a throatful of river water. The other thrashed and twisted, and then they were apart, floating. Floating in a bright, flowing river. Ramon noticed the red bloom that came from his side, his blood mixing with the water, becoming a part of it. He was becoming the river.

  It would have been easy to let it happen. The living sea called to him, and part of him wanted very much to join it, to become the river completely. But the part of him that was alien remembered the threatened sorrow of gaesu and the human part of him refused to be beaten, and together the two parts of himself forced him on. He shifted back, finding the dark form of the raft above him, and kicked against the flow with all his strength. He pulled off the alien cloth and swam naked, the heat and blood pouring out of him.

  His hand broke the surface. He clawed at the raw wood, almost too weak to grip it. Each time he pulled himself farther up out of the water, he felt fainter, but he gritted his teeth and tugged until he had a leg up, and then, with one last pull, he was free of the river. He fought to draw air, and then vomited, each spasm shooting pain like a fresh wound through the slit in his side.

  The raft rocked as the other also found it. Ramon saw the wounded hand, bandages washed away, scrabbling for purchase. He saw the familiar face, its lips blued already with the fierce cold, struggling to stay above the surface. Ramon moved to the edge of the raft.

  "Help me!" the other cried. "Madre de Dios, help me!"

  Ramon took the other's hand, feeling the fingers weak already with fever and with cold trying to grip his wrist.

  "I don't want to die!" the other said. "Please Jesus, I don't want to die!"

  "No one does," Ramon said, and pushed as hard as he could. The other yelped and went under again, lost for a long moment beneath the raft. When he emerged on the other side, Ramon could still see him moving, struggling to the last, trying to swim against the flow, beating weakly at the river.

  "I'll remember you," he called to his dying twin. "When I'm drinking your beer and sleeping with your woman, I'll remember you. You stupid prick."

  The other thrashed the water frantically, and then went still. His head sank beneath the surface of the river. It didn't come back up.

  Was there the faintest of tugs as the other died, as whatever bond was between them broke? Or was it just his imagination? It was impossible to say.

  Exhausted, panting, Ramon lay back on the raft. He recognized the sluggishness of hypothermia coming on, but he had nothing to cover himself with. He could only hope that the heat of the sun would be enough to sustain him. Blood still flowed, staining his side and his legs, and he had nothing to staunch it with; he'd just have to hope the wound was shallow enough for it to eventually stop on its own. There were still days to travel between here and Fiddler's Jump, and, sprawled there alone on the makeshift raft, Ramon guessed his chances of surviving that long at even money. Maybe a bit worse. But at least the monsters would live. The fetid, crook-spined ataruae, the yellow-fringed mahadya. The kait would all hatch and sleep warm in their creche. If he died here, if he joined his brother in the river's ice-cold flow, he would at least die Ramon Espejo, hero to monstrosities. He needed to sit up. He would gather his strength and sit up. He only needed to rest here for a moment first. Just a moment.

  Consciousness faded.

  He was surprised, some time later, to find himself weeping. It was dark around him, and he could not entirely recall who or what he was weeping for. It seemed that someone he loved had died, and that he was responsible, but he could not remember who it was or how he carried that burden. Then the world faded again and he found himself floating in darkness. Time passed, punctuated by strange dreams and spikes of fear and panic and shivering. Nothing carried the weight of reality. It might have been minutes or hours or years passing in the sick non-time of fever. He found himself floating in darkness, aware that he was awake, but not of what had awakened him. He tried to move, but something resisted him, pressing him gently back into place. A hand. A woman's hand against his naked breast.

  "Who are you?" she asked again, and he realized that, whoever she was, she had been asking him this for some time.

  He moved his lips, swallowed painfully, and in a hoarse voice he muttered, "My name is Ramon Espejo. And, perdoneme, mi amiga, but that's all I can recall."

  · · · · ·

  Nine

  · · · · ·

  It was summer again before he could really say all was well. He'd broken things off with Eleana as soon as he was strong enough to speak, still in the hospital with his food coming through a white plastic tube straight into his vein like the ghost of the sahael. She hadn't believed him at first, thinking, he supposed, that it was just another fight like any of the others. It wasn't until the doctors released him and he went to his own room instead of hers that it sunk in.

  She had been like a thunderstorm after that. For weeks, she had left angry notes pinned to his door with knives, screamed at him when they met. After she'd screwed her way through all of his friends and half of his enemies, she seemed to accept it that he was gone. Now she only spat on the ground when they chanced to see each other in the street.

  The São Paulo colony was a bad place to be poor, though. The bills from his hospital stay were more than he'd make in a year, even if he'd had a working van and his prospecting tools intact. Starting from scratch would have been easier, but Ramon did what he had to do. When the infection had cleared from his mangled side, he worked his strength back and took day-labor jobs in the spaceport or with fishing boats on the warmer coasts. It was easier saving money now that he'd stopped going to bars at night. And in high summer, he took what he had scraped together to Old Sanchez at the outfitter's station.

  "Ramon, mi amigo, this — this is pigshit."

  "You try saving up money hauling fish and retarring asphalt," Ramon said. "You got it easy sitting here with your iced tea and a bunch of desperate assholes needing whatever it is you got. I'll trade jobs with you for a week, and I'll have enough money to buy a new van outright."

&
nbsp; "Not if I'm the one selling it to you," Old Sanchez said, but he smiled when he said it. "I want to help out. I really do, but this isn't enough for a down payment on the cheapest thing I got."

  "What about renting it, then? I'll give you this much, and you let me rent one of the old vans and some equipment for two weeks. If I get a site that pays out, we can talk about maybe buying then."

  "And what happens if you don't find anything?" Old Sanchez asked, which wasn't a no.

  "I go haul some more fish until I can rent it again."

  Old Sanchez sipped his tea and wiped his hand across his mouth. His eyes shifted, calculating. Ramon sat forward.

  "What the fuck happened to you out there, mi amigo?" Old Sanchez asked. "You show up naked and half dead, no van, no equipment, and a hole in your side that someone could put a fist in. And now you're all of a sudden sober? You find God out there or something?"

  "You really want to know?"

  Old Sanchez considered him, and Ramon could see the unease in the old man's expression.

  "No," he said. "I get enough evangelical crap already."

  "Go forth, mi hijo, and sin no more," Ramon said.

  "Yeah, okay," Old Sanchez said at last. "You can rent it. But if you wreck it like you did that last one, I'm taking half your wages for the rest of your life."

  "Don't worry. Won't happen."

  They drew up the agreement—Old Sanchez wasn't stupid; all the legal forms would be followed in case something did go wrong—and Ramon signed away his meager savings with something like euphoria.

  "You really want to get back out there, don't you?"

  "Yeah," Ramon said. "This being around people so much. I don't like it."