Hunter's Run by George R. R. Martin; Gardner R. Dozois; Daniel Abraham

Author:George R. R. Martin; Gardner R. Dozois; Daniel Abraham
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science fiction, Space Opera, General, Science Fiction, American, Adventure, Fiction, Time travel, Fugitives
ISBN: 9780061373299
Publisher: Eos
Published: 2008-01-03T01:50:10+00:00

“Your tatecreude will be complete,” Maneck said.

“So what happens to someone when their tatecreude is complete?”

“Your language is flawed. To have completed tatecreude is to return to the flow.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Ramón said.

“Once our function is fulfilled, we will return to the flow,” it said.

Suddenly, with a flash of insight intense enough that he wondered if it partook of the two-way flow through the sahael, he knew what would happen to them both: they would die. They would be reab-HUNTER’S RUN 155

sorbed into the “flow,” whatever that was. Once they had fulfilled their tatecreude, they would have no reason for existing anymore, like tools that were disposed of once the job they were needed for was done.

Perhaps Maneck was content to submit to that fate, perhaps the alien even welcomed it, but, as far as Ramón was concerned, that was another good reason to escape as soon as possible. “Whatever you say,” he said wearily.

Ramón found that resting was more pleasant than he’d expected.

He was more tired than he thought he’d be. But then, he had marched all the previous day after nearly being killed in an explosion. He’d slept poorly. And perhaps Maneck’s distress was carried over in some alien fashion through the still-bruise-colored sahael.

The connection between Maneck’s people and the Enye haunted him, but he found it difficult to wrap his mind around it in any meaningful way. A war that crossed stars, that lasted through centuries, possibly millennia. A vendetta against Maneck’s kind, which had no discernible reason, which employed the human race as a tool.

They had always been hunting dogs for demons. Mikel Ibrahim, Martín Casaus, Ramón himself. Everyone, always. Dogs sent into the bush to flush out Maneck and beings like it. It was as deep a change of his view of the world as the curious fact of his twinning, but this time he didn’t have the alien injunction not to diverge. He was free to think anything of this that he saw fit, and discovered that a small-time independent prospector fleeing from the governor’s constabulary wasn’t the right man to make sense of it all. It only made his head ache.

Instead, he wondered what Elena was doing now. It had to be near noon, and . . . how many days since he’d snuck out of her apartment before dawn? A week? More than that? He wasn’t even certain of the day anymore. He wasn’t religious. Sunday mostly meant that the bars were closed. So perhaps this was a weekday, and she’d risen with the sun, showered, pulled on her dress, and gone to work.

G e o r g e R . R . M a r t i n

G a r d n e r D oz o i s

D a n i e l A b ra h a m

He noticed with detachment that he had never fucked around on Elena. He’d killed men, he’d lied, he’d stolen. He’d beaten Elena and been attacked by her, but he hadn’t frequented the whores down by the port when they were together.

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