Hunter's Run by George R. R. Martin

for
talking about hunting and his fantasy of disappearing into the Sierra Hueso to
live off the land. Manuel might assume he wasn’t coming back at all, especially
if he suspected (as he probably did) that Ramon knew that the cops were after
him.
     
    The only ones who would look for
him was the law, and the law would have followed him with public execution in
mind.
     
    There was no one. That was the
truth. He had lived his life on his own terms - always on his own terms - and
here was the price of it. He was on his own, hundreds of miles from the nearest
human settlement, captured and enslaved.
     
    If he was going to get out of
this, he would have to find his own way out.
     
    Maneck tugged at the sahael and
Ramon looked up, aware for the first time that they had stopped. The alien
thing pushed a bundle into his arms. Clothes.
     
    The clothes were a sleeveless
one-piece garment, something like pajamas, a large cloak, and hard-soled
slipper-boots, all made from a curious lusterless material. He pulled them on
with fingers stiff from cold. The aliens were obviously not used to tailoring
for humans; the clothes were clumsily-made and ill-fitting, but at least they
afforded him some protection against the numbing cold. It wasn’t until his
nakedness was covered and warmth began to return to his limbs that his teeth
began to chatter.
     
    Maneck led him down a bright
white passageway to another great, high-vaulted chamber. Things the color and
size of aphids swarmed across the floor, bumping into each other and into his
legs, singing incomprehensible gibberish in high, sweet voices. In the center
of the room squatted a bone-colored box like the one that had destroyed his
van. As they drew near, Ramon saw that the thing was not solid. Instead a
million tiny strands of dripping white and cream made a webwork of slats that
shifted to create an opening and then close it behind them.
     
    The interior of the box was
likewise only half solid - a wide low bench that appeared intended for Maneck’s
barrel-like form and also a smaller area set into the wall where Ramon himself
might sit, legs pulled up to his chest.
     
    Ramon waited leadenly while
Maneck examined the box, leaning in to run its long slender fingers carefully
over the controls. He could feel himself becoming dazed and passive, numbed by
weariness and shock - he’d been through too much, too fast. And he was tired,
more tired than he could remember being before; perhaps the shot they’d given
him, glucose or adrenaline or whatever it had been, was wearing off. He was
almost asleep on his feet when Maneck seized him, lifted him into the air as if
he was a little child, and stuffed him into the box. He struggled to sit up,
but Maneck seized his arms, drew them behind his back, and bound them with a
thin length of wire-like substance, then hobbled his legs, before turning and
sitting down before the controls. Maneck touched a pushplate, and the box rose
smoothly into the air.
     
    Acceleration pushed Ramon’s head
sideways, pinning it at an uncomfortable angle. In spite of the terror of his
situation, he realized that he was unable to stay awake any longer. Even as
they rose toward the high-domed cavern roof, his eyes were squeezing shut, as
though the mild g-forces that pulled with mossy inevitability on his bones were
also drawing him inexorably into sleep.
     
    Above them, the rock opened.
     
    As Ramon’s consciousness faded,
drowning him in hissing white snow, he saw, beyond the hole in the stone, a
single pale and isolate star.
     
    * * * *
     
    A freezing wind lashed him awake. He struggled to sit up. The box
lurched to the left, and he found himself looking through the spaces between
the woven slats straight down through an ocean of air at the tiny tops of the
trees. The box canted over the other way, violently, and the darkening evening
sky swirled around his head, momentarily turning the faint, newly-emerged stars
into tight little squiggles of