Hunter's Run by George R. R. Martin Page B

orange markings, the quills stirring in the wind
and moving like the feelers of some huge insect.
     
    I will kill you, Ramon thought once again. There
was very little anger in it. Only a deep, animal certainty. Somehow, I will
kill you.
     
    Maneck hauled Ramon to his feet
and set him loose, but his legs would not hold him, and he crashed back to the
ground as soon as he was released. Again Maneck pulled him up, and again Ramon
fell.
     
    As Maneck reached for him the
third time, Ramon screamed, ‘Kill me! Why don’t you just kill me?’ He wormed
backward, away from Maneck’s reaching hand. ‘You might as well just kill me
now!’
     
    Maneck stopped. Its head tilted
to one side to regard Ramon curiously in an oddly birdlike manner. The cool
orange eyes peered at him closely, unblinking.
     
    ‘I need food,’ Ramon went on, in
a more reasonable tone. ‘I need water. I need rest. I can’t use my arms and
legs if they’re tied like this. I can’t even stand, let alone walk!’ He heard
his voice rising again, but couldn’t stop it.   ‘Listen, puto, I need to piss! I’m a man, not a machine!’
With a supreme effort, he heaved himself to his knees and knelt there in the
dirt, swaying. ‘Is this aubre? Eh? Good! Kill me, then! I can’t go on
like this!’
     
    Man and alien stared at each
other for a silent moment. Ramon, exhausted by his outburst, breathed in
rattling gasps. Maneck studied him carefully, snout quivering. At last, it
said, ‘You possess retehue?
     
    ‘How the shit would I know?’
Ramon croaked, his voice rasping in his dry throat. ‘What the fuck is it?’ He
drew himself up as much as he could, and glared back at the alien.
     
    ‘You possess retehue,’ the
alien repeated, but it was not a question this time. It took a quick step
forward, and Ramon flinched, afraid that the death he’d demanded was on its
way. But instead, Maneck cut him free.
     
    At first, he could feel nothing
in his arms and legs; they were as dead as old wood. Then sensation flooded
back into them, burning like ice, and they began to spasm convulsively. Ramon
set his face stoically and said nothing, but Maneck must have noticed and
correctly interpreted the sudden pallor of his skin, for it reached down and
began to massage Ramon’s arms and legs. Ramon shrunk away from its touch -
again he was reminded of snakeskin, dry, firm, warm - but the alien’s powerful
fingers were surprisingly deft and gentle, loosening knotted muscles, and Ramon
found that he didn’t mind the contact as much as he would have thought that he
would; it was making the pain go away, after all, which was what really
counted.
     
    ‘Your limbs have insufficient
joints,’ Maneck commented. ‘That position would not be uncomfortable for me.’
It bent its arms backward and forward at impossible angles to demonstrate. With
his eyes closed, Ramon could almost believe that he was listening to a human
being - Maneck’s Spanish was much more fluent than that of the alien in the
pit, and its voice had less of the rusty timbre of the machine. But then Ramon
would open his eyes and see that terrible alien face, ugly and bestial, only
inches from his own, and his stomach would turn over, and he would have to
adjust all over again to the fact that he was chatting with a monster.
     
    ‘Stand up now,’ Maneck said. It
helped Ramon up, and supported him while he limped and stomped in a slow
semi-circle to work out cramps and restore circulation, looking as if he was
performing some arthritic tribal dance. At last, he was able to stand unsupported,
although his legs wobbled and quivered with the strain.
     
    ‘We have lost time this morning,’
Maneck said. ‘This is all time we might have employed in exercising our
functions.’ Ramon could almost imagine that it sighed. ‘I have not previously
performed this type of function. I did not realize that you possessed retehue, and therefore failed to take all factors into account. Now we must