I don’t know that this story lives up the hype on the backcover; but coming from a powerhouse trio there is an awful lot of good stuff.
Ramon Espejo lives as a prospector on an alien world. He volunteered to make the journey aboard an alien ship to help colonize an uninhabited world. He left no one behind and he arrived with no one. He is an alienated person; with no real ties to anyone, which is just as well as he pretty much hates everyone he meets. The funny thing about Ramon is that way deep down inside, he wants to be a hero. And that’s what got him into trouble a damsel in distress. He honestly didn’t plan to kill the man; he didn’t even know the woman. But the whole event was a blur; it took a fearful journey for him to understand what happened. Ramon is a very angry person but he did understand that he needed to leave town for a while until the incident became old news. So he left in his van for the mountains; leaving behind the only person who, although she was batshit crazy, was the only person to give him comfort. But even Elena, he thought, would benefit from him being gone for a while. All they ever did was fight and have sex.
Once in the mountains, Ramon was more himself. He never drank while in the wilderness, never missed anyone. And he is actually a pretty good prospector. Seeing a likely mountain, he prepared some charges to break open the face of the mountain. He was not prepared for what happened next. When the mountain face came down, it exposed a door. And he was definitely not prepared for what came out of it.
Injured and disoriented, he found himself in a strange room confronting an unknown alien; which immediately inserted something in his neck, something that was able to dispense some truly effective pain. With the attached thing in his neck, the alien made him understand that there had been another human in the area; someone who also discovered the aliens’ hiding place. The alien, Maneck, intended to use Ramon as a hunting dog to find and stop the other human from reaching a human town and exposing them. Ramon had no problem with this; if he had, the attached ‘leash’ would correct him.
As they journeyed, Ramon was forced to explain his humanness and needs. Ramon wasn’t stupid so he also learned things about his captor. The leash, which physically attached him to Maneck, also gave him access to Maneck’s secrets when it was injured and unable to control the exchange of information through the leash. This secret was the reason for the aliens hiding in a mountain on a relatively obscure planet. And this secret had a profound impact on Ramon.
Ramon began to have a respect for the abilities of the unknown human they were hunting. The man knew the desert for sure; Ramon would employ the same tactics if it were him running. And eventually, Ramon became quite sure that the human they were following was actually himself; which meant he, Ramon, must be a copy created for this purpose.
We are, as many say, a product of our experiences and memories. The experiences that Ramon has, along with learning the aliens’ secret was a major divergence; he was becoming someone quite different from the original. He had to give an honest effort to the search or Maneck would detect his dishonesty; which meant he had to be very clever in his efforts to give his original time to run. He harbored a hope that they might both escape Maneck.
There came a time when Maneck was fatally injured from an encounter with a local apex predator. Ramon was released from the leash and was able to run; eventually running into his double. As he looked like a much younger Ramon, his double didn’t recognize him and he was able to convince his double that he was also running from that alien. Together, they were able to reach civilization. The trouble was, of course, that Ramon really wanted to continue living; he was pretty sure that his double would kill him once he learned the truth. And the longer the journey, the more he aged into looking more like his double. He played with the idea of taking back his current life but couldn’t see the way unless his double died. So then he started to imagine that he could move to a different town, take a different name, and start all over where no one would know the violent and unstable person he once was.
But no matter what Ramon decided to do; there was still one looming unanswerable question: how could he prevent or convince his double not to tell about the aliens hiding in the desert.
I’d really like to continue this synopsis just because I really appreciated the setup before the resolution. But I won’t leave spoilers for any potential new readers. This story was decades in the making from the original idea from Dozois to Martin’s attempts to further the story, to their eventual collaboration with Abraham to bring it to a finish. It isn’t an epic story, it’s not even great science fiction. But it is a truly effective character study. Every step Ramon took was an honest step towards change; there was no abrupt shift so that the author could take the story where he needed it go such a thing is usually disruptive to the reader. These authors knew where Ramon needed to be at the end of the story and no one could have done this better. I am still feeling very satisfied at the resolution and I think I’ll be feeling this for a while. ~~ Catherine Book
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