No hay hola.
No me había acordado de que tenía esta versión en inglés del cuento ‘El fuego de los ancestros’, así que con mucho repatraso al cuelgo aquí. Espero mi inglés tenga una base mínima como para que haya quedado una traducción algo decente.
No hay adiós.
Ten to O’clock: the avenue is crowded by curious wishing to carry a memory from the duelists. Most of them swirls around the one from Altair–4, a mass of flesh and tentacles; the less watches me with undisguised pity. This is good. The focus hits on N’Kay and his massive gauss rifle. Me, a modified human armed with a crossbow, have all the bets against me: N’kay 1 – 236 Nguyen. I’ve bet for me. If I win I retire… if I survive.
Five to O’clock: the crowd has fled to the stands leaving us alone. I hear their expectant, avid whispers. Everybody knows the rules: we can only use kinetic weapons (not energetic or biological) and a single shot per gunslinger and round. As the time comes for I evaluate the umpteenth time the movements of the alien; I’ve been doing this for months. I must face a weapon that throws hollow needles at almost relativistic speed. No one has survived it, but I’ll make it. I do. My strategy is to follow his movements, every one; study the rifle position with milimetric precision, calculate the trajectory of the needle and so avoid it.
O’clock: the twang of the watch silences all the murmurs. I can feel the weight of the crossbow, ready and armed, on my back. N’kay rises the rifle and then starts to dangle. He seems to want to play with me. I squirm like a snake shunning the imaginary line that emerges from the canyon.
A buzz, a thunder, an explosión. Screams. Pain. The bottom half of my left forearm has vanished. The healing factor starts working. Although seriously wounded I smile: it’s my turn. I take the crossbow and support it on the stump, which is beginning to heal. I know that, in his inhuman manner, N’kay mocks confident. A simple bolt against my soft and malleable body, he thinks. I point to the center and shot. The surprise comes when the dart sinks in the protoplasmic mass. The hipergrafen coverage melts detonating his soul of white phosphorus. Hell breaks loose inside N’kay. It’s his turn but he cannot do anything: the fire devours him, driving him crazy. The fire kills from within, slow and relentless. The audience roars euphoric.
I smile. As I faint I remember how centuries ago, in an already forgotten war, my ancestors suffered a similar fire. They survived. And they won. So we are Vietnamese.