Phylogenesis (17 page)

Surely they couldn’t be looking for him, he thought. Even if the authorities had somehow managed to track him and trace his flight from San José to Lima, there was next to nothing to lead them to the middle of the rain forest. He thanked whatever deities looked after such as him that he had grabbed his pack while falling out of the boat: It contained all his identification. Then it occurred to him that they might not be looking for him, Cheelo Montoya, wanted for murder, but for the missing occupant of a runaway boat. Proceeding mindlessly on its way upriver, it was not unreasonable to assume that the intruding craft had caught the attention of one of the Reserva’s robotic monitors. Rangers and administrators could be expected to wonder at the presence of an unoccupied craft, packed with supplies, cruising blithely northward devoid of passengers. It would be percipient for them to assume that a small disaster might have occurred and to go looking for the owner of the wayward craft.

That was fine, except that he did not want to be rescued. It was his intention in coming to the Reserva to get himself good and lost. He did not want to be found, no matter how well-intentioned his would-be saviors were. Despite his reluctance to abandon the only landmark he knew, he had no choice but to move away from the main river and deeper into the forest. Searchers, human or mechanical, would assume that stranded travelers would keep to the shoreline and the beaches where they could easily be spotted. He had taken care to acquire a boat that could not be traced, so if scanned it would not lead back to him. With luck, it would sink and break up before inquisitive rangers could haul it ashore and check its contents.

Meanwhile he plunged deeper into the forest, knowing that it would conceal him like a hot, green blanket. The profusion of life in the canopy and on the ground would make it next to impossible to isolate his heat signature from the air, even if a properly equipped drone knew exactly where to search. He made slow but steady progress. Unlike thicket or jungle, virgin rain forest permitted relatively easy hiking. Large trees grew well apart, and the canopy harvested the sunlight before it could hit the ground, restricting the density of the undergrowth.

Not only was the solid overstory reassuring, it was also beautiful—diverse with epiphytes and flowers. Monkeys rattled their way through the arboreal highways, and the belllike warbling of the oropendula punctuated his footsteps. He was careful to shuffle his feet as he walked. Making as much noise and vibration as possible would keep the local serpents out of his path. Avoiding the authorities would not help him if he accidentally stepped on a bushmaster or fer-de-lance.

After making a careful check for ants, he settled down between the buttress roots of a sprawling tree and prepared to spend the night. His tent was still on the boat, but his pack yielded a light, strong emergency blanket. One root curved sideways and out, creating a swooping overhang that when combined with the blanket served to protect him from the evening rain. It was a good thing he had not come in the wet season, he mused. Without his boat he would be helpless, trapped by flooded rivers and lakes, unable to cross ground churned to mud. That he was going to get wet despite the lightweight raincoat he could extract from the pack was a fact he could not avoid: He was, after all, deliberately lost in Earth’s greatest rain forest. But he would not drown and, so long as he could fish, he would not starve. He did not care to think what he would have done had the folding fishing kit been lost along with the boat.

He had no difficulty the following morning pulling several small fish from a sizable pond. Using his belt knife, he gutted and filleted them. His camp stove was on the wayward boat, and making a fire was out of the question. Even if he could find sufficiently dry wood in the waterlogged forest, it would most likely be too soft to burn for long, or already so rotted it would fall apart in his hands. Nor could he risk giving away his location by producing smoke.

As he ate the fish raw he wished for a few limes or lemons. They were not available, so the tang of ceviche would have to wait until he found himself once more in a town. But the fish would give him strength. With the small remaining stock of supplements contained in the pack’s emergency kit, he ought to be able to keep going for some time. At least, he thought with a grim smile, he would not be slowed down by the weight of supplies.

Settling the pack on his shoulders and back, he struck off into the trees, keeping to the highest ground that presented itself. His feet stayed warm and dry, as the surrounding mud and muck was repelled by the permanent static charge in his jungle boots. He was glad that when he had made his purchases he had not stinted on appropriate clothing. It would have been nice, however, to have the tent.

On the other hand, he might have grabbed something besides the pack when tumbling out of the boat. He did not care to think about what his situation might be like without it. He would have had no choice but to risk rescue by the Reserva rangers and to hope that no one connected his face to the one that was by now no doubt splashed across police wanted files all across the planet.

The repeller in the pack kept the swarms of ravenous insects at bay. He could see them, could hear them humming and clicking and chittering as they flew and crawled all around, unable to enter the restricted sphere of electronic dislocation that had at its core a warm, pulsating, blood-filled figure. They wanted to nibble on his flesh and drink his blood. Mosquitoes and flies, beetles and ants, all gave way as the precisely modulated stridulations of the repeller urged them aside like a drifting iceberg parting the sea. Without the compact device, he knew, his skin would by now have taken on the reddened, uneven contours of a strenuously abused golf ball.

The birds kept him company, and the monkeys. While easy to hear, the latter were difficult to see. The natives who had once inhabited this region had been fond of monkey, but the thought of consuming a simian was not one that appealed to Cheelo. Anyway, he had only a single-bladed knife and could not have used a bow and arrow had heaven provided them.

The following morning a skimmer flashed by overhead, traveling slowly at treetop level. Alerted to its approach by the startled screeches of a family of squirrel monkeys, he had taken shelter beneath a dense cluster of dieffenbachia. Thick, spatulate leaves shielded him completely from above. Peeping out as the skimmer thrummed past, he saw that it was camouflaged visually as well as aurally. If not for the panic that had arisen among the monkeys he would never have noticed it until it was right on top of him. Despite the cover provided by the trees, he might have been spotted.

The forest is my friend, he thought, waiting beneath the concealing leaves until he was sure the patrolling vehicle was gone. When he resumed his march, his confidence was shaken by unexpected uncertainty.

Come to think of it, why would Reserva rangers need to camouflage their patrol craft? True, the soft whine a skimmer generated might disturb the native fauna, but it was hardly loud enough to be flagrantly unsettling. Masking the sound of an engine was an expensive procedure that hardly seemed justified by the limited disruption it might cause.

He could understand disguising drone probes as eagles and other birds. They could move more freely among the forest creatures, taking surveys and monitoring their health. But it seemed a waste of money to camouflage a skimmer. Its size and unfamiliar shape would instantly identify it to the creatures of the forest as an unknown and possibly hostile intruder. His confusion deepened.

If the skimmer was not disguised to conceal it from the denizens of the rain forest, then from whom? Wouldn’t it be more likely that an official Reserva vehicle would be boldly emblazoned with identifying marks and colors? A scientific expedition might opt for anonymity, but not for expensive camouflage. In the event of an emergency, they would want to make certain their craft could be spotted from the air by a search party. The same would be true for a tourist vehicle.

That left open to speculation the possibility that there were others in the rain forest who did not wish their presence advertised. Biochemical companies, for one, extracted enormously valuable and useful derivatives from rain forest plants. Most of these took the form of legal, government-approved, exhaustively tested products. A few did not. Their scarcity and novelty value enhanced their price.

If botanical pirates were active in this part of the forest, they might—once he had the chance to explain himself—accept him as a kindred spirit and take him in. That would obviate his need to find his way into a town, thereby risking exposure to the local authorities. On the other hand, such illicit organizations did not usually take kindly to the appearance of uninvited outsiders, no matter what their social standing. Depending on the frame of mind of the people in charge of such a hypothetical illegal operation, they might as readily decide to punch a hole in his chest and dump him in the nearest river for the caimans and the piranhas to clean up as invite him to share their camp.

He would have to tread carefully. He might already have tripped hidden sensors, resulting in the appearance of the patrolling skimmer. If he had strayed inside some undefined perimeter, the possibility of automated traps could not be discounted. From now on he would have to pay even more attention than usual to where he put his feet. But, he reminded himself, any assault by the authorities on a clandestine rain forest operation would come from the air. He would be cautious anyway. He did not know what he was dealing with, and until he did, he would continue to treat his immediate surroundings with heightened suspicion.

Another skimmer flew over later that day, forcing him to take shelter a second time. He knew it was a different vehicle from its size and silhouette. It only reinforced his conviction that it was someone other than the local authorities who was searching for him. If it was the police and they suspected a fugitive was afoot in the area, they would have called for him to surrender himself. If it was the as-yet-unidentified owner of the wayward boat who was being sought, they would have advertised the opportunity for rescue rather than gone to expensive lengths to conceal its presence.

That left him with his suspicions of a criminal operation hidden somewhere in the depths of the rain forest, its operators as eager as he to avoid the attention of the authorities. They would be people who might as readily kill him as welcome him, even if he invoked Ehrenhardt’s name. The choices thus presented were not easy ones. He decided that until he knew more he would maintain his privacy. Meanwhile let them search for him. He had avoided the authorities all the way from San José to the Reserva. No manufacturers of illicit pharmaceuticals were going to find him if he did not want to be found.

Whoever they were, he reflected as he stepped over a fallen log lush with fungi, they had money. Camouflaging a skimmer’s appearance was one thing, but muting its engine called for expensive technological expertise. This remote corner of the vast rain forest was not being guarded by a handful of amateurs working out of a few thatched huts. The presence of not one but two such costly disguised skimmers hinted at a level of sophistication outside his experience.

Maybe he could do more than merely survive here, he thought. Maybe there was a chance to make some contacts—big, important contacts. If the opportunity presented itself to fall in with a group of well-connected felons, he would take it. Or he might learn all he could about them and then turn in their operation to the nearest authorities, using his knowledge to bargain for the dropping of the charges that would have arisen from the incident in San José. That had been an accident, after all. No one could claim premeditation. Either way, he had options. What he needed now was to supplement them with knowledge, as much as he could gather without being discovered.

It struck him that the drone that had been disguised as an eagle might be owned and maintained not by the Reserva authority but by these same people. Monitoring a buffer area outside their immediate zone of operations, it could watch for patrolling rangers and unwitting tourists without drawing attention to itself. He whistled softly to himself, impressed by the implications. Everything he had seen so far suggested the existence of an illegitimate operation on an imposing scale. That was assuming he was right in his assumptions and that it was not the local authorities who were conducting the flyovers.

For a moment he worried that the electronic repeller might give him away. Then he relaxed, secure in the knowledge that if it was going to, it already would have. Its output must be infinitesimal, he decided. Anyone close enough to pick it up would be able to see and identify its owner. Even so, he considered turning it off. The continued presence of the active insect multitude that had helped to keep this portion of the Reserva pristine for hundreds of years forestalled him. He was uncomfortable enough already. He would not add to his discomfort by exposing his flesh to the attentions of a million marauding mandibles, stingers, and probing proboscises. Aside from the potential for loss of blood and the acquisition of disease, he flat-out hated and always had despised bugs.

Trying to make as little noise as possible as he advanced, he kept his eyes alert for the glint of metal and plastic and composite, and his ears attuned to the harmonic discord of the surrounding forest. If the monkeys failed to warn him next time, the birds might do so. He was not alone here; he had allies, however unconventional. He had escaped confinement and mindwipe by never letting down his guard and by trusting no one. Early in his life he had chosen to swap companionship for freedom. It was a philosophy that had served him well, and he saw no reason to tamper with it now.

Overhead, a pair of scarlet macaws were screeching with pleasure as they attacked a cluster of ripe figs. A pair of the juicy green fruits fell to earth not far from where Cheelo was standing. Bending, he picked them up and, after checking for ants, shoved them in a pocket. Later, when his stomach was feeling more adventurous, he might try a bite. Raising a hand, he saluted his rain forest confederates with a grin before moving on.