Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [54]
The guidebook suggested several possibilities. To the north lay a largely uninhabited region of rolling hills and flat plains. But the area was thick with important archeological sites that were periodically swarmed with tourists. That wouldn’t do. The mountains were a suitably forgotten fastness, except that the habitable valleys were full of neat vegetable farms and ranches that echoed to the hoofbeats of alpaca, llama, and cattle genetically engineered to thrive at altitude. The higher elevations were sufficiently inhospitable to discourage settlement. Similarly, the low temperatures and thin air were more than enough to discourage him.
More promising was the strip of southern coastal desert. Behind the beaches, with their resorts and desalinization plants, few people lived who did not work in one of the numerous mines gouged from the arid landscape. There was still room for a person to lose himself, but not enough room—not for the kind of near-total disappearance Cheelo had in mind.
That left the enormous Reserva Amazonia. The most biologically diverse stretch of rain forest wilderness left on the planet, it had seen its last indigenous inhabitants resettled elsewhere more than a hundred years earlier. Since then it had been abandoned to its great profusion of plants and wildlife, save only for scheduled incursions by tourists and scientists. The dense canopy would hide him from prying overhead eyes, and the presence of so many other forms of life would mask his heat signature from patrolling remotes.
According to the information he read on his card, the most primitive and isolated part of the park lay at and encompassed the eastern foothills of the Andes. There, where cloud forest met lowland rain forest, there had never been a need to remove and resettle traditional inhabitants because there had never been any. The region was as inhospitable to man as it was lush, a place where some of the rarest creatures left in the wild roamed free. Yet even there, isolated tourist facilities could be found that catered to the most adventurous, to those seeking a true wilderness experience.
Having spent some time in the rain forest himself, plucking tourists instead of tropical fruit, he enjoyed a certain familiarity with such country. The miserable months he had spent drunk and diseased in Amistad came back to him in a rush. It wouldn’t be very comfortable—he would be hot and sweaty all the time, and there would be bugs—but the same conditions that would make it unpleasant for him would also discourage extended examination by officers of the law. If stopped and challenged, he could pass himself off as just another tourist. If anyone thought to probe further, he could vanish into the immense forest while they were running a background check on him.
He was unable to outfit himself to his satisfaction in Lima, but Cuzco boasted a number of shops where he was able to obtain his modest requirements. The lightweight, rip-proof pack he purchased filled rapidly with a good supply of basic emergency concentrates and vitamins, a permanent water filter and purifier, insect-proof bedroll and tent, fuel-cell cooker, and mapping ware for his card. The live clerk assured him that his new clothes would repel everything from army ants to a rainy season downpour.
Thus equipped, he booked passage on a slow lift to Sintuya, the only community permitted within the boundaries of the southwestern portion of the Reserva. It existed solely to serve the needs of tourists and researchers. Since he could hardly pass himself off as the latter, he assumed the identity of the former. At the same time, he had as little intercourse with his fellow sightseers as possible, though he made a conscious effort to be polite rather than taciturn. Anything to render himself as bland and forgettable