Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [66]
That was when one of them, apparently deciding that the intruder had not been punished enough, jumped out of the water and onto his back.
As its teeth and claws tore into his shoulders, a screaming, cursing Cheelo flailed wildly at his back in an attempt to pull it off. Twisting violently, locked together, man and otter overbalanced the narrow craft and tumbled into the river. As he fell, the flailing fingers of Cheelo’s free hand contacted his backpack and instinctively grabbed hold. The safety strap connecting it to the side of the boat gave way beneath his weight and followed him into the water. Automatically righted by its internal gyro, the swift craft promptly resumed its course upstream—carrying with it Cheelo Montoya’s tent, sleep sack, and all of his supplies that were not contained in the pack.
Perhaps the impact dislodged the river wolf as well as discouraging it. Or possibly it had finally slaked its need for revenge. Regardless of the reason, the meter-and-a-half-long otter released its bloody grasp on Cheelo’s shoulders and swam off, occasionally popping its head out of the water to look back long enough to sputter a few final insulting chirps and barks at the intruding human. Treading water, Cheelo had no time to respond to the insults of his fellow mammal. Clutching tightly to the backpack with one hand and his pistol with the other, he struck out for the shore opposite the one favored by the otter clan, occasionally glancing upstream to track his boat as it blithely powered on out of sight minus its absent passenger.
He shouldn’t have been such a lazy sailor, he reflected in dismay. With its autonav activated the craft would continue to make steady progress until halted by impassable rapids or some other obstacle it had not been designed to cope with. Then it would stop and wait for instructions from its absent owner.
Thoroughly drenched, he hauled himself out on the nearest beach. Smooth-shelled turtles watched him from a nearby log, butterflies fluttering about their snouts in search of extruded salts. Wading birds accelerated their stride to give him additional room. Checking his pants for worms, candiru, and other potentially dangerous hangers-on, he contemplated his options.
Recharging by day, the boat would not run out of power. Programmed to proceed upstream, it would not pause for rest or sleep. It was gone, and along with it much that he had brought to sustain him in the rain forest. By great good fortune he had shoved the compact fishing kit into the backpack after the last time he had used it. That was helpful, but still left him with little choice. No longer could he gambol carelessly through the forest. In order to make his critical appointment with Ehrenhardt, he had to find his way to a town, an isolated farm, even a tourist encampment, and he had to start now. Anyplace would do so long as it was not home to official authority. A convincing liar, he felt that he could successfully pass himself off to a group of adventurous tourists as a kindred spirit. It would take very little to render wholly believable the story of falling out of a boat set on autonav and not being able to catch back up to it.
With luck he would find assistance in returning to civilization. There he could access his credcard and without further ado, book the sequence of flights necessary to take him back to Golfito. Because he was on foot he would have to move a little faster now, that was all. He still had ample time to make the deadline.
But first he had to find those hypothetical charitable tourists, and avoid the attention of park rangers while