Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [69]
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.