Cardenas squinted skyward. "Maybe the rain will go down with the sun."
"You really think that?" So hopeful was the sergeant's tone that Cardenas did not have the heart to tell him otherwise.
Surprisingly, the rain did let up as the light faded from the world. It did not come to an end completely, but instead was transformed into a clinging, all-pervasive mist. At the same time, the temperature actually rose as night descended. The result was an increase in cloying humidity that canceled out any benefit they might have enjoyed from the cessation of the rain.
Enough light lingered to show the track ahead of them branching off in three directions. Installed at the tripartite junction was a first-rate weatherproofed road sign, newly stamped and finished, that had been knocked sufficiently askew to render the directions imprinted thereon as useless as tits on a boar hog. Tired and discouraged, both men looked for a place to camp.
"Can't go on in the dark," Hyaki pointed out unnecessarily. The past couple of hours of heavy slogging had convinced him that the mud beneath their feet was imbued with a life of its own, and was deliberately crawling over his ankles and up his legs. "Wish I smoked."
"Why is that?" Cardenas was hunting for a tree with enough of a leafy overhang to provide some added protection from the weather.
"Because then I'd have a lighter, and we could make a fire."
"Don't be too hard on yourself. Look around." The Inspector indicated the sodden rainforest. "Where would you find anything to burn?"
The big man considered their rapidly darkening surroundings. "This isn't my style, Angel. I'm used to chasing nins and baggerags through the back streets of Agua Pri and Sonoyta. Wilderness survival is way down on my resume."
"Mine also," confessed Cardenas as he began to gather fallen leaves to construct a makeshift mattress. "Maybe like you said, somebody will come by. If not, we'll resume hiking tomorrow."
Pulling his second and last snack bar from a pocket, Hyaki flashed it at his friend and made a face. "At least there's no need to worry about breakfast. It's already cooked. Not that I wouldn't prefer a couple of breakfast burritos, with cheese and chorizo and sour cream and maybe a side of-"
"Shut up," Cardenas snapped at him. "I don't have to intuit the rest."
Thankfully, the rain did not resume as they sat down next to one another beneath the ample bole of a big cecropia to wait for morning. With exhaustion compensating for the lack of a bed, they slept surprisingly well in spite of their saturated clothing.
Nor did they have to worry about oversleeping.
Cardenas awoke to a crawling sensation the likes of which he had experienced only once before, twenty years earlier while engaged in a stakeout in a rattrap of a motel in the worst part of Tucson. Those legs had been larger, but the sensation was the same.
Leaping to his feet, ignoring the stiffness in his bones, he began slapping and swatting at himself. His awakeners fought back with stings and bites. Fortunately, few had slipped beneath his outer clothing. With hands and face most at risk, he concentrated on those first.
Hyaki blinked sleepily, then gaped at his afflicted friend. "Tell me the tune you're dancing to, Angel. I could use a-" The sudden realization that he had also become unwilling host to a sample of the uninvited sent him rocketing to his feet.
Together, they hopped and flailed at the ants that had invaded their clothing. Cardenas knew all about stimstick abusers, and crunch masters, about life on, above, and under the Strip. Living in the vastness of the Sonoran Desert had not prepared him to deal with the tropics. Had he been more versed in local ecology, he would have known that trees of the genus Cecropia are usually home to a varied assortment of tropical ants who live on and within them, and who do not take kindly to uninvited visitors.
It took twenty minutes of slapping, flicking, and inspecting before both men were reasonably confident they had rid themselves of their tiny but ferocious guests. They were now wide awake-and tired again.
Resignedly, Cardenas started forward down what he hoped was the right road, given the unhelpful angle of the single road sign. Wisps of damp fog clung to the treetops. Hidden birds hollered haunting cries. Within the canopy, unseen residents had commenced their morning commute. If their spinners had not been fried in their barbecue of a 4X4, the two federales could have called for a ride.
"How far do you think it is to the park boundary?" Hyaki found himself wondering if the anticipated ranger station was located on the edge of the Reserva, or deeper within.
Cardenas shuffled along beside his mountainous companion. "I don't remember from the map. Didn't pay much attention to it. Left it to the car's navigation system."
"My navigation system is sputtering." The sergeant gazed longingly into the rainforest, envisioning bananas hanging ripe and heavy from beckoning branches.
The image notwithstanding, he was as startled as his partner when the three uakaris landed in front of them. Both men halted in shock. With their bright, pinkish-red, hairless faces and long white fur, the dog-sized simians resembled nothing so much as a trio of downsized yetis. Adding to the visitors' astonishment was the realization that each of the newcomers carried a simple but undeniably efficient-looking knife and a small backpack.
Men and monkeys regarded one another silently. Then the smallest uakari scampered up into the tree nearest the road, pulled a small communicator from his backpack, and began fingering the front of the device.
"They're from the Reserva." Hyaki kept his voice to a whisper.
It was hardly necessary to point that out, Cardenas knew. The Ciudad Simiano located within the Reserva La Amistad had been created back in the '50s to provide a home for those simians who had been the subject or the offspring of now-banned research in genetic manipulation designed to enhance their intelligence. The focus of more than forty years of fighting between scientific and wildlife organizations, such experiments had also been carried out on dolphins. But while intelligence-enhanced dolphins had oceans in which to roam, no such preserves were available, in a world ever more overrun by humanity, for the altered apes and their relatives. Hence the creation within La Amistad of Ciudad Simiano-the City of Simians.
Knowing this, however, had not really prepared Hyaki and Cardenas for a face-to-face encounter with the inhabitants.
"I read that they moved about freely," the Inspector murmured to his friend, "but I didn't know they were allowed outside the boundaries of the Reserva."
"Did you know they were allowed to carry weapons?" Hyaki was paying attention to the knives. They were made of metal and composite, not hewn from wood or bone. Sensibly, he kept his hands out where they could be seen, and away from his service pistol.
"No, I did not." Cardenas was concentrating on the two uakaris still on the ground, trying to read their eyes and their movements. In the course of his long career he had seen and experienced a great deal, but this was the first time he had ever tried to intuit a monkey.
With a muted crash of branches and leaves, the energetic broadcaster descended from the treetops to rejoin his taciturn, pallid companions. Cardenas smiled and crouched, bringing his line of sight more in line with theirs.
"Look here, hombers. My friend and I are with the Namerican Federal Police. You know-policia? Federales? We are expected."
Two of the uakaris exchanged a glance and palavered softly among themselves. What was their intelligence level? the Inspector found himself wondering. Were they capable of understanding human speech? Or did they communicate only via their traditional chatter? Chimps in the wild had been observed using simple tools like rocks and sticks as long ago as the mid-twentieth century. From carrying a stick to wielding a knife did not require much in the way of a cerebral jump. As for the compact communicator, it might have been preprogrammed to send out one of several compacted signals, a procedure that could easily be taught, and reinforced, with rewards of food.