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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
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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 genusCecropia 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."
"Mynavigation 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
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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.
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