Cade decided there was something to be learned, and tried to find useful things to do. It seemed to help his head.
The altitude became higher, the surroundings more rugged. They came to a settlement of adobe houses, farm buildings, and sheds, tucked in a fold of the hills. Miguel had sent word ahead of their coming. Food and accommodation would be provided for the night. Also, a white-haired leader of the local arm of MOPAN, called Inguinca, was waiting to meet them with some of his followers. Ahead lay the most populous region, around Lake Titicaca and La Paz. From here on, Rocco and his escorts would merely attract attention. Their job was done, and they would turn back. Miguel volunteered to continue with Cade and Hudro to act as interpreter and general lookout.
A special evening meal was prepared for the occasion, consisting of a bean soup followed by meat, sweet potatoes, and a vegetable dish, with a plentiful supply of dryish red wine. It was held in a large, smoky room spanned by wooden beams and lit by oil lamps in one of the larger houses. There was nothing secretive or furtive. Just about the whole settlement, it seemed, from wide-eyed children and dark-braided women—several of them puffing pipes—to old men, squeezed themselves in around the walls and by the stove to take part, or at least be an audience. Maybe this was one of the things that passed for entertainment in these parts. It was clear that most if not all of them had never seen a Hyadean in the flesh before. Apart from curiosity that none tried to conceal, reactions were varied. Some, encouraged and not a little surprised by the alien’s familiarity with Spanish, did their best to be polite to the guest in the ways they had been taught. Others seemed hostile, showing their feelings by glowering or staring sullenly from far parts of the room. Cade was unsure of the risk they might represent, but nobody else seemed unduly bothered. Maybe the closeness of these communities was such that betrayal was unthinkable. Hudro seemed to accept such variations without surprise.
Inguinca told of the intensive search going on everywhere for the two Americans who had been snatched from a military transport intercepted between Peru and Brazil. All the Andes passes were under close surveillance; air connections out of the region were being watched. Although it might have seemed at first glance that the Amazon system would offer a choice of routes impossible to police effectively, they all converged in a gigantic funnel through a few checkpoints that it would be risky to try passing through, especially with all the military activity in the region following the outbreak of sabotage attacks. Inguinca denied that MOPAN guerrillas were responsible for these. Their fight, he said, was against the operations to clear populations farther west. Other groups were being funded from somewhere, and MOPAN being made the scapegoat.
Inguinca’s recommendation, therefore, was that Cade and Hudro should press on southward, even though their ultimate aim had not yet been agreed. Clearly, they had to get out of the South American continent. Poring over a map that Inguinca produced, Cade thought of getting past the Andes into Chile, somehow, and then south to Santiago. The Hyadeans were boring an outlet from the Uyali region through the Andes to the Pacific. If it was too risky to go over the mountains, with the kinds of friends he was collecting there might be a way to get himself and Hudro smuggled under them, through the tunnel workings. The idea became less crazy as he recalled the highway with its procession of robot trucks as a possible way of getting there. From Santiago it might be easier to get a commercial flight over the Pacific, perhaps to New Zealand, where Neville Baxter was, and then return on a regular flight into the Western Federation, avoiding the politically doubtful areas on the direct line between. Hudro could perhaps go on from New Zealand to join the Hyadeans with Krossig in Australia, and work out a new life from there.
That still left the question of how to get them through the populous area around Lake Titicaca and La Paz. Someone made a suggestion that brought laughter from some quarters and ridicule from others. Cade couldn’t follow, although Hudro seemed to be able to. As the noise fell, an old man near the stove began speaking. Miguel moved closer and translated in a low voice for Cade’s benefit. “He says the two of you can’t travel together. The American is no problem. It’s easy to make you invisible among the people, even if we have to darken your skin a little. But how do you hide a blue giant with a face like a rock statue?”