Camouflage

—44—

Just a week after it had been blasted with a shotgun and swam to the airport, the changeling returned. Sharon Valida had a brand- new passport, a six-month work permit, and a suitcase full of light business outfits. Over the internet, she’d landed a job with a bank in Apia looking for a customer representative who could speak German and French.

She also had packed a nice bikini and cute jogging outfit; a dinner dress and a bottle of Sudafed unlike any other in the world. Each capsule had been carefully opened and emptied and refilled with a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of reference DNA stolen from a teaching laboratory at the University of Hawaii. She had bitten down on one every few hours from the Honolulu airport to the Apia one, where a uniformed man apologetically stuck a swab in her mouth and stroked the inside of both cheeks. He did something under the counter and then waved her through.

The changeling was in a quiet race against time. It had to establish a convincing identity as a working woman in Apia before Michelle Watson, the Poseidon receptionist, retired to have her baby. It knew that Michelle’s husband was a pleasant but unemployed beach bum, and she wanted to work as long as she could waddle down to the bank with her paycheck, which was okay with Poseidon.

Some time in the next six weeks they would advertise for a replacement. The ad wouldn’t ask for a pretty young woman with a degree in business and minor in oceanography, but that was what they’d get.

The changeling rented an apartment on Beach Street, a few blocks from the project site, and began a routine that included jogging at dawn and dusk, which was when Russell was out riding his bike. He said he used the time to think, but he probably wouldn’t be thinking so hard that he would ignore a pretty blonde in a tight silver jogging outfit with property of nobody stenciled on the back.

Its bank job was not difficult, and was moderately interesting when they actually needed Sharon as a translator. The rest of the time they had it out front, being pretty and a teller, both of which the changeling could do without thinking about anything but ones and zeros.

Three of the men at the bank asked Sharon out, and she dated them in strict rotation, without becoming “involved.” It had been a woman often enough to know that men would accept a lack of sexual activity for a long time, if you were attractive and kept them talking about themselves. They were British, American, and Samoan; reserved, brash, and shy, respectively. The Samoan was the most interesting, taking his palagi woman to native places where no one else was Caucasian, and doing physical things like sailing and swimming. More traditional physical behavior, she was reserving for Russell.

Russell pedaled by her almost every morning, either approaching with a conventional I’m-not-looking-at-your-breasts smile and nod, or slowing down and coasting as he closed on her from behind.

The changeling contrived an incident the second week. Hearing the familiar bicycle about a block away, it stumbled and fell, skinning a knee.

Russell raced up and dropped his bike with a clatter. Sharon was looking at the minor wound and tentatively picking gravel out of it. The changeling manufactured enough histamine to make itself on the verge of tears.

“Are you all right?” He was a little out of breath.

“It’s nothing,” the changeling said. “I’m such a klutz.”

“Wait.” Russell stepped back to his bicycle and got the water bottle. He unscrewed the top and, steadying her with a light touch to the calf, poured cool water on the abrasion.

“Ooh.” There was no pain, actually, but the changeling made itself flinch. “No, it’s all right.”

It was more than all right, actually. His familiar touch and the smell of his sweat. If the changeling had been slightly more human, she would have grabbed him and held him tight.

“We have a first-aid kit back at the office,” he said, nodding in the direction of the project, about a block ahead. “We ought to clean that and wrap it up. Wounds get infected so fast here.”

“Thank you, I … I don’t want to be any trouble…”

“Nonsense.” He gave her an arm and helped her up. The changeling shivered slightly at his touch on its waist.

It limped a little, hand on his shoulder for support. “Your bike?”

“Nobody’ll take it. It’s a junker; I don’t even carry a lock.”

“People are different here, aren’t they? Back home, someone would steal it whether it was worth anything or not.”

“Where’s home?”

“Honolulu; Maui originally.”

He nodded. “You’re not a tourist, are you? I’ve seen you around.”

“Work at a bank downtown, translator.”

“You speak Samoan?”

“No.” She shook her head and brushed away her hair in a graceful gesture that was not Rae’s. “French and German, some Japanese. I’m studying Samoan, but it’s hard.”

“Don’t I know. I’ve been here two years and can’t even say ‘pass the disgusting vegetables.’ ”

“Aumai sau fuala’au fai mea’ai ma,” the changeling said. “I haven’t learned ‘disgusting’ yet.” It hadn’t given Samoan a thought since starting on the ones and zeros, actually, but remembered some from the first few days of that incarnation.

“Pretty impressive, actually. Languages come easy to you?”

Job interview? “They did when I was younger. I learned Japanese and some Mandarin.”

“Hawaiian, of course?”

“No,” it said quickly, remembering that Jack did speak some. “Funny thing, you don’t really need it socially, and no one expects someone who looks like me to speak it.” It shrugged. “Probably a class or race element, too. My mother and father wouldn’t have been thrilled.”

“Know what you mean.” He waved at the guard in his little kiosk and unlocked the door to the main building. “We lived in California, and my dad wasn’t happy about my taking Spanish. Even though it was the most useful second language.” The changeling knew that, of course.

They went into the familiar reception room. He sat the changeling down in Michelle’s chair, the one it hoped to be occupying soon, and began opening and closing drawers. “First-aid kit, first-aid kit.” He pulled out a white plastic box. “Ah.”

The changeling had a sudden thought. “Would you mind … I feel a little faint. Could I get something to drink?”

“Sure. Coke?”

“Fine.” She unzipped the little wallet on her wrist.

He waved a hand. “Free with my card.” It knew that, and knew the machine was out of sight down the corridor.

When he turned the corner, it slowly spun the chair around 90 degrees, so its back was to the camera behind Michelle’s desk, and plucked a Sudafed capsule from the wallet. Broke it between thumb and forefinger and sprinkled DNA into the wound. It got some on the fingers of both hands, too, slipped the empty capsule back into the wallet, and returned to its original position before Russell got back, feeling a little silly for being so thorough. But Russ wouldn’t be Russ if he hadn’t thought it through enough to suspect any new woman who came into his life.

“Thanks.” It took the Coke and drank an appropriate amount, and looked around. “So this is the place.”

He pressed an antiseptic pad against the knee. “This is the place, all right. Welcome to the madhouse.”

“Mad island,” it said. “Creature from outer space and its UFO.”

He shook his head and tossed the pad into Michelle’s trash can. “There are other explanations. But they’re no less bizarre.” He shook a can of bandage spray—“Cold”—and sprayed the knee liberally.

“What explanation do you like?”

“It’s as good as any.” He tapped the knee around the wound, checking the spray. “What do the people at the bank think?”

“Most of them are UFO. One guy’s convinced it’s all a movie gimmick, and you’ll all look like fools when they reveal it.”

He stood up. “I’d take bets against that. I talked to the movie people. They’re exploiting it for all they’re worth, but they were obviously as surprised as anyone else.”

“That’s what I told him. They would’ve had someone around who happened to have a camera. Else why spend the money?”

“Yeah, no-brainer. Can you flex the knee okay?”

It swung her foot carefully. “I think it’s fine.” She took his arm and stood up. “Thanks.”

“Are you doing anything for lunch?” He laughed nervously and kneaded his brow.

“I’m tied up today,” the changeling said, not to appear too eager. “Tomorrow’s free.” Putting out her hand: “Sharon Valida.”

“Russell Sutton. Noon at the Rainforest?”

“I’d be delighted.” It smiled at him, wondering if her dimples were too cute. “My knight in shining armor.”

“Bicyclist with a water bottle.” He escorted her out. “Bye.” He watched her jog away, slightly favoring the injured knee, and then walked back to retrieve his bike.

Could it be? he wondered. She didn’t look anything like Rae, but the assumption was that she could look like anyone.

He leaned the bike up next to the entrance and went back inside. In the bio corner of the lab he got a latex glove and a plastic bag. Back at the reception desk, he picked the bloodstained pad out of the trash can and put it into the bag. He emptied the Coke can out in the men’s room and put it in the bag, too, gingerly holding it by the rim, and printed sharon valida on the bag with a Magic Marker.

Trying to outthink an alien intelligence, they’d figured that one obvious avenue back to the artifact was Russell’s weakness for pretty women—for women in general, actually. If Sharon had been a small attractive Asian, he would be more suspicious.

One part of him wanted the samples to have no DNA, so they could close the trap. A smaller part hoped she was just a sexy blonde with a sense of humor and a nonalien intelligence.

He put the bag on the bio desk with a short note to Naomi. Then he went back to the bike and checked the cyclometer. Only four miles; one more to go.

He pedaled off in the direction Sharon had gone, but didn’t see her. Went home to shower before work, perhaps, or maybe to check the oil in her other flying saucer.

Russell was lost in reverie, staring at the monitor without seeing it, and was startled when Naomi set the bag down next to him, with a clink of Coke can.

“Your Sharon has plenty of DNA, I’m afraid. Next move is up to you.”

“What? Oh, lunch.”

“Hope she tastes good,” Naomi said with a lecherous wink. Russell balled up a piece of paper and threw it at her.

Back to the secret message. He was putting together a one-page website that only Rae would completely understand. It was called “A Rae in the Darkness” and was headed with three photos— Russell and Rae flanking a snap of Stevenson’s gravestone verse he’d taken the hour before she’d led him down the hill to the hotel.

He’d skimmed through a book of Stevenson’s poetry, and didn’t like much of it, but this one quatrain was not far off, and he typed it in:

Then he pasted in thirty characters of the artifact’s message:

And then his own message:

There was a box for “affinities,” words that would draw a searcher, or surfer, to the site. He typed in “Poseidon,” “Apia,” “artifact,” “alien,” and so forth, ending with “Rae Archer” and “Russell Sutton.” He knew that the first people drawn to the site would probably be the CIA and their ilk, but there was no way to get around that. He assumed that Rae would be canny enough to anticipate them, too.

The Rainforest Cafe was nostalgic nineties funk in a jungle setting. Bamboo and palms and elephant ears under blue lights and mist nozzles, quaintly angry rap whispering in the background.

Russell felt a little underdressed in cutoffs and an island shirt. It was the weekend, but Sharon had come from work, wearing suit and tie. She loosened the tie and patted her brow with a tissue, prettily.

“I should have suggested an air-conditioned place.”

“Glad you didn’t. I was freezing in the office.” She shrugged out of her jacket.

“You’ve always lived in the tropics?”

“In the heat, anyhow. You?”

“As soon as I could choose.” Russell told her about growing up in the Dakotas. He’d gone to college in Florida, and never had to live through another winter. “Most of my experience with being cold now is underwater, working in a wetsuit.”

“Been there.” She covered her mouth, laughing. “When you don’t have enough pee to warm it up.”

He poured her some iced tea. “You dive a lot?”

“When I was in school, a little. Now I mostly snorkel. A guy at work took me out to the reef at Palolo last week—all those giant clams, I couldn’t believe my eyes!”

“They’re something.” He served himself. “Was it your major, marine science?”

“No, I did business administration. Minor in oceanography— that was my real cold-water experience. A summer course diving in the Peru current.” She’d actually been there as professor, not student, but the university records would confirm she’d taken the course and made an A.

“We used to be out there,” he said. “My company, Poseidon. We did marine engineering out of Baja California.”

“Until you found the alien thingie.”

“Well, we didn’t know what it was, at the time.” He broke open a roll and buttered one half carefully with healthy spread. “We pinged it with sonar and registered it for later salvage. It was a while before we actually went down and took a look.” He gestured down the road with the roll. “Then this happened.”

“It must be exciting.”

“Exciting and frustrating in about equal measures. We’re not getting anywhere.” He drew a shape on the tablecloth with his fingernail. “What do you do for excitement? Or frustration.”

“I don’t know. Come out here, run, fall down.” They laughed. “I’ve been kind of drifting. Both my parents died when I was in college, like ten years ago, eleven.”

“I’m sorry…”

She dipped her head. “Yeah. They left me some money, and I sort of wandered around Europe, then Japan. Now that the money’s gone, I wish I’d stayed in school. Not much you can do with a B.B.A.”

“You’re still young. You could go back.”

“I guess thirty-one’s young.” She stared into her tea. “Maybe not to graduate school admission committees.”

“You’d go back to business?”

She shook her head. “Maybe macroeconomics. Pacific Rim economics. But I’ve been thinking more oceanography. I could get a B.S. in a year, maybe three semesters.” She smiled. “Come out here and work for you.”

“Not with a bachelor’s,” he said seriously. “Take a couple of years and get a doctorate. The artifact’s not going anywhere.”

“But you don’t know that,” she said. “It might decide to go back to Alpha Centauri.”

Their sandwiches came. Russell discarded the top piece of bread and carefully sliced the remainder into one-inch strips, then rotated the plate 90 degrees and cut the strips into thirds. The changeling remembered the habit and smiled.

“Saves me a hundred calories,” he said. “The media all think the thing’s from another star. That’s the easiest explanation. We’re trying to come up with something less obvious.”

“Like what? Secret government project?”

“Or that it’s always been here. You know what hell this has been for physicists and chemists.”

“I can imagine.”

He took a bite and then salted everything, as the changeling expected. “That’s no different whether the thing is local or from another galaxy. It means there are very basic laws we don’t understand about… the nature of matter.” He speared a square of sandwich and gestured with it. “It’s chaos. Nothing we know is true anymore.”

“Can you really say that?” the changeling said, carving its own sandwich into quarters. “Like we learned in school, Galileo’s physics was an approximation of Newton’s; Newton got swallowed by Einstein; then Einstein by Holling.”

“Hawking, then Holling, to be technical. But this is different. It’s like everything worked, down to eight decimal places, and then somebody says, ‘Hold it. You forgot about magic’ That’s what this damned thing is.” He laughed. “I love it! But then I’m not a physicist.”

“They must be going crazy.” She picked up one quarter and nibbled on it.

“You should see my e-mail. Actually, I should see my e-mail. This indispensable woman, Michelle, throws out nine-tenths of it before I come to work.”

“She knows physics?”

“Well, like you—she’s an accountant with some course work in various sciences. But she reads everything, knows more about general science than I do.”

“She doesn’t really throw them away,” the changeling asked. “You at least glance at them?”

“Oh, yeah. At least the ones that have some entertainment value— we call them the X-files. I get together with Jan, our space scientist, every Friday to run through them. Kind of fun, actually.” He speared another square. “Pleasant nutlike flavor.”

“Did you ever get anything useful?”

“Not yet.” He turned serious. “The whole game is going to change soon. We’re going public with … an aspect we’ve kept secret. Wish I could tell you.”

The changeling was glad he couldn’t. Knowing about the message gave it an edge for Michelle’s job. Those credits in Math 471 and 472, advanced statistics. “Oh, come on. Pretty please?”

He smiled. “Your womanly wiles will get you nowhere. I’ll tell you on Monday, though, if you’d like to have lunch again.”

“Okay. Can I bring my pal from the Weekly World News’?”

“He might already be down at the office. We’re making the announcement at nine o’clock.”

“You really think you’ll be free for lunch, then?”

“I’m telling you too much.” He looked left and right. “That’s why we chose Monday. No planes till Tuesday morning. Gives us, what, some measure of spin control.”

He did look a little worried. The changeling reached over and patted his hand. “Mum’s the word.”

’” Mum’s the word’?” He chuckled. “I haven’t heard that since I was a kid.”

Oops. “My mother used to say it. Where does it come from?”

“Where do any of them?” He relaxed. “How are things at the bank working out?”

“They’re nice enough people,” it said, quickly. “No real challenge, though. A few times a day I haul out a language to calm down a customer. Walk him through a document or just help with numbers. The job description said ‘international relations,’ and I suppose that’s technically true.”

“Apia’s smaller than you thought it would be?”

It shrugged. “I read up on it. No real surprises … except you guys. I expected a bigger deal.”

“Well, it’s only fifty people. We had a pretty low profile until a couple of weeks ago.”

“Your space alien. That made the front page in Honolulu. You found her?” It closed its eyes and shook its head. “Sorry. Mustn’t pry.”

“No; I wish we had. Love to spring that on the tabloids.”

“You don’t believe it’s in a secret wing in the Air Force hospital in Pago Pago?”

“No, it’s locked up in Roswell, New Mexico.” He laughed. “Before your time.” The changeling had been there twice, actually, as a juggling dwarf and an anthropology graduate student.

So Monday they were going to reveal the artifact’s coded response— or at least the fact that it had responded. The changeling wondered how that would change its situation, and what it could do before then to help its chances for the job.

Russell offered a possibility. “You work tomorrow?”

“No, everybody goes to church. Except me.”

“I’m off, too. You want to bike somewhere for a picnic?”

“God, I haven’t ridden a bike since college. Give it a try, though. I guess I could rent one someplace.”

“Oh, I have a spare.” He scratched his chin. “I usually go out to Fatumes Pool or Fagaloa Bay on Sunday, but that’s a little far if you’re not used to it. We ought to just tool around, see some local sights, wind up at Palolo or the project for a picnic and a swim.”

“Does the reef go over that far?”

“No, it’s just a white-sand swimming beach. The local kids like it. We even set out a shark barrier last week.”

“You get a lot of sharks?”

“Just takes one. A big hammerhead attacked a boat in the shallows—bit a hole in the hull!—and so the family, the aiga that technically owns the land the project’s on, asked whether we’d cooperate in putting a barrier up to protect swimmers. Just a wide- mesh net”—he sketched a six-inch square with his fingers—“to keep out really big fish. We bought it and they provided the manpower.”

An interesting challenge, the changeling thought. A hammerhead could pretend it was a dolphin and jump over it. “That sounds good. They have picnic tables and all?”

He nodded. “A grill. Let’s be American—I know a place with fairly convincing hot dogs. I’ll pick some up this afternoon and put them in the office fridge.”

They made arrangements to meet at the Vaiala Beach Cottages in the morning, bring a bathing suit, and she went back to her air- conditioned bank.

As he pedaled off toward the butcher shop, Russell thought about what he was getting into. He couldn’t afford an actual girlfriend; he had to be “available” for the Rae-alien’s return. That was one element of their plans to trap the creature, because when it returned it was likely to repeat the previous strategy, and try to seduce Russell. Or maybe Jack or Jan. Anybody new who came into their lives would have to pass the DNA test.

He toyed with the idea of arguing to the others that maybe the alien had figured out a way to manufacture DNA, so he should continue to pursue Sharon even though she’d passed the test—all in the name of science, of course.