Camouflage

—40—

Once on the other side of the reef, the changeling stayed in the relatively deep water, plying west slowly toward the airport at Faleolo. There was a plane out the next day, to Honolulu.

It would take human form and come ashore after dark. Hide for awhile and then walk into the airport. Then go about the problem of getting a ticket, without passport or credit cards. It could create counterfeit cash, but even under normal circumstances, it would look suspicious to try to purchase an expensive ticket with cash. Maybe a Samoan could get away with it, but it didn’t know the language well enough to pass among Samoans.

Eighty or ninety years ago, it would have just isolated someone, killed him, and used his identity and ticket. That was repugnant now. Maybe the man who shot Rae’s arm off. The world might be a better place without him.

By the time it got to Faleolo, it had a better plan. Not without risk, but it could always escape into the water again. They’d eventually catch on to that. But it had escaped from a few jails in its time, too.

It went a half mile past Faleolo, to get away from the light. The moon, not yet first quarter, was no problem. The changeling sat in the shallows and changed.

About a pound of its substance became a plastic bag full of circulated fifty- and hundred-dollar bills. Another twelve pounds, a light knapsack with a change of dirty clothing and a wallet that had enough Samoan tala for a few cab rides and a night of drinking, with an American Universal ID and a California driver’s license, matching the persona it painfully built. Newt Martin, a common type of denizen in this corner of the world. Young, restless; escaping from something. Money enough for food and drugs and a flop, and maybe a little more. Maybe a lot.

It made a passport that would pass visual inspection. The computer at passport control wouldn’t be fooled.

At about eight thirty it crept ashore, squeezed the water out of its long blond hair, and walked down to the airport. It got into a cab and told the man to take him to the clock.

It was a simple plan of action. Find a young American desperate enough to temporarily “lose” his wallet and passport and ticket out, in exchange for a lot of money. The kid wouldn’t find out until later that there was a little more than that involved.

“The clock” is an early-twentieth-century tower in the center of town, the main landmark. The changeling paid off the cab and walked down Beach Road toward the harbor. It knew there were some seedy-looking bars about halfway to Aggie Grey’s, but it had never been inside one. “Rae Archer” wouldn’t have done that. Newt Martin definitely would.

Bad Billy’s looked promising. Smelled right even from the sidewalk, spilled beer and stale cigarette smoke. Loud rap music from twenty years ago. The changeling sidled in through a mass of people standing in the door, for the air, and went to the bar. There were only two other customers there, the rest of the clientele either shooting pool or sitting in clusters of folding chairs around small tables full of drinks, talking loudly in two languages. Its keen hearing picked up a third, a French couple away in a corner, whispering about the scene around them.

One of the English conversations was about the strange goings- on at Aggie’s today. One of the Samoans had a friend in the police, and he said that he said it was an industrial espionage deal that had gone bad.

Right, somebody said—shotguns and old Jackie Chan superspies. It was just a publicity gag for the movie.

Wanting to draw attention, the changeling ordered a double martini. It had to explain what that meant, and wound up with a half-liter glass of cheap gin and ice with a quarter lime floating on top. (Having been a barmaid itself, it knew the smell of cheap gin. This stuff came in big plastic recycled soft-drink bottles from a distillery outside of town.)

The flavor was interesting, reminiscent of the underwater taste of bilge and oil spill.

An aromatic Samoan prostitute came over next to him. “What ya drinkin’?” She was still young but getting puffy.

Put an egg in your shoe and beat it, the changeling thought. Chase yourself, get lost—working up through the decades—bug off, fuck off, haul ass, twist a braid, give air. Instead it said, “Martini. Want one?”

“What I have to do for it?”

“You’re not what I need.”

She haunched up on the stool, short skirt casually revealing no underwear.

“I know some guys…”

“Not that.” The changeling got the barmaid’s attention; pointed a finger at its drink and then at the space in front of the girl. “You know where the drug action is?”

“Oh, man.” She looked around. “Cops everywhere tonight. That thing at Aggie’s.”

The barmaid brought the drink and the changeling made a show of riffling through the thick wad of bills to find a twenty. “I’ve been out of town. You see it?”

“No, man, it was noon. I hadn’t got up yet.” She stared at the wallet until the mark put it away. “I could bring you anything you want. You shouldn’t be on the street, man, cops’re pickin’ up any palagi they don’t know.” White man.

“Hold it here a minute.” The changeling went back to the men’s room, a single noisome stall, and sat in the dim light, changing slightly. It went back to the bar with the same features, but dark skin and black hair.

“Now that’s somethin’.” She rubbed its cheek with her fingertip and looked at it. “How long it last?”

“A day or two. So what happened at Aggie Grey’s, do you think?”

“Say it looked like a stuntman thing. Some gunshots and then this guy crashes through a window, bounces off the whatcha-callit over the door—”

“Awning?”

“Yeah. Then runs like a bat outa hell across the street and the park and jumps in the harbor. Looks like he got his arm blown off, blood everywhere, but it don’t slow him down, like special effects.”

“The movie people say anything about it?”

“They say it’s not them, but you know, bullshit.”

“Yeah. Drink up and let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Dope. Dealers.” The changeling drank off half the martini in one gulp. The girl tried, and went into a coughing fit. The barmaid brought some water and gave the changeling a sharp look.

“Maybe that’s enough,” it said when the girl quieted down and was breathing more or less normally. “Don’t know what they make this stuff out of, anyhow.”

She sighed and nodded and slid off the stool unsteadily.

“There’s a party. I take you there, you meet some guys, you take care of me?”

“What does that mean?”

“Like a hundred bucks?”

“We’ll see.” It took her shoulder and aimed her toward the door. “If I score, sure.”

They walked along Beach Road a couple of blocks and then down an unmarked gravel alley. She stopped at a Toyota that had more rust than paint, and jerked the driver’s-side door open with a shriek. “Here we go.”

“You okay to drive?” The door on the changeling’s side didn’t open. She leaned across and pushed hard twice.

“Yeah, yeah. Get in.” It smelled of mildew and marijuana.

On the third try the engine, older than the driver, sputtered to life, and they jerked on down the lane. She drove with a drunk’s elaborate caution, weaving.

“You don’t want me to drive?” It couldn’t die, but it didn’t want to attract attention from police by not doing so.

“Nah, this is fun.” She found her way to the winding uphill road that the changeling recognized as the one leading up to the Stevenson mansion. Traffic was light, fortunately. The girl didn’t say anything. She was concentrating on staying near the center of the road.

They passed Vailima and came into a woodsy area with no homes near the road. “Look for a orange plastic ribbon on your side,” she said, slowing to a walk. “Tied to a tree. ’Round a tree trunk.”

“There it is,” the changeling said, and then realized human eyes wouldn’t see it yet.

“Where? I don’t see.” She peered over the steering wheel and the right wheels crunched into gravel. She overcorrected well into the oncoming lane, forcing a Vespa off the road. The rider yelled something in Samoan but rode on.

“Trust me. It’s up there.” After another couple of hundred yards the headlights caught the pale orange ribbon, sun-bleached emergency tape. She pulled into a dirt road just beyond it.

“You got some eyes.” They could just see the road ahead, and the changeling held on. They splashed into potholes so deep the springs bottomed out with a clunk and the driver hit her head on the roof, laughing.

They came to a Western-style house, an incongruous rambler, a little light coming from behind drawn blinds, lots of cars parked in the circular gravel driveway. There were clapped-out hulks like the girl was driving, but also new cars, two taxis, and a shiny limousine.

Too many people, the changeling thought. Be careful.

They picked their way up a board walkway set on the muddy ground. Pine smell of construction; latex paint. The house was new. Business must be good.

She leaned on the doorbell and the front door opened a crack. A tall black man looked down at her. “Mo’o. You found some money somewhere?”

She jerked her thumb in the changeling’s direction. “He’s got plenty.”

The black man looked into its eyes for a long moment. “Why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t. I don’t know anybody local. The slit said she’d take me where I could find some dealers.”

“You buyin’ or sellin’?”

“Right now I’m buying.”

“Let me see some color.” A flashlight snapped on. The changeling opened his wallet, fanning bills. The man murmured, then flashed the light in the changeling’s face.

“We’ll take a chance.” He opened the door partway. “You know if you’re a cop, your family dies, in front of you. And then you?”

The changeling shrugged. “Not a cop; no family.” He passed through but the man stopped the girl.

“I got money,” she protested. “He’s got money for me.”

“A hundred bucks,” the changeling said, and took two fifties out of his wallet, and passed them back to her.

The black man let the money pass but still blocked the girl. “Go home, Mo’o. I don’t need any more trouble from your matai.”

“I’m over twenty-one and she’s a bitch.”

“You’re drunk. Sleep it off in the car.”

“Wait for me in the car,” the changeling said, waving her away. “Give you another hundred if I get what I want.” She walked away, mumbling and staggering.

Inside, it looked like the party was over but nobody’d gone home. There were about fifty people standing, sitting, or passed out. A table with food and bottles of wine and liquor was a picked- over mess. The air was gray with smoke. The changeling sorted out cigarettes, expensive as well as cheap cigars, the burnt-plastic smell of crack and the heavy incense of hashish. No one was smoking heroin, but there were plenty of needles in evidence; on the buffet table three hypodermics stood point-down in a glass of clear liquid.

The room had an unfinished look, walls freshly painted with travel posters and Gauguin reproductions thumb-tacked here and there. New cheap furniture in a haphazard scatter.

“So what can I get for you?” the black man said.

“Hash, I guess.” The changeling thought back to its circus days. “You have squiddy black?”

“Dream on. Most of these guys smokin’ slate.”

The changeling shook its head. “Nothing Moroccan. What you got Asian?”

“Red seal and gold seal. Cost you.”

“Little bag of gold seal, how much?” He said $250 and the changeling got him down to $210.

It took the stuff and a glass bong to a folding chair in a corner where it could survey the room.

The hash had an interesting flavor. It burned hot, probably because of additives. A little asphalt.

The changeling was looking for someone who looked like he was used to having money, but was down on his luck. Preferably someone not native; about a third of the men qualified on that score.

An American would be preferable; one who resembled the changeling would make things easier to explain. There was one light-skinned black man who was fairly close to the changeling’s current appearance, though a few inches taller and considerably heavier. He was sitting backward in a folding chair, chin resting on forearm, intently following a lazy argument two men were having, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Good clothes that needed dry- cleaning.

He was holding an empty bong. The changeling padded over and sat on the floor next to him, and relit the resin in its bong.

“So what do you think?” one of the arguers said to the newcomer. “How old is the universe?”

“Thirteen point seven billion years. I don’t remember half that far back, though.”

The other one shook his hand. “Close. Sixteen billion.”

“He’s using the Torah and general relativity,” the black man said. “Smells good.”

The changeling held out the packet to him. “Gold seal; have a hit.” To the Torah guy: “I could spot you 2.3 billion. That’s six really long days?”

He launched into an explanation about how small the universe had been back then. The other arguer stared at him with an expression like a spaniel trying to stay awake.

The black man broke off a little piece, rolled it into a ball, and sniffed it. He nodded and handed the bag back. “Thanks.”

The changeling lit a wooden match and held it up for him. He breathed the smoke in deeply and held it. After a minute he exhaled slowly and nodded satisfaction. “So what are you after?”

“What, you don’t believe in spontaneous acts of sharing?”

“You aren’t fucked up enough to be spontaneous with gold seal.”

“That’s a good observation.”

“So you want something, but it’s not drugs. Must be sex or money.” He shook his big head slowly back and forth. “Don’t have either.”

“There is one other thing.” The changeling stood up, feigning difficulty. “Talk outside?”

He nodded but stayed put. He held up one finger and stared at it. “Oh, and I can’t kill anybody. Don’t want to go through that again.” The two chronologists looked up at that, faces masks.

“Nothing like that. Come on.” The man got up and walked with exaggerated care, perhaps more stoned than he looked or sounded. The changeling told their host they’d be right back.

Some animal scampered away when the door opened. Otherwise the dark forest was silent except for water dripping.

“This is the score. I have to be on the plane to America tomorrow. But I don’t have a ticket or a passport.”

The man squinted at him in the faint light from the shaded windows. “Okay?”

“So do you have a passport?”

“Course. But no way you could pass for me.”

“That’s not a problem. I’ve done this before.”

“But then I’m stuck here. What do I do about that?”

“Nothin’ to it. I’ll mail it back to you, overnight, from L.A. But you don’t have to trust me. If you don’t get it, wait a few days and you go to the embassy and report it lost. They’ll check you out and issue a temporary; you can replace it when you get back to the States.”

“I’d have to think about it. How much?”

“Five thousand up front, plus the cost of a ticket. They probably just have first class open; that’ll be a thousand.

“But I’ll give you five thousand more if I get to L.A. with no problem. Send it in a package with your passport.”

“For that part I just have to trust you? A total stranger I met in a hash house?”

“Think of it as my insurance policy. It’s not in my interest to have you report your passport stolen.”

He was lost in thought, sorting that out. The changeling took the opportunity to stare into his dark-dilated eyes and duplicate his retinal pattern, in case.

“You throw in two bags of gold seal and you’ve got a deal.” They shook on it, the changeling getting his fingerprints in the process. Then it wrote down an address for the cash and passport return.

It had him wait on the doorstep and went back in to score the hash. The man said four hundred dollars and stayed with it; no deeper discounts unless you want a lot more. Ten bags would only be fifteen hundred. The changeling declined and left with the two.

His partner in crime wanted them right away, but the changeling said no; not until it had the ticket in hand. They crunched down the driveway to the rusty Toyota. The young prostitute had reclined in the driver’s seat and was deeply asleep, snoring softly. The changeling gently transferred her to the back seat and took the keys from her pocket.

The black man also slept while the changeling drove back into town. It wanted to avoid Beach Road and downtown; the police probably would recognize the car, and might wonder why he was driving it. It didn’t know the back roads, and so proceeded by dead reckoning, bearing roughly west and south until it came to Fugalei Street, which it knew would have the Maketi Fou—central market—on the right and nothing but swamp on the left. Then it hit the beach at the flea market on the edge of town and turned onto the airport road.

It was a half hour of slow driving, the changeling easy on the speed bumps, to keep its crew asleep. The airport was brightly lit, and there were lots of cars and cabs waiting. The airplane that it would take out tomorrow would be landing in about an hour. It remembered that, the late hour notwithstanding, the ticket office had been open when it had arrived the month before.

The black man rubbed his eyes and yawned; no room to stretch. “So. You give me the money. I go in and get myself a ticket to L.A.; bring it back and collect my hash.”

“Close.” The changeling handed him a roll of bills secured by a rubber band. “But I’m going to keep you company. The hash stays here, in case they have dogs or sniffers. We come back here. You give me the ticket and passport; you keep the change and the hash. I drive you back into town.” The changeling pulled into a space close to the waiting area.

“Okay up to the driving. I take a cab back.”

“What, you don’t trust me?”

He snorted. “Once you have the ticket and passport, I’m more use to you dead than alive.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” the changeling said honestly. “You must know the criminal mind better than I do.”

“ ‘Ask the man who owns one,’ ” he said. They got out and walked into the building. It was open-air, no walls on the ground floor.

There were dozens of people sitting around on plastic chairs, reading or watching television. A group of teenaged boys and girls in traditional garb chattered happily. They would be the song-and- dance welcome for the flight from the States.

The changeling went upstairs to the bar while his accomplice approached the ticket counter. There was no line and only a single agent, making no effort to appear happy or alert.

It got a beer and sat near the stairway, where it could watch the transaction. It could imagine what would happen Stateside, if you walked up after midnight and tried to buy an international ticket with fifties and hundreds from a thick roll, no luggage.

The young woman treated it as if he were buying a loaf of bread, though she looked at his passport.

Back at the car, the changeling checked the passport and ticket, and handed the black man the keys. “You okay to drive?”

“If I go as slowly as you did, yeah. You staying here until the flight?”

The changeling reached over to the back seat and stuffed a bill into the girl’s shirt pocket. “Go back to the hash house and don’t tell anybody where you’ve been.”

“I might just go back and get my car, and head home. Enough excitement for one night. What if the girl wakes up?”

The changeling considered. “Best just tell her you dropped me off at a house in town. And … don’t come back to the airport tomorrow. That could be awkward.”

“Yeah. I already figured that out.” He started the car, then shook his head. “This is crazy.”

“Just keep an eye on the mailbox.” They exchanged stares for a moment, and the man drove off.

The changeling had a few things to do, but there was no rush; the gate didn’t open till twelve. It went back inside and left passport and wallet in a storage locker, and then set out to find twenty pounds of flesh.

In the daytime it would have been easy: just go into a supermarket and buy twenty pounds of meat. It didn’t want to chance taking someone’s dog or piglet, so it had to be the sea.

It walked back to the road and headed away from town. Everyone had gone to bed and clouds covered the stars; between headlights the world was black as pitch. The changeling came to a path that led to a stone beach, and slipped quietly into the water.

There was no need to masquerade as a fish. It just stretched its feet into something resembling swim fins, unhinged its jaws, and made its mouth and throat wide enough to accept a large fish. It glided out to the reef and looked around with nose and skin more than its large eyes—like a shark, it could sense the change in electric potential that meant a large fish in trouble.

That was the meal ticket—it felt the slight tingling and went straight toward it, and came to a reef shark wrestling with a skipjack tuna half its size. The changeling killed the shark with a big bite, severing the notochord, and easily chased down the crippled tuna and ingested it in one gulp. Then it went back and consumed the shark.

The two of them had provided plenty of mass. It swam back to the shore, grew feet inside shoes, and walked back toward the airport, a large white American, and took a cab into town.

Bad Billy’s was still open—it advertised being the last bar to close in the Western Hemisphere—but the changeling didn’t want to attract attention, so it had the cab stop at the first vacant motel, the Klub Lodge, where it took a small room and lay thinking for some hours.

It hated leaving the artifact, hated leaving Russ, and considered just presenting itself for what it was: obviously from another planet, and possibly related to that impossible machine. But it didn’t want to wind up a specimen to be examined, and they could probably infer enough about its abilities to build a cage from which it couldn’t escape.

Would Russ protect it? If it returned as Rae? No; he knew by now that Rae wasn’t really a woman, and had tricked him.

And could trick him again. After a cooling-off period, the changeling could show up as another woman, and win his love again. It wouldn’t even be acting.

But it wouldn’t be smart to hang around Samoa. The island would be thick with U.S. government agents in another day or two, once they figured out what they had almost caught. Even if they didn’t figure it out, and thought the changeling was some sort of augmented human or spy machine, they’d still be all over the island trying to track it down. It hoped they were looking for a one- armed woman.

It waited until almost ten to walk into town; the sidewalk was crowded enough that it didn’t stand out particularly, just another sunburnt tourist. It had earlier, as Rae, found a church charity store; it went straight there and bought a suitcase and a few changes of clothing. At a more touristy place, it bought a couple of bright shirts and a souvenir lavalava. An assortment of toiletries from a convenience store, and a couple of gift bottles of Robert Louis Stevenson liqueur. In a coffeehouse rest room it disposed of some of the toothpaste and shaving gel, so they wouldn’t look just- bought, and caught a cab to the airport.

There were three uniformed policemen on duty, and one Samoan woman in a business suit pretty obviously surveying the crowd. It occurred to the changeling that its choice of identity might have been disastrous, if Scott Windsor Daniel, African- American hash hound, was known to the police.

Best done quickly. The changeling went into a crowded men’s room and waited for a stall. Once behind the door, it went through the uncomfortable business of changing its face and hands to match Daniel’s. It also changed shirts, putting on a souvenir one that, under the circumstances, acted as protective coloration.

The whole business took fifteen minutes. If anyone noticed that a white man had gone in and a black man had come out, they didn’t say anything.

The first test was passport control. A native woman checked documents and retinal scan, and collected departure tax, but the woman sitting behind her in the booth, right arm in a sling, was the one from “the United States intelligence community,” who had almost put a bullet into Rae the day before.

Neither of them paid any special attention to Scott Windsor Daniel, so maybe they actually were looking for a woman. A small white one with a missing arm? They did do a fingerprint check, though, as well as the usual retinal scan. The spy woman put on a jeweler’s loupe and, glancing, clumsy with one hand, compared the thumbprint to one on a card.

Security was likewise easy, which was encouraging. It hadn’t occurred to them that they were looking for a shape-changer. They sorted through Daniel’s unremarkable luggage, wanded him, and sent the suitcase down a chute and him through an optical baffle into the multilingual murmur of the waiting room.

It sat at the bar and nursed something they claimed was chardonnay, leafing through the Samoa Observer. The disturbance at Aggie Grey’s was the front-page story, with an interesting twist—the movie people were “not at liberty to say” whether it was part of the thriller they were filming. Presumably someone had coached them; they were an American company, and the government could hassle them if they didn’t cooperate. Though it could be that they came up with the evasiveness on their own, latching onto free publicity.

Interviews with Aggie Grey people and the police were not much more informative. Some tourists agreed that the “man” who ran across the park and dived into the harbor appeared to be one- armed. Their consensus was movie.

Hard to plan with so little information. The flight switched to Delta in Honolulu, and there was a six-hour layover. It might be prudent to switch identity again there, in case they’d picked up the trail to Daniel. If they had, there would be a greeting party at LAX. If Mr. Daniel didn’t show up there, they would no doubt smoke the real one out in Samoa.

Or they might be waiting in Honolulu. What would it do? The airport wasn’t too far from the sea, but harder to emergency-exit from than the Wing Room at Aggie Grey’s. They would presumably be expecting someone with unusual powers— depending on who “they” were. The spies might not have told the police everything. So one scenario was “police looking for a drug dealer with Mr. Daniel’s passport,” which wouldn’t be that hard to step around.

It set that problem aside, and returned to its usual mental occupation, analyzing 31,433 bits of information. Or noise. It continued its methodical way through those gazillion permutations as it filed through early boarding, took its seat in first class, and selected a random movie on its monitor. It nodded for champagne and made rote responses to the attendant’s rote queries.

If it spent one second on each possible combination of the 31,433 digits, it would take about as long as the Roman Empire had lasted. The changeling did have the time, but it was hoping that some sort of pattern would emerge long before that.

It had no seating companion, so the time went quickly, in a blur of ones and zeros. It came out of its five-hour reverie when the landing gear hit the tarmac in Hawaii.

First class exited democratically, allowing one hoi polloi interleaved between each of the elite, and the changeling entered the airport with a neutral expression, looking around with no particular interest, just a guy changing planes, who had to go through the inconvenience of passport check and baggage transfer.

There was nothing unusual at first. But then he saw that every u.s. citizen checkpoint was protected by a large policeman, standing between passport control and the luggage check.

Maybe they were always there. He didn’t remember them from earlier flights, when he was going back and forth between Australia and the States. It would be better not to take the chance.

There were two bathrooms, for the convenience of people who were willing to take a later place in line, in exchange for comfort. The changeling angled toward the men’s. Its timing was good.

As it entered the privacy baffle between the corridor and the men’s room, an attendant with a cart was backing out of a utility room. After a glance confirming that there were no witnesses, it covered the man’s mouth and nose and shoved him back into the room.

It punched him on the chin just hard enough to daze him, and slapped on the light. It was a room about the size of a walk-in closet, with racks of supplies. It plucked a roll of wide duct tape and carefully pressed a piece of it over the man’s mouth, and squares over each eye, after capturing his retinal pattern. Then it undressed him and put on his uniform, and bound him tightly with tape.

It took his fingerprints, studied him for a moment, and then turned out the light and concentrated on becoming him. It wasn’t too painful, skin color and facial structure. Then it pushed its way out behind the cart, leaving the door locked.

How much time did it have? If those cops were waiting for Mr. Daniel, it was only minutes.

It hesitated by a door that said authorized personnel only, trying to imagine what might be behind the sign. It could be the place where janitors went to catch a smoke. Or it might be full of nervous security types.

Turning the cart around, it headed back toward Customs. There were six lanes open for U.S. citizens, and three for foreigners—and one marked “employees.”

It got halfway through the short lane, and somebody shouted, “Hey! Asshole!”

It stopped and turned around. A fat cop said something angry. It was in Hawaiian, unfortunately.

It shrugged, hoping that not everyone who looked Hawaiian spoke Hawaiian. “You know the drill,” he said. “Where the hell you goin’?”

“Just out to the car,” the changeling said. “My dinner is in the cooler.”

“Yeah, liquid dinner. Just leave the goddamn cart on this side, okay?” The changeling trudged back and parked it out of the way.

Once outside, of course, the uniform made its wearer stand out rather than blend in. It would be conspicuous to hail a cab or get on a bus. Bad planning, not to carry along Daniel’s clothes.

It would take about twenty minutes to “grow” inconspicuous clothes, and discard the janitor’s. Too long. Taking a chance, it ducked into a souvenir shop and bought fairly modest tourist clothes—Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, and flip-flops. It changed in the men’s room—also changing its skin to pale white—and carried the uniform out in the shop’s paper bags.

In the line at the cab stand, it started mapping out its strategy. It told the cab to take it to the downtown Hilton, but paid attention for the last mile, looking for a more seedy place. The Crossed Palms looked suitably run-down.

It paid off the cab with an unremarkable tip, and walked straight through the Hilton lobby. On the way back to the Crossed Palms, it threw the janitor’s uniform into a Dumpster.

The chain-smoking woman at the desk was glad to give “James Baker” a room for three days, paid in advance with cash, no ID or luggage.

The room was musty and dark, and definitely not worth $150 a night. But the changeling was finally able to relax, for the first time since the side door to the Wing Room had opened to admit the unwelcome spies.

This couldn’t be rushed, it told itself; the identity it took back to Apia had to be absolutely bulletproof. It could go back to California and re-create its college-boy surfer dude, but why not just stay in Hawaii? Closer to Samoa, and so a more likely point of origin for a job-seeker.

There would be a job opening soon. Michelle, the project’s receptionist, was seven months pregnant. She was looking forward to quitting and becoming a full-time mother.

The changeling had perhaps a month to construct a perfect replacement and establish her in Samoa.

Receptionist would be good. It didn’t dare try lab technician again, but it did want to be someone Russ would notice, and fall for.

It had evidently been caught because it had masqueraded as a real person, and was snagged by some routine security procedure. “We talked to the real Rae Archer” was all the changeling knew or needed to know. Using an actual human had been lazy. This time it would create a woman from the ground up.

The changeling knew pretty exactly what Russ liked in a woman. But it probably wouldn’t be too smart to make a woman perfectly built to order—even if it didn’t make Russ suspicious, someone else might notice.

So she wouldn’t be a modest slender Oriental woman with a degree in astronomy. A normally plump blonde Caucasian who had studied marine biology. It would be smart if her first impression (especially to Jan, but also to Russ) was not too sexy. She could work on Russ slowly, in time-honored ways.

It bothered her to be sneaky with him. She loved him more than she had any other man or woman on Earth. But she had to find a way to the artifact, either through trust or stealth, and Russ was the obvious candidate for either.

What is this thing called love? that song asked when she had come out of the water the second time—back when those ex-Marine centenarians at the anniversary celebration had been horny young men. Could the changeling really know the answer, even eighty years later; even all those books and plays, poems and songs later?

It thought so. The answer was Russ.

If she couldn’t have him as Rae, conjure up a second best love. Someday she would amaze him with the story. First, though, she had to seduce him again.

The changeling wanted to be about thirty years old, married once briefly and widowed, no children, no ties. It had to be in complete control of the woman’s fictional paper trail, starting with birth.

It took most of a beautiful morning, walking through Kalaepohaku Cemetery, before the changeling found the perfect burial plot: Sharon Valida, born in 1990, died in ’91. Her parents were buried beside her, both dead in 2010.

A short computer search in the library showed her parents had died together in an auto accident. Sharon, just to complicate things, had been born in Maui, and died there. She was cremated and her ashes brought back here. But her death certificate was presumably in Maui, and had to be pulled from the system there.

Best to do things in proper order. The changeling flew over to Maui, still the pasty-faced tourist guy, and easily found the office where birth and death records were kept.

It spent a night in a closet, listening, making sure the place would be empty the next night. There was one complication: although there was no night watchman, there were video cameras covering every hall.

The changeling didn’t like to take the form of objects rather than living things; it was difficult and painful and time-consuming. But there didn’t seem to be any alternative in this case.

It became a sheet of grimy linoleum. The floors of every hall were the same dirt-colored plastic. So it was able to slide out through the millimeter clearance between door and floor and slowly undulate down the hall to Vital Statistics. There were no cameras in the office, so it rolled up into a cylinder and turned into a sort of cartoon human for convenience, or at least a roll of linoleum with feet and two two-fingered hands, keeping the drab linoleum color and texture.

The file drawers weren’t locked, so it was easy to pull the paper death certificate. The electronic record was another matter. Even if it knew which machine to use, there would be passwords and protocols. It would have to solve that problem from outside the system, as Sharon Valida.

It found Sharon’s birth certificate, and memorized the handprint and footprint on it. No retinal scans in 1990.

It gave itself a 2007 driver’s license, still no retinal scan. It had to take a chance on the Social Security number, changing a few digits from one that belonged to a person born in Maui the same year as Sharon.

Her parents’ driver’s licenses were still on file, with pictures; they’d lived in Maui until 2009, the year before they died. Her mother had been a strikingly beautiful blonde, which was convenient. The changeling generated a teenaged version for Sharon, with a 2007 hairstyle, nothing extreme. No facial tattoo or ritual scars. For “Scars or identifying marks,” it gave Sharon a small hummingbird tattoo on the left breast.

Russell would like that. Dipping into the nipple.

It found a map with school districts, but of course they’d have been much different in 2007. Guessing would be dangerous; some damned computer was liable to do a routine systems check and flag an anomaly. It took a little searching, but there was a file called “HS District Archives”; it found the one closest to her parents’ address and enrolled her.

It gave her a science track with APS; she aced all her science and math but didn’t do too well in humanities and arts. She also aced business and keyboard, which might count for more than her college degree. That would be the next day’s work.

Checking against other students’ yearbook entries, it gave her Chess Club and volleyball. Religious preference, none. Then it worked back through middle school and grade school records, which were mostly routine stuff. Her fourth-grade teacher noted that she did her work “with ease and dispatch,” a compliment she had given to about half the class. She skipped fifth grade, making it possible for her to finish college the year her parents died.

It was not quite dawn when the changeling turned back into linear linoleum and slid down a corridor to a location that wasn’t covered by the cameras, a stairwell that led to a musty basement. It took its janitor form, remembered from Berkeley, and waited until ten to walk upstairs and pass through the crowd, out onto the street.

It turned back into the tourist in a public library rest room stall, and used the library computer system to outline Sharon Valida’s academic career at the University of Hawaii, a more reasonable destination for an ambitious girl than the community college on Maui. She would study business with a concentration in oceanography—in fact, she would take an introductory oceanography course from herself, as the charismatic professor Jimmy Coleridge. The changeling used its intimate knowledge of the university’s academic and bureaucratic structure to give Sharon a respectable-but-not-brilliant four years of study. Inserting the paper and computer records verifying her existence there would be even easier than the past night’s work in Maui.

(The changeling had not just dropped everything when it changed from Professor Coleridge into Rae Archer. The timing had been perfect; the Sky and Telescope ad appearing right at the end of the term. So the professor turned in his grades and told everyone he was taking the summer off for a diving vacation in Polynesia, which was not completely a lie.)

There was one thing left to do before going back to Honolulu. The changeling went to a mall and bought a recent wardrobe for Sharon, and then went back to the Crossed Palms and spent a painful half hour changing into her. She rented another room for the night and went back to the Vital Statistics office at four thirty, a half hour before closing.

“May I help you?” The woman at the window, about forty, had a bright fixed stare as if she’d been caffeine-loading to stay awake till five, and seemed less than sincere in her desire to help.

“I can’t find my birth certificate,” the changeling said. “I need a certified copy to get a passport.”

“Photo ID,” the woman said, and the changeling handed over the fresh, though worn, driver’s license.

The woman sat down at a console and typed in Valida’s name. She stared at the screen, cleared it, and typed it in again. “This says you died in ’91.”

“What, died?”

“One year old.” She looked up suspiciously.

“Well, duh. I didn’t.”

“Wait here a moment.” She hustled off in the direction of the room where the changeling had spent the night.

She came back shaking her head. “Computer error,” she said, and deleted the record with a couple of strokes. Wordlessly, she made a copy of the birth certificate and notarized it. She went down the hall to have another clerk witness it. The changeling walked out with its new existence certified.

In a way, it was simpler for Sharon to get a college degree than it had been to go through grades 1 to 12, since the changeling could work from inside. It changed its retinal pattern to match that of Professor Jimmy Coleridge, to get into his front door, and took a cab from the Honolulu airport to his apartment off the Manoa campus.

The changeling didn’t think anyone saw Sharon entering the apartment, but if they did, it wouldn’t be that uncommon a sight.

The next morning, it took a half hour to change back into Jimmy, who fortunately didn’t weigh much more than Sharon. It put on teaching clothes and walked over to Coleridge’s office at the School of Ocean Earth Science Technology.

The departmental secretary was surprised to see him. “Back from Samoa already? I thought you were gone till August!”

“Just for a couple of days. I’ve got an open ticket on Polynesian Airways. Thought I’d catch up on some stuff and get a few decent meals.”

“What do they eat in Samoa? Each other?”

“Just for variety. Usually McDonald’s.”

“What about the space alien? Were you there?”

“Yeah—they think it’s some Hollywood stunt.”

“I hope they’re wrong. That would be so maze.”

“Would be.” There was a double handful of mail waiting. The changeling took it to Coleridge’s office, dumped it in a drawer, and held the desk’s identifier cable up to his eye. The console pinged to life and it started typing.

It wanted to give Sharon a bachelor’s in business administration, with a minor in oceanography. It only took twenty minutes to map out her course of study, and then another hour to verify which courses had been offered in which year.

The oceanography minor was easy—she took OCN 320, Aquatic Pollution, as well as “Science of the Sea,” from Professor Coleridge, and got an A. The business major was harder. It had taken some business courses as protective coloration in 1992 and 1993, while it was being a California surfer, but things had changed a lot in the past thirty years. Majors had to have calculus and advanced statistics.

It wouldn’t be smart to try to generate actual class records; nothing on computer. But it could fake a paper copy of her transcript, and sneak it into the proper file at Business Administration, which was also at the Manoa campus. It was unlikely that anyone would ask for her transcript, but if they did, maybe the scam with the birth certificate could work again.

The changeling gave itself, as Sharon, glowing job references from two dead professors and Coleridge, who of course was off diving but could be reached at jimmyc@uhw.edu.