Joe Haldeman: Camouflage

“Earthquake?”

He nodded. “A quarter of a million years ago.”

Russ stared at him for a long moment. “Didn’t I read about this in an old Stephen King novel?”

“Look at the next page.”

It was a regular color photograph. The object lay at the bottom of a deep hole. Russ thought about the size of that digging job; the expense of it. “The Navy doesn’t know about this?”

“No. We did use their equipment, of course.”

“You found the thing they lost?”

“We will next week.” He stared out the window. “I’ll have to trust you.”

“I won’t turn you in to the Navy.”

He nodded slowly and chose his words. “The submarine that was lost is in the trench, too. Not thirty miles from this … object.”

“You didn’t report it. Because?”

“I’ve been in the Navy for almost twenty years. Twenty years next month. I was going to retire anyhow.”

“Disillusioned?”

“I never was ‘illusioned.’ Twenty years ago, I wanted to leave academia, and the Navy made me an interesting offer. It has been a fascinating second career. But it hasn’t led me to trust the military, or the government.

“Over the past decade I’ve assembled a crew of like-minded men and women. I was going to take some of them with me when I retired— to set up an outfit like yours, frankly.”

Russ went to the coffee machine and refreshed his cup. He offered one to Halliburton, who declined.

“I think I see what you’re getting at.”

“Tell me.”

“You want to retire with your group and set up shop. But if you suddenly ‘discover’ this thing, the government might notice the coincidence.”

“That’s a good approximation. Take a look at the next page.”

It was a close-up of the thing. Its curved surface mirrored perfectly the probe that was taking its picture.

“We tried to get a sample of the metal for analysis. It broke every drill bit we tried on it.”

“Diamond?”

“It’s harder than diamond. And massive. We can’t estimate its density, because we haven’t been able to budge it, let alone lift it.”

“Good God.”

“If it were an atomic submarine, we could have hauled it up. It’s not even a tenth that size.

“If it were made of lead, we could have raised it. If it were solid uranium. It’s denser than that.”

“I see,” Russ said. “Because we raised the Titanic… .”

“May I be blunt?”

“Always.”

“We could bring it up with some version of your flotation techniques. And keep all the profit, which may be considerable. But there would be hell to pay when the Navy connection was made.”

“So what’s your plan?”

“Simple.” He took a chart out of his portfolio and rolled it out on Russ’s desk. It snapped flat. “You’re going to be doing a job in Samoa…”

Before it came out of the water, it formed clothes on the outside of its body. It had observed more sailors than fishermen, so that was what it chose. It waded out of the surf wearing white utilities, not dripping wet because they were not cloth. They had a sheen like the skin of a porpoise. Its internal organs were more porpoise than human.

It was sundown, almost dark. The beach was deserted except for one man, who came running up to the changeling.

“Holy cow, man. Where’d you swim from?”

The changeling looked at him. The man was almost two heads taller than it, with prominent musculature, wearing a black bathing suit.

“Cat got your tongue, little guy?”

Mammals can be killed easily with a blow to the brain. The changeling grabbed his wrist and pulled him down and smashed his skull with one blow.

When the body stopped twitching, the changeling pinched open the thorax and studied the disposition of organs and muscles. It reconfigured itself to match, a slow and painful process. It needed to gain about 30 percent body mass, so it removed both arms, after studying them, and held them to its body until they were absorbed. It added a few handfuls of cooling entrails.

It pulled down the bathing suit and duplicated the reproductive structure that it concealed, and then stepped into the suit. Then it carried the gutted body out to deep water and abandoned it to the fishes.

It walked down the beach toward the lights of San Guillermo, a strapping handsome young man, duplicated down to the fingerprints, a process that had taken no thought, but an hour and a half of agony.

But it couldn’t speak any human language and its bathing suit was on backward. It walked with a rolling sailor’s gait; except for the one it had just killed, every man it had seen for the past century had been walking on board a ship or boat.

It walked toward light. Before it reached the small resort town, the sky was completely dark, moonless, and spangled with stars. Something made it stop and look at them for a long time.

The town was festive with Christmas decorations. It noticed that other people were almost completely covered in clothing. It could form more clothing on its skin, or kill another one, if it could find one the right size alone. But it didn’t get the chance.

Five teenagers came out of a burger joint with a bag of hamburgers. They were laughing, but suddenly stopped dead.

“Jimmy?” a pretty girl said. “What are you doing?”

“Ain’t it a little cool for that?” a boy said. “Jim?”

They began to approach it. It stayed calm, knowing it could easily kill all of them. But there was no need. They kept making noises.

“Something’s wrong,” an older one said. “Did you have an accident, Jim?”

“He drove out with his surfing board after lunch,” the pretty girl said, and looked down the road. “I don’t see his car.”

It didn’t remember what language was, but it knew how whales communicated. It tried to repeat the sound they had been making. “Zhim.”

“Oh my God,” the girl said. “Maybe he hit his head.” She approached it and reached toward its face. It swatted her arms away.

“Ow! My God, Jim.” She felt her forearm where it had almost fractured it.

“Mike odd,” it said, trying to duplicate her facial expression.

One of the boys pulled the girl back. “Somethin’ crazy’s goin’ on. Watch out for him.”

“Officer!” the older girl shouted. “Officer Sherman!”

A big man in a blue uniform hustled across the street. “Jim Berry? What the hell?”

“He hit me,” the pretty one said. “He’s acting crazy.”

“My God, Jim,” it said, duplicating her intonation.

“Where’re your clothes, buddy?” Sherman said, unbuttoning his holster.

It realized that it was in a complex and dangerous situation. It knew these were social creatures, and they were obviously communicating. Best try to learn how.

“Where’re your clothes, buddy,” it said in a deep bass growl.

“He might have hit his head surfing,” the girl who was cradling her arm said. “You know he’s not a mean guy.”

“I don’t know whether to take him home or to the hospital,” the officer said.

“The hospital,” it said.

“Probably a good idea,” he said.

“Good idea,” it said. When the officer touched its elbow it didn’t kill him.

It worked like this: Poseidon Projects landed a contract from a Sea World affiliate—actually a dummy corporation that Jack Halliburton had built out of money and imagination—to raise up a Spanish-American War—era relic, a sunken destroyer, from Samoa. But no sooner had they their equipment in place than they got an urgent summons from the U.S. Navy—there was a nuclear submarine down in the Tonga Trench, and the Navy couldn’t lift it as fast as Poseidon could. There might be men still alive in it. They covered the five hundred miles as fast as they could.