Joe Haldeman - Camouflage

The privates pushed their prisoner through the door and down a dark corridor. A Filipino jailer, closely observed by a Japanese officer, unlocked a door of heavy iron bars. The changeling quickly memorized both of their faces. A basic plan would be to break out physically and kill one or both of them, and walk out as the officer’s doppelganger.

The Filipino took the changeling to the last of six cells and locked the old cast-iron barred door. The changeling widened its irises in the darkness and memorized the shape of the key.

As the guard walked away, a hoarse voice in the adjacent cell asked, “What they get you for?”

“They haven’t said. You?”

“Stole a can of sardines. Say they’re going to let me starve.”

“We’re starving outside anyhow,” the changeling said. “At least this is out of the sun.”

The key rattled in the door and the Filipino let the Japanese officer in. He had a riding crop, and whipped the changeling’s face and shoulders. “You quiet!” The changeling heard him do the same next door.

The cell had a board for a bed and a bucket for a toilet. The bucket was foul and buzzing with flies; maggots quietly rustled inside. There was a small open window about six inches square, up near the ceiling. Only a little light came through. It faced north and was evidently in the shadow of an eave.

The man who was sobbing next door was the only other prisoner who was conscious. The changeling could hear one near the jailer’s station whose breath was so shallow and ragged he must be near death.

It could easily make itself slender enough to slip between the bars. It was also strong enough to bend the bars and widen that space, but that would make noise, and leave behind evidence of a prisoner who was not human. There was already too much curiosity about “William Harrison.” Best to find a way to simply vanish. That could be explained away as bribery or carelessness.

There was a drain in the floor that would probably lead to a river. But it was only an inch in diameter. To form a shape that could slip through that would take hours; to keep enough mass to re-form into human shape would require a worm about a hundred feet long, and while it was turning into that grotesque creature, it would be conspicuous and vulnerable.

That gave it an idea, though. It heard the Japanese guard leave, and within an hour the Filipino was snoring.

It removed its right leg, with a sound like someone softly cracking his knuckles, then tearing clothes quietly. That drew no attention. The leg re-formed itself into a defensive creature that looked like a pile of rags but had teeth and claws like a saber- toothed tiger’s.

The changeling began to re-form, not into a worm, but into a snake about the size and shape of a young reticulated python. It had a square cross-section slightly smaller than the high small window.

That took about an hour of vulnerability. It was the work of a minute, then, to merge with the saber-toothed section, which was also six inches in thickness.

It had hundreds of gecko-like legs, so scrabbling up the wall was easy. It extended an eye through the opening and saw no one, though there were bright lights to the east. To the west there was a drainage ditch.

It slithered through the opening and down the wall, changing its color to match the dusty pink of the building. It stretched out along the length of the wall, as it had seen snakes do, and peered around the corner.

So far so good. To its right was the large square where the prisoners sleepily stepped along the undulating line to the water tap. There were plenty of guards, but they were standing or sitting with their backs to the drainage ditch.

Decisions. It would take too long to change back into a human form, and besides, the snake would probably be more efficient once in the water, assuming the ditch wasn’t dry. If it were intercepted on the way … that would be awkward. It was a cross between a boa constrictor and a chainsaw, so there would be no question about the outcome of an encounter between it and one or several humans. But it would have more than ten thousand witnesses.

It looked around and thought. Electricity.

The power line that served the jail building went on to the prisoners’ square. Seeing no potential witnesses, it slid up the wall and took one huge bite. Delicious taste of copper, dusty glass, and high voltage, and everything near went dark.

There were shouts and firing into the air, and then flashlight beams lancing, but all of the attention was directed inward, toward the prisoners. The changeling dropped to the ground and scurried on a thousand lizard legs to the ditch. Slid in and found a few inches of sewage, and slithered south.

It remembered from ordnance maps at the Bataan base that Manila Bay was about forty kilometers south, and there were plenty of rivers through the Panga and Bulacan Provinces. Once in Manila Bay, it was about sixty kilometers around the Bataan Peninsula to the South China Sea.

In the six hours that it took to get to the bay, there was only one witness, to its knowledge: a drunken man on a narrow wooden bridge. He screamed and fled. If anyone came out into the night to check his preposterous story, the changeling would be long gone.

Dawn was still hours away when the final ditch widened into a mud flat and the changeling wormed its way into the bay. It dove down to the bottom and began the process of changing into a fish.

A shark bit it in two, which was annoying. But it evidently didn’t like the flavor, and left the two halves alone. The changeling crawled along the bottom, crunching up bivalves and crabs, and when it had enough mass, it took the familiar shape of a great white shark itself. By then it was in the South China Sea. It pointed itself east. Only ten thousand miles to California.

The evacuation of the artifact room had taken a little longer than expected, but there were no leaks, and all of the data- gathering equipment seemed to be working fine. At five thirty, Naomi said through the monitor, “Okay. We can start the countdown.”

Jack nodded. “Fire when ready, Gridley.” No one else in the room knew who Gridley was.

After a few minutes, there was no temperature change at 10 percent. Naomi increased it to 20, and then to 30.

“Go to fifty,” Jack said, and Russ and Jan nodded.

“Where’s it all going?” Jan muttered, a question they’d all asked before. At least when there was air in the building, some of the energy had gone into heating the air. Now, the laser was putting out enough energy to run a small city into a hundred-square- centimeter area, and it was all disappearing—into the artifact, apparently.

“Go to a hundred?” Jack said.

“Seventy-five,” Russ and Jan said simultaneously.

It never got there. The monitor went blank and a second later the people in cottage 7 heard the dull thump of an explosion.

Jan and Russ were the first ones there, with their bicycles. Half the building had collapsed, the big laser almost submerged in the water. Naomi and Moishe staggered out of the water, coughing and gagging.

Russ took Naomi’s arm. “Are you all right?”

She ignored the question, and stared back at the wreck of the lab. “It moved.”

“Moved?” Russ said.

“Floated up and crashed down.”

“Holy shit.”

“Merry Christmas.”

Most of the equipment was wrecked, but a high-speed camera, which the manufacturer called “ruggedized,” had been rugged enough to record the sequence of events before it lost power and fell into the water.

When the laser increased to 72 percent output, 300,000 watts, the artifact gently rose off its cradle, at a uniform velocity of 18.3 centimeters per second. When it cleared the laser’s beam, the weapon punched a hole in the opposite wall, causing the slight explosion they had heard, as the building suddenly filled with air. The beam didn’t do any other damage except to explode a coconut at the top of a tree on the Mulinu’a Peninsula, more than two kilometers away.