Joe Haldeman - Camouflage

“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?”