Joe Haldeman - Camouflage

“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.