Joe Haldeman - Camouflage

It was over in forty-five seconds. All three stared at the artifact; nothing overt happened.

The chameleon rose and walked quietly over to stand next to her, Russell following just behind. “Looks like it didn’t work.”

“I felt something. Give it time.”

“We have plenty of time. Don’t worry.” The chameleon reached out and absently stroked her arm; gently took her wrist. “The arm’s all healed?”

She cocked her head. “Of course.”

“Pity.” He pulled down hard and the shoulder socket popped sickeningly, and the arm ripped off. An instant later her other hand came up and struck his face so hard the lower hinge of the jaw broke off and swung free.

He staggered back and threw the arm away, and used both hands to press his chin back into place.

“What are you doing?” she said. After an initial spray, the bleeding from her shoulder stopped.

It took a moment for the jaw to fuse back into place. “I’m doing … what I’ve lived for, for thousands of years.”

“Why?”

“Only one of us per planet.”

“I’m not one of you.”

“But you are—” Russ leaped onto his back and put a scissor- hold on his throat. The chameleon threw him off like a doll, to crash against the heavy laser mount.

“You are my only rival here. This is not personal. You just have to die.”

She sidled around to where Russ was lying still. “It became personal when you hurt him. And I can’t die.”

“I believe I can put you into a state equivalent to death. All I have to do is tear you into several pieces and make sure those pieces stay separate. For all time.”

The changeling found a pulse in Russell’s throat and stood between him and the monster. “I could do the same to you.”

“Not with one arm, I think. You won’t have time to grow a new one, and you can’t leave this room to do so at leisure.”

She looked at the walls. “You’re wrong. I could be through that wall and in the water in seconds. I don’t think you want to face me in the water. Even one-armed.”

“Leave and I’ll kill him. Your choice.”

The changeling hesitated. Jack couldn’t let Russ live, no matter what happened to her.

“Go ahead,” the chameleon said. “I won’t even try to stop you. You’ll be back, and meanwhile I’ll enjoy killing him slowly. He hasn’t been easy to work with.”

She tried another tack. “I don’t understand you. You’re like a scientist who’s searched all his life for something, but when you find it, you want to destroy it without learning anything first.”

“I learned enough before you left that bedroom to come here. And I’m no more a scientist than you are a woman.” He suddenly looked left. “Well, isn’t that cute.”

The amputated arm was transforming itself into a weapon. The nails had become long metal talons and eyes had formed over two knuckles. Pseudopods along the sides were turning into insectoid legs.

He turned back to the changeling. “Let me show you what I looked like when I first started looking for you.” He became more than a foot shorter, bulking out so much that his T-shirt and shorts split. Black hair bristled all over his body and his face coarsened into Neanderthal features. He tore the rags of clothing away to reveal massive ridges of muscle and prominent genitals, engorged.

She leaped at him and he casually kicked her aside, the rough horn of his toe claws ripping cloth and skin between her breasts with a crunch of broken bone. She rolled once and came up in a crouch, pale, uncertain.

He stroked himself for a moment, looking at her, and muttered, “No.”

“Please try.” She tensed.

Without looking at the target, he struck sideways with the speed of a serpent and snatched up the disembodied arm. Wriggling, it tried to fight, but he closed a hand over its claws and bent back until they broke. He threw them to the floor with a clatter and then stripped the legs off like someone cleaning a shrimp.

He bit at the biceps and tore off a strip of flesh and then, munching it, broke the arm at the elbow. With a long dirty thumbnail he daintily excavated the eyes over the knuckles, and popped them in his mouth.

He smiled, his teeth pink with her blood, and took another bite.

The changeling looked around the room for something it could use as a weapon. The place was too neat; there was nothing loose. The huge laser could certainly cut the creature into chunks, but it was immovable as a boulder and could only be activated remotely.

Russell had regained consciousness and was staring at the horrible scene. The chameleon had stripped almost all of the flesh from the bone above the elbow. It dropped the arm and spit out a large gobbet. “At this point I should say ‘You have wonderful taste, my dear,’ but in fact you don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything as vile as you.”

“You’re the first creature I’ve ever known to take a second bite. You’re the one with no taste.” She saw Russell fumble in his pocket and come out with his Swiss Army knife. “No, Russ!”

The chameleon turned to look at him and laughed. “Wrong tool, Russell.”

“Oh?” He half-turned and jammed it into a high-voltage wall socket. There was a shower of sparks and the shock knocked him flat. The lights went out.

The backup, a large gasoline-powered generator, came on in a second. The lights flickered and then returned to normal brightness. Russ sat back up, cradling his injured hand.

“That didn’t buy you any time.”

“That wasn’t the point. People will come to investigate.”

“They’ll find they can’t get the blast door open.”

“You really haven’t thought this through, have you? You kill us and then what? Call a press conference?”

“I’ll just leave the way she—” He turned, and she wasn’t there anymore.

The changeling dropped from a ceiling girder just as he looked up. She landed on his shoulders and gave his head two twists, and his neck snapped. A third jerk and the head came off, with enough force to hit the ceiling. But he had hold of her leg by then, and spraying blood from his neck, flung her off in a high arc. She landed heavily and rolled to the base of the artifact, not far from Russell.

By the time she stopped rolling, it had grown a new head, a grotesque combination of the Neanderthal and Jack. “That did hurt. Shall we play pain?”

Pulling herself to her feet, the changeling reached up and touched the artifact.

There was a sound like a distant large bell struck once.

The changeling took its true form for the first time in a million years. It elongated until it was about eight feet long. Its face had only one opening, with no apparent sense organs. You couldn’t focus on its body—it changed, moment by moment, colors shimmering all over the spectrum, limbs growing and fading and transmuting. It was inhumanly beautiful.

The artifact flowed off its stand as if it were mercury. It shot in one straight rivulet toward the chameleon and formed itself into a domed cage around him.

The changeling spoke to it, in colors.

The chameleon seized the liquid bars of its cage, but they wouldn’t budge. Then it spasmed into rigidity, and then froze, literally, frost riming all over its body.

The artifact melted into a puddle all around the chameleon, and then re-formed as a large silver ovoid, three or four times the size of its original manifestation, with the deadly creature inside. Colors flashed all over the room, and then stopped, and the changeling became Jan again, flickered through Sharon, and settled on Rae.

She walked over to Russ, took his hand, and helped him to his feet. She embraced him.

“What was … was that you?”

“It’s news to me, too, but yes. I guess that’s what I look like when I don’t have to look like something else.”