Joe Haldeman - Camouflage

T he changeling was interested and amused by people's changing attitudes toward Rae. Some obviously thought she was a shameless manipulator, or maybe just a nymphomaniac. A lot of the men were happy for Russ, the old dog, or ruefully jealous. Rae didn't wear makeup and dressed severely, at least in the office, but the men said they had her pegged as a hot number from the beginning. The ones who had seen her swimming had seen part of the rising sun tattooed over her shapely butt.

Some of the men and most of the women could see there was more than sex going on, though. The way she looked at him and he looked at her; the way their voices changed when they talked to each other.

After the snow day, most people came back to work with renewed vigor. A few had not benefited from having a day to reflect on the lack of resultsmaybe it was time to bring the government in.

The government was coming in, but not for decryption.

Two CIA agents, masquerading as honeymooners, reserved the fancy Wing Room at Aggie Grey's for a week. Four other agents rented the flanking rooms. They had flown into American Samoa on military aircraft, and come to Apia on the ferry, so there was no nonsense about luggage being searched.

A seventh agent, a white-haired old lady, got a room at the bed-and-breakfast where Rae Archer was staying. An hour after maid service the second day, Rae's room was thoroughly bugged.

That surveillance did them no good. The changeling was automatically cautious, mimicking human behavior. It ate and drank and excreted at regular intervals, and lay down in the dark for eight hours every night. That it was analyzing 31,433 ones and zeros, instead of sleeping, would not be obvious to any observer.

Three times she came in early in the morning, having spent the night with her boss. That mitigated against the direct approach, going straight to Poseidon and showing them what they knew about the mysterious employee. Besides the fact of her sexual relationship with the second in command, perhaps a love affair, what they learned about Jack Halliburton did not make them optimistic about his cooperating with the American government, either. He had cynically used the American Navy to put together a pool of talented specialists, hired them away, and quit his commission in an acrimonious scene. He wasn't even an American citizen anymore.

The other direct approach, just snatching the woman off the street or from her room, had some meritthey didn't know it would be easier to "kidnap" a Powell tankbut as they had no legitimate jurisdiction here, they wanted to be a little more subtle. They used a lure, an indirect one.

Russ had dropped his business card into a box for a once-monthly drawing that awarded a weekend for two at Aggie Grey's, at either the Wing Room or the Presidential Suite. He won the Wing Room, the weekend after the honeymooners left.

They knew they would have to deal with Russ sooner or later. Best do it directly.

There were three possibilities: Russ would arrive first, or Rae, or they would come in together. The last was not likely, since they were still being discreet. But the CIA team was ready for any of the three, as well as the trivial case where neither showed up.

If Russ had come through the door first, they would have had to do some fast explanation. But it was the woman.

The changeling came into the sumptuous room and tossed its overnight bag on the bed, and went into the bathroom to check its hair. It heard a vague sound in the hall, which was a man shoving a wooden wedge between the door and frame, jamming it shut, and the plain sound of another door opening and closing.

It sped out of the bathroom and saw the man and woman who had just entered from the adjoining room.

"Don't make this difficult," the man said. "You know why we're here."

The changeling answered automatically while considering various options: "You tell me."

"You're not Rae Archer. But you match her so precisely that you must be a clone or something."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"We just talked to the real Rae Archer, in Pasadena. You're someone else."

"Who do you work for?" the changeling said.

The woman shrugged. "The United States intelligence community."

"So you have no jurisdiction here."

"We just want to ask you some questions."

The changeling picked up its overnight bag. "No." Halfway to the door it heard a rubber-band sound and felt a sting in the middle of its back. It reached backrevealing unusual supplenessand pulled out a dart with plastic wings.

The man was holding what looked like a toy gun. "That won't hurt you. It will just make you a little groggy."

The changeling inspected the dart, sniffed it, and shook it next to its ear. "Seems to have a bit left."

"Doesn't take much" The spy grunted, dropped the pistol, and fell to his knees. The dart was in his neck, deeply imbedded into the carotid artery. He managed to pull it out but his knees gave way and he fell over prone, arms and legs trembling and then twitching.

"You want to be careful where you inject that." The changeling tried the door, but it was stuck. It heard the soft sound of metal on leather, and in three leaping steps was on the woman before she could raise the automatic to fire. It jerked her gun hand sideways and heard finger or knuckle bones breaking just before the weapon discharged, almost silent, into the wall, and pulled it out of her hand.

She screamed in pain and a small man swung out of the door to the adjoining room, pointing a double-barreled shotgun. The changeling leaped sideways just as the first hammer went down, and the hot blast just missed its face. It reached for the weapon and the second blast blew off its left arm at the shoulder.

In the reverberating silence, blood pulsing from the ragged stump, the changeling raised the pistol to point between the man's eyes. "Bang," it said, and dropped the gun.

Two steps and it vaulted the couch and crashed through the glass balcony door. It hit the balcony railing and tumbled over, falling onto the awning over the hotel entrance.

Russ was a half block away, and had looked up at the sound of the shots. He saw someone slide off the hotel awning and hit the sidewalk hard, and come up running, bleeding from the stump of an arm.

It seemed to have no face, as if it had a stocking over its head. Russ rubbed his eyes.

It ran over the slow traffic, one step on the roof of a southbound car, the next on a northbound, then onto the opposite sidewalk, over the low fence into the harborside park, and while tourists and picnicking families gaped, it ran like an Olympic sprinter and was over the stone breakwater in a flat dive.

By the time anyone got to the breakwater, there was nothing but ripples. A siren threaded through the air.

T he changeling sought shelter on the harbor bottom, under the shade of a tanker that was drawing half the depth of the water. It strained to become a fish as quickly as possible, bone into cartilege and denticles and teeth, muscle and guts into the streamlined swift form of a reef shark; bloody clothes left behind as a red herring.

The metamorphosis was just complete when it heard divers splash into the harbor back where it had dived in. It breathed a surge of warm salt water liberally flavored with diesel spilldeliciousand flexed the one huge muscle of itself toward the open sea.

A helicopter commandeered by the police made a search pattern low over the harbor, and with binoculars and sonar found nothing but the usual assortment of fish and discarded debris, from the surface to the bottom. A couple of large sharks, one evidently spooked by the helicopter.