Camouflage

by Joe Haldeman

  Of course the changeling could dissect itself, and did on a regular basis, but that didn’t teach it anything on the molecular level. Besides, the only science it knew was human science, and whatever it did when it changed into a shark or a roll of linoleum wasn’t covered by Organic Chemistry 101.

  It did absorb DNA when it ate, naturally, and human DNA sometimes when it had sex with a male human. But whatever passed for metabolism in its body didn’t retain the stuff. It could absorb a school of albacore tuna and somehow change their substance into a Volkswagen.

  Poseidon was probably going to be on the lookout for their alien returning, and would test job applicants for the presence of human DNA. What procedure could Sharon Valida expect?

  A little research showed it that DNA testing for purposes of identification was usually done with buccal swabs, just wiping a few cells off the inside of the cheek, noninvasive and less personal than a blood or sperm sample. All it had to do was contrive to have a mouthful of human flesh before it sat down to apply for work.

  Biting somebody, alive or dead, on the way to an interview didn’t seem practical. You could buy live portable DNA in the form of blood or sperm, but both posed practical problems, when it came to opening one’s mouth for the doctor or police officer.

  Pure DNA was sold for research purposes, but only in microscopic quantities, hardly a mouthful. Besides, they might even decide to be invasive—want a job? We’ll have to take a little blood.

  If it were only Russell involved, the changeling would just come out and tell him. Show up one night as Rae to get his attention, and explain. But there were all those tiresome people with guns—and Jack was ultimately in charge, not Russell. Jack felt dangerous, almost feral in his greedy intensity, and he could infer the changeling’s abilities from what had happened at Aggie Grey’s. There probably wouldn’t be a window facing the sea if Jack had anything to do with the conditions of their meeting.

  On the other hand, the changeling knew enough about the Poseidon labs to know they couldn’t test for DNA in-house. The samples would go to Pago Pago, or even back here to Honolulu. That would buy some time, and also might afford an opportunity for substitution.

  Perhaps the smartest thing would be to wait, to go join the circus again for a couple of decades; let things cool down. Jack and Russell would die, and new people would be in charge of the artifact.

  But there were factors arguing against that, not the least of which being its feelings for Russ; it wanted him, above all others, to know what was really going on. Also, in twenty years—or five, or one—it was likely that the artifact would wind up in a vault in Washington, or Langley, impossible to approach.

  There was something deeper, too, that the changeling couldn’t quite put a name to. Something in that pattern of ones and zeros was coming together—not logic, not numbers, but some sort of message.

  Jan and Russ and the rest of Poseidon were analyzing the digits by looking for an analogue to the Drake message. But maybe the message was not for them. Maybe it was not for any human.

  —43—

  Apia, Samoa, 20 July 2021

  They decided to set a trap for the alien.

  “Rae wanted to get to the artifact, but was playing it cool. She asked me about getting around the security protocols so she could actually be in the same room with it; touch it.” Russell was doodling while he talked, drawing precise geometrical figures. He and Jack and Jan were outside Jack’s suite at Aggie Grey’s, talking quietly on the balcony. Jack had belatedly realized the spooks could have had his room bugged. It was less likely with the wrought-iron patio furniture, exposed to the elements.

  “You told her you could arrange it?” Jan said.

  “Put her off. I said security’d probably be relaxed soon, if the artifact stayed calm.”

  “Leading her on,” Jack said.

  “Maybe so. But I had no reason to think it was anything other than normal curiosity. Who wouldn’t want to go take a look at the thing?”

  “Especially someone who’d come all this way to take a low- paying job, out of curiosity about it,” Jan said. “We tested her enthusiasm, remember, by having her pay her own way out for the interview.”

  “Which we can do again, for the trap,” Jack said. “But maybe we should be more subtle.”

  Russell nodded. “Whatever Rae is, she knows human nature well. She’s either going to be very careful or direct. She might just phone us and set up a meeting, one where she can control the conditions.”

  “I wonder how old she is,” Jack said.

  “Thirty-some.”

  “Try thirty thousand. She can’t be killed—at least not by a point-blank shotgun blast, or by drowning—and she can masquerade as another person down to the fingerprints and retinas. Who was she before Rae Archer? Before that? She might go all the way back through human history and prehistory.

  “She might have come to this planet even before humans evolved. Wandering around as a saber-toothed tiger. As a dinosaur before that.”

  “No,” Jan said, “I don’t think she’s an alien at all. Just a different kind of human. They probably evolved alongside us and learned to keep their nature secret—or somewhat secret. There are legends about shape-changers and immortals.”

  Jack rubbed his beard. “If so, there can’t be many of them. They’d just take over.”

  “Maybe they have,” Russ said. “We ought to check every world leader for DNA.” He and Jan laughed nervously.

  “The CIA is probably having this same conversation,” Jack said.

  In fact, by the time Jack said this, every employee of the CIA had donated a few cheek cells to the agency, as had employees of NSA and Homeland Security. A “suggestion” had come down from the White House that all of the country’s leaders be tested.

  Laboratories that did DNA testing were initially overwhelmed, but then their usual work was not just testing for the presence of DNA, but rather analyzing a sample to link it to a particular microorganism or person. This called for time-consuming processes like electrophoresis or mass spectrometry. But of course in those cases they already knew that a sample contained DNA; the question was pinning down its origin.

  It turned out that a DNA/no DNA test was a lot simpler. You took the buccal swab and swirled it around in a test tube containing a solution that turns acid in the presence of even a microgram of DNA, then added a drop of phenol red. If it turned yellow, voila, the scraping was from a human cheek, or at least it came from something that had DNA of some description. It couldn’t discriminate between onion DNA and human, but in this case it didn’t matter. Samples of the “flesh” and “blood” in the arm that resided in a freezer in the Apia police station had been sent all over the world for analysis. The samples had the right proportions of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, and nitrogen to have come from the amino acids that make up human (or animal) protein, but their chemistry was not human. It was not even organic chemistry.

  The thing it came from had not been alive, in the sense that a human is alive.

  The tests proved that every member of the American intelligence community was human, at least in a nominal sense, and so were all prominent politicians, including the president, which surprised a few people.

  —44—

  Apia, Samoa, 22 July 2021

  Just a week after it had been blasted with a shotgun and swam to the airport, the changeling returned. Sharon Valida had a brand- new passport, a six-month work permit, and a suitcase full of light business outfits. Over the internet, she’d landed a job with a bank in Apia looking for a customer representative who could speak German and French.

  She also had packed a nice bikini and cute jogging outfit; a dinner dress and a bottle of Sudafed unlike any other in the world. Each capsule had been carefully opened and emptied and refilled with a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of reference DNA stolen from a teaching laboratory at the University of Hawaii. She had bitten down on one every few hours from the Honolulu airport t
o the Apia one, where a uniformed man apologetically stuck a swab in her mouth and stroked the inside of both cheeks. He did something under the counter and then waved her through.

  The changeling was in a quiet race against time. It had to establish a convincing identity as a working woman in Apia before Michelle Watson, the Poseidon receptionist, retired to have her baby. It knew that Michelle’s husband was a pleasant but unemployed beach bum, and she wanted to work as long as she could waddle down to the bank with her paycheck, which was okay with Poseidon.

  Some time in the next six weeks they would advertise for a replacement. The ad wouldn’t ask for a pretty young woman with a degree in business and minor in oceanography, but that was what they’d get.

  The changeling rented an apartment on Beach Street, a few blocks from the project site, and began a routine that included jogging at dawn and dusk, which was when Russell was out riding his bike. He said he used the time to think, but he probably wouldn’t be thinking so hard that he would ignore a pretty blonde in a tight silver jogging outfit with property of nobody stenciled on the back.

  Its bank job was not difficult, and was moderately interesting when they actually needed Sharon as a translator. The rest of the time they had it out front, being pretty and a teller, both of which the changeling could do without thinking about anything but ones and zeros.

  Three of the men at the bank asked Sharon out, and she dated them in strict rotation, without becoming “involved.” It had been a woman often enough to know that men would accept a lack of sexual activity for a long time, if you were attractive and kept them talking about themselves. They were British, American, and Samoan; reserved, brash, and shy, respectively. The Samoan was the most interesting, taking his palagi woman to native places where no one else was Caucasian, and doing physical things like sailing and swimming. More traditional physical behavior, she was reserving for Russell.

  Russell pedaled by her almost every morning, either approaching with a conventional I’m-not-looking-at-your-breasts smile and nod, or slowing down and coasting as he closed on her from behind.

  The changeling contrived an incident the second week. Hearing the familiar bicycle about a block away, it stumbled and fell, skinning a knee.

  Russell raced up and dropped his bike with a clatter. Sharon was looking at the minor wound and tentatively picking gravel out of it. The changeling manufactured enough histamine to make itself on the verge of tears.

  “Are you all right?” He was a little out of breath.

  “It’s nothing,” the changeling said. “I’m such a klutz.”

  “Wait.” Russell stepped back to his bicycle and got the water bottle. He unscrewed the top and, steadying her with a light touch to the calf, poured cool water on the abrasion.

  “Ooh.” There was no pain, actually, but the changeling made itself flinch. “No, it’s all right.”

  It was more than all right, actually. His familiar touch and the smell of his sweat. If the changeling had been slightly more human, she would have grabbed him and held him tight.

  “We have a first-aid kit back at the office,” he said, nodding in the direction of the project, about a block ahead. “We ought to clean that and wrap it up. Wounds get infected so fast here.”

  “Thank you, I … I don’t want to be any trouble…”

  “Nonsense.” He gave her an arm and helped her up. The changeling shivered slightly at his touch on its waist.

  It limped a little, hand on his shoulder for support. “Your bike?”

  “Nobody’ll take it. It’s a junker; I don’t even carry a lock.”

  “People are different here, aren’t they? Back home, someone would steal it whether it was worth anything or not.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “Honolulu; Maui originally.”

  He nodded. “You’re not a tourist, are you? I’ve seen you around.”

  “Work at a bank downtown, translator.”

  “You speak Samoan?”

  “No.” She shook her head and brushed away her hair in a graceful gesture that was not Rae’s. “French and German, some Japanese. I’m studying Samoan, but it’s hard.”

  “Don’t I know. I’ve been here two years and can’t even say ‘pass the disgusting vegetables.’ ”

  “Aumai sau fuala’au fai mea’ai ma,” the changeling said. “I haven’t learned ‘disgusting’ yet.” It hadn’t given Samoan a thought since starting on the ones and zeros, actually, but remembered some from the first few days of that incarnation.

  “Pretty impressive, actually. Languages come easy to you?”

  Job interview? “They did when I was younger. I learned Japanese and some Mandarin.”

  “Hawaiian, of course?”

  “No,” it said quickly, remembering that Jack did speak some. “Funny thing, you don’t really need it socially, and no one expects someone who looks like me to speak it.” It shrugged. “Probably a class or race element, too. My mother and father wouldn’t have been thrilled.”

  “Know what you mean.” He waved at the guard in his little kiosk and unlocked the door to the main building. “We lived in California, and my dad wasn’t happy about my taking Spanish. Even though it was the most useful second language.” The changeling knew that, of course.

  They went into the familiar reception room. He sat the changeling down in Michelle’s chair, the one it hoped to be occupying soon, and began opening and closing drawers. “First-aid kit, first-aid kit.” He pulled out a white plastic box. “Ah.”

  The changeling had a sudden thought. “Would you mind … I feel a little faint. Could I get something to drink?”

  “Sure. Coke?”

  “Fine.” She unzipped the little wallet on her wrist.

  He waved a hand. “Free with my card.” It knew that, and knew the machine was out of sight down the corridor.

  When he turned the corner, it slowly spun the chair around 90 degrees, so its back was to the camera behind Michelle’s desk, and plucked a Sudafed capsule from the wallet. Broke it between thumb and forefinger and sprinkled DNA into the wound. It got some on the fingers of both hands, too, slipped the empty capsule back into the wallet, and returned to its original position before Russell got back, feeling a little silly for being so thorough. But Russ wouldn’t be Russ if he hadn’t thought it through enough to suspect any new woman who came into his life.

  “Thanks.” It took the Coke and drank an appropriate amount, and looked around. “So this is the place.”

  He pressed an antiseptic pad against the knee. “This is the place, all right. Welcome to the madhouse.”

  “Mad island,” it said. “Creature from outer space and its UFO.”

  He shook his head and tossed the pad into Michelle’s trash can. “There are other explanations. But they’re no less bizarre.” He shook a can of bandage spray—“Cold”—and sprayed the knee liberally.

  “What explanation do you like?”

  “It’s as good as any.” He tapped the knee around the wound, checking the spray. “What do the people at the bank think?”

  “Most of them are UFO. One guy’s convinced it’s all a movie gimmick, and you’ll all look like fools when they reveal it.”

  He stood up. “I’d take bets against that. I talked to the movie people. They’re exploiting it for all they’re worth, but they were obviously as surprised as anyone else.”

  “That’s what I told him. They would’ve had someone around who happened to have a camera. Else why spend the money?”

  “Yeah, no-brainer. Can you flex the knee okay?”

  It swung her foot carefully. “I think it’s fine.” She took his arm and stood up. “Thanks.”

  “Are you doing anything for lunch?” He laughed nervously and kneaded his brow.

  “I’m tied up today,” the changeling said, not to appear too eager. “Tomorrow’s free.” Putting out her hand: “Sharon Valida.”

  “Russell Sutton. Noon at the Rainforest?”

  “I’d be delight
ed.” It smiled at him, wondering if her dimples were too cute. “My knight in shining armor.”

  “Bicyclist with a water bottle.” He escorted her out. “Bye.” He watched her jog away, slightly favoring the injured knee, and then walked back to retrieve his bike.

  Could it be? he wondered. She didn’t look anything like Rae, but the assumption was that she could look like anyone.

  He leaned the bike up next to the entrance and went back inside. In the bio corner of the lab he got a latex glove and a plastic bag. Back at the reception desk, he picked the bloodstained pad out of the trash can and put it into the bag. He emptied the Coke can out in the men’s room and put it in the bag, too, gingerly holding it by the rim, and printed sharon valida on the bag with a Magic Marker.

  Trying to outthink an alien intelligence, they’d figured that one obvious avenue back to the artifact was Russell’s weakness for pretty women—for women in general, actually. If Sharon had been a small attractive Asian, he would be more suspicious.

  One part of him wanted the samples to have no DNA, so they could close the trap. A smaller part hoped she was just a sexy blonde with a sense of humor and a nonalien intelligence.

  He put the bag on the bio desk with a short note to Naomi. Then he went back to the bike and checked the cyclometer. Only four miles; one more to go.

  He pedaled off in the direction Sharon had gone, but didn’t see her. Went home to shower before work, perhaps, or maybe to check the oil in her other flying saucer.

  Russell was lost in reverie, staring at the monitor without seeing it, and was startled when Naomi set the bag down next to him, with a clink of Coke can.

  “Your Sharon has plenty of DNA, I’m afraid. Next move is up to you.”

  “What? Oh, lunch.”

  “Hope she tastes good,” Naomi said with a lecherous wink. Russell balled up a piece of paper and threw it at her.

  Back to the secret message. He was putting together a one-page website that only Rae would completely understand. It was called “A Rae in the Darkness” and was headed with three photos— Russell and Rae flanking a snap of Stevenson’s gravestone verse he’d taken the hour before she’d led him down the hill to the hotel.