by Joe Haldeman
“None close in. Some outside the shark net.”
“Want to live dangerously?”
“Sure. I always wanted to see a fourteen-foot hammerhead up close.”
I was only nine feet. “That’s what bit the boat?”
“Not to worry. They harpooned it and shot it in shallow water. It attacked out of pain and confusion, most likely.” He splashed water in his mask. “I’ve seen lots of sharks and never had a problem.”
“Me, too. Maybe we never met a really hungry one.”
“Maybe.” He pointed. “There’s some reef out that way. I’ll hold up the net and you can swim under.”
“Okay.” They bit down on their mouthgills, and swam the hundred yards out to the net. They wriggled under it without any problem and proceeded out to the reef, the changeling naturally taking Russell’s hand when it was offered. They swam in easy unison, moving fast with powerful surges from the fins.
The reef wasn’t too impressive, compared to the dramatic one past the giant clam farm at Palolo, but it did have lots of brightly colored fish and a small moray eel, watching their intrusion with its customary sour expression. Russell found an octopus the size of his hand, and they passed it back and forth until it tired of the game and shot away.
Russ pantomimed eating and Sharon nodded. They headed back to the net, with a short detour to chase after a medium-sized ray, hand in hand.
“That was nice,” the changeling said, taking off her fins in knee- deep water, quite aware that when the suit was wet it left nothing to the imagination. “Especially the octopus.”
“That was lucky. ‘The soft intelligence,’ someone called them.”
“Jacques Cousteau.” His eyebrows went up. “My oceanography prof had his old book.”
As they waded ashore, Russell waved at a boy of six or seven who was sitting at their table with a bucket.
The bucket was half full of ice, with a large bowl of oka, the Samoan version of ceviche, fish marinated in lime juice and served with coconut cream and hot peppers. “Caught this morning, Dr. Russell.”
He peered into the bowl. “Skipjack?”
He shrugged. “Ten tala.”
“I don’t have any money with me.”
“I’ve got some.” The boy was staring at her crotch, transfixed. She wrapped the lavalava around her waist and pulled a few bills out of a pocket, and handed him a ten.
“Fa’afetai,” he said, giving her the bowl and backing away shyly. “Thank.”
“Afio mai,” she said, and he turned and ran with the money.
They watched him go and Russell laughed quietly. “They’re funny. Casual about nudity but conservative about clothing.”
She nodded. “I’ll never understand religion. Or fashion, for that matter.” She set the bowl on the table and fished through the grocery bag for a couple of plastic forks. “Appetizer?”
“Thanks. Let me put on the dogs first.” He smoothed the white pile of coals with a stick and got four hot dogs from the cooler.
The fish was cold and firm and spicy. “I could get used to this,” the changeling said. “How long have you lived here?”
“Got here last summer, when I came out with Jack Halliburton to set up the lab.” He arranged the hot dogs in a precise row. “I commuted for a couple of months, finishing up old business in Baja. Pretty much stuck here since the lab was finished and the artifact was in place.”
“You don’t like it?”
“As a place it’s okay. Vacation spot. Hard to do science here, though.” He sat down next to her and speared a piece of oka. “Even with modern communications, virtual conference room and all, it’s really isolated. You can break a fifty-cent part and be shut down for two days, waiting for the plane. And you miss … it sounds snobbish, it is snobbish, but I miss the company of like-minded people, people you don’t work with—scientists, artists, whatever.”
“I would have taken you for a loner.”
“Well, I am, or was. The place in Baja was miles from nowhere, and that’s one reason I leased it. But I could be in L.A. in an hour, and had an apartment just off the UCLA campus.”
“Where you seduced college girls. I know your type.”
He laughed and blushed. “Back when I had hair.” He got up to check the dogs. “I do miss the college-town atmosphere. Bookstores, coffeeshops, bars. The libraries on campus. The girls on campus.”
“It’s a nice campus. I stayed there for two weeks, diving in summer school.”
“Where?”
“A dorm.” The changeling knew where Jimmy Coleridge’s students stayed now. Where would it have been eleven years ago? “Maybe Con-way? Conroy.”
“Oh yeah. That’s close to where I stay.” He used tongs to rotate the hot dogs 180 degrees, then went to the cooler. “Beer? Or a glass of wine.”
“You have wine in there?”
“No, back in the fridge. Only take a minute.”
“That would be good. I’m not much of a beer drinker. Maybe when the dogs are done.”
“Keep an eye on ’em.” He jogged away.
The changeling considered its position. This was a cusp. If it began a love affair with Russ—or restarted one—it would probably kill its chances for the job. But the job was only a stepping stone to get close to the artifact. Maybe Russ’s lover would have a better shot at that than the receptionist.
Why did it feel this drive to be in the physical presence of the thing? It had seen all the pictures, studied the data, read people’s frustrated inconclusions.
It remembered the feeling when it swam from Bataan to California. The inchoate feeling, the hesitation, when it passed over the Tonga Trench.
It felt that now, more strongly than ever. Something was taking form.
Russell came back with two long-stemmed glasses of white wine, already misted with humidity. “Drink it while it’s cold,” he said, handing one to her, and drank off a third of his in a gulp. “Ready in a minute.” He gave the hot dogs a quarter turn.
“So why didn’t you just move the thing to Baja? Why start from scratch here?”
“I wish.” He stared at the grill. “Partly the difficulty of moving the damned thing. Mostly political, though. Mexico’s too close to the United States, not just in miles, but politically and economically. Jack didn’t want Uncle Sam breathing down our neck. Mexican soldiers knocking on our door. Down our door.”
“They could do that?”
“Sure they could. Threat to hemisphere security.” He split two buns and set them on the grill. “Independent Samoa really is independent. And stable. Tonga was closer to the artifact’s original position, but we didn’t want to deal with the politics there.
“Jack studied surveys of the Samoan Islands, and wound up here by a process of elimination.”
“The first factor being ‘Is there a town?’ ”
He nodded. “They call it the only city in Samoa, but as you know, it’s not exactly Hong Kong. It’s really just a bunch of towns crowded together, but it does have a pharmacy, hardware store, and so forth.” He gestured toward the main building. “And this patch of land: it was undeveloped, privately owned, and on the water. Jack got in touch with the matai of the family that owned it and arranged to lease it. He even became a Samoan citizen.”
“Did he join the family, the aiga?”
“No, although he didn’t rule out the possibility. Technically, he’d have to share all his wealth with the family.” He raised an eyebrow. “That’s not in his nature.”
“You’ve known him a long time?”
“No. Not until … he got in touch with me about the submarine disaster that led to our finding the artifact.” The changeling knew, as Rae, that there was something secret going on there. Maybe it could tease the truth out of him in this incarnation.
“We never would have met, in the normal course of things. He was born into money, but chose a military career. I’m pretty far from either of those.” He inspected the hot dogs. “These two are done.”
She held out paper plates and he installed buns and dogs on them, then repositioned the remaining two according to some arcane thermodynamic principle, and split two more buns to toast.
They silently went about the business of mustard and ketchup and relish, all out of small squeeze packets that Russell had liberated from various airports.
The changeling took a bite. “Good.” Bland, actually.
Russell shrugged. “Sometimes I’d kill for some plain American sidewalk vendor food. Bacteria and all.”
“You made money, though. As opposed to being born with it. You didn’t raise the Titanic with spare change.”
He shook his head, chewing. “Always use other people’s money. Sometimes I feel more like a pitchman than an engineer.” He paused to squirt another envelope of mustard into the bun. “Jack thinks, or claims to think, that there’s a huge fortune in this. Maybe someday, but probably not for him. He’s got a zillion eurobucks to earn back—and he’s old.”
“How about you?”
“I’m not so old.”
“I mean money. Do you expect to make a fortune yourself?”
“No; hell, no. I’m in it for the game.”
“That’s what I thought. Hoped.”
“Biggest thing in the twenty-first century. Maybe the biggest thing, all the way back.” He stared at the containment building. “Even if it’s not from another world. That would mean that our view of reality, our science, is wrong. Not just incomplete, but wrong.”
“Isn’t that true, no matter where it comes from?”
“In a way, no. Last century, a guy pointed out that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic…”
Arthur C. Clarke, the changeling didn’t say. It had met him at an Apollo launch in the 1970s.
“And that gives us an out. Our science could still be a subset of theirs. Like going back to Newton and showing him a hologram.”
He was so absorbed in his explanation he wasn’t aware of the man walking quietly up behind him. His shadow fell over him and he jumped, startled. “Jack!”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“This is Sharon Valida. Jack Halliburton.”
The changeling extended its hand. “We’ve met, briefly. I work at the Pacific Commercial Bank.”
“And have a good memory for faces.”
Especially yours, the changeling thought.
“Hot dog?” Russell said.
“No, I’m headed for the hotel. I saw you here and wondered whether we might get together a little earlier tomorrow morning, before the … thing.”
“Like what, eight o’clock?”
“Eight would be fine. I’ll leave a message for Jan.” He nodded at the changeling. “Miss Valida. See you then, Russell.”
When he was out of earshot, the changeling said, “He always dresses like that?” White linen suit, Panama hat, Samoan shirt.
“Yeah, when he’s not working in the lab. Maybe a century out of date.”
“A few other rich old guys who come into the bank dress that way. My boss calls them his Somerset Maugham characters. Was he some actor?”
“Writer, I think.” He ate the last bite and stood up. “Ready for another?”
“Let it get a little burnt. Try a beer, though.”
“Excellent idea.” He took two Heinekens out and popped them.
She drank off her wine and accepted one. “Here’s to drunken debauchery on Sunday.” They clinked bottles together. “So … showing Newton a hologram.”
“Well, it’s occurred to me that this thing might not be from another planet. It might be from our own future.”
“Really? I thought you could only go the other way.”
“You know about that?”
“I saw a thing on the cube. Particle accelerator.”
“Yeah, they’ve been able to move a particle a fraction of a second into the future. Which is kosher; general relativity has always allowed that.”
“But not into the past?”
“That’s right—and it’s not just relativity; it’s causality, common sense. Cause and effect out the window.”
“But you think—”
“I know it’s like ‘one impossible thing happens, therefore anything impossible can happen.’ But it makes a screwy kind of sense. They sent this indestructible thing back a million years into the past, and put it where no one could find it. Then they went to dig it up…”
“And it wasn’t there!” She nodded rapidly. “So they sent this kind of robot back here to find out what happened.”
“Not a robot,” he said. “Definitely not a robot.”
“You knew her?”
He hesitated. “Pretty well. Or I thought I did. She was pretty human for a robot. Or transhuman, as I say, from the future.”
“Evolved from humans?”
“Bingo. It wouldn’t take millions of years, either. It’s only law and custom, not science, that keeps us from directing our own evolution now.”
The changeling considered this. It seemed to have memories going so far back that it always considered itself a visitor from the distant past. It could have been from the future, though, and lost the memory of that travel.
It knew that a way around the causality paradox might be that the time traveler not be allowed to take any information back in time. It had never thought of applying that to its own amnesia of the time before the centuries it had spent as a great white shark. It could have been sent back as a blank-slate creature that needed no memory to survive, and evolve.
“Have you talked this over with Jack?”
“Jack? No. He’s all for aliens from another planet. Especially since the thing with Rae, our ‘space alien.’ ”
“Which you don’t buy.”
“Well … I guess you can make a better scientific, or at least logical, case for extraterrestrial origin. But if so, why didn’t she just come forward and say ‘Take me to your leader’?”
“Maybe she was afraid.”
“She wasn’t afraid of me.”
“Maybe Jack.” The changeling smiled. “I take it she wouldn’t be the only one.”
“He’s a little scary sometimes.” He got up and turned the hot dogs. “Let’s burn the other side.”
She didn’t say anything while he repositioned the meat and buns. When he looked up she was staring out to sea, an odd thoughtful expression on her face.
“Sharon?”
It was a song. A song.
The changeling never stopped manipulating the ones and zeros. Pretending to be human only used a small part of its intelligence, so while it was carrying on bank business or being social, even concentrating on Russ, most of its being was swimming through the binary sea of the message.
The message itself wasn’t clear, but suddenly the changeling knew what it was.
A song in its native tongue. A language forgotten for a million years.
“Sharon? Are you all right?”
“Oh! Sorry.” She rubbed her face with both hands. “Sometimes I do that.”
He sat on the bench, not too close, and touched her hand. “Is it your parents?” She nodded her head in two short jerks. “I lost mine together, too, at least in the same week. I was quite a bit older than you, but it still hit me hard. Being alone.”
Her eyes brimmed and she wiped them. “You’re right. Alone.” He’s a wonderful man, it thought, but he doesn’t know what loneliness is.
He wanted to take her into his arms, but restrained himself. “Let me take you home.”
“No. It’s passed.” She flashed him a bright smile. “Let’s have another hot dog.” She peered into the empty beer bottle. “Maybe the beer makes me sentimental. I should have another.”
“Your wish is my command.” He opened two and passed her one. “Sentimental together.”
A song. A song about home. “Are they burnt enough?”
He touched one lightly. “Done to a turn.”
While they ate and chatted
about deliberately inconsequential things, it made plans for the rest of the day and night. Especially night. Russell was in for a little surprise.
Tomorrow, they were almost certainly going to announce that the artifact had answered them, and perhaps release the binary sequence, so that a few million other people could try to figure it out.
People wouldn’t. It would be like someone who didn’t know what Braille was running a finger along a line of it, in a foreign language. A coded message, not coded for secrecy, but nevertheless unbreakable.
But by Tuesday, there would be outsiders all over the place. Reporters lucky enough to be in American Samoa would be on the spot by noon Monday. The Tuesday morning plane would be crowded with them, from America; Thursday, from Asia and Europe. Security would be tighter around the clock.
So it had until tomorrow morning.
“I don’t want to rush things,” Russell said, “but are you doing anything tonight? If I don’t have an excuse, Jack’s going to collar me at Aggie’s.”
She closed her eyes. Careful. “I wish I could. But I’m going out with a man from work.” She patted Russell’s knee. “Have to tell him I’m not interested. Free Monday and Tuesday, though.”
“We already have lunch Monday,” he reminded her.
“Dinner Tuesday, then.”
“I’ll make Sails reservations at eight, right away. There’ll be a lot of hungry reporters in town.”
The changeling nodded. “And I’ll know the big secret by then.”
“By ten tomorrow, if you listen to the news. Or you can wait and let me surprise you at lunch.”
“Maybe I’ll wait. I don’t suppose you’ll let me try to guess.”
“Nope.”
“You’ve discovered the president’s an alien.”
“Damn, you got it. Now we’ll have to kill you.”
“Oh, well. At least I found out early.”
They pedaled around Apia after lunch, stopping at the Maketi Fou, the normally crowded central market, for iced coconuts. On Sunday it was pretty lazy, the vendors chatting in clusters in shady spots, reluctantly coming over to take their money. He bought her a mother-of-pearl necklace she admired. She bought him a garish silk crimson lavalava and dared him to wear it to dinner.
