Camouflage (26 page)

"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 delighted." 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.

He'd skimmed through a book of Stevenson's poetry, and didn't like much of it, but this one quatrain was not far off, and he typed it in:

LOVE, WHAT IS LOVE?

LOVE
—
what is love? A great and aching heart;

Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair.

Life
—
what is life? Upon a moorland bare

To see love coming and see love depart.

—
Robert Louis Stevenson

Then he pasted in thirty characters of the artifact's message:

110100101101001011101001001011

And then his own message:

Rae, when I did see you depart, literally, I didn't know it was you, and it deepened the mystery.

If you have to disappear, that's your decision. But you know that if there's anyone on this world you can trust, it's me.

I know I don't know you, but I love you. Come hack in whatever guise.

—
Russ

There was a box for "affinities," words that would draw a searcher, or surfer, to the site. He typed in "Poseidon," "Apia," "artifact," "alien," and so forth, ending with "Rae Archer" and "Russell Sutton." He knew that the first people drawn to the site would probably be the CIA and their ilk, but there was no way to get around that. He assumed that Rae would be canny enough to anticipate them, too.

The Rainforest Cafe was nostalgic nineties funk in a jungle setting. Bamboo and palms and elephant ears under blue lights and mist nozzles, quaintly angry rap whispering in the background.

Russell felt a little underdressed in cutoffs and an island shirt. It was the weekend, but Sharon had come from work, wearing suit and tie. She loosened the tie and patted her brow with a tissue, prettily.

"I should have suggested an air-conditioned place."

"Glad you didn't. I was freezing in the office." She shrugged out of her jacket.

"You've always lived in the tropics?"

"In the heat, anyhow.You?"

"As soon as I could choose." Russell told her about growing up in the Dakotas. He'd gone to college in Florida, and never had to live through another winter. "Most of my experience with being cold now is underwater, working in a wetsuit."

"Been there." She covered her mouth, laughing. "When you don't have enough pee to warm it up."

He poured her some iced tea. "You dive a lot?"

"When I was in school, a little. Now I mostly snorkel. A guy at work took me out to the reef at Palolo last week—all those giant clams, I couldn't believe my eyes!"

"They're something." He served himself. "Was it your major, marine science?"

"No, I did business administration. Minor in oceanography—that was my real cold-water experience. A summer course diving in the Peru current." She'd actually been there as professor, not student, but the university records would confirm she'd taken the course and made an A.

"We used to be out there," he said. "My company, Poseidon. We did marine engineering out of Baja California."

"Until you found the alien thingie."

"Well, we didn't know what it was, at the time." He broke open a roll and buttered one half carefully with healthy spread. "We pinged it with sonar and registered it for later salvage. It was a while before we actually went down and took a look." He gestured down the road with the roll. "Then this happened."

"It must be exciting."

"Exciting and frustrating in about equal measures. We're not getting anywhere." He drew a shape on the tablecloth with his fingernail. "What do
you
do for excitement? Or frustration."

"I don't know. Come out here, run, fall down." They laughed. "I've been kind of drifting. Both my parents died when I was in college, like ten years ago, eleven."

"I'm sorry...."

She dipped her head. "Yeah. They left me some money, and I sort of wandered around Europe, then Japan. Now that the money's gone, I wish I'd stayed in school. Not much you can do with a B.B.A."

"You're still young. You could go back."

"I guess thirty-one's young." She stared into her tea. "Maybe not to graduate school admission committees."

"You'd go back to business?"

She shook her head. "Maybe macroeconomics. Pacific Rim economics. But I've been thinking more oceanography. I could get a B.S. in a year, maybe three semesters." She smiled. "Come out here and work for you."

"Not with a bachelor's," he said seriously. "Take a couple of years and get a doctorate. The artifact's not going anywhere."

"But you don't know that," she said. "It might decide to go back to Alpha Centauri."

Their sandwiches came. Russell discarded the top piece of bread and carefully sliced the remainder into one-inch strips, then rotated the plate 90 degrees and cut the strips into thirds. The changeling remembered the habit and smiled.

"Saves me a hundred calories," he said. "The media all think the thing's from another star. That's the easiest explanation. We're trying to come up with something less obvious."

"Like what? Secret government project?"

"Or that it's always been here. You know what hell this has been for physicists and chemists."

"I can imagine."

He took a bite and then salted everything, as the changeling expected.
"That's
no different whether the thing is local or from another galaxy. It means there are very basic laws we don't understand about... the nature of matter." He speared a square of sandwich and gestured with it. "It's chaos. Nothing we know is true anymore."

"Can you really say that?" the changeling said, carving its own sandwich into quarters. "Like we learned in school, Galileo's physics was an approximation of Newton's; Newton got swallowed by Einstein; then Einstein by Holling."

"Hawking, then Holling, to be technical. But this is different. It's like everything worked, down to eight decimal places, and then somebody says, 'Hold it. You forgot about magic' That's what this damned thing is." He laughed. "I love it! But then I'm not a physicist."

"They must be going crazy." She picked up one quarter and nibbled on it.

"You should see my e-mail. Actually,
I
should see my e-mail. This indispensable woman, Michelle, throws out nine-tenths of it before I come to work."

"She knows physics?"

"Well, like you—she's an accountant with some course work in various sciences. But she reads everything, knows more about general science than I do."

"She doesn't really throw them away," the changeling asked. "You at least glance at them?"

"Oh, yeah. At least the ones that have some entertainment value— we call them the X-files. I get together with Jan, our space scientist, every Friday to run through them. Kind of fun, actually." He speared another square. "Pleasant nutlike flavor."