Camouflage

couldn’t change a ten.
    “You look like a nice boy,” it said in what it hoped was a convincing little-old-lady voice. “You can bring me the change later.”
    He was a nice boy, in fact, though his face mirrored an obvious internal conflict. He refused the money and gave her a paper. “You just fold her back up after you finish; put her on this here stack by the station door.”
    It was the seventh of April, 1948. A British and a Russian plane had collided over Berlin, which was evidently split up among the countries that had defeated Germany. Arabs attacked three Jewish areas of Palestine. The House approved the establishment of a U.S. Air Force, and pledged a billion dollars to Latin America to fight communism. Airplane manufacturer Glenn L. Martin predicted that within months America would have bacteriological weapons, guided missiles, and a “radioactive cloud” much more deadly than the atomic bomb.
    So the war wasn’t really over. It had just entered a new phase. The changeling would stay out of this one.
    An obvious game plan would be to go back to college. April was not too late to apply, but there was the problem of high school transcripts, letters of recommendation—the problem of establishing an actual identity with a verifiable past.
    As soon as it defined the problem, the solution was obvious.
    Four people had gathered. They didn’t bother the old farm lady. A train approached, northbound. The changelingfolded the paper carefully and replaced it on top of the pile, under the nickels people had left.
    As the northbound train approached, the little old lady asked the four whether it was the train to San Francisco. They confirmed that it was, and she got on board.
    The conductor changed her twenty with pursed lips but no comment. It continued to read the almanac, storing up information about how the world had changed while it swam around for six years.
    Of course the war had changed the world’s map, while leaving whole cities, and even countries, in ruins. The United States had been spared, and now seemed to be leading a coalition of “free” countries versus communist ones. Atomic bombs, supersonic jets, guided missiles, electronic brains, the transistor, and the zoot suit. Al Capone was dead and the changeling’s namesake Joe Louis was still champ, which the changeling found gratifying.
    At the San Francisco station, it picked up a copy of a women’s magazine and stayed in a stall in the ladies’ room for about ten minutes, then emerged as a woman of about twenty, dressed like a college student—two-tone loafers, bobby sox, plaid skirt (that had taken some effort), and a white blouse. It assimilated a chromed toilet-paper holder and recycled it as costume jewelry.
    It took the bus to Berkeley and wandered around the campus all day, eavesdropping on people and getting the lay of the land. It tarried for quite a while in the Admissions office. College student was an obvious choice of occupation, but which major? It remembered all it had learned about oceanography, but of course would have to hide most of that, starting over. Physics or astronomy might be useful, and interesting, but if it were to track down others of its kind, anthropology or psychology—abnormal psychology—would be more useful.
    Of course it had time for all of them.
    It studied the posture, demeanor, and uniform of a janitor, and as darkness fell, let itself into an empty classroom and changed. There were still a few students hanging around in the halls, but a balding fifty-year-old man with a broom was invisible to them.
    Around midnight, the changeling slipped into the Admissions office and locked the door. It moved swiftly and quietly, the room adequately lit, to its eyes, from the dim dappled light that filtered through a tree from a streetlight at the end of the block.
    There were about fifty return letters from prospective students in the in-box of the young woman the changeling had earlier identified as the most junior secretary. It read through forty of the letters before finding exactly what it needed.
    Stuart Tanner, a boy from North Liberty, Iowa, had sent in a letter thanking them for his acceptance, but saying that Princeton had offered him a scholarship, which of course he couldn’t pass up. The changeling found his file in the “Acceptance” drawer and memorized it. He had an almost perfect academic record. No athletics other than swimming team, which was good. The photo was black-and-white, but he