Camouflage

dawn flight back to Apia, in a much improved mood.

- 36 -
apia, samoa, june 2021
    T he third morning was clear and calm, so the changeling took mouthgill and gear down to the Palolo Deep Marine Preserve, less than a kilometer down the road. It had formed a bathing suit around its body, modest by American standards, but also wore the lavalava walking to the beach, so as not to offend the locals—who were all sleeping it off anyhow, except for the yawning young girl who took its money at the park entrance.
    The tide was high. The changeling put on its unnecessary mask, mouthgill, and fins, and slipped into the familiar medium.
    In the shallows between the shore and the reef, there was a scene of unearthly strangeness—a many-acre farm of giant clams, thousands of them, from a foot in diameter to the size of manhole covers and larger. There were smaller ones protected by enclosures of chicken wire; the changeling salivated at the thought of what they wouldtaste like. It worked a small one out of its cage and, hardening its teeth, crunched down on it: delicious.
    The reef was beautiful, a multicolor maze of living coral, but that wasn’t the changeling’s destination. It swam quickly beyond, out to where the waves crashed on the barrier reef that separated the island from the deeps. It cut through the strong swirling currents, found a jagged opening, and dove through.
    It swam down through the cool stillness to the bottom, and stashed its equipment under a rock.
    How fast could it change into a shark?
    It took twelve pain-filled minutes, perhaps its fastest time. Halfway through, it was visited by a reef shark almost its size, which circled it a few times and nosed it, and apparently decided that whatever the strange thing was, you couldn’t eat it or breed with it, and drifted away. Sea creatures did occasionally bite the changeling, but most of them immediately spit out the alien stuff.
    It became a hammerhead for the good eyesight, and swam a couple of kilometers south, to visit the Poseidon site. It was easy to find, following a metallic taste that was quite different from anything it had experienced before. It found the source easily, warm water coming out of a discharge tube; it evidently cooled the nuclear reactor that powered the place.
    After a minute’s search, it found the intake tube as well. That could come in handy. If you plugged it up, how long would it be before the reactor started to heat up and shut down? Or melt down.
    It inspected the parts of the blast shield that were in reasonably deep water, not wanting to attract attention. A nine-foot-long hammerhead would be pretty conspicuous in shallow water. It could hear children splashing and swimming on the village side of the shield, and was tempted to give them something to tell their playmatesabout—just swim up and smile—but no, best not to do anything unusual, unsharklike.
    It might be on camera, anyhow. Better act like a confused fish who just wandered in too close to shore. Hammerheads are curious and incautious.
    As if in response to the thought, it heard a powerful motor roar into life and begin heading its way. It swam quickly for the depths.
    Fast boat. It caught up with the changeling before it got out of the relative shallows. There was a loud bang! and a harpoon spiked completely through the shark body, just below its head.
    The motor immediately throttled down, and someone began to haul in his prize. The changeling let itself be pulled halfway to the boat and then flexed a sudden 180 degrees—hammerheads are agile—and swam away at top speed.
    At the end of the line there was a sudden tug; then a scream and splash. Just for fun, the changeling flexed again and sped back to the boat, only a little hampered by the harpoon. The man was still halfway in the water when the shark bumped into his foot, the immediate change in the water’s flavor a testimony to how much he enjoyed the experience.
    Someone aboard the boat started firing a large pistol into the shark, two hits and two misses. The changeling twisted under the boat and took a healthy bite of fiberglass hull, and then headed at top speed for deep water. Once safely out of sight, it stopped the dramatic but unnecessary bleeding, and temporarily enlarged the first wound so that the harpoon could slide out easily. Then it swam north, staying comfortably deep.
    It wondered whether the men had been motivated by fear or greed. Probably greed; with the harpoon and gun, they were