Camouflage

changeling probably knew more about Robert Louis Stevenson’s writing than everybody else on the project combined, by virtue of its English major some lives before. But it played dumb and let Russ educate it.
    It decided that it had read Treasure Island, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and nothing else by Stevenson. So as they trudged up the hill, Russ told her the stories of Kidnapped and The Master of Ballantrae, and some of the complex story of Stevenson’s life on the island.
    The changeling knew most of it, but was a good listener. How the great writer had come out here seeking relief from tuberculosis, and found not a cure, but a relaxed and relaxing style of life. He, or his wife, Fanny, imported a lot of things that made Vailima a transplanted corner of civilized Scotland: fine linens and china, a good piano that was rarely played, walls lined with books—even a fireplace, in case the Earth changed its orbit.
    It would be a better story if Stevenson had written any of his classics here, but those were behind him. He did write five books, and threw great parties, for the Samoans as well as the Anglos and Europeans. He found people to love, a condition that Fanny may have been resigned to before they moved, and his last years were full of joy and ease.
    The changeling was not seducing Russ; it was just being there. But that was sufficient. Russ had never been immune to attractive women, and he was at a stage in life that was like Stevenson’s, minus wife and illness, plus good genes and all the benefits of twenty-first-century medicine. Hisbody and mind were young enough that a liaison with a thirty-year-old woman was not ridiculous to either of them. As they pounded uphill together, sweating and laughing, stopping for a beer at a little joint, the difference in age became a novelty rather than a barrier.
    They walked through Stevenson’s mansion, shoes off, with a teenaged Samoan guide who hadn’t read much of the author’s work, but knew everything about daily life in the mansion, and talked as if Stevenson had just stepped out for awhile, perhaps riding down to Apia to see what the latest freighter had brought in, or joining the native workers in farm chores or clearing brush—she claimed that in spite of his physical problems, he took special pleasure in working to exhaustion, because afterward he could sit and look at the beauty of the forest and the distant sea, and truly enjoy it, his busy brain stilled. After the guide left, Russ said that he hoped it was true, but doubted it.
    Not for the first time, the changeling wished it had discovered humans before 1932. It would have been interesting to watch the centuries go by; see how people changed.
    After the tour, they climbed farther up the mountain, to where Stevenson and Fanny were buried. On his stone, the familiar inscription:

    Under the wide and starry sky,
    Dig my grave and let me lie;
    Glad did I live and gladly die,
    And I lay me down with a will.
    This be the verse you grave for me;
    “Here he lies where he longed to be;
    Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
    And the hunter home from the hill.”

    “I wonder if he really meant that,” the changeling said. “ ‘Gladly die.’ Was he that ill? Or maybe he was talking about the natural order of things.”
    “He was gravely ill,” Russ said, “but it wasn’t in Samoa. He wrote it in California, a long time before he got here and his health improved.”
    The changeling took his hand and they looked at the stone for a few silent moments. “So what do you want to do for the rest of your snow day?” it said.
    “I don’t know. We could build a fort and have a snowball fight.”
    It laughed. “I have a better idea.” About a kilometer back down the hill was a quaint twentieth-century hotel, where they spent a couple of hours under a ticking ceiling fan, making love and then quietly sharing their life stories. Russ did most of the talking, but then he thought he had lived a lot longer.
    They got back to the project site just before dark, and for appearances’ sake, went their separate ways, Russ going downtown for dinner and the changeling getting a sandwich at the beach concession.
    The changeling assumed that their secret wouldn’t be a secret for long; in fact, it was out before they left their hotel room, since the clerk had recognized Russ. On Samoa, gossip is a varsity sport, a high art. The clerk had a cousin who worked at the project, and every native employee knew some