Camouflage

twenty minutes.” He gestured at the small cooler on the picnic table. “Beer? Or swim.”
    “Swim first. I’m all sticky.” She turned her back toward him to step out of the lavalava, which under other circumstances might have been a modest posture. She snatched her face mask, fins, and mouthgill off the table and ran for the water. “Last one in has to cook the hot dogs.” He stood and watched her run, with a growing smile. Then he jogged after her. She was already sitting in the shallows, only her head showing, when he splashed in.
    “Oh well. I was going to cook them anyway.”
    She got the fins on, then spit into her mask and rubbed the saliva around. “Any reefs out here?”
    “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