Camouflage

liberated from various airports.
    The changeling took a bite. “Good.” Bland, actually.
    Russell shrugged. “Sometimes I’d kill for some plain American sidewalk vendor food. Bacteria and all.”
    “You made money, though. As opposed to being born with it. You didn’t raise the Titanic with spare change.”
    He shook his head, chewing. “Always use other people’s money. Sometimes I feel more like a pitchman than an engineer.” He paused to squirt another envelope of mustard into the bun. “Jack thinks, or claims to think, that there’s a huge fortune in this. Maybe someday, but probably not for him. He’s got a zillion eurobucks to earn back—and he’s old.”
    “How about you?”
    “I’m not so old.”
    “I mean money. Do you expect to make a fortune yourself?”
    “No; hell, no. I’m in it for the game.”
    “That’s what I thought. Hoped.”
    “Biggest thing in the twenty-first century. Maybe the biggest thing, all the way back.” He stared at the containment building. “Even if it’s not from another world. That would mean that our view of reality, our science, is wrong. Not just incomplete, but wrong.”
    “Isn’t that true, no matter where it comes from?”
    “In a way, no. Last century, a guy pointed out that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. . . .”
    Arthur C. Clarke, the changeling didn’t say. It had met him at an Apollo launch in the 1970s.
    “And that gives us an out. Our science could still be a subset of theirs. Like going back to Newton and showing him a hologram.”
    He was so absorbed in his explanation he wasn’t aware of the man walking quietly up behind him. His shadow fell over him and he jumped, startled. “Jack!”
    “Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
    “This is Sharon Valida. Jack Halliburton.”
    The changeling extended its hand. “We’ve met, briefly. I work at the Pacific Commercial Bank.”
    “And have a good memory for faces.”
    Especially yours, the changeling thought.
    “Hot dog?” Russell said.
    “No, I’m headed for the hotel. I saw you here and wondered whether we might get together a little earlier tomorrow morning, before the . . . thing.”
    “Like what, eight o’clock?”
    “Eight would be fine. I’ll leave a message for Jan.” He nodded at the changeling. “Miss Valida. See you then, Russell.”
    When he was out of earshot, the changeling said, “He always dresses like that?” White linen suit, Panama hat, Samoan shirt.
    “Yeah, when he’s not working in the lab. Maybe a century out of date.”
    “A few other rich old guys who come into the bank dress that way. My boss calls them his Somerset Maugham characters. Was he some actor?”
    “Writer, I think.” He ate the last bite and stood up. “Ready for another?”
    “Let it get a little burnt. Try a beer, though.”
    “Excellent idea.” He took two Heinekens out and popped them.
    She drank off her wine and accepted one. “Here’s to drunken debauchery on Sunday.” They clinked bottles together. “So . . . showing Newton a hologram.”
    “Well, it’s occurred to me that this thing might not be from another planet. It might be from our own future.”
    “Really? I thought you could only go the other way.”
    “You know about that?”
    “I saw a thing on the cube. Particle accelerator.”
    “Yeah, they’ve been able to move a particle a fraction of a second into the future. Which is kosher; general relativity has always allowed that.”
    “But not into the past?”
    “That’s right—and it’s not just relativity; it’s causality, common sense. Cause and effect out the window.”
    “But you think—”
    “I know it’s like ‘one impossible thing happens, therefore anything impossible can happen.’ But it makes a screwy kind of sense. They sent this indestructible thing back a million years into the past, and put it where no one could find it. Then they went to dig it up . . .”
    “And it wasn’t there!” She nodded rapidly. “So they sent this kind of robot back here to find out what happened.”
    “Not a robot,” he said. “Definitely not a robot.”
    “You knew her?”
    He hesitated. “Pretty well. Or I thought I did. She was pretty human for a robot. Or transhuman, as I say, from the future.”
    “Evolved from humans?”
    “Bingo. It wouldn’t take millions of years, either. It’s only law and custom, not science, that keeps us from directing our own evolution now.”
    The