It walked most of the mile into town, stopping at a souvenir store to buy some informal clothes and change out of its business attire. The clerk showed it how to tie a lavalava dress, and it chose a matching blue shirt that it would have called Hawaiian in any other context. Gaudy earrings and a necklace of shells completed its camouflage.
Samoa had actually gained its independence on January first, but since that was already a holiday, they sensibly moved the celebration up to June. The changeling walked on into town in a resigned, almost grim, mood. Enjoy, enjoy.
It found all kinds of dancing and singing, which might have been more interesting to an actual human. Feasting, similarly irrelevant. Canoe and outrigger races and horses prancing through dressage routines.
The changeling used its simulated Americanness and feminine charm to get close to a couple of the vets, both slightly over a hundred years old.
One was surprisingly clear-headed and articulate, especially about war: he was against it. After WWII, he had fought in Korea and had no sympathy for it or Vietnam or the dozen smaller wars and fake wars that followed.
(His WWII assignment to Samoa had been a stroke of luck. The Japanese high command had at the last minute decided not to invade and occupy the Samoan Islands; the only contact with them in the whole war had been a long-distance burst of machine-gun fire from a passing submarine, which hurt no one.)
He was unaware of the Poseidon project, though he well remembered the submarine disaster that had provided a pretext for its beginning. Never would have happened if the goddamned fat cats had kept their mitts off Indonesia, a not uncommon opinion which had not kept the United States out of the current conflict there. As part of the international peace-keeping force, that is, which was 88 percent American and was conspicuously not keeping the peace.
The changeling having practiced its “pretty American girl” routine on the old man got her a holovision news spot. That didn’t hurt her job prospects, as it turned out, because it happened to be aired at the time when the exhausted research team broke for dinner, and Jan recognized her name. Russ probably decided right then that he was going to hire her, just to brighten up the place.
The changeling walked all day exploring Apia, aware that it was far from a typical day. No race could play so hard and expect to survive.
The next morning it was again rebuffed; everyone was too busy for interviews. It went back to the B-and-B and spent the rest of the day searching the web, building a mosaic of such information as Poseidon had parsimoniously released, along with a wealth of rumors and speculation.
Some of the speculation was extremely bizarre, ascribing to the project a CIA genesis, or even suggesting that they were all aliens, and had made up this ruse to slowly break the news to the human race.
The changeling was possibly the most intelligent reader who saw that one and wondered if it just might be true. In fact, though, it wasn’t.
There were only two aliens on the island.
—35—
Apia was too local and too small for a killing spree, and the chameleon was getting bored. He left work a few minutes early and took a cab to the little Fagali’i Airport outside of town, and got on the six o’clock puddle-jumper over to American Samoa. The twelve-passenger plane had sixteen passengers, but four of them were children sitting on their mothers’ laps. The flight was only forty minutes long, but forty long bouncing minutes locked up with crying and puking children could turn even a normal man’s thoughts to violence. The chameleon distracted himself conjuring images of infanticides past.
It was still blistering hot at the Pago Pago airport, but worse in town: it had been a “bad tuna day.” Almost half of the people in American Samoa work in one of the two tuna canneries; the plants’ malodorous waste goes into the harbor to compete with sewage for one’s attention on hot still days.
Darkness brought a breeze, though. The chameleon went down to the waterfront in search of trouble. The area east of the canneries, the Darkside, was where to find it. On his way down, he ducked into an alley and came out the other end looking like a rumpled Pakistani sailor.
The first couple of bars looked too quiet for fun, catering to the yachties who moored in the cesspool long enough to take on provisions— and perhaps avail themselves of the Darkside’s cheap women and inexpensive drugs.
He heard a commotion and went into a dark dive called Goodbye Charlie’s. Two tall and muscular Samoans were standing at the bar, yelling at each other in a couple of languages. The bartender watched them warily, evidently moving bottles and glasses out of reach. The other patrons were looking on with an air of detachment. It might be a regular evening diversion.
The chameleon took the only empty seat at the bar and waved an American twenty. The bartender sidled over, not taking his eyes off the two. “Yeah?”
“I would like a Budweiser and an ounce of whisky,” he said with a pronounced Pakistani accent. The bartender gave him a look and snatched the twenty away.
He came back with no change, a warm bottle of Bud, and a tumbler that had been rinsed but not cleaned. He poured a generous inch of liquor into it from a bottle without a label.
“Are those gentlemen twinking?” the chameleon asked.
“Tweaking? I guess.” American Samoa’s drug of choice was methamphetamine, ice. People coming off it get into a dark mood, sometimes argumentative and combative, “tweaking.” It could lead to violence.
The chameleon drank the whisky in two gulps and slid off the stool. He walked unsteadily over to stand in front of the two sailors. “I say.” They ignored him. “I say! Will you quiet down?”
“Yeah, right, fuck with ’em,” a drunk American said into the sudden silence. The two looked blearily down at the little Pakistani, a foot shorter than them. One leaned forward and swung at him, an open-handed slap.
The chameleon ducked under the blow and grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted, bringing him to his knees. He twisted harder and pulled, and the man’s shoulder joint popped like a chicken leg coming off. He rolled down on the floor, keening in pain. The chameleon silenced him with two vicious head kicks. Bar stools crashed all around as most people backed away from the action. The drunk American stayed seated and applauded slowly.
“Tough little Paki,” the other Samoan said, and produced a box- cutter from somewhere.
“Enough!” the bartender roared. “Take it outside!”
“Okay.” The chameleon turned on his heel and walked toward the door.
Witnesses would later tell the police that whatever happened was too fast to follow. The Samoan touched the Pakistani on the shoulder, evidently, and he spun around.
The Pakistani handed the Samoan his box knife back and said, “Ta.” The Samoan stood up straight and looked at the scarlet stain spreading on the abdomen of his T-shirt. Then loops of bluish bloodstained guts slid out, hanging to his knees, and he crumpled over dead.
No one saw the Pakistani leave. When they crowded out the door, there was no one there except an old man sitting on the pier, fishing with a handline.
In the morning, the police would find two prostitutes’ bodies in a Dumpster. There were strangle signs on their necks, livid finger and thumb marks, but they’d died of cerebral hemorrhage, their heads beaten together.
When the sun rose higher, they smelled and found a dead Pakistani sailor in an alleyway, inexplicably naked. Case closed, anyhow.
The chameleon was gone by then, on the dawn flight back to Apia, in a much improved mood.
—36—