The changeling shook its head. “Nothing Moroccan. What you got Asian?”
“Red seal and gold seal. Cost you.”
“Little bag of gold seal, how much?” He said $250 and the changeling got him down to $210.
It took the stuff and a glass bong to a folding chair in a corner where it could survey the room.
The hash had an interesting flavor. It burned hot, probably because of additives. A little asphalt.
The changeling was looking for someone who looked like he was used to having money, but was down on his luck. Preferably someone not native; about a third of the men qualified on that score.
An American would be preferable; one who resembled the changeling would make things easier to explain. There was one light-skinned black man who was fairly close to the changeling’s current appearance, though a few inches taller and considerably heavier. He was sitting backward in a folding chair, chin resting on forearm, intently following a lazy argument two men were having, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Good clothes that needed dry- cleaning.
He was holding an empty bong. The changeling padded over and sat on the floor next to him, and relit the resin in its bong.
“So what do you think?” one of the arguers said to the newcomer. “How old is the universe?”
“Thirteen point seven billion years. I don’t remember half that far back, though.”
The other one shook his hand. “Close. Sixteen billion.”
“He’s using the Torah and general relativity,” the black man said. “Smells good.”
The changeling held out the packet to him. “Gold seal; have a hit.” To the Torah guy: “I could spot you 2.3 billion. That’s six really long days?”
He launched into an explanation about how small the universe had been back then. The other arguer stared at him with an expression like a spaniel trying to stay awake.
The black man broke off a little piece, rolled it into a ball, and sniffed it. He nodded and handed the bag back. “Thanks.”
The changeling lit a wooden match and held it up for him. He breathed the smoke in deeply and held it. After a minute he exhaled slowly and nodded satisfaction. “So what are you after?”
“What, you don’t believe in spontaneous acts of sharing?”
“You aren’t fucked up enough to be spontaneous with gold seal.”
“That’s a good observation.”
“So you want something, but it’s not drugs. Must be sex or money.” He shook his big head slowly back and forth. “Don’t have either.”
“There is one other thing.” The changeling stood up, feigning difficulty. “Talk outside?”
He nodded but stayed put. He held up one finger and stared at it. “Oh, and I can’t kill anybody. Don’t want to go through that again.” The two chronologists looked up at that, faces masks.
“Nothing like that. Come on.” The man got up and walked with exaggerated care, perhaps more stoned than he looked or sounded. The changeling told their host they’d be right back.
Some animal scampered away when the door opened. Otherwise the dark forest was silent except for water dripping.
“This is the score. I have to be on the plane to America tomorrow. But I don’t have a ticket or a passport.”
The man squinted at him in the faint light from the shaded windows. “Okay?”
“So do you have a passport?”
“Course. But no way you could pass for me.”
“That’s not a problem. I’ve done this before.”
“But then I’m stuck here. What do I do about that?”
“Nothin’ to it. I’ll mail it back to you, overnight, from L.A. But you don’t have to trust me. If you don’t get it, wait a few days and you go to the embassy and report it lost. They’ll check you out and issue a temporary; you can replace it when you get back to the States.”
“I’d have to think about it. How much?”
“Five thousand up front, plus the cost of a ticket. They probably just have first class open; that’ll be a thousand.
“But I’ll give you five thousand more if I get to L.A. with no problem. Send it in a package with your passport.”
“For that part I just have to trust you? A total stranger I met in a hash house?”
“Think of it as my insurance policy. It’s not in my interest to have you report your passport stolen.”
He was lost in thought, sorting that out. The changeling took the opportunity to stare into his dark-dilated eyes and duplicate his retinal pattern, in case.
“You throw in two bags of gold seal and you’ve got a deal.” They shook on it, the changeling getting his fingerprints in the process. Then it wrote down an address for the cash and passport return.
It had him wait on the doorstep and went back in to score the hash. The man said four hundred dollars and stayed with it; no deeper discounts unless you want a lot more. Ten bags would only be fifteen hundred. The changeling declined and left with the two.
His partner in crime wanted them right away, but the changeling said no; not until it had the ticket in hand. They crunched down the driveway to the rusty Toyota. The young prostitute had reclined in the driver’s seat and was deeply asleep, snoring softly. The changeling gently transferred her to the back seat and took the keys from her pocket.
The black man also slept while the changeling drove back into town. It wanted to avoid Beach Road and downtown; the police probably would recognize the car, and might wonder why he was driving it. It didn’t know the back roads, and so proceeded by dead reckoning, bearing roughly west and south until it came to Fugalei Street, which it knew would have the Maketi Fou—central market—on the right and nothing but swamp on the left. Then it hit the beach at the flea market on the edge of town and turned onto the airport road.
It was a half hour of slow driving, the changeling easy on the speed bumps, to keep its crew asleep. The airport was brightly lit, and there were lots of cars and cabs waiting. The airplane that it would take out tomorrow would be landing in about an hour. It remembered that, the late hour notwithstanding, the ticket office had been open when it had arrived the month before.
The black man rubbed his eyes and yawned; no room to stretch. “So. You give me the money. I go in and get myself a ticket to L.A.; bring it back and collect my hash.”
“Close.” The changeling handed him a roll of bills secured by a rubber band. “But I’m going to keep you company. The hash stays here, in case they have dogs or sniffers. We come back here. You give me the ticket and passport; you keep the change and the hash. I drive you back into town.” The changeling pulled into a space close to the waiting area.
“Okay up to the driving. I take a cab back.”
“What, you don’t trust me?”
He snorted. “Once you have the ticket and passport, I’m more use to you dead than alive.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” the changeling said honestly. “You must know the criminal mind better than I do.”
“ ‘Ask the man who owns one,’ ” he said. They got out and walked into the building. It was open-air, no walls on the ground floor.
There were dozens of people sitting around on plastic chairs, reading or watching television. A group of teenaged boys and girls in traditional garb chattered happily. They would be the song-and- dance welcome for the flight from the States.
The changeling went upstairs to the bar while his accomplice approached the ticket counter. There was no line and only a single agent, making no effort to appear happy or alert.
It got a beer and sat near the stairway, where it could watch the transaction. It could imagine what would happen Stateside, if you walked up after midnight and tried to buy an international ticket with fifties and hundreds from a thick roll, no luggage.
The young woman treated it as if he were buying a loaf of bread, though she looked at his passport.