Russell was wearing the same blue-jean cutoffs he’d bicycled in, changing it into a swimsuit by taking off his shirt and shoes. The changeling smiled at his familiar body, a little pudgy in spite of athletic legs and arms, skin almost milk white—he never went out into the sun without total sunblock; both his parents had had skin cancer. His body hair was a silky down of black and white mixed, no gray, and his only tattoo, not visible now, was a small do not open till Christmas tag attached to a big scar he’d gotten from an emergency appendectomy by a village doctor in the Cook Islands. How many other women had giggled at that the first time he undressed in front of them?
He noticed her own tattoo immediately. “Bird?”
“Hummingbird.” She pulled the top of her bra down almost to the aureole. Her breasts were small, which he liked.
“Very nice.” He smiled and turned his attention back to the grill, splashing the charcoal with 100 percent isopropyl alcohol from a lab bottle. He snapped a sparker at it and it ignited with a blue puff.
“How much longer?” the changeling said. “I’m famished.”
“At least 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 like-minded people, people you don’t work with—scientists, artists, whatever.”
“I would have taken you for a loner.”
“Well, I am, or was. The place in Baja was miles from nowhere, and that’s one reason I leased it. But I could be in L.A. in an hour, and had an apartment just off the UCLA campus.”
“Where you seduced college girls. I know your type.”
He laughed and blushed. “Back when I had hair.” He got up to check the dogs. “I do miss the college-town atmosphere. Bookstores, coffeeshops, bars. The libraries on campus. The girls on campus.”
“It’s a nice campus. I stayed there for two weeks, diving in summer school.”
“Where?”
“A dorm.” The changeling knew where Jimmy Coleridge’s students stayed now. Where would it have been eleven years ago? “Maybe Con-way? Conroy.”
“Oh yeah. That’s close to where I stay.” He used tongs to rotate the hot dogs 180 degrees, then went to the cooler. “Beer? Or a glass of wine.”
“You have wine in there?”
“No, back in the fridge. Only take a minute.”
“That would be good. I’m not much of a beer drinker. Maybe when the dogs are done.”
“Keep an eye on ’em.” He jogged away.
The changeling considered its position. This was a cusp. If it began a love affair with Russ—or restarted one—it would probably kill its chances for the job. But the job was only a stepping stone to get close to the artifact. Maybe Russ’s lover would have a better shot at that than the receptionist.
Why did it feel this drive to be in the physical presence of the thing? It had seen all the pictures, studied the data, read people’s frustrated inconclusions.
It remembered the feeling when it swam from Bataan to California. The inchoate feeling, the hesitation, when it passed over the Tonga Trench.
It felt that now, more strongly than ever. Something was taking form.
Russell came back with two long-stemmed glasses of white wine, already misted with humidity. “Drink it while it’s cold,” he said, handing one to her, and drank off a third of his in a gulp. “Ready in a minute.” He gave the hot dogs a quarter turn.