Camouflage by Joe Haldeman Page A

little else, which was good protective coloration, and then a couple of years on a master's, then a doctorate and, eventually, Woods Hole.
    It did get to work at Woods Hole for two summers, sailing the ketch Atlantis as a graduate intern. Every now and then, on days off, it would go to a deserted cove and spend an hour changing into a dolphin, to get back to the sea in a more personal, familiar way. These cold rich waters were another world from its Pacific home, and it learned a lot, some of which would direct its own research.
    But before the doctorate came, war intervened.
    The changeling saw people being drafted and assigned to whatever kind of job and place the military desired. But people who joined up were allowed to choose, within reason.
    It wanted to study the Pacific, suspecting its origin must be somewhere out there. Danger wasn't a factor; as far as it knew, it couldn't die. So it joined the Marines, and asked for a Pacific assignment.
    To most graduate students, it would be an annoyance and delay— not to mention the possibility of being shot or succumbing to some tropical disease. But to the changeling, time was just time, meaningless. Every new experience had been useful.
    It didn't tell the Marine Corps about college, which probably would have led to a desk job. So instead of being a marine science Marine, it became a plain foot soldier, grunt, jarhead. Pearl Harbor was a year away.

    -13 -

    Eurasia, pre-Christian era

    The changeling wasn't alone on the planet. There was another creature, unrelated, who had lived on Earth longer than he could remember; who had lived thousands of lives, disappearing when he got too old, to reappear as a young man.
    He was always a man, and usually a brute.
    Call him the chameleon: an alpha male who never had sons, unless an adulterer cooperated. Unlike the changeling, he did have DNA, but it was alien; he could no more reproduce with a human than he could with a rock or a tree.
    Also unlike the changeling, he seemed to be stuck in human form. It never occurred to him to wonder why this was so. But it didn't occur to him for tens of millennia—not until the Renaissance—that he might have come from another world. He assumed that he was some sort of demon or demigod, but early on realized that it was a mistake to advertise the fact. He couldn't be killed, not even by fire, but he did feel pain, and he felt it profoundly, in ways a human never could. At low levels it was pleasure, and he sought out varieties of that. But hanging and crucifixion were experiences he never wanted to do a second time. To be burned to ashes was agony beyond belief, and reconstructing yourself afterward was worse.
    So after a few experiences that probably helped establish the myth of the vampire, the chameleon settled into routine existence, seriatim lives that were fairly ordinary.
    He was usually a warrior, and of course a good one. Sometimes his career was cut short by being chopped in two or trampled or drawn and quartered. In the chaos of battle he could usually find a few minutes of darkness, to pull himself together, and then go off in search of another life. When his death and interment were witnessed by many, he had to fake a grave robbery or, reluctantly, a miracle.
    In ancient times, he occasionally wound up being a warlord or even a king, by dint of superiority in battle and an instinct to advance. But that was always more trouble than it was worth, and made it almost impossible to arrange a private death and resurrection.
    Like the changeling, he was a quick study, but he was a sensualist, indifferent to knowledge. All he needed to know in order to survive, his body already knew. The rest was just for maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain that was too great to enjoy.
    He picked the right side in the Peloponnesian Wars, and went through several generations as a Spartan. Then he joined Alexander's army and wound up settling in Persia. He spent a century or so as a Parthian before he