“Nice cab ride?” Jan asked, rubbing a bandana through her ruff of white hair.

“Bumpy as hell.” He pushed a bottle of red wine an inch in their direction. “I took the liberty.”

“A glass, anyhow.” She poured for herself and Russ, and they sat down heavily, simultaneously. “Not a cloud in the sky.”

“Bicycling causes rain,” Jack said. “Scientific fact.”

“Glad there’s some science today,” Russ said. The waiter came up and they all ordered without looking at the menu.

“Every time we stress it without leaving a mark is a little science.” She took a sip. “It’s our technology versus theirs, or what theirs was a million years ago.”

“And where are they now?” Russ said. “Either dead and gone or on their way home.”

“Or they were us a million years ago,” Jack said. “You read the Times thing yesterday?”

“Lori Timms,” Russ said without inflection. She was a popular science writer.

“What was it?” Jan said.

“Just a new angle on the time capsule theory,” Russ said. “She thinks our ancestors deliberately renounced technology, and carefully wiped out every trace of their civilization. Except the artifact, which they left as a warning, in case their descendants, us, started on their path as well.

“She handles the problem of the fossil record by postulating that they were as knowledgeable in life sciences as in the physical ones. They repopulated the world with appropriate creatures.”

Russ laughed. “And then what did they do with the fossil record that was already there? Carbon dating doesn’t lie.”

“Maybe they cleaned ‘em up. Had some way to find all the fossils and get rid of ‘em.”

“That’s a bit of a stretch.”

“Well, think about it,” Jan said. “What if the ‘million-year-old’ part is wrong? What if that part of it was faked? Any technology that could build the artifact could bury it under an ancient coral reef. Then you only have to worry about archeology.”

“And the historical record,” Russ said.

“ ‘There were giants on the earth in those days,’ “ Jan said, smiling.

“And fishburgers now,” Jack said, as the waiter came through the door.

22

Bataan, Philippines, 5 April 1942

The changeling waited until two groups of marchers had gone by, and there was no sound of nearby movement. It knew that the loose dirt of its grave would move around while it went through the hour of agony it took to change from one body to another.

It planned to leave the head behind, and become a foot shorter. Japanese.

“Agony” is really too human a word to describe what it went through. It was tearing its body apart and reassembling it from the center outwards, squeezing and ripping organs, crushing bones and forcing them to knife through flesh, but pain was just another sense to it, not a signal to modify its behavior. Besides, it was nothing new. It had been hundreds of people by now.

When it had become a Japanese private, complete with grimy uniform, it pushed up in a shower of dirt, to its knees, and then stood and brushed itself off. As it had calculated, the sun was well down, and it was pitch black.

Except for the flashlight.

Someone screamed and ran away. The changeling was at first impeded by the loose dirt, but then it sprang out, and in three long steps caught up with the fleeing intruder and pushed him lightly to the ground.

He was a Filipino child, cowering in terror, still clutching a canvas bag. Six or seven years old.

The changeling sorted through the few Japanese phrases it had accumulated, and decided none was appropriate. It used English: “Don’t be afraid. I was just resting. We do it that way. It’s cool in the dirt.”

The boy probably didn’t understand a word, but the tone of the changeling’s voice calmed him. It helped him to his feet and handed him flashlight and bag, and made a shooing motion. “Now go! Get out of here!” The boy ran wildly away.

Perhaps it should have killed him. With a finger punch it could have simulated a bullet wound to the head. But what could he really do? He would run home and tell his parents, and they would interpret the event in terms of what they knew of reality, and be glad the boy had survived waking up a Japanese soldier. He would tell the other children, and they might believe him, but other adults would dismiss it as imagination.

(In fact, the changeling was wrong. The boy’s parents did believe he had awakened a dead man, and told him to be quiet about it except to God, and pray thankfulness for the rest of his life, that God had chosen to spare him.)

The changeling widened its irises temporarily, so the starlit desolation was as bright as day, and started moving quietly but swiftly north. It took only a half hour to catch up with a group that had been allowed a few hours of rest. It had passed four Americans lying dead in the road.

It saw only one guard awake, leaning against the fender of a truck. It went behind the truck and forced itself to produce urine, and then casually walked forward, adjusting its clothes. “Hai,” it whispered to the guard, ready to kill him instantly if his reaction was wrong. He just grunted and spit.

It walked among the Americans, planning. The masquerade as a Japanese probably wouldn’t pass muster during the day, among Japanese. So it would be best to change back into an American before dawn.

By starlight it examined every sleeping face. None of them was familiar, either from the Marine detachment or from the Mariveles camp. So it could become Jimmy again, and not have to fake a new history.

The people at the end of the group would be the ones nearest death, and probably least likely to be keeping track of who was around them. In fact, it found two that were dead, and quietly lay down between them in the pitch darkness.

It made as little noise as possible, changing the bones of its face back into Jimmy’s starveling countenance. The uniform was trivially easy, and only made a normal rustling sound. It stretched the Japanese skeleton as much as was practical, with an occasional popped-knuckle noise, and got to within three inches of Jimmy’s height.

What it wound up with was an even more famished version of Jimmy, which was fine. The weaker-looking, the better.

With the first light of dawn, the Japanese guards were working through their ranks, shouting and kicking. A sudden blue flash and rifle shot got them moving faster.

They left five behind, dead or so close as to make no difference. The sun sped up over the horizon, and in less than an hour, the morning cool had dissipated.

It had rained torrentially two days before, and although the road was dry and dusty, there were sometimes mud puddles at the edges of the fields. People would fall out of ranks to go to them with their canteens, but the guards would chase them off.

Finally there was a huge puddle, a wallow where two water buffalo were cooling off. The water was green and odoriferous, but there was lots of it, and a guard who was a private made an ironic gesture inviting them over.

A man next to the changeling put his hand on its shoulder. “Wait,” he croaked. “That’s the asshole got us fucked with yesterday.”

Dozens of men staggered to the wallow and pushed the scum aside to drink and fill canteens or cups. Some splashed water over their heads and chests, cooling off like the buffalo, which would prove a mistake.

An officer with a saber came running down the line screaming at the ones in the water. They hustled back to rejoin the ranks.

The officer huddled the guards and then watched smiling while they moved through the crowd and pulled out everyone with damp clothing.

They lined them up along the side of the road. The officer said one word and in a ragged volley they shot them all.