In terms of temperature and pressure, it was a lot easier to handle than Venus. But carbon dioxide isn’t flammable. She looked at the huge tanks of hydrogen waiting for the high-pressure phase and tried not to think of it as a fireball waiting to happen.

It was more than a thousand times the quantity of hydrogen that exploded in the Hindenburg disaster.

By now, most of the people, Jan included, had little hope that the artifact was going to respond to anything. When it did, they thought it was an experimental error.

The thing inside the artifact didn’t think, not the way humans think. It didn’t pose problems and solve them. It didn’t wonder about its place in the universe. It felt no real need to communicate.

Its mandate was survival, and it had powerful tools to that end. If the life that decorated the surface of this planet seemed to be a threat, it could simplify the situation. It had patience, fortunately, beyond any human reckoning of the term. All this tapping and zapping and flashing—it could stop the annoyance with one exercise of will, fry the planet clean.

But a central part of it was still out there. It could wait for its return. Maybe, it finally decided, speed up the return by tapping back.

When the changeling got off the plane at the Apia airport, the place was crazy with celebration, even though it was three in the morning. A couple of dozen young men and women danced and clapped and sang in harmony; bunting and flags were everywhere.

When it had boarded in Hawaii, it couldn’t help noticing that several of the Caucasian passengers were unusually old. When the singing stopped, while it was waiting for its luggage, it found out what the story was. It was the sixtieth anniversary of Samoa’s independence, and these old guys were the last survivors of the American forces that had been stationed here in World War II.

Bataan came back in a rush of bad memory, while the mayor of Apia welcomed the old vets and told stories she’d heard from her father and grandfather. The changeling listened respectfully, its face revealing nothing.

It was a pretty face. The changeling had the form of a young attractive woman.

The ad it had answered on the net was looking for a laboratory technician who could operate this and that machine and had knowledge of marine biology and astronomy. It didn’t call for doctorates in those subjects, but then the changeling could hardly advertise those. Its faked credentials were impressive enough; it only claimed “wide reading” in marine biology and a B.S. in astronomy. (The degree actually belonged to the woman whose appearance it had taken. Safely out of the job market herself, she was the mother of triplets in Pasadena.)

Putting together a fake identity was more complicated than it used to be. It was not particularly hard for the changeling to pretend to be the woman from Pasadena; it even had her fingerprints and tattoos and scent. But it had taken a bit of computer wizardry to erase the records of her husband and triplets and substitute an impressive job record. It had taken even more to temporarily make sure that computer, phone, and fax messages were routed through the changeling before Rae Archer got them.

The actual Rae Archer was beautiful, and took pains to look less than her thirty years. The changeling modified the details so that it was the same face, but merely pretty, and thirty.

It had done it all in less than a day, once the ad appeared on Shy and Telescope’s website. (It automatically monitored anything with the key words “Apia” or “Poseidon Projects.”) As Rae, it had talked to Naomi and then Jan, who agreed to give Ms. Archer an interview if she were willing to gamble the airfare out to Samoa and back. The changeling thought it had done a good job of imitating an excited young woman trying to contain her enthusiasm.

The real gamble, of course, was background checking. The changeling had inserted files attesting to Rae Archer’s job competence in every position she’d held. But if Naomi or Jan decided to call the States and ask for an actual person’s recollection of the woman’s work, the web of deception would evaporate.

Apia was muggy and buggy at three in the morning. Almost every cab in town was waiting outside the airport—the plane from Honolulu only came in twice a week—but the changeling asked directions and did the sensible thing, taking the bus into town. It was twenty miles of slow driving either way. For an extra three dollars, the bus went a block out of its way and delivered the changeling to its door, a bed-and-breakfast just a kilometer up the beach from the Poseidon site.

The proprietor was there, heavy-lidded but friendly, to show the changeling to its room. It feigned a couple of hours’ sleep (while relaying four e-mails to the real Rae Archer and monitoring a wrong number) and then went out to watch the dawn come up over the mountains.

34

Apia, Samoa, June 2021

The changeling suspected there might be some slowdown in things because of the anniversary, but it didn’t expect an absolute rejection.

“Come back day after tomorrow,” the guard with the phone said. “It might even be a week before anyone can see you.” She asked why and he shook his head, listening to the receiver. “We’ll reimburse you for your extra expenses.” Listening again. “There’s too much happening now. Just enjoy the town.”

The changeling, of course, could clearly hear the other side of the conversation. The excitement in the woman’s voice—it knew she was Naomi from the Stateside calls—was palpable. It had obviously come one day too late. There had been some breakthrough.

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.