It waited until almost ten to walk into town; the sidewalk was crowded enough that it didn’t stand out particularly, just another sunburnt tourist. It had earlier, as Rae, found a church charity store; it went straight there and bought a suitcase and a few changes of clothing. At a more touristy place, it bought a couple of bright shirts and a souvenir lavalava. An assortment of toiletries from a convenience store, and a couple of gift bottles of Robert Louis Stevenson liqueur. In a coffeehouse rest room it disposed of some of the toothpaste and shaving gel, so they wouldn’t look just-bought, and caught a cab to the airport.

There were three uniformed policemen on duty, and one Samoan woman in a business suit pretty obviously surveying the crowd. It occurred to the changeling that its choice of identity might have been disastrous, if Scott Windsor Daniel, African-American hash hound, was known to the police.

Best done quickly. The changeling went into a crowded men’s room and waited for a stall. Once behind the door, it went through the uncomfortable business of changing its face and hands to match Daniel’s. It also changed shirts, putting on a souvenir one that, under the circumstances, acted as protective coloration.

The whole business took fifteen minutes. If anyone noticed that a white man had gone in and a black man had come out, they didn’t say anything.

The first test was passport control. A native woman checked documents and retinal scan, and collected departure tax, but the woman sitting behind her in the booth, right arm in a sling, was the one from “the United States intelligence community,” who had almost put a bullet into Rae the day before.

Neither of them paid any special attention to Scott Windsor Daniel, so maybe they actually were looking for a woman. A small white one with a missing arm? They did do a fingerprint check, though, as well as the usual retinal scan. The spy woman put on a jeweler’s loupe and, glancing, clumsy with one hand, compared the thumbprint to one on a card.

Security was likewise easy, which was encouraging. It hadn’t occurred to them that they were looking for a shape-changer. They sorted through Daniel’s unremarkable luggage, wanded him, and sent the suitcase down a chute and him through an optical baffle into the multilingual murmur of the waiting room.

It sat at the bar and nursed something they claimed was chardonnay, leafing through the Samoa Observer. The disturbance at Aggie Grey’s was the front-page story, with an interesting twist—the movie people were “not at liberty to say” whether it was part of the thriller they were filming. Presumably someone had coached them; they were an American company, and the government could hassle them if they didn’t cooperate. Though it could be that they came up with the evasiveness on their own, latching onto free publicity.

Interviews with Aggie Grey people and the police were not much more informative. Some tourists agreed that the “man” who ran across the park and dived into the harbor appeared to be one-armed. Their consensus was movie.

Hard to plan with so little information. The flight switched to Delta in Honolulu, and there was a six-hour layover. It might be prudent to switch identity again there, in case they’d picked up the trail to Daniel. If they had, there would be a greeting party at LAX. If Mr. Daniel didn’t show up there, they would no doubt smoke the real one out in Samoa.

Or they might be waiting in Honolulu. What would it do? The airport wasn’t too far from the sea, but harder to emergency-exit from than the Wing Room at Aggie Grey’s. They would presumably be expecting someone with unusual powers—depending on who “they” were. The spies might not have told the police everything. So one scenario was “police looking for a drug dealer with Mr. Daniel’s passport,” which wouldn’t be that hard to step around.

It set that problem aside, and returned to its usual mental occupation, analyzing 31,433 bits of information. Or noise. It continued its methodical way through those gazillion permutations as it filed through early boarding, took its seat in first class, and selected a random movie on its monitor. It nodded for champagne and made rote responses to the attendant’s rote queries.

If it spent one second on each possible combination of the 31,433 digits, it would take about as long as the Roman Empire had lasted. The changeling did have the time, but it was hoping that some sort of pattern would emerge long before that.

It had no seating companion, so the time went quickly, in a blur of ones and zeros. It came out of its five-hour reverie when the landing gear hit the tarmac in Hawaii.

First class exited democratically, allowing one hoi polloi interleaved between each of the elite, and the changeling entered the airport with a neutral expression, looking around with no particular interest, just a guy changing planes, who had to go through the inconvenience of passport check and baggage transfer.

There was nothing unusual at first. But then he saw that every u.s. citizen checkpoint was protected by a large policeman, standing between passport control and the luggage check.

Maybe they were always there. He didn’t remember them from earlier flights, when he was going back and forth between Australia and the States. It would be better not to take the chance.

There were two bathrooms, for the convenience of people who were willing to take a later place in line, in exchange for comfort. The changeling angled toward the men’s. Its timing was good.

As it entered the privacy baffle between the corridor and the men’s room, an attendant with a cart was backing out of a utility room. After a glance confirming that there were no witnesses, it covered the man’s mouth and nose and shoved him back into the room.

It punched him on the chin just hard enough to daze him, and slapped on the light. It was a room about the size of a walk-in closet, with racks of supplies. It plucked a roll of wide duct tape and carefully pressed a piece of it over the man’s mouth, and squares over each eye, after capturing his retinal pattern. Then it undressed him and put on his uniform, and bound him tightly with tape.

It took his fingerprints, studied him for a moment, and then turned out the light and concentrated on becoming him. It wasn’t too painful, skin color and facial structure. Then it pushed its way out behind the cart, leaving the door locked.

How much time did it have? If those cops were waiting for Mr. Daniel, it was only minutes.

It hesitated by a door that said authorized personnel only, trying to imagine what might be behind the sign. It could be the place where janitors went to catch a smoke. Or it might be full of nervous security types.

Turning the cart around, it headed back toward Customs. There were six lanes open for U.S. citizens, and three for foreigners—and one marked “employees.”

It got halfway through the short lane, and somebody shouted, “Hey! Asshole!”

It stopped and turned around. A fat cop said something angry. It was in Hawaiian, unfortunately.

It shrugged, hoping that not everyone who looked Hawaiian spoke Hawaiian. “You know the drill,” he said. “Where the hell you goin’?”

“Just out to the car,” the changeling said. “My dinner is in the cooler.”

“Yeah, liquid dinner. Just leave the goddamn cart on this side, okay?” The changeling trudged back and parked it out of the way.

Once outside, of course, the uniform made its wearer stand out rather than blend in. It would be conspicuous to hail a cab or get on a bus. Bad planning, not to carry along Daniel’s clothes.

It would take about twenty minutes to “grow” inconspicuous clothes, and discard the janitor’s. Too long. Taking a chance, it ducked into a souvenir shop and bought fairly modest tourist clothes—Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, and flip-flops. It changed in the men’s room—also changing its skin to pale white—and carried the uniform out in the shop’s paper bags.