Camouflage (novel)

A million years prior to the dawn of Homo sapiens, two immortal, shapeshifting aliens roam the Earth with little memory of their origin or their purpose. In the year 2019, an artifact is discovered off the coast of Samoa, buried deep beneath the ocean floor. The mysterious find attracts the alien beings—the "changeling" and the "chameleon"—to Samoa, where one ponders the meaning of the object and the other speculates on its relationship to each of them. Both immortals seek each other for different reasons: one harbours good intentions toward humanity, while the other is extremely hostile.

A million years before the rise of humans, the changeling arrives on Earth from Messier 22; its spaceship hides deep in the Pacific Ocean. The changeling lives in the ocean for millennia, taking the form of a great white shark, killer whale, or porpoise while it explores, and it gradually forgets where it came from. Eventually it discovers humanity "and wades ashore naked and ignorant. But eager to learn."

San Guillermo, California, 1931. The changeling takes the form of (and unwittingly kills) the first person it comes across, a handsome, wealthy young man named Jimmy Berry. Because it cannot speak English (yet), Jimmy's friends assume that he has brain damage, and the changeling is sent home to his parents.

Baja California, 2019. Dr. Russell Sutton is a marine engineer who runs the small firm Poseidon Projects. He is approached by elderly Admiral Jack Halliburton, who has a for-profit job for Poseidon: recover a submarine sunk in the Tonga Trench, and then "find" a mysterious cigar-shaped object located nearby. Jack wants to use Russell's team as camouflage, because all he really cares about is getting the object – for himself.

Chapters alternate between the stories of the changeling and its various lives over decades; of Russ's attempts to decipher the artifact; and of the chameleon, whose story begins in Eurasia in the Pre-Christian Era. The chameleon "was always a man, and usually a brute." He can change his looks in a moment (unlike the changeling, who needs several minutes and suffers while doing so). The chameleon has often been a soldier, fighting for example with Alexander the Great and as a Masai warrior, though he also lived as farmers and butchers, among others; he suffers as a slave brought from West Africa to the new America, but in later decades makes a vast fortune.

The changeling begins to learn about humanity with Jimmy Berry's parents. They have specialists brought to their mansion to test it, and it learns to read, draw, play piano, and speak. The changeling has eidetic memory, so these tasks are easy; human psychology baffles it. When a nurse seduces it, it learns about sex; when next seduced, the changeling is unaware that it has hurt the woman badly, and in 1932 it is sent to a "private insane asylum", where it learns a great deal more about the range of human behaviors than a coddled rich boy normally would.

Jack and Russ move their team to Apia, Samoa. The artifact proves difficult to move, as it is possibly three times as dense as plutonium, but they bring it to the beach and build a wall around it. Dr. Franklin Nesbitt, Chief of NASA Advanced Planning, comes to them with a proposal: To share much of the enormous cost of the project, he wants to add a team of researchers to the Poseidon Project, for what he seeks: "Half our team are exobiologists. It's not so much a 'what'... as a 'who'." The new team includes Jan Dagmar, an exobiologist, who quickly befriends Russ.

In 1935, the changeling attends the University of Massachusetts to study oceanography, then the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; it senses that something important to it will be found in marine science. Its studies are interrupted by World War II. In 1941, it takes part in the Bataan Death March, during which "Jimmy" sees horrific incidents which humanize the changeling; it learns friendship and pity. The changeling escapes Bataan and spends years swimming back to America as a shark; meanwhile, the chameleon enjoys war atrocities and becomes assistant to Josef Mengele at Birkenau.

In 2020, the team attempts many ways to make an impression on the artifact; when they try to communicate with it, they get a surprising momentary result.

In 1948, the changeling comes to shore in California. It attends college at Berkeley to study literature and anthropology. When it learns of Project Sign, it begins to wonder whether there are other extraterrestrials on Earth. The chameleon also hunts for other aliens, so that he may enjoy fighting and killing them.

In 2021, Jan Dagmar begins to send a complex message to the artifact, by beaming at it in every frequency from microwave to X ray, and by tapping it mechanically. The team plunges the artifact into different atmospheres – specifically, those of the planets and moons of our Solar System – in case the object might recognize one of them as "home-like" and respond.

For many years, the changeling earns further doctorates in astronomy, astrophysics, marine biology and biotechnology. It attends Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study computers. It works on the SETI project, then leaves academia for several years to work in the circus, get married, and otherwise learn more about humanity. After re-creating itself as a woman many times, it finds that it prefers to be one, though for a long time it establishes an identity as Professor Jimmy Coleridge at the University of Hawaii. It occasionally shows a human playfulness: turning into a shark, for example, and then swimming up to the local campus's marine cameras and dissemblingly doing something "unsharklike."

In 2019, the changeling learns about the artifact at Apia and, feeling "a shock of recognition," determines to join the team there. The chameleon has also come to Apia and pleasures itself by killing people. In 2021, the artifact answers Jan's tests by tapping back. The changeling borrows biological and job information from a Californian woman, Rae Archer, to apply for a job at Poseidon. "She" is interviewed by Russ and Jan, and gets a job as a technician. Part of this job requires trying to crack the message that the artifact has sent. While working on it, for some weeks, "Rae" and Russ fall in love. "Rae" can do enormous computations in her head while working with others or pretending to sleep, and soon becomes convinced that the message that the artifact emitted is meant for herself.

The impersonation of Rae Archer is exposed by the CIA. Agents plan an ambush for Russ and Rae by allowing them to think that they have won a weekend at a luxury hotel, the Aggie Grey's. The changeling enters the room first, and the agents assault her; one blows off her left arm with a double-barreled shotgun. The changeling smashes through the balcony, runs across the traffic, and dives into the water, where it changes into a shark again. "Rae" decides to approach Russ again, to reunite with him as well as to approach the artifact, and creates a new personality, Sharon Valida, a pretty blonde.

Meeting Russ one night as Sharon, she makes love to him, reveals herself as both Rae and an extraterrestrial, and insists that he take her to the artifact site. Russ agrees, and the changeling changes itself to look like Jan, so that they can get through the security checkpoints. As Rae approaches the artifact, which she now recognizes as her spaceship, Jack Halliburton appears in the room, traps them there, and reveals himself as the chameleon. Rae fights the chameleon, but almost loses the battle while trying to protect Russ. At last, her spaceship traps "Jack," and, revealing her true self (large, shimmering, colorful, "inhumanly beautiful"), she tells Russ that she must leave. "It's like a law. I've been here for too long. Done things I shouldn't have done. Like fall in love with a local, an alien." Russ begs to go with her, and with great joy, they enter the spaceship and leave for her home.

• Changeling: An extraterrestrial who is fascinated by people and who learns to share their joys and fears, and to love. It can manufacture bodies, clothes, money, passports, and almost anything else it needs, out of the basic material of itself. Among the many personalities it takes are Jimmy Berry, Professor Jimmy Coleridge, Rae Archer and Sharon Valida.
• Dr. Russell Sutton: A marine engineer whose company, Poseidon Projects, is hired by Jack Halliburton to lift the artifact from the sea bed. He likes food; he likes women more and likes working with them; he falls in love with Rae Archer, then with Sharon Valida, then with the changeling.
• Jack Halliburton: Posing as a U.S. Navy Admiral, he hires Russ to retrieve the artifact. As the chameleon, he seeks any other extraterrestrial on Earth, in order to destroy it.
• Jan Dagmar: A "white-haired exobiologist old enough to remember the first moon landing and young enough to go cave-diving for fun." Leader of the NASA team which endeavors to understand the nature of the artifact.
• Naomi: A well-muscled young woman, part of Jan's team.
• Moishe: Jan's senior technician.
• Hugh: The changeling's first friend, a Marine who suffers through the Bataan Death March with "Jimmy."

• Camouflage is the theme running throughout the chapters on the changeling and the chameleon; one of the first things Jack says about himself is that he wears an admiral's uniform for "protective coloration." Unafraid to hide his secrets in plain sight, he talks about extraterrestrials, calls himself a "total barbarian" and likes steaks so rare they're blue inside, a hint of his predatory nature, but Russ and Jan, who admit they find him intimidating, are fooled. The changeling, hoping to find others like itself, spends years in a circus and in universities, and investigates humans with biological oddities.
• War: As one reviewer put it, Haldeman "is much more than just a military SF writer, but it's clear that Vietnam remains central to his existence and the nightmare inspiration for some of his best work."[2] In Camouflage, the war that receives Haldeman's auctorial disgust is World War II, and two particular periods are spotlighted: the Bataan Death March and the atrocities at the Auschwitz concentration camps, where the chameleon enjoys working with Mengele.
• Distrust of the United States government appears throughout the 2019-2021 sections, as though the characters fear it is approaching totalitarianism. Russ and Jack agree to work together on the stipulation that the U.S. is not involved; even the NASA team offers itself as a sort of semi-autonomous agency, with its own budget to spend and no strings attached. Even the changeling, when ambushed, tells the CIA agents, "You have no jurisdiction here."
• Cultural diversity: To the changeling, all human behavior needs studying; to the chameleon, any group of humans can be found to need destroying. Haldeman describes the differences between the Americans and the Samoans, but any hints of racism appear to be on the part of white American government people. Haldeman describes Samoa affectionately, spending paragraphs on its views, beauty, and variety of foods.

• Hays, Carl. "Camouflage (Book)". Booklist 100.22 (Aug. 2004): 1913.
• Sallis, James. "Life/Troll: A Love Story/Camouflage". Fantasy & Science Fiction 109.6 (Dec. 2005): 38-43.
• "CAMOUFLAGE (Book)." Kirkus Reviews 72.10 (15 May 2004): 477.
• "August Publications (Book)". Publishers Weekly 251.30 (26 July 2004): 42–43.
• Robischon, Noah. "SCI-FI 101: Preventing Earth Defects" in Entertainment Weekly (10 Sep. 2004): 167.

• List of underwater science fiction works

• Camouflage at Worlds Without End