She shook her head and started to trill. It was an unearthly sound, and no human could have done it, glottal stops modulating one tone in rapid-fire Morse code.
It was over in forty-five seconds. All three stared at the artifact; nothing overt happened.
The chameleon rose and walked quietly over to stand next to her, Russell following just behind. "Looks like it didn"t work."
"I felt something. Give it time."
"We have plenty of time. Don"t worry." The chameleon reached out and absently stroked her arm; gently took her wrist. "The arm"s all healed?"
She c.o.c.ked her head. "Of course."
"Pity." He pulled down hard and the shoulder socket popped sickeningly, and the arm ripped off. An instant later her other hand came up and struck his face so hard the lower hinge of the jaw broke off and swung free.
He staggered back and threw the arm away, and used both hands to press his chin back into place.
"What are you doing?" she said. After an initial spray, the bleeding from her shoulder stopped.
It took a moment for the jaw to fuse back into place. "I"m doing ... what I"ve lived for, for thousands of years."
"Why?"
"Only one of us per planet."
"I"m not one of you."
"But you are-" Russ leaped onto his back and put a scissor-hold on his throat. The chameleon threw him off like a doll, to crash against the heavy laser mount.
"You are my only rival here. This is not personal. You just have to die."
She sidled around to where Russ was lying still. "It became personal when you hurt him. And I can"t die."
"I believe I can put you into a state equivalent to death. All I have to do is tear you into several pieces and make sure those pieces stay separate. For all time."
The changeling found a pulse in Russell"s throat and stood between him and the monster. "I could do the same to you."
"Not with one arm, I think. You won"t have time to grow a new one, and you can"t leave this room to do so at leisure."
She looked at the walls. "You"re wrong. I could be through that wall and in the water in seconds. I don"t think you want to face me in the water. Even one-armed."
"Leave and I"ll kill him. Your choice."
The changeling hesitated. Jack couldn"t let Russ live, no matter what happened to her.
"Go ahead," the chameleon said. "I won"t even try to stop you. You"ll be back, and meanwhile I"ll enjoy killing him slowly. He hasn"t been easy to work with."
She tried another tack. "I don"t understand you. You"re like a scientist who"s searched all his life for something, but when you find it, you want to destroy it without learning anything first."
"I learned enough before you left that bedroom to come here. And I"m no more a scientist than you are a woman." He suddenly looked left. "Well, isn"t that that cute." cute."
The amputated arm was transforming itself into a weapon. The nails had become long metal talons and eyes had formed over two knuckles. Pseudopods along the sides were turning into insectoid legs.
He turned back to the changeling. "Let me show you what I looked like when I first started looking for you." He became more than a foot shorter, bulking out so much that his T-shirt and shorts split. Black hair bristled all over his body and his face coa.r.s.ened into Neanderthal features. He tore the rags of clothing away to reveal ma.s.sive ridges of muscle and prominent genitals, engorged.
She leaped at him and he casually kicked her aside, the rough horn of his toe claws ripping cloth and skin between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with a crunch of broken bone. She rolled once and came up in a crouch, pale, uncertain.
He stroked himself for a moment, looking at her, and muttered, "No."
"Please try." She tensed.
Without looking at the target, he struck sideways with the speed of a serpent and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the disembodied arm. Wriggling, it tried to fight, but he closed a hand over its claws and bent back until they broke. He threw them to the floor with a clatter and then stripped the legs off like someone cleaning a shrimp.
He bit at the biceps and tore off a strip of flesh and then, munching it, broke the arm at the elbow. With a long dirty thumbnail he daintily excavated the eyes over the knuckles, and popped them in his mouth.
He smiled, his teeth pink with her blood, and took another bite.
The changeling looked around the room for something it could use as a weapon. The place was too neat; there was nothing loose. The huge laser could certainly cut the creature into chunks, but it was immovable as a boulder and could only be activated remotely.
Russell had regained consciousness and was staring at the horrible scene. The chameleon had stripped almost all of the flesh from the bone above the elbow. It dropped the arm and spit out a large gobbet. "At this point I should say "You have wonderful taste, my dear," but in fact you don"t. I don"t think I"ve ever eaten anything as vile as you."
"You"re the first creature I"ve ever known to take a second bite. You"re the one with no taste." She saw Russell fumble in his pocket and come out with his Swiss Army knife. "No, Russ!"
The chameleon turned to look at him and laughed. "Wrong tool, Russell."
"Oh?" He half-turned and jammed it into a high-voltage wall socket. There was a shower of sparks and the shock knocked him flat. The lights went out.
The backup, a large gasoline-powered generator, came on in a second. The lights flickered and then returned to normal brightness. Russ sat back up, cradling his injured hand.
"That didn"t buy you any time."
"That wasn"t the point. People will come to investigate."
"They"ll find they can"t get the blast door open."
"You really haven"t thought this through, have you? You kill us and then what? Call a press conference?"
"I"ll just leave the way she-" He turned, and she wasn"t there anymore.
The changeling dropped from a ceiling girder just as he looked up. She landed on his shoulders and gave his head two twists, and his neck snapped. A third jerk and the head came off, with enough force to hit the ceiling. But he had hold of her leg by then, and spraying blood from his neck, flung her off in a high arc. She landed heavily and rolled to the base of the artifact, not far from Russell.
By the time she stopped rolling, it had grown a new head, a grotesque combination of the Neanderthal and Jack. "That did hurt. Shall we play pain?"
Pulling herself to her feet, the changeling reached up and touched the artifact.
There was a sound like a distant large bell struck once.
The changeling took its true form for the first time in a million years. It elongated until it was about eight feet long. Its face had only one opening, with no apparent sense organs. You couldn"t focus on its body-it changed, moment by moment, colors shimmering all over the spectrum, limbs growing and fading and trans.m.u.ting. It was inhumanly beautiful.
The artifact flowed off its stand as if it were mercury. It shot in one straight rivulet toward the chameleon and formed itself into a domed cage around him.
The changeling spoke to it, in colors.
The chameleon seized the liquid bars of its cage, but they wouldn"t budge. Then it spasmed into rigidity, and then froze, literally, frost riming all over its body.
The artifact melted into a puddle all around the chameleon, and then re-formed as a large silver ovoid, three or four times the size of its original manifestation, with the deadly creature inside. Colors flashed all over the room, and then stopped, and the changeling became Jan again, flickered through Sharon, and settled on Rae.
She walked over to Russ, took his hand, and helped him to his feet. She embraced him.
"What was ... was that you?"
"It"s news to me, too, but yes. I guess that"s what I look like when I don"t have to look like something else."
There was a loud croaking sound, and a large part of the ceiling dropped a few feet, then stopped, turned sideways, and settled slowly to the floor, leaning neatly against the wall.
"The artifact is sort of like my partner, alive in its way. It didn"t realize who I was until I sang and touched it. That changed it, too; woke it up. It"s been in a kind of waiting mode, suspended animation, since I left it to explore."
"Ninety years ago?"
"More like a million." She looked at the ovoid. "It doesn"t know what Jack is, but he obviously shouldn"t be allowed to remain on Earth. We"ll take him home for study."
"He"s not dead?"
"No. He can"t die any more than we can. But he"s not from our world."
"Where is your world?"
"Ten thousand light-years away.A planet in a globular cl.u.s.ter- Messier 22, in Sagittarius." She gave him a long kiss. "Get a telescope and look me up sometime."
"You have to go."
"Yes. 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."
"Well ... I know how that feels." She squeezed his hand and started to say something, but turned and walked toward the ship. An entrance rippled open. "Could I go with you?"
"Still the astronaut." She blinked away tears and shook her head. "The journey"s too long. And you"d have to learn to like chlorine." She looked at him for a long moment and stepped into the ovoid. The entrance resealed.
The ship silently rose toward the hole in the ceiling. But then it settled back down to the floor. It opened again.
The changeling was in its natural form, splendid, chaotic. It became Rae again.
"Actually, the ship says you could could come. But not as a human. You"d have to let it change you into something like me." come. But not as a human. You"d have to let it change you into something like me."
"It could do that?"
"Nothing to it." She smiled at him, eyes glittering. "And you"d still be Russ. My Russ."
Suddenly, loudspeakers crackled. Jan"s voice, painfully loud: "Jack? Russell? What the h.e.l.l is going on in there?"
Russell shook his head and laughed.
"Russ, the guard says you went in there with me! What are you doing?"
"Just... taking a little trip." He paused, then stepped over the threshold and felt himself start to glow.