Camouflage by Joe Haldeman Page B

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.
    In the ringing silence after the shots, the man next to the changeling said, "Shitty water woulda killed 'em anyhow."
    The changeling nodded and, with the others, began shuffling away from the execution scene. It was having difficulty trying to generalize about human nature.
    Would Americans have done that, with the roles reversed? It seemed inconsistent with what it had observed, except occasionally at the insane asylum, where there were patients unable to see others as human beings.
    After the war, it would have to look into this. That wouldn't be very hard, since apparently the Japanese were going to win, and everyone would have to learn their language, and be assimilated into their culture.
    Unless they slaughtered all the Americans like animals, as it had just witnessed. Well, it could become a Japanese who'd lost the power of speech. That had worked before.
    They finally got to Balanga, the first town on their route of march. Filipinos lined the road, staring at the Americans, and began throwing food to them—sticks of sugar cane, rice balls, sugar cakes—until suddenly the Japanese started shooting.
    The civilians scattered, running for cover. Two young men took off across a field, which apparently caught someone's attention. Three of the guards, clustered together, started firing at them, laughing. They kept missing them, either on purpose or from poor marksmanship, but they finally fell.
    The three went out to inspect their handiwork, and evidently the two boys were still alive. They kicked them around and yelled at them, and finally shot them several times point-blank.
    Most of the men watched this tableau in shocked silence. Someone behind the changeling growled "fucking Jap bastards," and someone else shushed him.
    The changeling tried to interpret what was happening in terms of animal and human behavior, and the little it knew about Japanese culture. If they were trying to scare the Americans with a show of brutality, it wasn't working well; the ones susceptible to that were already nearly paralyzed with terror. Most of the prisoners by now assumed they were going to die, and were just concentrating on not being next. Each fresh horror seemed to increase the men's contempt for the Japanese "animals" (as if nonhuman animals ever behaved in such elaborate ways), and also increased their dissatisfaction with their own command, who had surrendered them. Though their defense of Bataan would have been unimpressive, without food, water, gasoline, or ammunition.
    The Japanese behavior revealed vicious contempt, as if the individual Americans had decided to throw down their arms rather than fight. That was an understandable simplification, for young men so unsophisticated they evidently still thought, after all these days, that the Americans would understand Japanese if they spoke it loudly enough.
    The gulf between the two sides was so large