Keith Laumer: Dinosaur Beach

Sun in my eyes. Forgot to pull down the shades. Lumpy mattress. Too hot. Sand in the bed. Itches; aches…

I unglued an eyelid and looked at white sand that undulated down to the shore of a brassy sea. A lead-colored sky, but bright for all that; a gray wave that slid in and crump! ed on the beach. No birds, no sails, no kids with buckets, no bathing beauties. Just me and the eternal sea.

It was a view I knew all too well. I was back on Dinosaur Beach, and it was early in the morning, and I hurt all over.

Things cracked and fell away as I sat up, using a couple of broken arms that happened to be handy. There was gray mud caked on my trousers, gluing them to my legs; gray mud covered my shoes. I bent my knee and almost yelped at the pain. The cloth cracked and mud broke and crumbled. I was coated in the stuff like a shrimp in batter. It was on my face, too. I scraped at it, breaking off shells, prying it loose from my sideburns, spitting it. It was in my eyes; I fingered them, making matters worse.

“You’re awake, I see,” a crisp voice said from somewhere behind me. I dug mud from my ear and could hear her feet squeaking in the sand. The sound of something being dumped nearby.

“Don’t claw at your eyes,” she said sharply. “You’d better go down to the water and wash yourself clean.”

I grunted and got both knees and both hands firmly planted and stood up. A firm hand took my right arm just above the elbow—rather gingerly, I thought—and urged me forward. I walked, stumbling, through the loose sand. The sun burned against my eyelids; the sound of surf grew louder. I crossed firm sand that sloped down, and then warm water was swirling around my ankles. She let go and I took a few more steps and sank down in the water and let it wash over me.

The dry mud turned back to slime, releasing a sulphurous stench. I sluiced water over my head, scoured my scalp more or less clean, put my face in the water and scrubbed at it, and could see again.

I pulled my shirt off, mud-heavy, sodden, swished it back and forth, trailing a dark cloud in the murky-pale green. Various small cuts and one larger one across my forearm were leaking pink. My knuckles were raw. The salt water burned like acid. I noticed that the back of my shirt was gone, leaving a charred edge. The sky had turned a metallic black, filled with small whiny lights…

Splashing sounds behind me. Hands on me, pulling me up. I seemed to have been drowning without knowing it. I coughed and retched while she half-dragged me back up through the surf onto the beach. My legs weren’t working very well. They got tangled up and I went down, and rested like that for a minute on all fours, shaking my head to drive away the high, whining noise that seemed to be coming from a spot deep between my ears.

“I didn’t realize… you’re hurt. Your back… burns… what happened to you?” Her voice came from far away, swelling and fading.

“The boy stood on the burning deck,” I said airily, and heard it come out slurred gibberish. I could see a pair of trim female shins in fitted leather boots, a nice thigh under gray whipcord, a pistol belt, a white shirt that had probably been crisp once. I grunted again, just to let her know I was still in there pitching, and got my feet under me and stood, with her hauling on my arm.

“…left you outside all night… first aid… you walk…?… little way…” Some of the drill-sergeant snap was gone from the voice. It sounded almost familiar. I turned and blinked against the sun and looked into her face, which was frowning at me in an expression of deep concern, and felt my heart stop dead for a full beat.

It was Lisa.

I croaked something and grabbed at her; she fended me off and looked stern, like a night nurse not liking her job but doing it anyway.

“Lisa—how did you get here?” I got the words out somehow.

“My name isn’t Lisa—and I got here in the same way I suspect you did.” She was walking me toward a small field tent, regulation issue, that was pitched higher up on the beach, under the shade of the club mosses. She gave me another no-nonsense look. “You are a field man, I suppose?” Her eyes were taking in what was left of my clothes. She sucked in air between her teeth. “You look as if you’d been in an air raid,” she said, almost accusingly.

“Ground-armor attack and a sea chase,” I said. “No air raid. What are you doing here, Lisa? How…”

“I’m Mellia Gayl,” she cut in. “Don’t go delirious on me now. I’ve got enough on my hands without that.”

“Lisa, don’t you know me? Don’t you recognize me?”

“I never saw you before in my life, mister.” She ducked her head and thrust me through the tent fly, into coolness and amber light.

“Get those clothes off,” she ordered. I wanted to assert my masculine prerogative of undressing myself, but somehow it was just a little more than I could manage. I leaned against her and slid down sideways and had my pants dragged down over my ankles. She pulled my shoes off, and my socks. I managed the wet shorts myself. I was shivering and burning up. I was a little boy and mama was putting me to bed. I felt cool softness under me and rolled over on my face, away from the remote fire at my back, and let it all fade away into a soft, embracing darkness.

“I’m sorry about leaving you unattended all last night,” Lisa, or Mellia Gayl, said. “But of course I didn’t know you were hurt—and—”

“And I was out cold and too heavy to carry, even if I’d smelled better,” I filled in. “Forget it. No harm done.”

It had been rather pleasant, waking up in a clean bed, in an air-conditioned tent, neatly bandaged and doped to the hairline, feeling no pain, just a nice warm glow of well-being, and a pleasant numbness in the extremities.

But Lisa still insisted she didn’t know me.

I watched her face as she fiddled with the dressings she’d put on my various contusions, as she spooned soup into me. There wasn’t the slightest shadow of a doubt. She was Lisa.

But somehow not quite the Lisa I’d fallen in love with.

This Lisa—Mellia Gayl—was crisp, efficient, cool, unemotional. Her face was minutely thinner, her figure minutely more mature. It was Lisa, but a Lisa older by several years than the wife I had abandoned only subjective hours ago. A Lisa who had never known me. There were implications in that I wasn’t ready to think about. Not yet.

“They’re full of surprises, the boys back at Central,” I said. “Imagine Lisa—my sweet young bride-being a Timesweep plant. Hard to picture. Took me completely. I thought I met her by accident. All part of the elan. They could have told me. Some actress…”

“You’re tiring yourself out,” Mellia said coolly. “Don’t try to talk. You’ve lost a lot of blood and plasma. Save your strength for recuperating.”

“Otherwise you’re stuck with an invalid or a corpse, eh, kid?” I thought, but the spoon went into my mouth in time to keep me from saying it.

“I heard the splash,” she was saying. “I knew something big was thrashing around down there. I thought a small reptile had blundered into it. It’s a regular trap. They fall in and can’t get out again.” As she spoke, her voice sounded younger, more vulnerable.

“But you came and had a look anyway,” I said. “Animal lover.”

“I was glad when you shouted,” she blurted, as if it was a shameful admission. “I was beginning to wonder… to think—”

“And you still haven’t told me how you happened to be waiting here to welcome me with hot soup and cold glances,” I said.

She tightened up her mouth but it was still a mouth that was made for kisses.