Keith Laumer - Dinosaur Beach

“Yes,” she said, in a thin, old, but very calm voice. “You’ve come. As I knew you would, of course.”

“It’s nice to be expected, ma’am,” I said inanely. “Who told you? About us, I mean. Coming, that is.”

A flicker of a frown went across her face. “The predictor screens, of course.” Her eyes went past me. “May I ask: where is the rest of your party?”

“She’s, ah, still asleep.”

“Asleep? How very curious.”

“Back there.” I nodded toward the bedrooms. “She’ll be happy to know we aren’t alone here. We had a long day yesterday, and—”

“Excuse me. Yesterday? When did you come?”

“About twenty-four hours ago.”

“But—why didn’t you advise me at once? I’ve been waiting—I’ve been ready… for such a long time…” Her voice almost broke, but she caught it.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. We didn’t know you were here. We searched the place, but—”

“You didn’t know ?” Her face looked shocked, stricken.

“Where were you keeping yourself? I thought we’d checked every room…”

“I… my… I have my quarters in the outwing,” she said in a broken voice. A tear spilled from the outer corner of each eye and she brushed them away impatiently. “I had assumed,” she said, getting her voice under control again, “that you had come in response to my signal. But of course that’s not important. You’re here. May I have just a few minutes? There are some things—mementos—but if there’s any hurry, I can leave them, of course,” she added hurriedly, watching my face.

“I have no intention of hurrying you, ma’am,” I said. “But I think there may be some misunderstanding—”

“But you will take me?” Her thin hand caught my arm; panic was in her voice. “Oh, please. take me with you, I beg you, please, don’t leave me here—”

“I promise,” I said, and put my hand over hers; it was as cool and thin as a turkey’s foot.

“But I think you’re making some erroneous assumptions. Maybe I did too. Are you a part of the station cadre?”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head like a child caught with a paw in the cookie jar. “This is not my station. Not my station at all. I merely took refuge here, you see, after the collapse.”

“Where are the station personnel, ma’am?”

She looked at me as if I’d said something amazing. “There are none. No one. It’s as I stated in my reports. I found the station abandoned. I’ve been here alone, no one else—”

“Sure, I see, just you. Pretty lonely. But it’s all right now, we’re here, you won’t be alone any longer.”

“Yes, you’re here. As I knew you would be—someday. The instruments never lie. That’s what I told myself. It was just that I didn’t know when. ”

“Instruments—told you we’d come?”

“Oh, yes.”

She sank into the nearest chair, and her old fingers flew over the keys. The screen lit up, changed texture, flowed through colors, ended a vivid greenish-white rectangle on the right edge of which a wavering black vertical line, like a scratch on a film strip, flickered and danced. I was about to open my mouth to admire her virtuosity on the keyboard when she made a small sighing sound and crumpled forward onto her face, out cold.

I grabbed her, eased her from the chair, got my arms under her. She couldn’t have weighed ninety pounds. Mellia met me at the mouth of the corridor. She stopped dead and put a hand over her mouth, then remembered her Field Agent’s training and smoothed the look off her face.

“Ravel—who—”

“Dunno. She was here when I woke up; thought I’d come to rescue her. She started to tell me something, and fainted.”

Mellia stepped back to let me pass, her eyes on the old woman. She stiffened; she caught my arm. She stared at the withered face.

“Mother!” she gasped.

I let a few long seconds slide past. The old lady’s eyes fluttered and opened. “Mother!” Mellia said again and grabbed for her hand.

The old lady smiled rather vaguely. “No, no, I’m not anyone’s mother,” she said. “I always wanted… but…” She faded out again.

I took her along to an empty room and put her on the bed. Mellia sat beside her and rubbed her hands and made sure she was breathing properly.

“What’s this about your mother?” I said.

“I’m sorry. She’s not my mother, of course. I was just being silly. I suppose all elderly women look alike…”

“Is your mother that old?”

“No, of course not. It was just a superficial resemblance.” She gave me a small apologetic laugh. “I suppose the psychologists could read all sorts of things into it.”

“She said she was expecting us,” I said. “Said the instruments predicted it.”

Mellia looked at me. “Predicted? There’s no such instrument.”

“Maybe she’s slipped her clutch. Alone too long.”

The old lady sighed and opened her eyes again. If Lisa reminded her of anyone, she didn’t say so. Mellia made encouraging noises. They smiled at each other. Love at first sight.

“Now I’ve made an old fool of myself,” the old lady said. “Fainting like that…” Her expression became troubled.

“Don’t be silly,” Mellia said. “It’s perfectly understandable…”

“Do you feel well enough to talk?” I said, in spite of the dirty look Mellia gave me.

“Of course.”

I sat on the side of the bed. “Where are we?” I asked as gently as possible. “What is this place?”

“The Dinosaur Beach Timecast station,” the old girl said, looking just a little surprised.

“Maybe I should say when are we…”

“The station date is twelve thirty-two.” Now she looked puzzled.

“But—” Mellia said.

“Meaning we haven’t made a Timejump after all,” I told her, as smoothly as you can say something as preposterous as that.

“Then—we’ve jumped—somehow—to a secondary line!”

“Not necessarily. Who’s to say what’s primary and what’s secondary, after what we’ve been through?”

“Excuse me,” the old lady said. “I get the impression from what you say that… that matters are not as well as might be hoped.”

Mellia gave me a troubled look. I passed it on to the old lady.

“It’s quite all right,” she said. “You may speak freely to me… I understand that you are Timecast agents. That makes us colleagues.” She smiled faintly.

“Field Agent Mellia Gayl, at your service,” she said.

I happened to be looking at Mellia—my Mellia; her face turned as pale as marble. She didn’t move, didn’t speak.

“And who are you, my dear?” the old lady said, almost gaily. She couldn’t see Mellia’s face. “I almost feel I know you.”

“I’m Field Agent Ravel,” I spoke up. “This is— Agent Lisa Kelly.”

Mellia turned on me, but caught herself. I watched her smoothing her face out; it was an admirable piece of work.

“We’re happy to meet… a… a colleague, Agent Gayl,” she said in a voice with all the color washed out of it.

“Oh, yes, I led a very active life at one time,” the old lady said, lightly, smiling. “Life was exciting in those days, before… before the Collapse. We had such high ambitions, such a noble program. How we worked and planned! After each mission, we’d gather to study the big screen, to gauge the effects of our efforts, to congratulate or commiserate with each other. We had such hopes in those days.”

“I’m sure you did,” Mellia said in a lifeless whisper.

“After the official announcement, of course, things were different,” the elderly Miss Gayl went on. “We still tried, of course; we hadn’t really accepted defeat, admitted it; but we knew. And then the deterioration began. The chronodegradation. Little things, at first. The loss of familiar articles, the memory lapses, and the contradictions. We sensed life unraveling around us. Many of the personnel began dropping off, then. Some jumped out to what they hoped might be stable loci; others were lost in temporal distortion areas. Some simply—deserted, wandered away. I stayed on, of course. I always hoped—somehow—” She broke off abruptly. “But all that’s neither here nor there, of course—”