Dinosaur Beach

23

I got up early; even asleep, the silence got to me. There was a well-equipped kitchen at the end of the dormitory wing; apparently even A-P theoreticians had a taste for a fresh-laid egg and a slice of sugar-cured ham from a nulltime locker where aging didn’t happen.

I punched in two breakfasts and started back to call Mellia, and then changed my mind when I heard footsteps across the big hall.

She was standing by the Timecaster’s chair, dressed in a loose robe, looking at the screen. She didn’t hear me coming, barefooted, until I was within ten feet of her. She turned suddenly, and from the expression on her face, nearly had an angina attack.

So did I. It wasn’t Mellia’s beautiful if disapproving face; it was an old woman, white-haired, with sunken cheeks and faded eyes that might have been bright and passionate once, a long time ago. She tottered, as if she were going to fall, and I shot out a hand and caught her by an arm as thin as a stick of wood inside her flowing sleeve. She made a nice recovery; feature by feature, her face put itself back together, leaving a look that was almost too serene, under the circumstances.

“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.