The smell could have been sliced and sold for linoleum. I spat and coughed and sploshed and my hand scraped a surface that sloped gently up under me. My knees bumped and I was crouched on all fours, snorting and trying without much luck to squeeze the muck from my eyes. I tried to crawl forward and slipped and slid backward and almost dunked my head again.
I did it more carefully the next time: eased forward, with most of my weight supported by the semiliquid goo, and felt over the shore. It wasn’t like any shore I had ever encountered before; hard-surfaced, planar, as smooth as a toilet bowl, curving gently upward. I groped my way along sideways, slipping, splashing, suffocating in the raw-sewage reek. Something spongy and rotting came apart under my hands. I tried again to crawl forward, made a yard and slid back two.
I was getting tired. There was nothing to hold onto. I had to rest. But if I rested, I sank. I thought about sliding down under that glutinous surface and trying to breathe and getting a lungful of whatever it was I was floundering in, and dying there and turning to something as black and corrupt as what I was buried in—
It was a terrible thought. I opened my mouth and yelled.
And somebody answered.
“You down there! Stop kicking around! I’m throwing you a line!”
It was a female voice, not to say feminine, coming from above me somewhere. It sounded sweeter than a choir of massed angels. I tried to call out a cheery and insouciant reply, managed a croak. A beam of white light speared down at me from a point thirty feet above and fifty feet away. It hunted across the bubbly black surface and glared in my eyes.
“Lie still!” the voice commanded. The light went away, bobbled around, came back. Something came whistling down and slapped into the muck a few feet away. I floundered and groped, encountered a half-inch rope slick with the same stuff I was slick with.
“There’s a loop at the end. Put your foot in it. I’ll haul you up.”
The rope slid through my hands; I scrabbled, felt the knot, got another dipping trying to hook a foot in it, settled for a two-handed grip. The rope surged, pulling me clear of the stew and up the slope. I held on and rode. The surface under me curved up and up. Progress was slowed. Another yard. Another. Half a yard. A foot. I was at an angle of about thirty degrees now, pressed tight against the slope. Another surge and I heard the rope rasping above. An edge raked my forearm. I grabbed, almost lost the rope, was dragged up the final foot and got a knee over the edge and crawled forward across loose sand and went down on my face and out.
13
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 whirly 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.
14
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.