False Memory

yards to the north. The moonlight revealed two men twenty feet back from the tide line, huddled at some task.
    He wondered if they could be digging for clams. The doctor had no idea where clams were dug up, or when, because that was work, and he had little interest in the subject. Some were born to work, some to play, and he knew into which camp the stork had delivered him.
    A set of concrete steps with a pipe railing led down a ten-foot-high embankment to the beach, but he preferred not to approach these men along the strand. In the moonlight, they would see him coming, and they might suspect that his intentions weren’t good.
    Instead, Ahriman headed north through soft sand and shore grass, staying well back from the edge of the embankment, so that his prey would not glance up and see him silhouetted against the sky.
    His handmade Italian shoes were filling with sand. By the time this was finished, they would be too abraded to take a good shine.
    Moonglow on the sand. Black shoes wear pale glowing scuffs. Should I blame the moon?
    He wished he’d had an opportunity to change clothes. He still wore the suit in which he had started the day, and it was dreadfully rumpled. Appearance was an important part of strategy, and no game was what it ought to be if played in the wrong costume. Fortunately, the darkness and the moonlight would make him look better-pressed and more elegant than he actually was.
    When he had mentally measured fifty yards, Ahriman approached the brink of the low bluff—and directly in front of him were Skeet and his buddy. They stood only fifteen feet from the foot of the embankment, facing away from him and toward the sea.
    The golden retriever was with them. It, too, was facing the Pacific. The onshore flow, blowing toward Ahriman, ensured that the dog wouldn’t catch his scent.
    He watched them, trying to figure out what they were doing.
    The Skeeter was holding a battery-powered signal light with a semaphore shutter and a quick-flick lens system that allowed him to change the color of the beam. Apparently, he was flashing a message to someone at sea.
    In his right hand, the other man had what might have been a small directional microphone with a dish receiver and a pistol grip. In his left hand, he was holding a set of headphones, pressing one of the cups to his left ear, though he was unlikely to be able to pluck any conversations out of the blustering wind.
    Mysterious.
    Then Ahriman realized the men weren’t aiming the signal light or the microphone at any ships at sea, but high into the night sky.
    More mysterious.
    Unable to understand what he might be walking into, the doctor almost decided to back off from his plan. He was too hot for action, however. Deciding to hesitate no longer, he quickly descended the crumbling embankment. The shifting sand was silent underfoot.
    He could have shot them in the back. But ever since his fantasy in the antique-toy store earlier in the day, he had been itching to gut-shoot someone. Besides, blasting people in the back was no fun; you couldn’t see their faces, their eyes.
    He walked boldly around in front of the men, startling both of them. Pointing the Millennium at the blushing man, the doctor raised his voice to compete with the wind and the crashing surf. “What the hell are you doing here?”
    “Aliens,” the man answered.
    “Making contact,” said Skeet.
    Assuming that they were high on a combination of drugs and that neither of them was likely to make any sense, Ahriman shot Skeet’s pal twice in the gut. The man was flung backward, instantly dead or dying, dropping the microphone and the headset as he fell.
    The doctor turned to the astonished Skeet and shot him twice in the gut, too, and Skeet dropped like a biology-lab skeleton clipped loose from its suspension rack.
    Stars, moon, and gunshots. Two deaths here where life began. The sea and the surf.
    Quickness counts. No time for poetry. Two more rounds in the chest for the downed Skeet—wham, wham—finishing him for sure.
    “Your mother’s a whore, your father’s a fraud, your stepfather’s got pig shit for brains,” Ahriman gloated.
    Swivel, aim. Wham, wham. Two more in the chest for Skeet’s idiot buddy, just for good measure. Regrettably, the doctor knew nothing about this man’s family, so he couldn’t flavor the moment with any colorful insults.
    The pungent stink of gunfire was satisfying, but unfortunately the inconstant moonlight wasn’t the ideal illumination in which to enjoy the