The sheer irrefutability of her logic both maddened and quieted him. All he could do was crouch there at the edge of the jungle and watch and wait. “Why don’t they defend themselves?” he muttered. “Surely they must have been prepared for this.” He had a sudden thought. “Your time belt! We could use it to go back just a little and warn them!”
She shook her head. “Won’t work. Just like any other time, you can’t be in two places at once. Besides—they were warned. The computer refused to let them take any action.”
“Huh? Why?”
“It’s part of a nightside time loop. In time, causes can precede events, but the events must be allowed to come about or much worse will happen. God knows, I don’t pretend to understand it. I—I just accept what must be now.”
He looked at her strangely, then back at the scene, which was getting worse. The device was completed now and powered up, and what was clearly a barrel or projector was aimed directly at the base. The sound of an air horn caused the attack from the gargoyles to be broken off, and they retreated a respectful distance. Then the weapon was brought into play, shooting a continuous beam of what seemed almost liquid blue energy at the complex. The energy struck and seemed to flow over the entirety of the building.
There was a crackling sound near them, and Moosic looked over to see tiny fields of electricity dancing around Dawn’s time belt. The small red displays blinked on and off erratically. “The time belt!” he almost shouted, in no danger with the din of the attack masking them. “It’s shorting out!”
Dawn seemed to be in almost a hypnotized state, but she suddenly snapped out of it. She picked up the microphone and dialed the base frequency. “Dawn to Base—we are caught outside and unarmed. Advise!”
There was a crackling sound, and then a tinny voice responded, “Use the belt and get out now! It’s your only chance…” And then it went dead. She turned and looked at him and seemed almost ready to cry, but she did not.
“Here! Let’s open the belt wide so it goes around both of us. It’ll be tight, but I think we can manage,” she said.
“You mean use it now?”
“While we still can. The base may fall or short out any minute!”
He felt guilty about running, but it was clear that once the base fell, the occupying force would scour the island for any survivors. There was literally nothing they could do but take the chance.
The belt was never intended for two people and was an extremely tight fit, but they seemed to make it as she’d predicted. More electricity danced, and she had trouble making the adjustments on the belt.
Everything blacked out and they were falling, but ever so briefly. Then all exploded again into reality, but this time into darkness.
The belt continued to sputter. They got it off as quickly as possible and it fell to the ground, then lit up the area with a display of dancing sparks.
“Where’d we go?” he asked her.
“Nowhere. There wasn’t time. I just tapped the advance for a decade. We’re still on the island, ten years in the future of the attack. That should be safe enough. I didn’t dare try any long jump. What if the power failed? And if we did make it, we’d be assimilated.”
He nodded, crediting her with some swift thinking. The belt continued to crackle, then made a single electronic whine which slowly faded and died. They were again in darkness. There were no dancing sparks, no red readouts on the belt.
“Oh, Jesus!” he breathed, half cursing and half praying. “The power’s gone out!”
She stared down at the blackness. “Or the belt’s O.K., but no longer connected to a power source. I—I think they shorted out the base.”
And then she cried, long and hard, and he did his best to comfort her, although, truth to tell, he felt like crying, too.
In some ways, the island had not changed at all. In others, the change was dramatic.
Where the base had been, there was now simply a large depression of impressive size and squared-off dimensions, but with growth already creeping into it in profusion. Around the area, much of the gardens had gone wild, yet there were still fruit trees and bushes and even vegetables growing.
Surveying the place, Ron Moosic sighed and sat on a rock. “Well, in one way it’s not so bad. Almost the Garden of Eden, you might say. We won’t starve, that’s for sure, and the stream is a secure water supply. From the looks of the sun and the jungle I’d say this place has two climates, hot and hotter. Of course, there are no doctors, no dentists, no nails or hammers or saws. Nothing but the clothes on our backs, such as they are.”
“These flimsy things aren’t going to last long out here,” she noted. She kicked off her boots and started to remove her clothes.
“Going natural, huh?”
“You should, too,” she told him. “We won’t have these forever, so we better get our skin and feet toughened up. We might eventually figure out how to rig lean-tos and maybe even huts, but there’s nothing I’ve seen on this island that can be used to make clothes or shoes. I’ll use these, as long as they last, when we explore the island, but not otherwise. There’s no use.”
“You’ve got a point,” he admitted, and stripped as well. They stood up and looked at each other. “You know,” he said, “we really are Adam and Eve.” He went over to her and hugged her.
“You’re turning on,” she noted softly.
“Oh? I hadn’t noticed.” He grew suddenly serious. “You know we may be here for the rest of our lives.”
“However long they may be,” she replied. “I’m making a personal decision right here and now. I’m not going to think about time at all. Not now, not unless I have to. There’s nothing else except now. There’s nobody else but us. There’s no place else but here.”
“That’s fair enough,” he agreed. “Maybe it all worked out for the best. Maybe this is the place for nightsiders. Let’s make the most of it.” And, with that, they kissed.
It was in many ways a new beginning. After a while, they set out to explore the island and found it relatively large. In the end, Moosic estimated it at being more than forty miles across and perhaps fifty long, the product of two undersea volcanic peaks breaking the surface of the deep ocean. One peak, on whose slopes the base had been built, was extremely old and worn, a low mound now, with even its ancient crater partly caved in and difficult to distinguish. From there the land ran down to a flat, though not level plain that made up the bulk of the island. The product of old lava flows, it had long been overgrown into jungle. There were, however, unspoiled black sand beaches where plain met sea.
The other end of the island’s peak was by no means a grand mountain, although it surely was if one could have rolled back the ocean to see the whole of it, but it was certainly newer, with a clear cone shape caved in on one side and evidence through its growth of clearly less than ancient flows.
Although they could roam some distance, and did, they realized that their permanent home had to be in the remains of the old base, for it was only there that a continuous and guaranteed supply of edible vegetation was found. One day, Moosic decided, he would try and transplant some of the more valuable edible plants to the beach areas and perhaps the far slopes, but for now the first item of business was setting up a permanent home.
There was something about the passage of time that dimmed their memories and calmed their demons. Dawn had said that there was no assimilation possible in the Safe Zone, but, whether for psychological or physiological reasons, they did not, after a while, think back on or dwell upon the past. It was not that the information wasn’t still there, simply that it was filed away as irrelevant. Conversation turned to the practical thoughts that seemed directed at nature and solving the practical problems.