Дэймон Найт - Orbit 6

“Let’s have some lunch and rest,” Lorin said. They had been walking for over four hours. He lowered his pack and took out a plastic cover that he spread out for her to sit on. She rested with her back against one of the trees while he prepared their food: he boiled water over a tiny fire of nut skins, and to the pan of boiling water he added mushrooms and sliced needle nuts, and a handful of the green moss. Jan watched without speaking. When he handed her a cup of the soup she stared at it for several seconds, then said, “Didn’t you bring any of our dri-freeze food? Why this?”

“For fun,” Lorin said. “Try it.” He lifted his cup and sipped the broth and found it even better than he had expected. After a moment Jan tasted hers. They smiled at each other and finished the pot of soup without speaking again. For dessert Lorin peeled raw needle nuts and cut the sections apart. “All things to all men,” he said solemnly. “Fried in their own oil, they are better than potatoes; ground, they make a dandy flour. .”

Jan looked troubled, and he stopped talking and took her hand. “You are having fun, aren’t you, honey? It isn’t so bad now, is it?”

She shrugged and glanced about her at the trees and the deepening gloom that filled the spaces between them. “I don’t like it; I don’t feel safe here, but as long as I don’t think about where we are, just remember that we are here together, then I’m all right. If you went away even for two minutes I might start screaming.”

“I won’t go away even for one minute,” he said. He turned her around and pointed to the tree that had been her backrest. “Look at the pattern it makes, honey. Like great scales overlapping, climbing up the tree in a spiral, getting smaller and smaller as they get near the top.” He rubbed his hand over the smooth glossy tree, and when Jan moved slightly away without touching it, he didn’t force the issue. There would be time. She began to roll up the plastic cover, not looking at him. “We’d better be getting on. Is it much farther?”

“Not much now,” he said. He repacked and they walked again. After another hour Jan began glancing at her watch from time to time, and a worried pucker appeared on her forehead.

“Lorin, do you remember exactly where the place is? Are you sure?”

“I think so,” he said. “It can’t be much farther now. Tired?”

“No, of course not, but we have to get back before dark. . Maybe we should start back now. I don’t think we’ll have time before it gets too dark in here.”

“Half an hour more, then if we don’t find the swamp, we’ll go back. I was sure I could go straight to it again.”

After the half hour was up Jan insisted they turn back. An hour later they both knew they couldn’t get out of the woods before night fell.

“Lorin, we can’t stay out here overnight. I won’t. I can’t!”

“Honey, it’s all right. There’s nothing here at night that wasn’t here in the daylight. I’ll be with you. I even have a tent we can pitch.”

Jan whirled about and stared at him unbelievingly. “You did it on purpose! You deliberately brought me out here too far to get back before dark! What will Doyle say? And the Directors when he reports it?”

“We got lost, that’s all. Who can say anything about that? We got lost.” Lorin caught her to him and pressed his face against her hair for a moment. He said softly, “I had to come out for one night, Jan. I had to bring you with me. I couldn’t help myself.” She didn’t relax in his arms, however, and he kissed her forehead, then got busy with the tent. He made a fire before the tent, and there was the light inside it. He started to cook their meal and presently Jan came out to help him; they sat before the crackling fire and ate, and Jan kept her gaze on the flames and didn’t look beyond the light at all. Later he made love to her, and after she was asleep, he left her side and stood in the dark forest for a long time, simply feeling happy.

The next day Lorin increased their distance from the ship, knowing instinctively which direction he wanted, not able to tell how he knew from hour to hour when he couldn’t see shadows or the sun’s position. But he knew. And slowly Jan grew to understand what he was doing.

When she balked, Lorin put his pack down and caught her arms. “You can’t help yourself, Jan. Don’t you see that? I love you too much to leave you behind, and I can’t go back again. Not now.”

She said, “We have three more days here. Then we have to go back, Lorin. You know that?”

“I know.”

She nodded; looking at his face, studying his eyes, his mouth, she said, “All right. I’m with you. I wouldn’t have come if you’d told me what you planned, but I am here, and I won’t spoil it for you.”

Arm in arm they walked again, whistling, singing, stopping to gaze in awe at a waterfall they found, laughing at each other’s clumsiness in crossing the brook that formed the falls. They found a cave and stepped inside it, and Lorin said thoughtfully, “It would make a good home when the tent wears out, or if it gets too small.”

Jan stiffened again at his words, and her tension stayed with her for the next hour, fading gradually as the cave was left behind. Lorin didn’t refer to it again, but he made a mental map, locating the cave on it for future reference.

On the third day Jan knew he wasn’t going to take her back at all. She sat down on a boulder and kicked the deep mat of needles and nuts. “I won’t go any farther. You could kill them all by this, and you know it. If we turn back right now, and don’t waste any time, we can make it before the snap takes them back.” She kicked a nut viciously. “You would murder them all without a thought?”

“I left a complete list with weights on it for Doyle to substitute,” Lorin said. “He’s no fool. He’ll be careful when he knows he has to make substitutions. They’ll be all right.”

“And if they die, won’t that be even better for you? Then no one would ever discover this time zone. You know they never double check if they lose a ship. They assume that it was a bad time and let it go at that. Is that what you hope for?”

He hadn’t thought of it consciously, but with her words, he knew that the thought had been there. He jerked the pack up and slung it over his shoulder. “All right, so that’s what I hope for. You know who will get to come to a zone like this? Those who hate it. Like Doyle, and you. They’ll come here and sweat out the minutes until they can leave again, living only for the bonus that’s waiting for them, afraid all the time, wishing the zone would burn up, or sink into the ocean, dumping filth here, taking what’s good and clean, leaving their filth behind. Can you imagine what this place right here will look like in ten years? When they finish with it, it’ll be as bad as the fire-bombed ruins we found on the third probe. I don’t care if Doyle and the others live or die. If they’re careful they’ll get back. But are they alive, will they ever be again? Alive in hell?”

He started to walk. She had to follow; she had no choice but to follow, and he would make her forget the other world, the other time that was like a fading nightmare.

A searing pain hit the back of his head, and he clutched it, staggering, thinking she had thrown something. The pain deepened and he fell, and abruptly there was only blackness.

He heard, from a great distance, “He’s okay. He’ll wake up in a moment. Negative.”

He waited without moving, trying to remember, and there was a blank. Hands were fumbling about the back of his head and he opened his eyes warily. A nurse smiled at him. “I’m just removing the electrode wires. Relax a few minutes, and then you can get up.”