Stop it, he told himself. Keep a positive attitude. You will figure out how the machine works. We will get out of here. THE sun was still above the horizon when Susan looked around and said this would be a good place to stop. Matt didn't like it.
"You'd be surprised how quickly that will go away," she said. "There's things we need to do, and it's best to be familiar with the immediate area before it gets dark. We need every advantage we can get if there are night-hunting predators around."
Matt still didn't look convinced, so she added, "Do you really want to gather firewood in the dark with saber-tooths prowling around?"
There was plenty of wood lying around, both dead branches blown down by the wind and a couple trees that had been devastated by large herbivores, probably sloths or mammoths. They worked at it for half an hour, and when they were done it was getting harder to see. They arranged a fire and lit it with the lighter they had found in a desk drawer. Soon it was crackling, and Susan's spirits soared with the sparks that leaped into the air. She looked at Matt, who was sweaty, soot-streaked, and grinning.
"Fire is the basic unit of civilization," he said.
"I never thought of it that way... but you may be right."
"It's the first thing that really set us off from other animals," Matt said. "And it still does. Other animals have languages, other animals use tools. We're still the only animal that manipulates energy."
Susan had felt something like that before, sitting around a campfire. Out in the woods, just you and your family or some other Girl Scouts... you realized that the bad things feared the light, that as long as you were in the light, you were okay. If the fire went out, if the darkness closed in, that was when you were in trouble.
Matt found a few long branches and arranged them with one end in the fire and the other sticking out where they could reach them.
"If we see anything move out there," he said, "grab one of these and throw it toward the movement. Like a torch."
"Good idea."
They ate some of their remaining fruit and a candy bar each.
"Too bad we don't have some—"
"I wish we had some—"
"—hot dogs!" they finished together, and laughed longer than the coincidence really warranted. When they were through with their meager dinner they sat close together and stared into the fire. Susan finished her drink and was about to toss the empty can into the fire, then she frowned at it. "Say we leave this back here in the past," she said.
"Well, what if somebody finds it? Digs it up, back in the future."
"They'd be mighty puzzled, wouldn't they."
"I mean... would it cause a paradox, or something?"
"I've always operated on the assumption that there are no real paradoxes."
"I don't get your meaning."
"I mean 'real-world' paradoxes. Sure, they can exist in math, and in logic. The human mind can
propose a paradox, but if you examine it you'll find it's either a semantic problem or a hypothetical physical problem that actually doesn't exist in the real world."
"Help me out here."
"Okay. Take a silly paradox, the one Gilbert and Sullivan described in Pirates of Penzance. Frederick was apprenticed to the Pirate King until his twenty-first birthday, not his twenty-first year. But he was born in a leap year, on the twenty-ninth of February. Therefore, though he was twenty-one years old, he had only had five birthdays. You see, the paradox only arises because of the way the contract was worded."
"Got it."
"Then there's another classic one, the grandfather paradox. You build a time machine, go into the past, and kill your grandfather when he's a young boy. So your father is never born, and you are
never born..." He waited.
"So you never built a time machine and never traveled in time and never killed your grandfather."
"Exactly."
"But... that is a paradox. Isn't it?"
"It would be, if time travel was possible. Up to now, I would have sworn it wasn't possible, so I
didn't spend a lot of time worrying about temporal paradoxes."
"Sounds like you'd better reorder your priorities."
"Sounds like."
They were silent for a long time, listening to the crackling of the fire. Susan tried not to look at it, not wanting to destroy her night vision. Once she thought she saw a movement at the edge of their little clearing and she tossed a flaming brand at it. Nothing happened, and the torch soon burned itself out. "So," Matt said at last. "You know any good ghost stories?"
"Matt," she said quietly at one point. "We may never get out of here, right?"
He looked at her a long time, trying to find it in himself to give her a reassuring lie. He knew he couldn't do it, so he just shook his head. She scooted closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder. They hadn't found anything like real bedding in their search of the warehouse. The best they could do were several plastic tarps that had been used for various things. They were sitting on one, and each of them had one to wrap up in. They weren't very thick, and he could feel her warmth against him.
"Maybe we should change our names to Adam and Eve," she said.
He looked at her, and for once in his life he didn't even think about it, he just leaned over and kissed her. She responded for a moment, then pushed him gently away.
"I want you to hold me," she said. "Let's get together under both these tarps, we'll be warmer."
"Good idea," he said, breathing hard. They struggled to get it all arranged, and then lay down side by side and he took her in his arms. She hugged him tightly.
"I'm afraid," she whispered.
"So am I."
"I want you to make love to me," she said. "But I guess it would be too dangerous. There's things out there, hunting. We need to stay alert."
"You're right," he said. She let go of him and started squirming around, and he asked, "What are you doing?"
"Getting out of my pants. Wishing, for the first time in a long time, that I'd worn a skirt, so if we have to run for it I wouldn't have to run half-naked."
"Maybe I should get out of my pants, too. So you won't be the only one running away half-naked."
"That's very considerate of you," she said. She raised her knees under the tarp and got her jeans off, then faced him and slipped her hand into the waist of his pants, and squeezed his erection. "Yes, I do think you should take off your pants."
She helped him, then took his hand and pressed it to her belly. He moved it over her hip, down her thigh, and then into curly hair and wetness. She kissed him, and he moved over her. "I wanted to tell you... I've been trying for weeks to tell you that I love you."
"I wouldn't."
"I know," she said. But Matt noticed she didn't say she returned the love. She asked, "When?"
"When did I fall in love with you?"
"Yes."
"You want me to pinpoint a moment?"
"Sure. Can't you?"
"I'm tempted to say it happened over time, as I got to know you. But I think it really happened
the first time I saw you."
She looked at him, and grinned. "Really? Love at first sight?"
"I'll have to admit it wasn't the first time it's happened to me. I used to fall in love at first sight
several times a week. This was just the first time I've been able to do anything about it."
She laughed. "When did it first happen?"
"My first day of college. But she was an older woman. She was, oh, I'd guess around twenty.
And I was twelve."
"You're something else, Matt. My first supergenius."
It was only later that he even thought about that, of other men she might have made love to, or been in love with. She might still be in love with another man, she had never talked about it. So maybe it was despair, surrendering to the idea that they would never go back to the world they knew. Maybe it was fear of the darkness out there and the things hiding in it. Maybe it was the need for human warmth and knowing he was the only one who could provide it. He didn't care. Just then he lived entirely in the moment, in his body and not in his head. Just then she became his entire world.