The End of Eternity Part 7

Voy nodded rapidly, "I know. I know."

But Feruque was not to be denied his bitterness. "So you read the biographical data and it's every man a hero. Every man an insupportable loss to his world. So you work it through. You see what would happen to Reality if each man lived, and for Time's sake, if different _combinations_ of men lived.

"In the last month, I've done 572 cancer requests. Seventeen, count them, seventeen Life-Plots came out to involve no undesirable Reality Changes. Mind you, there wasn't one case of a possible _desirable_ Reality Change, but the Council says neutral cases get the serum. Humanity, you know. So exactly seventeen people in a.s.sorted Centuries get cured this month.

"And what happens? Are the Centuries happy? Not on your life. One man gets cured and a dozen, same country, same Time, don't. Everyone says, Why _that_ one? Maybe the guys we didn't treat are better characters, maybe they're rosy-cheeked philanthropists beloved by all, while the one man we cure kicks his aged mother all around the block whenever he can spare the time from beating his kids. They don't know about Reality Changes and we can't tell them.

"We're just making trouble for ourselves, Voy, unless the Allwhen Council decides to screen all applications and approve only those which result in a desirable Reality Change. That's all. Either curing them does some good for humanity, or else it's out. Never mind this business of saying: 'Well, it does no harm.'"

The Sociologist had been listening with a look of mild pain on his face, and now he said, "If it were _you_ with cancer . . ."

"That's a stupid remark, Voy. Is that what we base decisions on? In that case there'd never be a Reality Change. Some poor sucker always gets it in the neck, doesn't he? Suppose you were that sucker, hey?

"And another thing. Just remember that every time we make a Reality Change it's harder to find a good next one. Every physioyear, the chance that a random Change is likely to be for the worse increases. That means the proportion of guys we can cure gets smaller anyway. It's always going to get smaller. Someday, we'll be able to cure only one guy a physioyear, even counting the neutral cases. Remember that."

Harlan lost even the faintest interest. This was the type of griping that went with the business. The Psychologists and Sociologists, in their rare introvertive studies of Eternity, called it identification. Men identified themselves with the Century with which they were a.s.sociated professionally. Its battles, all too often, became their own battles.

Eternity fought the devil of identification as best it could. No man could be a.s.signed to any Section within two Centuries of his homewhen, to make identification harder. Preference was given to Centuries with cultures markedly different from that of their homewhen. (Harlan thought of Finge and the 482nd.) What was more, their a.s.signments were s.h.i.+fted as often as their reactions grew suspect. (Harlan wouldn't give a 5oth Century grafenpiece for Feruque's chances of retaining this a.s.signment longer than another physioyear at the outside.) And still men identified out of a silly yearning for a home in Time (the Time-wish; everyone knew about it). For some reason this was particularly true in Centuries with s.p.a.ce-travel. It was something that should be investigated and would be but for Eternity's chronic reluctance to turn its eyes inward.

A month earlier Harlan might have despised Feruque as a bl.u.s.tering sentimentalist, a petulant oaf who eased the pain of watching the electro-gravitics lose intensity in a new Reality by railing against those of other Centuries who wanted anti-cancer serum.

He might have reported him. It would have been his duty to do so. The man's reactions obviously could no longer be trusted.

He could not do so, now. He even found sympathy for the man. His own crime was so much greater.

How easy it was to slip back to thoughts of Noys.

Eventually he had fallen asleep that night, and he awoke in daylight, with brightness s.h.i.+ning through translucent walls all about until it was as though he had awakened on a cloud in a misty morning sky.

Noys was laughing down at him. "_Goodness_, it was hard to wake you."

Harlan's first reflexive action was a scrabble for bedclothes that weren't there. Then memory arrived and he stared at her hollowly, his face burning red. How should he feel about this?

But then something else occurred to him and he shot to a sitting position. "It isn't past one, is it? Father Time!"

"It's only eleven. You've got breakfast waiting and lots of time."

"Thanks," he mumbled.

"The shower controls are all set and your clothes are all ready."

What could he say? "Thanks," he mumbled.

He avoided her eyes during the meal. She sat opposite him, not eating, her chin buried in the palm of one hand, her dark hair combed thickly to one side and her eyelashes preternaturally long.

She followed every gesture he made while he kept his eyes lowered and searched for the bitter shame he knew he ought to feel.

She said, "Where will you be going at one?"

"Aeroball game," he muttered, "I have the ticket."

"That's the rubber game. And I missed the whole season because of just skipping the time, you know. Who'll win the game, Andrew?"

He felt oddly weak at the sound of his first name. He shook his head curtly and tried to look austere. (It used to have been so easy.) "But surely you know. You've inspected this whole period, haven't you?"

Properly speaking, he ought to maintain a flat and cold negative, but weakly he explained, "There was a lot of s.p.a.ce and Time to cover. I wouldn't know little precise things like game scores."

"Oh, you just don't want to tell me."

Harlan said nothing to that. He inserted the pene-p.r.o.ng into the small, juicy fruit and lifted it, whole, to his lips.

After a moment Noys said, "Did you see what happened in this neighborhood before you came?"

"No details, N--noys." (He forced her name past his lips.) The girl said softly, "Didn't you see us? Didn't you know all along that--"

Harlan stammered, "No, no, I couldn't see myself.I'm not in Rea---- I'm not here till I come. I can't explain." He was doubly fl.u.s.tered. First, that she should speak of it. Second, that he had almost been trapped into saying, "Reality," of all the words the most forbidden in conversation with Timers.

She lifted her eyebrows and her eyes grew round and a little amazed. "Are you ashamed?"

"What we did was not proper."

"Why not?" And in the 482nd her question was perfectly innocent. "Aren't Eternals allowed to?" There was almost a joking cast to that question as though she were asking if Eternals weren't allowed to eat.

"Don't use the word," said Harlan. "As a matter of fact, we're not, in a way."

"Well, then, don't tell them. _I_ won't."

And she walked about the table and sat down on his lap, pus.h.i.+ng the small table out of the way with a smooth and flowing motion of her hip.

Momentarily he stiffened, lifted his hands in a gesture that might have been intended to hold her off. It didn't succeed.

She bent and kissed him on his lips, and nothing seemed shameful any more. Nothing that involved Noys and himself.

He wasn't sure when first he began to do something that an Observer, ethically, had no right to do. That is, he began to speculate on the nature of the problem involving the current Reality and of the Reality Change that would be planned.

It was not the loose morals of the Century, not ectogenesis, not matriarchy, that disturbed Eternity. All of that was as it was in the previous Reality and the Allwhen Council had viewed it with equanimity then. Finge had said it was something very subtle.

The Change then would have to be very subtle and it would have to involve the group he was Observing. So much seemed obvious.

It would involve the aristocracy, the well-to-do, the upper cla.s.ses, the beneficiaries of the system.

What bothered him was that it would most certainly involve Noys.

He got through the remaining three days called for in his chart in a gathering cloud that dampened even his joy in Noys's company.

She said to him, "What happened? For a while, you seemed all different from the way you were in Eter--in that place. You weren't stiff at all. Now, you seem concerned. Is it because you have to go back?"

Harlan said, "Partly."

"Do you have to?"

"I have to."

"Well, who would care if you were late?"

Harlan almost smiled at that. "They wouldn't like me to be late," he said, yet thought longingly just the same of the two-day margin allowed for in his chart.

She adjusted the controls of a musical instrument that played soft and complicated strains out of its own creative bowels by striking notes and chords in a random manner; the randomness weighted in favor of pleasant combinations by intricate mathematical formulae. The music could no more repeat itself than could snowflakes, and could no more fail of beauty.

Through the hypnosis of sound Harlan gazed at Noys and his thoughts wound tightly about her. What would she be in the new dispensation? A fishwife, a factory girl, the mother of six, fat, ugly, diseased? Whatever she was, she would not remember Harlan. He would have been no part of her life in a new Reality. And whatever she would be then, she would not be Noys.

He did not simply love a _girl_. (Strangely, he used the word "love" in his own thoughts for the first time and did not even pause long enough to stare at the strange thing and wonder at it.) He loved a complex of factors; her choice of clothes, her walk, her manner of speech, her tricks of expression. A quarter century of life and experience in a given Reality had gone into the manufacture of all that. She had not been his Noys in the previous Reality of a physioyear earlier. She would not be his Noys in the next Reality.

The new Noys might, conceivably, be better in some ways, but he knew one thing very definitely. He wanted this Noys here, the one he saw at this moment, the one of this Reality. If she had faults, he wanted those faults, too.

What could he do?

Several things occurred to him, all illegal. One of them was to learn the nature of the Change and find out definitely how it would affect Noys. One could not, after all, be certain that . . .

A dead silence wrenched Harlan out of his reverie. He was in the Life-Plotter's office once more. Sociologist Voy was watching him out of the corner of his eye. Feruque's death's-head was lowering at him.

And the silence was piercing.

It took a moment for the significance to penetrate. Just a moment. The Summator had ceased its inner clucking.

Harlan jumped up. "You have the answer, Life-Plotter."

Feruque looked down at the flimsies in his hand. "Yeah. Sure. Sort of funny."

"May I have it?" Harlan held out his hand. It was trembling visibly.

"There's nothing to see. That's what's funny."

"What do you mean--nothing?" Harlan stared at Feruque with eyes that suddenly smarted till there was only a tall, thin blur where Feruque stood.

The Life-Plotter's matter-of-fact voice sounded thin. "The dame doesn't exist in the new Reality. No personality s.h.i.+ft. She's just out, that's all. Gone. I ran the alternatives down to Probability 0.0001. She doesn't make it anywhere. In fact"--and he reached up to rub his cheek with long, spare fingers--"with the combination of factors you handed me I don't quite see how she fit in the old Reality."

Harlan hardly heard "But--but the Change was such a small one."

"I know. A funny combination of factors. Here, you want the flimsies?"

Harlan's hand closed over them, unfeeling. Noys gone? Noys nonexistent? How could that be?

He felt a hand on his shoulder and Voy's voice clashed on his ear. "Are you ill, Technician?" The hand drew away as though it already regretted its careless contact with a Technician's body.

Harlan swallowed and with an effort composed his features. "I'm quite well. Would you take me to the kettle?"

He _must not_ show his feelings. He must act as though this were what he represented it to be, a mere academic investigation. He must disguise the fact that with Noys's nonexistence in the new Reality he was almost physically overwhelmed by a flood of pure elation, unbearable joy.

7 Prelude to Crime

Harlan stepped into the kettle at the 2456th and looked backward to make certain that the barrier that separated the shaft from Eternity was truly flawless; that Sociologist Voy was not watching. In these last weeks it had grown to be a habit with him, an automatic twitch; there was always the quick backward glance across the shoulder to make sure no one was behind him in the kettle shafts.

And then, though already in the 2456th, it was for upwhen that Harlan set the kettle controls. He watched the numbers on the temporometer rise. Though they moved with blurry quickness, there would be considerable time for thought.

How the Life-Plotter's finding changed matters! How the very nature of his crime had changed!

And it had all hinged on Finge. The phrase caught at him with its ridiculous rhyme and its heavy beat circled dizzyingly inside his skull: It hinged on Finge. It hinged on Finge . . .

Harlan had avoided any personal contact with Finge on his return to Eternity after those days with Noys in the 482nd. As Eternity closed in about him, so did guilt. A broken oath of office, which seemed nothing in the 482nd, was enormous in Eternity.

He had sent in his report by impersonal air-chute and took himself off to personal quarters. He needed to think this out, gain time to consider and grow accustomed to the new orientation within himself.

Finge did not permit it. He was in communication with Harlan less than an hour after the report had been coded for proper direction and inserted into the chute.

The Computer's image stared out of the vision plate. His voice said, "I expected you to be in your office."

Harlan said, "I delivered the report, sir. It doesn't matter where I wait for a new a.s.signment."

"Yes?" Finge scanned the roll of foil he held in his hands, holding it up, squint-eyed, and peering at its perforation pattern.

"It is scarcely complete," he went on. "May I visit your rooms?"

Harlan hesitated a moment. The man was his superior and to refuse the self-invitation at this moment would have a flavor of insubordination. It would advertise his guilt, it seemed, and his raw, painful conscience dared not permit that.

"You will be welcome, Computer," he said stiffly.

Finge's sleek softness introduced a jarring element of epicureanism into Harlan's angular quarters. The 95th, Harlan's homewhen, tended toward the Spartan in house furnis.h.i.+ngs and Harlan had never completely lost his taste for the style. The tubular metal chairs had been surfaced with a dull veneer that had been artificially grained into the appearance of wood (though not very successfully). In one corner of the room was a small piece of furniture that represented an even wider departure from the customs of the times.

It caught Finge's eye almost at once.

The Computer put a pudgy finger on it, as though to test its texture. "What is this material?"

"Wood, sir," said Harlan.

"The real thing? Actual wood? Amazing! You use wood in your homewhen, I believe?"

"We do."

"I see. There's nothing in the rules against this, Technician"--he dusted the finger with which he had touched the object against the side seam of his trouser leg--"but I don't know that it's advisable to allow the culture of the homewhen to affect one. The true Eternal adopts whatever culture he is surrounded by. I doubt, for instance, if I have eaten out of an energic utensil more than twice in five years." He sighed. "And yet to allow food to touch matter has always seemed unclean. But I don't give in. I don't give in."

His eyes returned to the wooden object, but now he held both hands behind his back, and said, "What is it? What is its purpose?"