The End of Eternity Part 11

"So far it's bearable. It comes pretty easy, you know. I like it. But now they're really loading it on."

Harlan nodded and felt a certain satisfaction. He said, "Temporal Field matrices and all that?"

But Cooper, his color a little high, turned toward the stacked volumes in the bookshelves, and said, "Let's get back to the Primitives. I've got some questions."

"About what?"

"City life in the 23rd. Los Angeles, especially."

"Why Los Angeles?"

"It's an interesting city. Don't you think so?"

"It is, but let's. .h.i.t it in the 21st, then. It was at its peak in the 21st."

"Oh, let's try the 23rd."

Harlan said, "Well, why not?"

His face was impa.s.sive, but if the impa.s.siveness could have been peeled off, there would have been a grimness about him. His grand, intuitional guess was more than a guess. Everything was checking neatly.

Item Four: research. Twofold research.

For himself, first. Each day, with ferreting eyes, he went through the reports on Twissell's desk. The reports concerned the various Reality Changes being scheduled or suggested. Copies went to Twissell routinely since he was a member of the Allwhen Council, and Harlan knew he would not miss one. He looked first for the coming Change in the 482nd. Secondly he looked for other Changes, any other Changes, that might have a flaw, an imperfection, some deviation from maximum excellence that might be visible to his own trained and talented Technician's eyes.

In the strictest sense of the word the reports were not for his study, but Twissell was rarely in his office these days, and no one else saw fit to interfere with Twissell's personal Technician.

That was one part of his research. The other took place in the 575th Section branch of the library.

For the first time he ventured out of those portions of the library which, ordinarily, monopolized his attention. In the past he had haunted the section on Primitive history (very poor indeed, so that most of his references and source materials had to be derived from the far downwhen of the 3rd millennium, as was only natural, of course). To an even greater extent he had ransacked the shelves devoted to Reality Change, its theory, technique, and history; an excellent collection (best in Eternity outside the Central branch itself, thanks to Twissell) of which he had made himself full master.

Now he wandered curiously among the other film-racks. For the first time he Observed (in the capital-O sense) the racks devoted to the 575th itself; its geographies, which varied little from Reality to Reality, its histories, which varied more, and its sociologies, which varied still more. These were not the books or reports written about the Century by Observing and Computing Eternals (with those he was familiar), but by the Timers themselves.

There were the works of literature of the 575th and these stirred memories of tremendous arguments he had heard of concerning the values of alternate Changes. Would this masterpiece be altered or not? If so, how? How did past Changes affect works of art?

For that matter, could there ever be general agreement about art? Could it ever be reduced to quant.i.tative terms amenable to mechanical evaluation by the Computing machines?

A Computer named August Sennor was Twissell's chief opponent in these matters. Harlan, stirred by Twissell's feverish denunciations of the man and his views, had read some of Sennor's papers and found them startling.

Sennor asked publicly and, to Harlan, disconcertingly, whether a new Reality might not contain a personality within itself a.n.a.logous to that of a man who had been withdrawn into Eternity in a previous Reality. He a.n.a.lyzed then the possibility of an Eternal meeting his a.n.a.logue in Time, either with or without knowing it, and speculated on the results in each case. (That came fairly close to one of Eternity's most potent fears, and Harlan s.h.i.+vered and hastened uneasily through the discussion.) And, of course, he discussed at length the fate of literature and art in various types and cla.s.sifications of Reality Changes.

But Twissell would have none of the last. "If the values of art can't be computed," he would shout at Harlan, "then what's the use of arguing about it?"

And Twissell's views, Harlan knew, were shared by the large majority of the Allwhen Council.

Yet now Harlan stood at the shelves devoted to the novels of Eric Linkollew, usually described as the outstanding writer of the 575th, and wondered. He counted fifteen different "Complete Works" collections, each, undoubtedly, taken out of a different Reality. Each was somewhat different, he was sure. One set was noticeably smaller than all the others, for instance. A hundred Sociologists, he imagined, must have written a.n.a.lyses of the differences between the sets in terms of the sociological background of each Reality, and earned status thereby.

Harlan pa.s.sed on to the wing of the library which was devoted to the devices and instrumentation of the various 575th's. Many of these last, Harlan knew, had been eliminated in Time and remained intact, as a product of human ingenuity, only in Eternity. Man had to be protected from his own too flouris.h.i.+ng technical mind. That more than anything else. Not a physioyear pa.s.sed but that somewhere in Time nuclear technology veered too close to the dangerous and had to be steered away.

He returned to the library proper and to the shelves on mathematics and mathematical histories. His fingers skimmed across individual t.i.tles, and after some thought he took half a dozen from the shelves and signed them out.

Item Five: Noys.

That was the really important part of the interlude, and all the idyllic part.

In his off-hours, when Cooper was gone, when he might ordinarily have been eating in solitude, reading in solitude, sleeping in solitude, waiting in solitude for the next day--he took to the kettles.

With all his heart he was grateful for the Technician's position in society. He was thankful, as he had never dreamed he could be, for the manner in which he was avoided.

No one questioned his right to be in a kettle, nor cared whether he aimed it upwhen or down. No curious eyes followed him, no willing hands offered to help him, no chattering mouths discussed it with him.

He could go where and when he pleased.

Noys said, "You've changed, Andrew. Heavens, you've changed."

He looked at her and smiled. "In what way, Noys?"

"You're smiling, aren't you? That's one of the ways. Don't you ever look in a mirror and see yourself smiling?"

"I'm afraid to. I'd say: 'I can't be that happy. I'm sick. I'm delirious. I'm confined in an asylum, living in daydreams, and unaware of it.'"

Noys leaned close to pinch him. "Feel anything?"

He drew her head toward him, felt bathed in her soft, black hair.

When they separated, she said breathlessly, "You've changed there, too. You've become very good at it."

"I've got a good teacher," began Harlan, and stopped abruptly, fearing that would imply displeasure at the thought of the many who might have had the making of such a good teacher.

But her laugh seemed untroubled by such a thought. They had eaten and she looked silky-smooth and warmly soft in the clothing he had brought her.

She followed his eyes and fingered the skirt gently, lifting it loose from its soft embrace of her thigh. She said, "I wish you wouldn't, Andrew. I really wish you wouldn't."

"There's no danger," he said carelessly.

"There _is_ danger. Now don't be foolish. I can get along with what's here, until--until you make arrangements."

"Why shouldn't you have your own clothes and doodads?"

"Because they're not worth your going to my house in Time and being caught. And what if they make the Change while you're there?"

He evaded that uneasily. "It won't catch me." Then, brightening, "Besides my wrist generator keeps me in physiotime so that a Change can't affect me, you see."

Noys sighed. "I don't see. I don't think I'll ever understand it all."

"There's nothing to it." And Harlan explained and explained with great animation and Noys listened with sparkling eyes that never quite revealed whether she was entirely interested, or amused, or, perhaps, a little of both.

It was a great addition to Harlan's life. There was someone to talk to, someone with whom to discuss his life, his deeds, and thoughts. It was as though she were a portion of himself, but a portion sufficiently separate to require speech in communication rather than thought. She was a portion sufficiently separate to be able to answer unpredictably out of independent thought processes. Strange, Harlan thought, how one might Observe a social phenomenon such as matrimony and yet miss so vital a truth about it. Could he have predicted in advance, for instance, that it would be the pa.s.sionate interludes that he would later least often a.s.sociate with the idyl?

She snuggled into the crook of his arm and said, "How is your mathematics coming along?"

Harlan said, "Want to look at a piece of it?"

"Don't tell me you carry it around with you?""Why not? The kettle trip takes time. No use wasting it, you know."

He disengaged himself, took a small viewer from his pocket, inserted the film, and smiled fondly as she put it to her eyes.

She returned the viewer to him with a shake of her head. "I never saw so many squiggles. I wish I could read your Standard Intertemporal."

"Actually," said Harlan, "most of the squiggles you mention aren't Intertemporal really, just mathematical notation."

"You understand it, though, don't you?"

Harlan hated to do anything to disillusion the frank admiration in her eyes, but he was forced to say, "Not as much as I'd like to. Still, I have been picking up enough math to get what I want. I don't have to understand everything to be able to see a hole in a wall big enough to push a freight kettle through."

He tossed the viewer into the air, caught it with a flick of his hand, and put it on a small end-table.

Noys's eyes followed it hungrily and sudden insight flashed on Harlan.

He said, "Father Time! You can't read Intertemporal, at that."

"No. Of course not."

"Then the Section library here is useless to you. I never thought of that. You ought to have your own films from the 482nd."

She said quickly, "No. I don't want any."

He said, "You'll have them."

"Honestly, I don't want them. It's silly to risk----"

"You'll have them!" he said.

For the last time he stood at the immaterial boundary separating Eternity from Noys's house in the 482nd. He had intended the time before to be the last time. The Change was nearly upon them now, a fact he had not told Noys out of the decent respect he would have had for anyone's feelings, let alone those of his love.

Yet it wasn't a difficult decision to make, this one additional trip. Partly it was bravado, to s.h.i.+ne before Noys, bring her the book-films from out the lion's mouth; partly it was a hot desire (what was the Primitive phrase?) "to singe the beard of the King of Spain," if he might refer to the smooth-checked Finge so.

Then, too, he would have the chance once again of savoring the weirdly attractive atmosphere about a doomed house.

He had felt it before, when entering it carefully during the period of grace allowed by the spatio-temporal charts. He had felt it as he wandered through its rooms, collecting clothing, small _objets d'art_, strange containers, and instruments from Noys's vanity table.

There was the somber silence of a doomed Reality that was past merely the physical absence of noise. There was no way for Harlan to predict its a.n.a.logue in a new Reality. It might be a small suburban cottage or a tenement in a city street. It might be zero with untamed scrubland replacing the parklike terrain on which it now stood. It might, conceivably, be almost unchanged. And (Harlan touched on this thought gingerly) it might be inhabited by the a.n.a.logue of Noys or, of course, it might not.

To Harlan the house was already a ghost, a premature specter that had begun its hauntings before it had actually died. And because the house, as it was, meant a great deal to him, he found he resented its pa.s.sing and mourned it.

Once, only, in five trips had there been any sound to break the stillness during his prowlings. He was in the pantry, then, thankful that the technology of that Reality and Century had made servants unfas.h.i.+onable and removed a problem. He had, he recalled, chosen among the cans of prepared foods, and was just deciding that he had enough for one trip, and that Noys would be pleased indeed to intersperse the hearty but uncolorful basic diet provided in the empty Section with some of her own dietary. He even laughed aloud to think that not long before he had thought her diet decadent.

It was in the middle of the laugh that he heard a distinct clapping noise. He froze!

The sound had come from somewhere behind him, and in the startled moment during which he had not moved the lesser danger that it was a housebreaker occurred to him first and the greater danger of its being an investigating Eternal occurred second.

It _couldn't_ be a housebreaker. The entire period of the spatio-temporal chart, grace period and all, had been painstakingly cleared and chosen out of other similar periods of Time because of the lack of complicating factors. On the other hand, he had introduced a micro-Change (perhaps not so micro at that) by abstracting Noys.

Heart pounding, he forced himself to turn. It seemed to him that the door behind him had just closed, moving the last millimeter required to bring it flush with the wall.

He repressed the impulse to open that door, to search the house. With Noys's delicacies in tow he returned to Eternity and waited two full days for repercussions before venturing into the far upwhen. There were none and eventually he forgot the incident.

But now, as he adjusted the controls to enter Time this one last time, he thought of it again. Or perhaps it was the thought of the Change, nearly upon him now, that preyed on him. Looking back on the moment later on, he felt that it was one or the other that caused him to misadjust the controls. He could think of no other excuse.

The misadjustment was not immediately apparent. It pin-pointed the proper room and Harlan stepped directly into Noys's library.

He had become enough of a decadent himself, now, to be not altogether repelled by the workmans.h.i.+p that went into the design of the film-cases. The lettering of the t.i.tles blended in with the intricate filigree until they were attractive but nearly unreadable. It was a triumph of aesthetics over utility.

Harlan took a few from the shelves at random and was surprised. The t.i.tle of one was _Social and Economic History of our Times_.

Somehow it was a side of Noys to which he had given little thought. She was certainly not stupid and yet it never occurred to him that she might be interested in weighty things. He had the impulse to scan a bit of the _Social and Economic History_, but fought it down. He would find it in the Section library of the 482nd, if he ever wanted it. Finge had undoubtedly rifled the libraries of this Reality for Eternity's records months earlier.

He put that film to one side, ran through the rest, selected the fiction and some of what seemed light non-fiction. Those and two pocket viewers. He stowed them carefully into a knapsack.

It was at that point that, once more, he heard a sound in the house. There was no mistake this time. It was not a short sound of indeterminate origin. It was a langh, a man's laugh. He was _not_ alone in the house.

He was unaware that he had dropped the knapsack. For one dizzy second he could think only that he was trapped!

10 Trapped!

All at once it had seemed inevitable. It was the rawest dramatic irony. He had entered Time one last time, tweaked Finge's nose one last time, brought the pitcher to the well one last time. It had to be then that he was caught.

Was it Finge who laughed?

Who else would track him down, lie in wait, stay a room away, and burst into mirth?

Well, then, was all lost? And because in that sickening moment he was sure all was lost it did not occur to him to run again or to attempt flight into Eternity once more. He would face Finge.

He would kill him, if necessary.

Harlan stepped to the door from behind which the laugh had sounded, stepped to it with the soft, firm step of the premeditated murderer. He flicked loose the automatic door signal and opened it by hand. Two inches. Three. It moved without sound.

The man in the next room had his back turned. The figure seemed too tall to be Finge and that fact penetrated Harlan's simmering mind and kept him from advancing further.

Then, as though the paralysis that seemed to hold both men in rigor was slowly lifting, the other turned, inch by inch.

Harlan never witnessed the completion of that turn. The other's profile had not yet come into view when Harlan, holding back a sudden gust of terror with a last fragment of moral strength, flung himself back out the door. Its mechanism, not Harlan, closed it soundlessly.