The End of Eternity (11 page)

“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 furnishings 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?”

“It’s a bookcase,” said Harlan. He had the impulse to ask Finge how he felt now that his hands rested firmly upon the small of his back. Would he not consider it cleaner to have his clothes and his own body constructed of pure and undefiled energy fields?

Finge’s eyebrows lifted. “A bookcase. Then those objects resting upon the shelves are books. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Authentic specimens?”

“Entirely, Computer. I picked them up in the 24th. The few I have here date from the 20th. If—if you intend to look at them, I wish you’d be careful. The pages have been restored and impregnated, but they’re not foil. They take careful handling.”

“I won’t touch them. I have no intention of touching them. Original 20th Century dust is on them, I imagine. Actual books!” He laughed. “Pages of cellulose, too? You implied that.”

Harlan nodded. “Cellulose modified by the impregnation
treatment for longer life. Yes.” He opened his mouth for a deep breath, forcing himself to remain calm. It was ridiculous to identify himself with these books, to feel a slur upon them to be a slur upon himself.

“I dare say,” said Finge, still on the subject, “that the whole content of those books could be placed on two meters of film and stored in a finger’s end. What do the books contain?”

Harlan said, “They are bound volumes of a news magazine of the 20th.”

“You read that?”

Harlan said proudly, “These are a few volumes of the complete collection I have. No library in Eternity can duplicate it.”

“Yes, your hobby. I remember now you once told me about your interest in the Primitive. I’m amazed your Educator ever allowed you to grow interested in such a thing. A complete waste of energy.”

Harlan’s lips thinned. The man, he decided, was deliberately trying to irritate him out of possession of calm reasoning faculties. If so, he must not be allowed to succeed.

Harlan said flatly, “I think you’ve come to see me about my report.”

“Yes, I have.” The Computer looked about, selected a chair, and sat down gingerly. “It is not complete, as I said over the communicator.”

“In what way, sir?” (Calm! Calm!)

Finge broke into a nervous twitch of a smile. “What happened that you didn’t mention, Harlan?”

“Nothing, sir.” And though he said it firmly, he stood there, hangdog.

“Come, Technician. You spent several periods of time in the society of the young lady. Or you did if you followed the spatio-temporal chart. You did follow it, I suppose?”

Harlan’s guilt riddled him to the point where he could
not even rise to the bait of this open assault upon his professional competence.

He could only say, “I followed it.”

“And what happened? You include nothing of the private interludes with the woman.”

“Nothing of importance happened,” said Harlan, dry-lipped.

“That is ridiculous. At your time of life and with your experience, I don’t have to tell you that it is not for an Observer to judge what is important and what is not.”

Finge’s eyes were keenly upon Harlan. They were harder and more eager than quite befitted his soft line of questioning.

Harlan noted that well and was not fooled by Finge’s gentle voice, yet the habit of duty tugged at him. An Observer must report
everything.
An Observer was merely a sense-perceptive pseudopod thrust out by Eternity into Time. It tested its surroundings and was drawn back. In the fulfillment of his function an Observer had no individuality of his own; he was not really a man.

Almost automatically Harlan began his narration of the events he had left out of his report. He did it with the trained memory of the Observer, reciting the conversations with word-for-word accuracy, reconstructing the tone of voice and cast of countenance. He did it lovingly, for in the telling he lived it again, and almost forgot, in the process, that a combination of Finge’s probing and his own healing sense of duty was driving him into an admission of guilt.

It was only as he approached the end result of that first long conversation that he faltered and the shell of his Observer’s objectivity showed cracks.

He was saved from further details by the hand that Finge suddenly raised and by the Computer’s sharp, edgy voice. “Thank you. It is enough. You were about to say that you made love to the woman.”

Harlan grew angry. What Finge said was the literal truth, but Finge’s tone of voice made it sound lewd, coarse, and, worse than that, commonplace. whatever else it was, or might be, it was not commonplace.

Harlan had an explanation for Finge’s attitude, for his anxious cross-examination, for his breaking off the verbal report at the moment he did. Finge was jealous! That much Harlan would have sworn was obvious. Harlan had succeeded in taking away a girl that Finge had meant to have.

Harlan felt the triumph in that and found it sweet. For the first time in his life he knew an aim that meant more to him than the frigid fulfillment of Eternity. He was going to keep Finge jealous, because Noÿs Lambent was to be permanently his.

In this mood of sudden exaltation he plunged into the request that originally he had planned to present only after a wait of a discreet four or five days.

He said, “It is my intention to apply for permission to form a liaison with a Timed individual.”

Finge seemed to snap out of a reverie. “With Noÿs Lambent, I presume.”

“Yes, sir. As Computer in charge of the Section, it will have to go through you. . . .”

Harlan wanted it to go through Finge. Make him suffer. If he wanted the girl himself, let him say so and Harlan could insist on allowing Noÿs to make her choice. He almost smiled at that. He hoped it would come to that. It would be the final triumph.

Ordinarily, of course, a Technician could not hope to push through such a matter in the face of a Computer’s desires, but Harlan was sure he could count on Twissell’s backing and Finge had a long way to go before he could buck Twissell.

Finge, however, seemed tranquil. “It would seem,” he said, “that you have already taken illegal possession of the girl.”

Harlan flushed and was moved to a feeble defense. “The spatio-temporal chart insisted on our remaining alone together. Since nothing of what happened was specifically forbidden, I feel no guilt.”

Which was a lie, and from Finge’s half-amused expression one could feel that he knew it to be a lie.

He said, “There will be a Reality Change.”

Harlan said, “If so, I will amend my application to request liaison with Miss Lambent in the new Reality.”

“I don’t think that would be wise. How can you be sure in advance? In the new Reality, she may be married, she may be deformed. In fact I can tell you this. In the new Reality, she will not want you. She will
not
want you.”

Harlan quivered. “You know nothing about it.”

“Oh? You think this great love of yours is a matter of soul-to-soul contact? That it will survive all external changes? Have you been reading novels out of Time?”

Harlan was goaded into indiscretion. “For one thing, I don’t believe you.”

Finge said coldly, “I beg pardon.”

“You’re lying.” Harlan didn’t care what he said now. “You’re jealous. It’s all it amounts to. You’re jealous. You had your own plans for Noÿs but she chose me.”

Finge said, “Do you realize—”

“I realize a great deal. I’m no fool. I may not be a Computer, but neither am I an ignoramus. You say she won’t want me in the new Reality. How do you know? You don’t even know yet what the new Reality will be. You don’t know if there must be a new Reality at all. You just received my report. It must be analyzed before a Reality Change can be computed, let alone submitted for approval. So when you affect to know the nature of the Change, you are lying.”

There were a number of ways in which Finge might have made response. Harlan’s heated mind was aware of many.
He did not try to choose among them. Finge might stalk out in affected dudgeon; he might call in a member of Security and have Harlan taken into custody for insubordination; he might shout back, yelling as angrily as Harlan; he might put in an immediate call to Twissell, lodging a formal complaint; he might—he might . . .

Finge did none of this.

He said gently, “Sit down, Harlan. Let’s talk about this.”

And because that response was completely unexpected, Harlan’s jaw sagged and he sat down in confusion. His resolution faltered. What was this?

“You remember, of course,” said Finge, “that I told you that our problem with the 482nd involved an undesirable attitude on the part of the Timers of the current Reality toward Eternity. You do remember that, don’t you?” He spoke with the mild urging of a schoolmaster toward a somewhat backward student, yet Harlan thought he could detect a kind of hard glitter in his eye.

Harlan said, “Of course.”

“You remember, too, that I told you that the Allwhen Council was reluctant to accept my analysis of the situation without specific confirming Observations. Doesn’t that imply to you that I had already Computed the necessary Reality Change?”

“But my own Observations represent the confirmation, don’t they?”

“They do.”

“And it would take time to analyze them properly.”

“Nonsense. Your report means nothing. The confirmation lay in what you told me orally moments ago.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Look, Harlan, let me tell you what is wrong with the 482nd. Among the upper classes of this Century, particularly among the women, there has grown up the notion that
Eternals are really Eternal, literally so; that they live forever. . . . Great Time, man, Noÿs Lambent told you as much. You repeated her statements to me not twenty minutes ago.”

Harlan stared blankly at Finge. He was remembering Noÿs’s soft, caressing voice as she leaned toward him and caught at his eyes with her own lovely, dark glance:
You live forever. You’re an Eternal.

Finge went on, “Now a belief like that is bad, but, in itself, not too bad. It can lead to inconveniences, increase difficulties for the Section, but Computation would show that only in a minority of cases would Change be necessary. Still, if a Change
is
desirable, isn’t it obvious to you that the inhabitants of the Century who must, above all, change maximally with the Change, be those who are subject to the superstition. In other words, the female aristocracy. Noÿs.”

“It may be, but I’ll take my chance,” said Harlan.

“You have no chance at all. Do you think your fascinations and charm persuaded the soft aristocrat to fall into the arms of an unimportant Technician? Come, Harlan, be realistic about this.”

Harlan’s lips grew stubborn. He said nothing.

Finge said, “Can’t you guess the additional superstition which these people have added to their belief in the actual eternal life of the Eternals? Great Time, Harlan! Most of the women believe that intimacy with an Eternal will enable a mortal woman (as they think of themselves) to live forever!”

Harlan swayed. He could hear Noÿs’s voice again so clearly:
If I were made an Eternal . . .

And then her kisses.

Finge went on. “The existence of such a superstition was hard to believe, Harlan. It was unprecedented. It lay within the region of random error so that a search through the Computations for the previous Change yielded no information respecting it one way or the other. The Allwhen Council
wanted firm evidence, direct substantiation. I chose Miss Lambent as a good example of her class. I chose you as the other subject—”

Harlan struggled to his feet. “You chose
me
? As a
subject
?”

“I’m sorry,” said Finge stiffly, “but it was necessary. You made a very good subject.”

Harlan stared at him.

Finge had the grace to squirm a bit under that wordless stare. He said, “Don’t you see? No, you still don’t. Look, Harlan, you’re a cold-fish product of Eternity. You won’t look at a woman. You consider women and all that concerns them unethical. No, there’s a better word. You consider them
sinful.
That attitude shows all over you, and to any woman you’d have all the sex appeal of a month-dead mackerel. Yet here we have a woman, a beautiful pampered product of a hedonistic culture, who ardently seduces you on your first evening together, virtually begging for your embrace. Don’t you understand that that is ridiculous, impossible, unless—well, unless it is the confirmation we were looking for.”