The End of Eternity (18 page)

“For instance, suppose a Change here in the 575th. Reality will change with increasing effects to perhaps the 600th. It will change, but with continually lesser effects to perhaps
the 650th. Thereafter, Reality will be unchanged. We all know this is so, but do any of us know why it is so? Intuitive reasoning would suggest that any Reality Change would increase its effects without limit as the Centuries pass, yet that is not so.

“Take another point. Technician Harlan, I’m told, is excellent at selecting the exact Minimum Change Required for any situation. I’ll wager he cannot explain how he arrives at his own choice.

“Consider how helpless the Primitives must be. They worry about a man killing his own grandfather because they do not understand the truth about Reality. Take a more likely and a more easily analyzed case and let’s consider the man who in his travels through time meets himself—”

Harlan said sharply, “What about a man who meets himself?”

The fact that Harlan interrupted a Computer was a breach of manners in itself. His tone of voice worsened the breach to a scandalous extent, and all eyes turned reproachfully on the Technician.

Sennor harumphed, but spoke in the trained tone of one determined to be polite despite nearly insuperable difficulties. He said, continuing his broken sentence and thus avoiding the appearance of answering directly the unmannerly question addressed to him, “And the four subdivisions into which such an act can fall. Call the man earlier in physiotime, A, and the one later, B, Subdivision one, A and B may not see one another, or do anything that will significantly affect one another. In that case, they have not really met and we may dismiss this case as trivial.

“Or B, the later individual, may see A while A does not see B. Here, too, no serious consequences need be expected. B, seeing A, sees him in a position and engaged in activity of which he already has knowledge. Nothing new is involved.

“The third and fourth possibilities are that A sees B, while
B does not see A, and that A and B see one another. In each possibility, the serious point is that A has seen B; the man at an earlier stage in his physiological existence sees himself at a later stage. Observe that he has learned he will be alive at the apparent age of B. He knows he will live long enough to perform the action he has witnessed. Now a man in knowing his own future in even the slightest detail can act on that knowledge and therefore change his future. It follows that Reality must be changed to the extent of not allowing A and B to meet or, at the very least, of preventing A from seeing B. Then, since nothing in a Reality made un-Real can be detected, A never has met B. Similarly, in every apparent paradox of Time-travel, Reality always changes to avoid the paradox and we come to the conclusion that there are no paradoxes in Time-travel and that there can be none.”

Sennor looked well pleased with himself and his exposition, but Twissell rose to his feet.

Twissell said, “I believe, gentlemen, that time presses.”

Far more suddenly than Harlan would have thought the lunch was over. Five of the subcommittee members filed out, nodding at him, with the air of those whose curiosity, mild at best, had been assuaged. Only Sennor held out a hand and added a gruff “Good day, young man” to the nod.

With mixed feelings Harlan watched them go. What had been the purpose of the luncheon? Most of all, why the reference to men meeting themselves? They had made no mention of Noÿs. Were they there, then, only to study him? Survey him from top to bottom and leave him to Twissell’s judging?

Twissell returned to the table, empty now of food and cutlery. He was alone with Harlan now, and almost as though to symbolize that, he wielded a new cigarette between his fingers.

He said, “And now to work, Harlan. We have a great deal to do.”

But Harlan would not, could not, wait longer. He said flatly, “Before we do anything, I have something to say.”

Twissell looked surprised. The skin of his face puckered up about his faded eyes, and he tamped at the ash end of his cigarette thoughtfully.

He said, “By all means, speak if you wish, but first, sit down, sit down, boy.”

Technician Andrew Harlan did not sit down. He strode up and back the length of the table, biting off his sentences hard to keep them from boiling and bubbling into incoherence. Senior Computer Laban Twissell’s age-yellowed pippin of a head turned back and forth as he followed the other’s nervous stride.

Harlan said, “For weeks now I’ve been going through films on the history of mathematics. Books from several Realities of the 575th. The Realities don’t matter much. Mathematics doesn’t change. The order of its development doesn’t change either. No matter how else the Realities shifted, mathematical history stayed about the same. The mathematicians changed; different ones switched discoveries, but the end results—Anyway, I pounded a lot of it into my head. How does that strike you?”

Twissell frowned and said, “A queer occupation for a Technician?”

“But I’m not just a Technician,” said Harlan. “You know that.”

“Go on,” said Twissell and he looked at the timepiece he wore. The fingers that held his cigarette played with it with unwonted nervousness.

Harlan said, “There was a man named Vikkor Mallansohn who lived in the 24th Century. That was part of the Primitive era, you know. The thing he is known best for is the fact
that he first successfully built a Temporal Field. That means, of course, that he invented Eternity, since Eternity is only one tremendous Temporal Field shortcircuiting ordinary Time and free of the limitations of ordinary Time.”

“You were taught this as a Cub, boy.”

“But I was not taught that Vikkor Mallansohn could not possibly have invented the Temporal Field in the 24th Century. Nor could anyone have. The mathematical basis for it didn’t exist. The fundamental Lefebvre equations did not exist; nor could they exist until the researches of Jan Verdeer in the 27th Century.”

If there was one sign by which Senior Computer Twissell could indicate complete astonishment, it was that of dropping his cigarette. He dropped it now. Even his smile was gone.

He said, “Were you taught the Lefebvre equations, boy?”

“No. And I don’t say I understand them. But they’re necessary for the Temporal Field. I’ve learned that. And they weren’t discovered till the 27th. I know that, too.”

Twissell bent to pick up his cigarette and regarded it dubiously. “What if Mallansohn had stumbled on the Temporal Field without being aware of the mathematical justification? What if it were simply an empirical discovery? There have been many such.”

“I’ve thought of that. But after the Field was invented, it took three centuries to work out its implications and at the end of that time there was no one way in which Mallansohn’s Field could be improved on. That could not be coincidence. In a hundred ways, Mallansohn’s design showed that he must have used the Lefebvre equations. If he knew them or had developed them without Verdeer’s work, which is impossible, why didn’t he say so?”

Twissell said, “You insist on talking like a mathematician. Who told you all this?”

“I’ve been viewing films.”

“No more?”

“And thinking.”

“Without advanced mathematical training? I’ve watched you closely for years, boy, and would not have guessed that particular talent of yours. Go on.”

“Eternity could never have been established without Mallansohn’s discovery of the Temporal Field. Mallansohn could never have accomplished this without a knowledge of mathematics that existed only in his future. That’s number one. Meanwhile, here in Eternity at this moment, there is a Cub who was selected as an Eternal against all the rules, since he was overage and married, to boot. You are educating him in mathematics and in Primitive sociology. That’s number two.”

“Well?”

“I say that it is your intention to send him back into Time somehow, back past the downwhen terminus of Eternity, back to the 24th. It is your intention to have the Cub, Cooper, teach the Lefebvre equations to Mallansohn. You see, then,” Harlan added with tense passion, “that my own position as expert in the Primitive and my knowledge of that position entitles me to special treatment.
Very
special treatment.”

“Father Time!” muttered Twissell.

“It’s true, isn’t it? We come full circle,
with my help.
Without it . . .” He let the sentence hang.

“You come so close to the truth,” said Twissell. “Yet I could swear there was nothing to indicate—” He fell into a study in which neither Harlan nor the outside world seemed to play a part.

Harlan said quickly. “Only close to the truth? It
is
the truth.” He could not tell why he was so certain of the essentials of what he said, even quite apart from the fact that he so desperately wanted it to be so.

Twissell said, “No, no, not the exact truth. The Cub,
Cooper, is not going back to the 24th to teach Mallansohn anything.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“But you must. You must see the importance of this. I want your cooperation through what is left of the project. You see, Harlan, the situation is more full circle than you imagine. Much more so, boy. Cub Brinsley Sheridan Cooper
is
Vikkor Mallansohn!”

Harlan would not have thought that Twissell could have said anything at that moment that could have surprised him. He was wrong.

He said, “Mallansohn. He—”

Twissell, having smoked his cigarette to a stub, produced another and said, “Yes, Mallansohn. Do you want a quick summary of Mallansohn’s life? Here it is. He was born in the 78th, spent some time in Eternity, and died in the 24th.”

Twissell’s small hand placed itself lightly on Harlan’s elbow and his gnomish face broke into a wrinkled extension of his usual smile. “But come, boy, physiotime passes even for us and we are not completely masters of ourselves this day. Won’t you come with me to my office?”

He led the way and Harlan followed, not entirely aware of the opening doors and the moving ramps.

He was relating the new information to his own problem and plan of action. With the passing of the first moment of disorientation his resolution returned. After all, how did this change things except to make his own importance to Eternity still more crucial, his value higher, his demands more sure to be met, Noÿs more certain to be bartered back to him.

Noÿs!

Father Time, they must not harm her! She seemed the only real part of his life. All Eternity beside was only a filmy fantasy, and not a worth while one, either.

When he found himself in Computer Twissell’s office, he could not clearly recall how it had come about that he had passed from the dining area here. Though he looked about and tried to make the office grow real by sheer force of the mass of its contents, it still seemed but another part of a dream that had outlived its usefulness.

Twissell’s office was a clean, long room of porcelain asepsis. One wall of the office was crowded from floor to ceiling and wall to distant wall with the computing micro-units which, together, made up the largest privately operated Computaplex in Eternity and, indeed, one of the largest altogether. The opposite wall was crammed with reference films. Between the two what was left of the room was scarcely more than a corridor, broken by a desk, two chairs, recording and projecting equipment, and an unusual object the like of which Harlan was not familiar with and which did not reveal its use until Twissell flicked the remnants of a cigarette into it.

It flashed noiselessly and Twissell, in his usual prestidigitational fashion, held another in his hands.

Harlan thought: To the point, now.

He began, a trifle too loudly, a bit too truculently, “There is a girl in the 482nd—”

Twissell frowned, waved one hand quickly as though brushing an unpleasant matter hastily to one side. “I know, I know. She will not be disturbed, nor you. All will be well. I will see to it.”

“Do you mean—”

“I tell you I know the story. If the matter has troubled you, it need trouble you no more.”

Harlan stared at the old man, stupefied. Was this all?
Though he had thought intently of the immensity of his power, he had not expected so clear a demonstration.

But Twissell was talking again.

“Let me tell you a story,” he began, with almost the tone he would have used in addressing a newly inducted Cub. “I had not thought this would be necessary, and perhaps it still isn’t, but your own researches and insight deserve it.”

He stared at Harlan quizzically and said, “You know, I still can’t quite believe that you worked this out on your own,” then went on:

“The man most of Eternity knows as Vikkor Mallansohn left the record of his life behind him after he died. It was not quite a diary, not quite a biography. It was more of a guide, bequeathed to the Eternals he knew would someday exist. It was enclosed in a volume of Time-stasis which could be opened only by the Computers of Eternity, and which therefore remained untouched for three Centuries after his death, until Eternity was established and Senior Computer Henry Wadsman, the first of the great Eternals, opened it. The document has been passed along in strictest security since, along a line of Senior Computers ending with myself. It is referred to as the Mallansohn memoir.

“The memoir tells the story of a man named Brinsley Sheridan Cooper, born in the 78th, inducted as a Cub into Eternity at the age of twenty-three, having been married for a little over a year, but having been, as yet, childless.

“Having entered Eternity, Cooper was trained in mathematics by a Computer named Laban Twissell and in Primitive sociology by a Technician named Andrew Harlan. After a thorough grounding in both disciplines, and in such matters as temporal engineering as well, he was sent back to the 24th to teach certain necessary techniques to a Primitive scientist named Vikkor Mallansohn.

“Once having reached the 24th, he embarked first on a slow process of adjusting himself to the society. In this he
benefited a great deal from the training of Technician Harlan and the detailed advice of Computer Twissell, who seemed to have an uncanny insight into some of the problems he was to face.