The End of Eternity (7 page)

Finge said, “She is here for a deliberate purpose. She is performing an essential function. It is only temporary. Try to endure her meanwhile.”

Harlan’s jaw quivered. He had protested and was being fobbed off. To hell with caution. He would speak his mind. He said, “I can imagine what the woman’s ‘essential function’ is. To keep her so openly will not be allowed to pass.”

He turned stiffly, walked to the door. Finge’s voice stopped him.

“Technician,” Finge said, “your relationship with Twissell may have given you a distorted notion about your own importance. Correct that! And meanwhile tell me, Technician, have you ever had a” (he hesitated, seeming to pick among words) “girlfriend?”

With painstaking and insulting accuracy, back still turned, Harlan quoted: “In the interest of avoiding emotional entanglements with Time, an Eternal may not marry. In the interest of avoiding emotional entanglements with family, an Eternal may not have children.”

The Computer said gravely, “I didn’t ask about marriage, or children.”

Harlan quoted further: “Temporary liaisons may be made with Timers only after application with the Central Charting Board of the Allwhen Council for an appropriate Life-Plot of the Timer concerned. Liaisons may be conducted thereafter only according to the requirements of specific spatio-temporal charting.”

“Quite true. Have you ever applied for temporary liaison, Technician?”

“No, Computer.”

“Do you intend to?”

“No, Computer.”

“Perhaps you ought to. It would give you a greater breadth of view. You would become less concerned about the details
of a woman’s costume, less disturbed about her possible personal relations with other Eternals.”

Harlan left, speechless with rage.

He found it almost impossible to perform his near-daily trek into the 482nd (the longest continuous period remaining something under two hours).

He was upset, and he knew why. Finge! Finge, and his coarse advice concerning liaisons with Timers.

Liaisons existed. Everyone knew that. Eternity had always been aware of the necessity for compromising with human appetites (to Harlan the phrase carried a quivery repulsion), but the restrictions involved in choosing mistresses made the compromise anything but lax, anything but generous. And those who were lucky enough to qualify for such an arrangement were expected to be most discreet about it, out of common decency and consideration for the majority.

Among the lower classes of Eternals, particularly among Maintenance, there were always the rumors (half hopeful, half resentful) of women imported on a more or less permanent basis for the obvious reasons. Always rumor pointed to the Computers and Life-Plotters as the benefiting groups. They and only they could decide which women could be abstracted from Time without danger of significant Reality Change.

Less sensational (and therefore less tongue-worthy) were the stories concerning the Timer employees that every Section engaged temporarily (when spatio-temporal analysis permitted) to perform the tedious tasks of cooking, cleaning, and heavy labor.

But a Timer, and
such
a Timer, employed as “secretary,” could only mean that Finge was thumbing his nose at the ideals that made Eternity what it was.

Regardless of the facts of life to which the practical men
of Eternity made a perfunctory obeisance it remained true that the ideal Eternal was a dedicated man living for the mission he had to perform, for the betterment of Reality and the improvement of the sum of human happiness. Harlan liked to think that Eternity was like the monasteries of Primitive times.

He dreamed that night that he spoke to Twissell about the matter, and that Twissell, the ideal Eternal, shared his horror. He dreamed of a broken Finge, stripped of rank. He dreamed of himself with the yellow Computer’s insigne, instituting a new regime in the 482nd, ordering Finge grandly to a new position in Maintenance. Twissell sat next to him, smiling with admiration, as he drew up a new organizational chart, neat, orderly, consistent, and asked Noÿs Lambent to distribute copies.

But Noÿs Lambent was nude, and Harlan woke up, trembling and ashamed.

He met the girl in a corridor one day and stood aside, eyes averted, to let her pass.

But she remained standing, looking at him, until he had to look up and meet her eyes. She was all color and life and Harlan was conscious of a faint perfume about her.

She said, “You’re Technician Harlan, aren’t you?”

His impulse was to snub her, to force his way past, but, after all, he told himself, all this wasn’t her fault. Besides, to move past her now would mean touching her.

So he nodded briefly. “Yes.”

“I’m told you’re quite an expert on our Time.”

“I have been in it.”

“I would love to talk to you about it someday.”

“I am busy. I wouldn’t have time.”

“But Mr. Harlan, surely you could
find
time someday.”

She smiled at him.

Harlan said in a desperate whisper, “Will you pass, please? Or will you stand aside to let me pass? Please!”

She moved by with a slow swing of her hips that brought blood tingling to his embarrassed cheeks.

He was angry at her for embarrassing him, angry at himself for being embarrassed, and angry, most of all, for some obscure reason, at Finge.

Finge called him in at the end of two weeks. On his desk was a sheet of perforated flimsy the length and intricacy of which told Harlan at once that this concerned no half-hour excursion into Time.

Finge said, “Would you sit down, Harlan, and scan this thing right now? No, not by eye. Use the machine.”

Harlan lifted indifferent eyebrows, and inserted the sheet carefully between the lips of the scanner on Finge’s desk. Slowly it passed into the intestines of the machine and, as it did so, the perforation pattern was translated into words that appeared on the cloudy-white rectangle that was the visual attachment.

Somewhere about midpoint, Harlan’s hand shot out and disconnected the scanner. He yanked the flimsy out with a force that tore its tough cellulite structure.

Finge said calmly, “I have another copy.”

But Harlan was holding the remnants between thumb and forefinger as though it might explode. “Computer Finge, there is some mistake. Surely I am not to be expected to use the home of this woman as base for a near-week stay in Time.”

The Computer pursed his lips. “Why not, if the spatio-temporal requirements are such. If there is a personal problem involved between yourself and Miss Lam—”

“No personal problem at all,” interposed Harlan hotly.

“Some kind of problem, certainly. In the circumstances, I
will go as far as to explain certain aspects of the Observational problem. This is not to be taken as a precedent, of president, of course.”

Harlan sat motionless. He was thinking hard and fast. Ordinarily professional pride would have forced Harlan to disdain explanation. An Observer, or Technician, for that matter, did his job without question. And ordinarily a Computer would never dream of offering explanation.

Here, however, was something unusual. Harlan had complained concerning the girl, the so-called secretary. Finge was afraid the complaint might go further. (“The guilty fleeth when no man pursueth,” thought Harlan with grim satisfaction and tried to remember where he had read that phrase.)

Finge’s strategy was obvious, therefore. By stationing Harlan in the woman’s dwelling place he would be ready to make counteraccusations if matters went far enough. Harlan’s value as a witness against him would be destroyed.

And, of course, he would have to have some specious explanation for placing Harlan in such a place, and this would be it. Harlan listened with barely hidden contempt.

Finge said, “As you know, the various Centuries are aware of the existence of Eternity. They know that we supervise intertemporal trade. They consider that to be our chief function, which is good. They have a dim knowledge that we are also here to prevent catastrophe from striking mankind. That is more a superstition than anything else, but it is more or less correct, and good, too. We supply the generations with a mass father image and a certain feeling of security. You see all that, don’t you?”

Harlan thought: Does the man think I’m still a Cub?

But he nodded briefly.

Finge went on. “There are some things, however, they must not know. Prime among them, of course, is the manner in which we alter Reality when necessary. The insecurity such knowledge would arouse would be most harmful. It is
always necessary to breed out of Reality any factors that might lead to such knowledge and we have never been troubled with it.

“However, there are always other undesirable beliefs about Eternity which spring up from time to time in one Century or another. Usually, the dangerous beliefs are those which concentrate particularly in the ruling classes of an era; the classes that have most contact with us and, at the same time, carry the important weight of what is called public opinion.”

Finge paused as though he expected Harlan to offer some comment or ask some question. Harlan did neither.

Finge continued. “Ever since the Reality Change 433–486, Serial Number F-2, which took place about a year—a physioyear ago, there has been evidence of the bringing into Reality of such an undesirable belief. I have come to certain conclusions about the nature of that belief and have presented them to the Allwhen Council. The Council is reluctant to accept them since they depend upon the realization of an alternate in the Computing Pattern of an extremely low probability.

“Before acting on my recommendation, they insist on confirmation by direct Observation. It’s a most delicate job, which is why I recalled you, and why Computer Twissell allowed you to be recalled. Another thing I did was to locate a member of the current aristocracy, who thought it would be thrilling or exciting to work in Eternity. I placed her in this office and kept her under close observation to see if she were suitable for our purpose—”

Harlan thought: Close observation! Yes!

Again his anger focused itself on Finge rather than upon the woman.

Finge was still speaking. “By all standards, she is suitable. We will now return her to her Time. Using her dwelling as a base, you will be able to study the social life of her circle. Do
you understand now the reason I had the girl here and the reason I want you in her house?”

Harlan said with an almost open irony, “I understand quite well, I assure you.”

“Then you will accept this mission.”

Harlan left with the fire of battle burning inside his chest. Finge was
not
going to outsmart him. He was
not
going to make a fool of him.

Surely it was that fire of battle, the determination to outwit Finge, that caused him to experience an eagerness, almost an exhilaration, at the thought of this next excursion into the 482nd.

Surely it was nothing else.

Noÿs Lambent’s estate was fairly isolated, yet within easy reach of one of the larger cities of the Century. Harlan knew that city well; he knew it better than any of its inhabitants could. In his exploratory Observations into this Reality he had visited every quarter of the city and every decade within the purview of the Section.

He knew the city both in Space and Time. He could piece it together, view it as an organism, living and growing, with its catastrophes and recoveries, its gaieties and troubles. Now he was in a given week of Time in that city, in a moment of suspended animation of its slow life of steel and concrete.

More than that, his preliminary explorations had centered themselves more and more closely about the “perioeci,” the inhabitants who were the most important of the city, yet who lived outside the city, in room and relative isolation.

The 482nd was one of the many Centuries in which wealth was unevenly distributed. The Sociologists had an equation for the phenomenon (which Harlan had seen in print, but which he understood only vaguely). It worked itself out for any given Century to three relationships, and for the 482nd those relationships stood near the limits of what
could be permitted. Sociologists shook their heads over it and Harlan had heard one say at one time that any further deterioration with new Reality Changes would require “the closest Observation.”

Yet there was this to be said for unfavorable relationships in the wealth-distribution equation. It meant the existence of a leisure class and the development of an attractive way of life which, at its best, encouraged culture and grace. As long as the other end of the scale was not too badly off, as long as the leisure classes did not entirely forget their responsibilities while enjoying their privileges, as long as their culture took no obviously unhealthy turn, there was always the tendency in Eternity to forgive the departure from the ideal wealth-distribution pattern and to search for other, less attractive maladjustments.

Against his will Harlan began to understand this. Ordinarily his overnight stays in Time involved hotels in the poorer sections, where a man might easily stay anonymous, where strangers were ignored, where one presence more or less was nothing and therefore did not cause the fabric of Reality to do more than tremble. When even that was unsafe, where there was a good chance that the trembling might pass the critical point and bring down a significant part of the card house of Reality, it was not unusual to have to sleep under a particular hedge in the countryside.

And it was usual to survey various hedges to see which would be least disturbed by farmers, tramps, even stray dogs, during the night.

But now Harlan, at the other end of the scale, slept in a bed with a surface of field-permeated matter, a peculiar welding of matter and energy that entered only the highest economic levels of this society. Throughout Time it was less common than pure matter but more common than pure energy. In any case it molded itself to his body as he lay down, firm when he lay still, yielding when he moved or turned.

Reluctantly he confessed the attraction of such things, and he accepted the wisdom which caused each Section of Eternity to live on the
median
scale of its Century rather than at its most comfortable level. In that way it could maintain contact with the problems and “feel” of the Century, without succumbing to too close an identification with a sociological extreme.