The End of Eternity

Harlan decided that, after all, there wasn't a man in Eternity he disliked quite as much as Finge. The excuses he had found for the man only a few days before vanished.

On the morning of the fourth day Harlan asked for and received permission to see Finge privately. He walked in with a determined step and, to his own surprise, made his point instantly. "Computer Finge, I suggest that Miss Lambent be returned to Time."

Finge's eyes narrowed. He nodded toward a chair, placed clasped hands under his soft, round chin, and showed some of his teeth. "Well, sit down. Sit down. You find Miss Lambert incompetent? Unsuitable?"

"As to her incompetence and unsuitability, Computer, I ca

Finge stared at him distantly as though his Computer's mind were weighing abstractions beyond the reach of an ordinary Eternal. "In what way is she hurting morale, Technician?"

"There's no real necessity for you to ask," said Harlan, his anger deepening. "Her costume is exhibitionistic. Her--"

"Wait, wait. Now wait a while, Harlan. You've been an Observer in this era. You know her clothes are standard costume for the 482nd."

"In her own surroundings, in her own cultural milieu, I would have no fault to find, though I'll say right now that her costume is extreme even for the 482nd. You'll allow me to be the judge of that. Here in Eternity, a person such as she is certainly out of place."

Finge nodded his head slowly. He actually seemed to be enjoying himself. Harlan stiffened.

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) "girl friend?"

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 a 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 rnonasteries 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 Noys Lambent to distribute copies.

But Noys 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 sca

Somewhere about midpoint, Harlan's hand shot out and disco