The End of Eternity

Harlan, whose homewhen was middling fruitful in advertisement, raised tolerant eyebrows and merely said, "You'll have to accept that. It's their way and we never quarrel with the ways of any culture as long as it does not seriously harm mankind as a whole."

But now Harlan's mind snapped back to his present situation and he was back in the present, staring at the loudmouthed, brassy advertisements in the news magazine. He asked himself in sudden excitement: Were the thoughts he had just experienced really irrelevant? Or was he tortuously finding a way out of the blackness and back to Noys?

Advertisement! A device for forcing the unwilling into line. Did it matter to a ground-vehicle manufacturer whether a given individual felt an original or spontaneous desire for his product? If the prospect (that was the word) could be artificially persuaded or cajoled into feeling that desire and acting upon it, would that not be just as well?

Then what did it matter if Noys loved him out of passion or out of calculation? Let them but be together long enough and she would grow to love him. He would make her love him and, in the end, love and not its motivation was what counted. He wished now he had read some of the novels out of Time that Finge had mentioned scornfully.

Harlan's fists clenched at a sudden thought. If Noys had come to him, to Harlan, for immortality, it could only mean that she had not yet fulfilled the requirement for that gift. She could have made love to no Eternal previously. That meant that her relationship to Finge had been nothing more than that of secretary and employer. Otherwise what need would she have had for Harlan?

Yet Finge surely must have tried-must have attempted… (Harlan could not complete the thought even in the secrecy of his own mind.) Finge could have proved the superstition's existence on his own person. Surely he could not have missed the thought with Noys an everpresent temptation. Then she must have refused him.

He had had to use Harlan and Harlan had succeeded. It was for that reason that Finge had been driven into the jealous revenge of torturing Harlan with the knowledge that Noys's motivation had been a practical one, and that he could never have her.

Yet Noys had refused Finge even with eternal life at stake and had accepted Harlan. She had that much of a choice and she had made it in Harlan's favor. 'So it wasn't calculation entirely. Emotion played a part.

Harlan's thoughts were wild and jumbled, and grew more heated with every moment.

He must have her, and now. Before any Reality Change. What was it Finge had said to him, jeering: _The now does not last, even in Eternity_.

Doesn't it, though? Doesn't it?

Harlan had known exactly what he must do. Finge's angry taunting had goaded him into a frame of mind where he was ready for crime and Finge's final sneer had, at least, inspired him with the nature of the deed he must commit.

He had not wasted a moment after that. It was with excitement and even joy that he left his quarters, at all but a run, to commit a major crime against Eternity.

8. Crime

No one had questioned him. No one had stopped him. There was that advantage, anyway, in the social isolation of a Technician. He went via the kettle cha

Of course, it might be Finge who stumbled upon the door. He would have to chance that.

Noys was still standing as he had left her. Wretched hours (physiohours) had passed since Harlan had left the 482nd for a lonely Eternity, but he returned now to the same Time, within a matter of seconds, that he had left. Not a hair on Noys's head had stirred.

She looked startled. "Did you forget something, Andrew?"

Harlan stared at her hungrily, but made no move to touch her. He remembered Finge's words, and he dared not risk a repulse. He said stiffly, "You've got to do as I say."

She said, "But is something wrong, then? You just left. You just this minute left."

"Don't worry," said Harlan. It was all he could do to keep from taking her hand, from trying to soothe her. Instead he spoke harshly. It was as though some demon were forcing him to do all the wrong things. Why had he come back at the first available moment? He was only disturbing her by his almost instantaneous return after leaving.

(He knew the answer to that, really. He had a two-day margin of grace allowed by the spatio-temporal chart. The earlier portions of that period of grace were safer and yielded least chance of discovery. It was a natural tendency to crowd it as far downwhen as he could. A foolish risk, too, though. He might easily have miscalculated and entered Time before he had left it physiohours earlier. What then? It was one of the first rules he had learned as an Observer: One person occupying two points in the same Time of the same Reality runs a risk of meeting himself.

Somehow that was something to be avoided. Why? Harlan knew he didn't want to meet himself. He didn't want to be staring into the eyes of another and earlier (or later) Harlan. Beyond that it would be a paradox, and what was it Twissell was fond of saying? "There are no paradoxes in Time, but only because Time deliberately avoids paradoxes.")

All the time Harlan thought dizzily of all this Noys stared at him with large, luminous eyes.

Then she came to him and put cool hands on either burning cheek and said softly, "You're in trouble."

To Harlan her glance seemed kindly, loving. Yet how could that be? She had what she wanted. What else was there? He seized her wrists and said huskily, "Will you come with me? Now? Without asking any questions? Doing exactly as I say?"

"Must I?" she asked.

"You must, Noys. It's very important."

"Then I'll come." She said it matter-of-factly, as though such a request came to her each day and was always accepted.

At the lip of the kettle Noys hesitated a moment, then stepped in.

Harlan said, "We're going upwhen, Noys."

"That means the future, doesn't it?"

The kettle was already faintly humming as she entered it and she was scarcely seated when Harlan unobtrusively moved the contact at his elbow.

She showed no signs of nausea at the begi

She sat there quietly, so beautiful and so at ease that he ached, looking at her, and gave not the particle of a damn that, by bringing a Timer, unauthorized, into Eternity, he had committed a felony.

She said, "Does that dial show the numbers of the years, Andrew?"

"The Centuries."

"You mean we're a thousand years in the future? Already?"

"That's right."

"It doesn't feel like it."

"I know."

She looked about. "But how are we moving?"

"I don't know, Noys."

"You don't?"

"There are many things about Eternity that are hard to understand."

The numbers on the temporometer marched. Faster and faster they moved till they were a blur. With his elbow Harlan had nudged the speed stick to high. The power drain might cause some surprise in the power plants, but he doubted it. No one had been waiting for him in Eternity when he returned with Noys, and that was nine tenths the battle. Now it was only necessary to get her to a safe place.

Again Harlan looked at her. "Eternals don't know everything."

"And I'm not an Eternal," she murmured. "I know so little."