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Harlan's pulse quickened. Still not an Eternal? But Finge said…
Leave it at that, he pleaded with himself. Leave it at that. She's coming with you. She smiles at you. What more do you want?
But he spoke anyway. He said, "You think an Eternal lives forever, don't you?"
"Well, they call them Etemals, you know, and everyone says they do." She smiled at him brightly. "But they don't, do they?"
"You don't think so, then?"
"After I was in Eternity a while, I didn't. People didn't talk as though they lived forever, and there were old men there."
"Yet you told me I lived forever-that night."
She moved closer to him along the seat, still smiling. "I thought: who knows?"
He said, without being quite able to keep the strain out of his voice, "How does a Timer go about becoming an Eternal?"
Her smile vanished and was it his imagination or was there a trace of heightened color in her cheek. She said, "Why do you ask that?"
"To find out."
"It's silly," she said. "I'd rather not talk about it." She stared down at her graceful fingers, edged with nails that glittered colorlessly in the muted light of the kettle shaft. Harlan thought abstractedly and quite apropos of nothing that at an evening gathering, with a touch of mild ultraviolet in the wall illumination, those nails would glow a soft apple-green or a brooding crimson, depending on the angle she held her hands. A clever girl, one like Noys, could produce half a dozen shades out of them, and make it seem as though the colors were reflecting her moods. Blue for i
He said, "Why did you make love to me?"
She shook her hair back and looked at him out of a pale, grave face. She said, "If you must know, part of the reason was the theory that a girl can become an Eternal that way. I wouldn't mind living forever."
"I thought you said you didn't believe that."
"I didn't, but it couldn't hurt a girl to take the chance. Especially--"
He was staring at her sternly, finding refuge from hurt and disappointment in a frozen look of disapproval from the heights of the morality of his homewhen. "Well?"
"Especially since I wanted to, anyway."
"Wanted to make love to me?"
"Yes."
"Why me?"
"Because I liked you. Because I thought you were fu
"Fu
"Well, odd, if you like that better. You always worked so hard not to look at me, but you always looked at me anyway. You tried to hate me and I could see you wanted me. I was sorry for you a little, I think."
"What were you sorry about?" Ue felt his cheeks burning.
"That you should have such trouble about wanting me. It's such a simple thing. You just ask a girl. It's so easy to be friendly. Why suffer?"
Harlan nodded. The morality of the 482nd! "Just ask a girl," he muttered. "So simple. Nothing more necessary."
"The girl has to be willing, of course. Mostly she is, if she's not otherwise engaged. Why not? It's simple enough."
It was Harlan's turn to drop his eyes. Of course, it was simple enough. And nothing wrong with it, either. Not in the 482nd. Who in Eternity should know this better? He would be a fool, an utter and unspeakable fool, to ask her now about earlier affairs. He might as well ask a girl of his own homewhen if she had ever eaten in the presence of a man and how dared she?
Instead he said humbly, "And what do you think of me now?"
"That you are very nice," she said softly, "and that if you ever relaxed- Won't you smile?"
"There's nothing to smile about, Noys."
"Please. I want to see if your cheeks can crease right. Let's see." She put her fingers to the corners of his mouth and pressed them backward. He jerked his head back in surprise and couldn't avoid smiling.
"See. Your cheeks didn't even crack. You're almost handsome. With enough practice-standing in front of a mirror and smiling and getting a twinkle in your eye-I'll bet you could be really handsome."
But the smile, fragile enough to begin with, vanished.
Noys said, "We are in trouble, aren't we?"
"Yes, we are, Noys. Great trouble."
"Because of what we did? You and I? That evening?"
"Not really."
"That was my fault, you know. I'll tell them so, if you wish."
"Never,", said Harlan with energy. "Don't take on any fault in this. You've done nothing, nothing, to be guilty for. It's something else."
Noys looked uneasily at the temporometer. "Where are we? I can't even see the numbers."
"When are we?" Harlan corrected her automatically. He slowed the velocity and the Centuries came into view.
Her beautiful eyes widened and the lashes stood out against the whiteness of her skin. "Is that right?"
Harlan looked at the indicator casually. It was in the 72,000's. "I'm sure it is."
"But where are we going?"
"To when are we going. To the far upwhen," he said, grimly. "Good and far. Where they won't find you."
And in silence they watched the numbers mount. In silence Harlan told himself over and over that the girl was i
He looked up, then, as Noys shifted position. She had moved to his side of the kettle and, with a resolute gesture, brought the kettle to a halt at a most uncomfortable temporal deceleration.
Harlan gulped and closed his eyes to let the nausea pass. He said, "What's the matter?"
She looked ashen and for a moment made no reply. Then she said, "I don't want to go any further. The numbers are so high."
The temporometer read: 111,394.
He said, "Far enough."
Then he held out his hand gravely, "Come, Noys. This will be your home for a while."
They wandered through the corridors like children, hand in hand. The lights along the mainways were on, and the darkened rooms blazed at the touch of a contact. The air was fresh and had a liveliness about it which, without sensible draft, yet indicated the presence of ventilation.
Noys whispered, "Is there no one here?"
"No one," said Harlan. He tried to say it firmly and loudly. He wanted to break the spell of being in a "Hidden Century," but he said it in only a whisper after all.
He did not even know how to refer to anything so far upwhen. To call it the one-one-one-three-ninety-fourth was ridiculous. One would have to say simply and indefinitely, "The hundred thousands."
It was a foolish problem to be concerned with, but now that the exaltation of actual flight was done with, he found himself alone in a region of Eternity where no human footsteps had wandered and he did not like it. He was ashamed, doubly ashamed since Noys was witness, at the fact that the faint chill within him was the faint chill of a faint fear.
Noys said, "It's so clean. There's no dust."
"Self-cleaning," said Harlan. With an effort that seemed to tear at his vocal cords he raised his voice to near-normal level. "But no one's here, upwhen or downwhen for thousands and thousands of Centuries."
Noys seemed to accept that. "And everything is fixed up so? We passed food stores and a viewing-film library. Did you see that?"
"I saw that. Oh, it's fully equipped. They're all fully equipped. Every Section."
"But why, if no one ever comes here?"
"It's logical," said Harlan. Talking about it took away some of the eeriness. Saying out loud what he already knew in the abstract would pin-point the matter, bring it down to the level of the prosaic. He said, "Early in the history of Eternity, one of the Centuries in the 300's came up with a mass duplicator. Do you know what I mean? By setting up a resonating field, energy could be converted to matter with subatomic particles taking up precisely the same pattern of positions, within the uncertainty requirements, as those in the model being used. The result is an exact copy.