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Noys said, "Is all this allowed? I mean, can you take people into Eternity and keep them from changing? It doesn't sound right, somehow, from the things you've told me."
For a moment Harlan felt shrunken and cold in the large emptiness of the thousands of Centuries that surrounded him upwhen and down. For a moment he felt cut off even from the Eternity that was his only home and only faith, doubly cast out from Time and Eternity; and only the woman for whom he had forsaken it all left at his side.
He said, and he meant it deeply, "No, it is a crime. It is a very great crime, and I am bitterly ashamed. But I would do it again, if I had to, and any number of times, if I had to."
"For me, Andrew? For me?"
He did not raise his eyes to hers. "No, Noys, for myself. I could not bear to lose you."
She said, "And if we are caught…"
Harlan knew the answer to that. He knew the answer since that moment of insight in bed in the 482nd, with Noys sleeping at his side. But, even yet, he dared not think of the wild truth.
He said, "I am not afraid of anyone. I have ways of protecting myself. They don't imagine how much I know."
9. Interlude
It was, looking back at it, an idyllic period that followed. A hundred things took place in those physioweeks, and all confused itself inextricably in Harlan's memory, later, making the period seem to have lasted much longer than it did. The one idyllic thing about it was, of course, the hours he could spend with Noys, and that cast a glow over everything else.
Item One: At the 482nd he slowly packed his personal effects; his clothing and films, most of all his beloved and tenderly handled newsmagazine volumes out of the Primitive. Anxiously he supervised their return to his permanent station in the 575th.
Finge was at his elbow as the last of it was lifted into the freight kettle by Maintenance men.
Finge said, choosing his words with unerring triteness, "Leaving us, I see." His smile was broad, but his lips were carefully held together so that only the barest trace of teeth showed. He kept his hands clasped behind his back and his pudgy body teetered forward on the balls of his feet.
Harlan did not look at his superior. He muttered a monotoned "Yes, sir."
Finge said, "I will report to Senior Computer Twissell concerning the entirely satisfactory ma
Harlan could not bring himself to utter even a sullen word of thanks. He remained silent.
Finge went on, in a suddenly much lower voice, "I will not report, for the present, your recent attempt at violence against me." And although his smile remained and his glance remained mild, there was a relish of cruel satisfaction about him.
Harlan looked up sharply and said, "As you wish, Computer."
Item Two: He re-established himself at the 575th.
He met Twissell almost at once. He found himself happy to see that little body, topped by that lined and gnomelike face. He was even happy to see the white cylinder nestling smokily between two stained fingers and being lifted rapidly toward Twissell's lips.
Harlan said, "Computer."
Twissell, emerging from his office, looked for a moment unseeingly and unrecognizingly at Harlan. His face was haggard and his eyes squinted with weariness.
He said, "Ah, Technician Harlan. You are done with your work in the 482nd?"
"Yes, sir."
Twissell's comment was strange. He looked at his watch, which, like any watch in Eternity, was geared to physiotime, giving the day number as well as the time of day, and said, "On the nose, my boy, on the nose. Wonderful. Wonderful."
Harlan felt his heart give a small bound. When he had last seen Twissell he would not have been able to make sense of that remark. Now he thought he did. Twissell was tired, or he would not have spoken so close to the core of things, perhaps. Or the Computer might have felt the remark to be so cryptic as to feel safe despite its closeness to the core.
Harlan said, speaking ascasually as he could to avoid letting it seem that his remark had any co
"Fine, fine," said Twissell, with only half his mind, apparently, on his words. He took a quick puff at the shortening tube of tobacco, indulged in a quick nod of dismissal, and hurried off.
Item Three: the Cub.
He seemed older. There seemed to be a greater feeling of maturity to him as he held out his hand and said, "Glad to see you back, Harlan."
Or was it merely that, where earlier Harlan had been conscious of Cooper only as a pupil, he now seemed more than a Cub. He now seemed a gigantic instrument in the hands of the Eternals. Naturally he could not help but attain a new stature in Harlan's eyes.
Harlan tried not to show that. They were in Harlan's own quarters, and the Technician basked in the creamy porcelain surfaces about him, glad to be out of the ornate splash of the 482nd. Try as he might to associate the wild baroque of the 482nd with Noys, he only succeeded in associating it with Finge. With Noys he associated a pink, satiny twilight and, strangely, the bare austerity of the Sections of the Hidden Centuries.
He spoke hastily, almost as though he were anxious to hide his dangerous thoughts. "Well, Cooper, what have they been doing with you while I was away?"
Cooper laughed, brushed his drooping mustache self-consciously with one finger and said, "More math. Always math."
"Yes? Pretty advanced stuff by now, I guess."
"Pretty advanced."
"How's it coming?"
"So far it's bearable. It comes pretty easy, you know. I like it. But now they're really loading it on."
Harlan nodded and felt a certain satisfaction. He said, "Temporal Field matrices and all that?"
But Cooper, his color a little high, turned toward the stacked volumes in the bookshelves, and said, "Let's get back to the Primitives. I've got some questions."
"About what?"
"City life in the 23rd. Los Angeles, especially."
"Why Los Angeles?"
"It's an interesting city. Don't you think so?"
"It is, but let's hit it in the 21st, then. It was at its peak in the 21st."
"Oh, let's try the 23rd."
Harlan said, "Well, why not?"
His face was impassive, but if the impassiveness could have been peeled off, there would have been a grimness about him. His grand, intuitional guess was more than a guess. Everything was checking neatly.
Item Four: research. Twofold research.
For himself, first. Each day, with ferreting eyes, he went through the reports on Twissell's desk. The reports concerned the various Reality Changes being scheduled or suggested. Copies went to Twissell routinely since he was a member of the Allwhen Council, and Harlan knew he would not miss one. He looked first for the coming Change in the 482nd. Secondly he looked for other Changes, any other Changes, that might have a flaw, an imperfection, some deviation from maximum excellence that might be visible to his own trained and talented Technician's eyes.
In the strictest sense of the word the reports were not for his study, but Twissell was rarely in his office these days, and no one else saw fit to interfere with Twissell's personal Technician.
That was one part of his research. The other took place in the 575th Section branch of the library.
For the first time he ventured out of those portions of the library which, ordinarily, monopolized his attention. In the past he had haunted the section on Primitive history (very poor indeed, so that most of his references and source materials had to be derived from the far downwhen of the 3rd mille