The End of Eternity

The force-gear would take over now. Thrust would come at zero time. And that left Harlan one last manipulation. The Samson-smash!

His right hand moved. He did not look at his right hand.

Minus five seconds.

Noys!

His right hand mo-ZERO-ved again, spasmodically. He did not look at it.

Was this nonexistence?

Not yet. Nonexistence not yet.

Harlan stared out the window. He did not move. Time passed and he was unaware of its passage.

The room was empty. Where the giant, enclosed kettle had been was nothing. Metal blocks that had served as its base sat emptily, lifting their huge strength against air.

Twissell, strangely small and dwarfed in the room that had become a waiting cavern, was the only thing that moved as he tramped edgily this way and that.

Harlan's eyes followed him for a moment and then left him.

Then, without any sound or stir, the kettle was back in the spot it had left. Its passage across the hairline from time past to time present did not as much as disturb a molecule of air.

Twissell was hidden from Harlan's eyes by the bulk of the kettle, but then he rounded it, came into view. He was ru

A flick of his hand was enough to activate the mechanism that opened the door of the control room. He hurtled inside, shouting with an almost lyrical excitement. "It's done. It's done. We've closed the circle." He had breath to say no more.

Harlan made no answer.

Twissell stared out the window, his hands flat against the glass. Harlan noted the blotches of age upon them and the way in which they trembled. It was as though his mind no longer had the ability or the strength to filter the important from the inconsequential, but were selecting observational material in a purely random ma

Wearily he thought: What does it matter? What does anything matter now?

Twissell said (Harlan heard him dimly), "I'll tell you now that I've been more anxious than I cared to admit. Se

He had turned at Harlan's odd grunt.

Harlan shook his head, managed a choked "Nothing."

Twissell left it at that and turned away. It was doubtful whether he spoke to Harlan or to the air. It was as though he were allowing years of pent-up anxieties to escape in words.

"Se

"We knew our own future, Se

"Impossible, he would say. Reality must change to correct your knowledge, even if it meant the circle would never close and Eternity never established.

"Why he argued so, I don't know. Perhaps he honestly believed it, perhaps it was an intellectual game with him, perhaps it was just the desire to shock the rest of us with an unpopular viewpoint. In any case, the project proceeded and some of the memoir began to be fulfilled. We located Cooper, for instance, in the Century and Reality that the memoir gave us. Se

"And yet, and yet"-he laughed gently, with more than a trace of embarrassment, and let his cigarette, u

Harlan said in a low voice, "Computer Se

Twissell whirled. "What?"

"The project failed." Harlan's mind was coming out of the shadows (why, and into what, he was not sure). "The circle is not complete."

"What are you talking about?" Twissell's old hands fell on Harlan's shoulders with surprising strength. "You're ill, boy. The strain."

"Not ill. Sick of everything. You. Me. Not ill. The gauge. See for yourself."

"The gauge?" The hairline on the gauge stood at the 27th Century, hard against the right-hand extreme. "What happened?" The joy was gone from his face. Horror replaced it.

Harlan grew matter-of-fact. "I melted the locking mechanism, freed the thrust control."

"How could you--"

"I had a neuronic whip. I broke it open and used its micro-pile energy source in one flash, like a torch. There's what's left of it." He kicked at a small heap of metal fragments in one corner.

Twissell wasn't taking it in. "In the 27th? You mean Cooper's in the 27th--"

"I don't know where he is," said Harlan dully. "I shifted the thrust control downwhen, further down than the z4th. I don't know where. I didn't look. Then I brought it back. I still didn't look."

Twissell stared at him, his face a pale, unhealthy yellowish color, his lower lip trembling.

"I don't know where he is now," said Harlan. "He's lost in the Primitive. The circle is broken. I thought everything would end when I made the stroke. At zero time. That's silly. We've got to wait. There'll be a moment in physiotime when Cooper will realize he's in the wrong Century, when he'll do something against the memoir, when he-" He broke off, then broke into a forced and creaky laughter. "What's the difference? It's only a delay till Cooper makes the final break in the circle. There's no way of stopping it. Minutes, hours, days. What's the difference? When the delay is done, there will be no more Eternity. Do you hear me? It will be the end of Eternity.

14. The Earlier Crime

"Why? Why?"

Twissell looked helplessly from the gauge to the Technician, his eyes mirroring the puzzled frustration in his voice.

Harlan lifted his head. He had only one word to say. "Noys!"

Twissell said, "The woman you took into Eternity?"

Harlan smiled bitterly, said nothing.

Twissell said, "What has she to do with this? Great Time, I don't understand, boy."

"What is there to understand?" Harlan burned with sorrow. "Why do you pretend ignorance? I had a woman. I was happy and so was she. We harmed no one. She did not exist in the new Reality. What differ. ence would it have made to anyone?"

Twissell tried vainly to interrupt.

Harlan shouted. "But there are rules in Eternity, aren't there? I know them all. Liaisons require permission; liaisons require computations; liaisons require status; liaisons are tricky things. What were you pla

He ended in a kind of despair and Twissell moved quickly to the Communiplate. Its function as a transmitter had obviously been restored.

The Computer shouted into it till he aroused an answer. Then he said, "This is Twissell. No one is to be allowed in here. No one. No one. Do you understand?… Then see to it. It goes for members of the Allwhen Council. It goes for them particularly."

He turned back to Harlan, saying abstractedly, "They'll do it because I'm old and senior member of the Council and because they think I'm cranky and queer. They give in to me because I'm cranky and queer." For a moment he fell into a ruminative silence. Then he said, "Do you think I'm queer?" and his face turned swiftly up to Harlan's like that of a seamed monkey.