The End of Eternity (2 page)

But then he flicked the foil out across the table and turned to the matter at hand.

“I am not a Sociologist, sir.”

Voy smiled. “That sounds formidable. When one begins by expressing lack of competence in a given field, it usually implies that a flat opinion in that field will follow almost immediately.”

“No,” said Harlan, “not an opinion. Just a request. I wonder if you won’t look over this summary and see if you haven’t made a small mistake somewhere here.”

Voy looked instantly grave. “I hope not,” he said.

Harlan kept one arm across the back of his chair, the other in his lap. He must let neither hand drum restless fingers. He must not bite his lips. He must not show his feelings in any way.

Ever since the whole orientation of his life had so changed itself, he had been watching the summaries of projected Reality Changes as they passed through the grinding administrative gears of the Allwhen Council. As Senior Computer Twissell’s personally assigned Technician, he could arrange that by a slight bending of professional ethics. Particularly with Twissell’s attention caught ever more tightly in his own overwhelming project. (Harlan’s nostrils flared. He knew
now
a little of the nature of that project.)

Harlan had had no assurance that he would ever find what he was looking for in a reasonable time. When he had first glanced over projected Reality Change 2456-2781, Serial Number V-5, he was half inclined to believe his reasoning powers were warped by wishing. For a full day he had checked and rechecked equations and relationships in a rattling uncertainty, mixed with growing excitement and a bitter
gratitude that he had been taught at least elementary psycho-mathematics.

Now Voy went over those same puncture patterns with a half-puzzled, half-worried eye.

He said, “It seems to me; I say, it
seems
to me that this is all perfectly in order.”

Harlan said, “I refer you particularly to the matter of the courtship characteristics of the society of the current Reality of this Century. That’s sociology and your responsibility, I believe. It’s why I arranged to see
you
when I arrived, rather than someone else.”

Voy was now frowning. He was still polite, but with an icy touch now. He said, “The Observers assigned to our Section are highly competent. I have every certainty that those assigned to this project have given accurate data. Have you evidence to the contrary?”

“Not at all, Sociologist Voy. I accept their data. It is the development of the data I question. Do you not have an alternate tensor-complex at this point, if the courtship data is taken properly into consideration?”

Voy stared, and then a look of relief washed over him visibly. “Of course, Technician, of course, but it resolves itself into an identity. There is a loop of small dimensions with no tributaries on either side. I hope you’ll forgive me for using picturesque language rather than precise mathematical expressions.”

“I appreciate it,” said Harlan dryly. “I am no more a Computer than a Sociologist.”

“Very good, then. The alternate tensor-complex you refer to, or the forking of the road, as we might say, is non-significant. The forks join up again and it is a single road. There was not even any need to mention it in our recommendations.”

“If you say so, sir, I will defer to your better judgment. However, there is still the matter of the M.N.C.”

The Sociologist winced at the initials as Harlan knew he would. M.N.C.—Minimum Necessary Change. There the Technician was master. A Sociologist might consider himself above criticism by lesser beings in anything involving the mathematical analysis of the infinite possible Realities in Time, but in matters of M.N.C. the Technician stood supreme.

Mechanical computing would not do. The largest Computaplex ever built, manned by the cleverest and most experienced Senior Computer ever born, could do no better than to indicate the ranges in which the M.N.C. might be found. It was then the Technician, glancing over the data, who decided on an exact point within that range. A good Technician was rarely wrong. A top Technician was never wrong.

Harlan was never wrong.

“Now the M.N.C. recommended,” said Harlan (he spoke coolly, evenly, pronouncing the Standard Intertemporal Language in precise syllables), “by your Section involves induction of an accident in space and the immediate death by fairly horrible means of a dozen or more men.”

“Unavoidable,” said Voy, shrugging.

“On the other hand,” said Harlan, “I suggest that the M.N.C. can be reduced to the mere displacement of a container from one shelf to another. Here!” His long finger pointed. His white, well-cared-for index nail made the faintest mark along one set of perforations.

Voy considered matters with a painful but silent intensity.

Harlan said, “Doesn’t that alter the situation with regard to your unconsidered fork? Doesn’t it take advantage of the fork of lesser probability, changing it to a near-certainty, and does that not then lead to—”

“—to virtually the M.D.R.” whispered Voy.

“To
exactly
the Maximum Desired Response,” said Harlan.

Voy looked up, his dark face struggling somewhere between
chagrin and anger. Harlan noted absently that there was a space between the man’s large upper incisors which gave him a rabbity look quite at odds with the restrained force of his words.

Voy said, “I suppose I will be hearing from the Allwhen Council?”

“I don’t think so. As far as I know, the Allwhen Council does not know of this. At least, the projected Reality Change was passed over to me without comment.” He did not explain the word “passed,” nor did Voy question it.

“
You
discovered this error, then?”

“Yes.”

“And you did not report it to the Allwhen Council?”

“No, I did not.”

Relief first, then a hardening of countenance. “Why not?”

“Very few people could have avoided this error. I felt I could correct it before damage was done. I have done so. Why go any further?”

“Well—thank you, Technician Harlan. You have been a friend. The Section’s error which, as you say, was practically unavoidable, would have looked unjustifiably bad in the record.”

He went on after a moment’s pause. “Of course, in view of the alterations in personality to be induced by this Reality Change, the death of a few men as preliminary is of little importance.”

Harlan thought, detachedly: He doesn’t sound really grateful. He probably resents it. If he stops to think, he’ll resent it even more, this being saved a downstroke in rating by a Technician. If I were a Sociologist, he would shake my hand, but he won’t shake the hand of a Technician. He defends condemning a dozen people to asphyxiation, but he won’t touch a Technician.

And because waiting to let resentment grow would be
fatal, Harlan said without waiting, “I hope your gratitude will extend to having your Section perform a slight chore for me.”

“A chore?”

“A matter of Life-Plotting. I have the data necessary here with me. I have also the data for a suggested Reality Change in the 482nd. I want to know the effect of the Change on the probability-pattern of a certain individual.”

“I am not quite sure,” said the Sociologist slowly, “that I understand you. Surely you have the facilities for doing this in your own Section?”

“I have. Nevertheless, what I am engaged in is a personal research which I don’t wish to appear in the records just yet. It would be difficult to have this carried out in my own Section without—” He gestured an uncertain conclusion to the unfinished sentence.

Voy said, “Then you want this done
not
through official channels.”

“I want it done confidentially. I want a confidential answer.”

“Well, now, that’s very irregular. I can’t agree to it.”

Harlan frowned. “No more irregular than my failure to report your error to the Allwhen Council. You raised no objection to that. If we’re going to be strictly regular in one case, we must be as strict and as regular in the other. You follow me, I think?”

The look on Voy’s face was proof positive of that. He held out his hand. “May I see the documents?”

Harlan relaxed a bit. The main hurdle had been passed. He watched eagerly as the Sociologist’s head bent over the foils he had brought.

Only once did the Sociologist speak. “By Time, this is a small Reality Change.”

Harlan seized his opportunity and improvised. “It is. Too small, I think. It’s what the argument is about. It’s below critical difference, and I’ve picked an individual as a test case.
Naturally, it would be undiplomatic to use our own Section’s facilities until I was certain of being right.”

Voy was unresponsive and Harlan stopped. No use running this past the point of safety.

Voy stood up. “I’ll pass this along to one of my Life-Plotters. We’ll keep this private. You understand, though, that this is not to be taken as establishing a precedent.”

“Of course not.”

“And if you don’t mind, I’d like to watch the Reality Change take place. I trust you will honor us by conducting the M.N.C. personally.”

Harlan nodded. “I will take full responsibility.”

Two of the screens in the viewing chamber were in operation when they entered. The engineers had focused them already to the exact coordinates in Space and Time and then had left. Harlan and Voy were alone in the glittering room. (The molecular film arrangement was perceptible and even a bit more than perceptible, but Harlan was looking at the screens.)

Both views were motionless. They might have been scenes of the dead, since they pictured mathematical instants of Time.

One view was in sharp, natural color; the engine room of what Harlan knew to be an experimental spaceship. A door was closing, and a glistening shoe of a red, semi-transparent material was just visible through the space that remained. It did not move. Nothing moved. If the picture could have been made sharp enough to picture the dust motes in the air,
they
would not have moved.

Voy said, “For two hours and thirty-six minutes after the viewed instant, that engine room will remain empty. In the current Reality, that is.”

“I know,” murmured Harlan. He was putting on his
gloves and already his quick eyes were memorizing the position of the critical container on its shelf, measuring the steps to it, estimating the best position into which to transfer it. He cast one quick look at the other screen.

If the engine room, being in the range described as “present” with respect to that Section of Eternity in which they now stood, was clear and in natural color, the other scene, being some twenty-five Centuries in the “future,” carried the blue luster all views of the “future” must.

It was a spaceport. A deep blue sky, blue-tinged buildings of naked metal on blue-green ground. A blue cylinder of odd design, bulge-bottomed, stood in the foreground. Two others like it were in the background. All three pointed cleft noses upward, the cleavage biting deeply into the vitals of the ship.

Harlan frowned. “They’re queer ones.”

“Electro-gravitic,” said Voy. “The 2481st is the only Century to develop electro-gravitic space travel. No propellants, no nucleonics. It’s an aesthetically pleasing device. It’s a pity we must Change away from it. A pity.” His eyes fixed themselves on Harlan with distinct disapproval.

Harlan’s lips compressed. Disapproval, of course! Why not? He was the Technician.

To be sure, it had been some Observer who had brought in the details of drug addiction. It had been some Statistician who had demonstrated that recent Changes had increased the addiction rate until now it was the highest in all the current Reality of man. Some Sociologist, probably Voy himself, had interpreted that into the psychiatric profile of a society. Finally, some Computer had worked out the Reality Change necessary to decrease addiction to a safe level and found that, as a side effect, electro-gravitic space travel must suffer. A dozen, a hundred men of every rating in Eternity had had a hand in this.

But then, at the end, a Technician such as himself must
step in. Following the directions all the others had combined to give him, he must be the one to initiate the actual Reality Change. And then, all the others would stare in haughty accusation at him. Their stares would say:
You
, not we, have destroyed this beautiful thing.

And for that, they would condemn and avoid him. They would shift their own guilt to his shoulders and scorn him.

Harlan said harshly, “Ships aren’t what count. We’re concerned with those things.”

The “things” were people, dwarfed by the spaceship, as Earth and Earth’s society is always dwarfed by the physical dimensions of spaceflight.

They were little puppets in clusters, these people. Their tiny arms and legs were in raised, artificial-looking positions, caught in the frozen instant of Time.

Voy shrugged.

Harlan was adjusting the small field-generator about his left wrist. “Let’s get this job done.”

“One minute. I want to get in touch with the Life-Plotter and find out how long this job for you will take. I want to get that job done, too.”

His hands worked cleverly at a little movable contact and his ear listened astutely to the pattern of clicks that came back. (Another characteristic of this Section of Eternity, thought Harlan—sound codes in clicks. Clever, but affected, like the molecular films.)

“He says it won’t take more than three hours,” said Voy at length. “Also, by the way, he admires the name of the person involved. Noÿs Lambent. It is a female, isn’t it?”

There was a dryness in Harlan’s throat. “Yes.”

Voy’s lips curled into a slow smile. “Sounds interesting. I’d like to meet her, sight unseen. Haven’t had any women in this Section for months.”

Harlan didn’t trust himself to answer. He stared a moment at the Sociologist and turned abruptly.

If there was a flaw in Eternity, it involved women. He had known the flaw for what it was from almost his first entrance into Eternity, but he felt it personally only that day he had first met Noÿs. From that moment it had been an easy path to this one, in which he stood false to his oath as an Eternal and to everything in which he had believed.