Isaac Asimov - The End of Eternity

“In the last month, I’ve done 572 cancer requests. Seventeen, count them, seventeen Life-Plots came out to involve no undesirable Reality Changes. Mind you, there wasn’t one case of a possible desirable Reality Change, but the Council says neutral cases get the serum. Humanity, you know. So exactly seventeen people in assorted Centuries get cured this month.

“And what happens? Are the Centuries happy? Not on your life. One man gets cured and a dozen, same country, same Time, don’t. Everyone says, Why that one? Maybe the guys we didn’t treat are better characters, maybe they’re rosy-cheeked philanthropists beloved by all, while the one man we cure kicks his aged mother all around the block whenever he can spare the time from beating his kids. They don’t know about Reality Changes and we can’t tell them.

“We’re just making trouble for ourselves, Voy, unless the Allwhen Council decides to screen all applications and approve only those which result in a desirable Reality Change. That’s all. Either curing them does some good for humanity, or else it’s out. Never mind this business of saying: ‘Well, it does no harm.’”

The Sociologist had been listening with a look of mild pain on his face, and now he said, “If it were you with cancer . . .”

“That’s a stupid remark, Voy. Is that what we base decisions on? In that case there’d never be a Reality Change. Some poor sucker always gets it in the neck, doesn’t he? Suppose you were that sucker, hey?

“And another thing. Just remember that every time we make a Reality Change it’s harder to find a good next one. Every physioyear, the chance that a random Change is likely to be for the worse increases. That means the proportion of guys we can cure gets smaller anyway. It’s always going to get smaller. Someday, we’ll be able to cure only one guy a physioyear, even counting the neutral cases. Remember that.”

Harlan lost even the faintest interest. This was the type of griping that went with the business. The Psychologists and Sociologists, in their rare introvertive studies of Eternity, called it identification. Men identified themselves with the Century with which they were associated professionally. Its battles, all too often, became their own battles.

Eternity fought the devil of identification as best it could. No man could be assigned to any Section within two Centuries of his homewhen, to make identification harder. Preference was given to Centuries with cultures markedly different from that of their homewhen. (Harlan thought of Finge and the 482nd.) What was more, their assignments were shifted as often as their reactions grew suspect. (Harlan wouldn’t give a 5oth Century grafenpiece for Feruque’s chances of retaining this assignment longer than another physioyear at the outside.)

And still men identified out of a silly yearning for a home in Time (the Time-wish; everyone knew about it). For some reason this was particularly true in Centuries with space-travel. It was something that should be investigated and would be but for Eternity’s chronic reluctance to turn its eyes inward.

A month earlier Harlan might have despised Feruque as a blustering sentimentalist, a petulant oaf who eased the pain of watching the electro-gravitics lose intensity in a new Reality by railing against those of other Centuries who wanted anti-cancer serum.

He might have reported him. It would have been his duty to do so. The man’s reactions obviously could no longer be trusted.

He could not do so, now. He even found sympathy for the man. His own crime was so much greater.

How easy it was to slip back to thoughts of Noÿs.

Eventually he had fallen asleep that night, and he awoke in daylight, with brightness shining through translucent walls all about until it was as though he had awakened on a cloud in a misty morning sky.

Noÿs was laughing down at him. “ Goodness , it was hard to wake you.”

Harlan’s first reflexive action was a scrabble for bedclothes that weren’t there. Then memory arrived and he stared at her hollowly, his face burning red. How should he feel about this?

But then something else occurred to him and he shot to a sitting position. “It isn’t past one, is it? Father Time!”

“It’s only eleven. You’ve got breakfast waiting and lots of time.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled.

“The shower controls are all set and your clothes are all ready.”

What could he say? “Thanks,” he mumbled.

He avoided her eyes during the meal. She sat opposite him, not eating, her chin buried in the palm of one hand, her dark hair combed thickly to one side and her eyelashes preternaturally long.

She followed every gesture he made while he kept his eyes lowered and searched for the bitter shame he knew he ought to feel.

She said, “Where will you be going at one?”

“Aeroball game,” he muttered, “I have the ticket.”

“That’s the rubber game. And I missed the whole season because of just skipping the time, you know. Who’ll win the game, Andrew?”

He felt oddly weak at the sound of his first name. He shook his head curtly and tried to look austere. (It used to have been so easy.)

“But surely you know. You’ve inspected this whole period, haven’t you?”

Properly speaking, he ought to maintain a flat and cold negative, but weakly he explained, “There was a lot of Space and Time to cover. I wouldn’t know little precise things like game scores.”

“Oh, you just don’t want to tell me.”

Harlan said nothing to that. He inserted the pene-prong into the small, juicy fruit and lifted it, whole, to his lips.

After a moment Noÿs said, “Did you see what happened in this neighborhood before you came?”

“No details, N—noys.” (He forced her name past his lips.)

The girl said softly, “Didn’t you see us? Didn’t you know all along that—“

Harlan stammered, “No, no, I couldn’t see myself.I’m not in Rea— I’m not here till I come. I can’t explain.” He was doubly flustered. First, that she should speak of it. Second, that he had almost been trapped into saying, “Reality,” of all the words the most forbidden in conversation with Timers.

She lifted her eyebrows and her eyes grew round and a little amazed. “Are you ashamed?”

“What we did was not proper.”

“Why not?” And in the 482nd her question was perfectly innocent. “Aren’t Eternals allowed to?” There was almost a joking cast to that question as though she were asking if Eternals weren’t allowed to eat.

“Don’t use the word,” said Harlan. “As a matter of fact, we’re not, in a way.”

“Well, then, don’t tell them. I won’t.”

And she walked about the table and sat down on his lap, pushing the small table out of the way with a smooth and flowing motion of her hip.

Momentarily he stiffened, lifted his hands in a gesture that might have been intended to hold her off. It didn’t succeed.

She bent and kissed him on his lips, and nothing seemed shameful any more. Nothing that involved Noÿs and himself.

He wasn’t sure when first he began to do something that an Observer, ethically, had no right to do. That is, he began to speculate on the nature of the problem involving the current Reality and of the Reality Change that would be planned.

It was not the loose morals of the Century, not ectogenesis, not matriarchy, that disturbed Eternity. All of that was as it was in the previous Reality and the Allwhen Council had viewed it with equanimity then. Finge had said it was something very subtle.

The Change then would have to be very subtle and it would have to involve the group he was Observing. So much seemed obvious.