Isaac Asimov - The End of Eternity

(He knew the answer to that, really. He had a two-day margin of grace allowed by the spatio-temporal chart. The earlier portions of that period of grace were safer and yielded least chance of discovery. It was a natural tendency to crowd it as far downwhen as he could. A foolish risk, too, though. He might easily have miscalculated and entered Time before he had left it physiohours earlier. What then? It was one of the first rules he had learned as an Observer: One person occupying two points in the same Time of the same Reality runs a risk of meeting himself.

Somehow that was something to be avoided. Why? Harlan knew he didn’t want to meet himself. He didn’t want to be staring into the eyes of another and earlier (or later) Harlan. Beyond that it would be a paradox, and what was it Twissell was fond of saying? “There are no paradoxes in Time, but only because Time deliberately avoids paradoxes.”)

All the time Harlan thought dizzily of all this Noÿs stared at him with large, luminous eyes.

Then she came to him and put cool hands on either burning cheek and said softly, “You’re in trouble.”

To Harlan her glance seemed kindly, loving. Yet how could that be? She had what she wanted. What else was there? He seized her wrists and said huskily, “Will you come with me? Now? Without asking any questions? Doing exactly as I say?”

“Must I?” she asked.

“You must, Noÿs. It’s very important.”

“Then I’ll come.” She said it matter-of-factly, as though such a request came to her each day and was always accepted.

At the lip of the kettle Noÿs hesitated a moment, then stepped in.

Harlan said, “We’re going upwhen, Noÿs.”

“That means the future, doesn’t it?”

The kettle was already faintly humming as she entered it and she was scarcely seated when Harlan unobtrusively moved the contact at his elbow.

She showed no signs of nausea at the beginnings of that indescribable sensation of “motion” through Time. He was afraid she might.

She sat there quietly, so beautiful and so at ease that he ached, looking at her, and gave not the particle of a damn that, by bringing a Timer, unauthorized, into Eternity, he had committed a felony.

She said, “Does that dial show the numbers of the years, Andrew?”

“The Centuries.”

“You mean we’re a thousand years in the future? Already?”

“That’s right.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

“I know.”

She looked about. “But how are we moving?”

“I don’t know, Noÿs.”

“You don’t? ”

“There are many things about Eternity that are hard to understand.”

The numbers on the temporometer marched . Faster and faster they moved till they were a blur. With his elbow Harlan had nudged the speed stick to high. The power drain might cause some surprise in the power plants, but he doubted it. No one had been waiting for him in Eternity when he returned with Noÿs, and that was nine tenths the battle. Now it was only necessary to get her to a safe place.

Again Harlan looked at her. “Eternals don’t know everything.”

“And I’m not an Eternal,” she murmured. “I know so little.”

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 Noÿs, could produce half a dozen shades out of them, and make it seem as though the colors were reflecting her moods. Blue for innocence, bright yellow for laughter, violet for sorrow, and scarlet for passion.

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 funny.”

“Funny!”

“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, Noÿs.”

“ 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.

Noÿs said, “We are in trouble, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are, Noÿs. 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.”