Isaac Asimov - The End of Eternity

The anger reached her face and turned it a glowing pink while her dark eyes seemed somehow the darker for it.

“But that’s criminal,” she said. “Who are the Eternals to do this?”

“It’s done for humanity’s good,” said Harlan. Of course, she couldn’t really understand that. He felt sorry for the Time-bound thinking of a Timer.

“Is it? I suppose that’s how the mass duplicator was wiped out.”

“We have copies still. Don’t worry about that. We’ve preserved it.”

“ You’ve preserved it. But what about us? We of the 482nd might have had it.” She gestured with little movements of two clenched fists.

“It wouldn’t have done you good. Look, don’t be excited, dear, and listen.” With an almost convulsive gesture (he would have to learn how to touch her naturally, without making the movement seem a sheepish invitation to a repulse) he took her hands in his and held them tightly.

For a moment she tried to free them, and then she relaxed. She even laughed a bit. “Oh, go ahead, silly, and don’t look so solemn. I’m not blaming you.”

“You mustn’t blame anyone. There is no blame necessary. We do what must be done. That mass duplicator is a classic case. I studied it in school. When you duplicate mass, you can duplicate persons, too. The problems that arise are very complicated.”

“Isn’t it up to the society to solve its own problems?”

“It is, but we studied that society throughout Time and it doesn’t solve the problem satisfactorily. Remember that its failure to do so affects not only itself but all its descendant societies. In fact, there is no satisfactory solution to the mass-duplicator problem. It’s one of those things like atomic wars and dreamies that just can’t be allowed. Developments are never satisfactory.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“We have our Computing machines, Noÿs; Computaplexes far more accurate than any ever developed in any single Reality. These Compute the possible Realities and grade the desirabilities of each over a summation of thousands and thousands of variables.”

“Machines!” She said it with scorn.

Harlan frowned, then relented hastily. “Now don’t be like that. Naturally, you resent learning that life is not as solid as you thought. You and the world you lived in might have been only a probability shadow a year ago, but what’s the difference? You have all your memories, whether they’re of probability shadows or not, haven’t you? You remember your childhood and your parents, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Then it’s just as if you lived it, isn’t it? Isn’t it? I mean, whether you did or not?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. What if tomorrow it’s a dream world again, or a shadow, or whatever you call it?”

“Then there would be a new Reality and a new you with new memories. It would be just as though nothing had happened, except that the sum of human happiness would have been increased again.”

“I don’t find that satisfying, somehow.”

“Besides,” said Harlan hastily, “nothing will happen to you now. There will be a new Reality but you’re in Eternity. You won’t be changed.”

“But you say it makes no difference,” said Noÿs gloomily. “Why go to all the trouble?”

With sudden ardor Harlan said, “Because I want you as you are. Exactly as you are. I don’t want you changed. Not in anyway.”

He came within a hair of blurting out the truth, that without the advantage of the superstition about Eternals and eternal life she would never have inclined toward him.

She said, looking about with a slight frown, “Will I have to stay here forever, then? It would be—lonely.”

“No, no. Don’t think it,” he said wildly, gripping her hands so tight that she winced. “I’ll find out what you will be in the new Reality of the 482nd, and you’ll go back in disguise, so to speak. I’ll take care of you. I’ll apply for permission for formal liaison and see to it that you remain safely through future Changes. I’m a Technician and a good one and I know about Changes.” He added grimly, “And I know a few other things as well,” and stopped there.

Noÿs 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, Noÿs, 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 Noÿs 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.”

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 Noÿs, 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 manner in which you performed your Observational duties in the 482nd.”

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.”