Isaac Asimov: The End of Eternity

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 co-ordinates 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 space-ship. 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 space-port. A deep blue sky, blue-tinged buildings of naked metal on blue-green ground. A blue cylinder of odd design, bulgebottomed, 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 space-ship, 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 his 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.

For what?

For Noÿs.

And he was not ashamed. It was that which really rocked him. He was not ashamed. He felt no guilt for the crescendo of crimes he had committed, to which this latest addition of the unethical use of confidential Life-Plotting could rank only as a peccadillo.