Isaac Asimov - The End of Eternity

He had turned at Harlan’s odd grunt.

Harlan shook his head, managed a choked “Nothing.”

Twissell left it at that and turned away. It was doubtful whether he spoke to Harlan or to the air. It was as though he were allowing years of pent-up anxieties to escape in words.

“Sennor,” he said, “was the doubter. We reasoned with him and argued. We used mathematics and presented the results of generations of research that had preceded us in the physiotime of Eternity. He put it all to one side and presented his case by quoting the man-meetshimself paradox. You heard him talk about it. It’s his favorite.

“We knew our own future, Sennor said. I, Twissell, knew, for instance, that I would survive, despite the fact that I would be quite old, until Cooper made his trip past the downwhen terminus. I knew other details of my future, the things I would do.

“Impossible, he would say. Reality must change to correct your knowledge, even if it meant the circle would never close and Eternity never established.

“Why he argued so, I don’t know. Perhaps he honestly believed it, perhaps it was an intellectual game with him, perhaps it was just the desire to shock the rest of us with an unpopular viewpoint. In any case, the project proceeded and some of the memoir began to be fulfilled. We located Cooper, for instance, in the Century and Reality that the memoir gave us. Sennor’s case was exploded by that alone, but it didn’t bother him. By that time, he had grown interested in something else.

“And yet, and yet”—he laughed gently, with more than a trace of embarrassment, and let his cigarette, unnoticed, burn down nearly to his fingers—“you know I was never quite easy in my mind. Something might happen. The Reality in which Eternity was established might change in some way in order to prevent what Sennor called a paradox. It would have to change to one in which Eternity would not exist. Sometimes, in the dark of a sleeping period, when I couldn’t sleep, I could almost persuade myself that that was indeed so. —and now it’s all over and I laugh at myself as a senile fool.”

Harlan said in a low voice, “Computer Sennor was right.”

Twissell whirled. “What?”

“The project failed.” Harlan’s mind was coming out of the shadows (why, and into what, he was not sure). “The circle is not complete.”

“What are you talking about?” Twissell’s old hands fell on Harlan’s shoulders with surprising strength. “You’re ill, boy. The strain.”

“Not ill. Sick of everything. You. Me. Not ill. The gauge. See for yourself.”

“The gauge?” The hairline on the gauge stood at the 27th Century, hard against the right-hand extreme. “What happened?” The joy was gone from his face. Horror replaced it.

Harlan grew matter-of-fact. “I melted the locking mechanism, freed the thrust control.”

“How could you—“

“I had a neuronic whip. I broke it open and used its micro-pile energy source in one flash, like a torch. There’s what’s left of it.” He kicked at a small heap of metal fragments in one corner.

Twissell wasn’t taking it in. “In the 27th? You mean Cooper’s in the 27th—“

“I don’t know where he is,” said Harlan dully. “I shifted the thrust control downwhen, further down than the z4th. I don’t know where. I didn’t look. Then I brought it back. I still didn’t look.”

Twissell stared at him, his face a pale, unhealthy yellowish color, his lower lip trembling.

“I don’t know where he is now,” said Harlan. “He’s lost in the Primitive. The circle is broken. I thought everything would end when I made the stroke. At zero time. That’s silly. We’ve got to wait. There’ll be a moment in physiotime when Cooper will realize he’s in the wrong Century, when he’ll do something against the memoir, when he—“ He broke off, then broke into a forced and creaky laughter. “What’s the difference? It’s only a delay till Cooper makes the final break in the circle. There’s no way of stopping it. Minutes, hours, days. What’s the difference? When the delay is done, there will be no more Eternity. Do you hear me? It will be the end of Eternity.

“Why? Why?”

Twissell looked helplessly from the gauge to the Technician, his eyes mirroring the puzzled frustration in his voice.

Harlan lifted his head. He had only one word to say. “Noÿs!”

Twissell said, “The woman you took into Eternity?”

Harlan smiled bitterly, said nothing.

Twissell said, “What has she to do with this? Great Time, I don’t understand, boy.”

“What is there to understand?” Harlan burned with sorrow. “Why do you pretend ignorance? I had a woman. I was happy and so was she. We harmed no one. She did not exist in the new Reality. What differ. ence would it have made to anyone?”

Twissell tried vainly to interrupt.

Harlan shouted. “But there are rules in Eternity, aren’t there? I know them all. Liaisons require permission; liaisons require computations; liaisons require status; liaisons are tricky things. What were you planning for Noÿs when all this was over? A seat in a crashing rocket? Or a more comfortable position as community mistress for worthy Computers? You won’t make any plans now, I think.”

He ended in a kind of despair and Twissell moved quickly to the Communiplate. Its function as a transmitter had obviously been restored.

The Computer shouted into it till he aroused an answer. Then he said, “This is Twissell. No one is to be allowed in here. No one. No one. Do you understand? . . . Then see to it. It goes for members of the Allwhen Council. It goes for them particularly.”

He turned back to Harlan, saying abstractedly, “They’ll do it because I’m old and senior member of the Council and because they think I’m cranky and queer. They give in to me because I’m cranky and queer.” For a moment he fell into a ruminative silence. Then he said, “Do you think I’m queer?” and his face turned swiftly up to Harlan’s like that of a seamed monkey.

Harlan thought: Great Time, the man’s mad. The shock has driven him mad.

He took a step backward, automatically aghast at being trapped with a madman. Then he steadied. The man, be he ever so mad, was feeble, and even madness would end soon.

Soon? Why not at once? What delayed the end of Eternity?

Twissell said (he had no cigarette in his fingers; his hand made no move to take one) in a quiet insinuating voice, “You haven’t answered me. Do you think I’m queer? I suppose you do. Too queer to talk to. If you had thought of me as a friend instead of as a crotchety old man, whimsical and unpredictable, you would have spoken openly to me of your doubts. You would have taken no such action as you did.”

Harlan frowned. The man thought Harlan was mad. That was it!

He said angrily, “My action was the right one. I’m quite sane.”

Twissell said, “I told you the girl was in no danger, you know.”

“I was a fool to believe that even for a while. I was a fool to believe the Council would be just to a Technician.”

“Who told you the Council knew of any of this?”

“Finge knew of it and sent in a report concerning it to the Council.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I got it out of Finge at the point of a neuronic whip. The business end of a whip abolishes comparative status.”

“The same whip that did this?” Twissell pointed to the gauge with its blob of molten metal perched wryly above the face of the dial.

“Yes.”

“A busy whip.” Then, sharply, “Do you know why Finge took it to the Council instead of handling the matter himself?”